letting me fill in for her, also all of you, thank you for letting me be here on this day. that's going to do it for this hour. i'm peter alexander. katy tur starts now. i hand over the reins. >> peter, thank you. i love having nicole, but i love having you a lot as well, so she's got some competition. if it's tuesday and the story is not about russia, the story is actually still about russia. >> reporter: tonight confirmation bias. democrats are zeroing in on brett kavanaugh's past writings on presidential immunity.

>> the thing the president is most obsessed with is the mueller investigation, and kavanaugh is the strongest against such an investigation. >> reporter: could the nominee be on a collision course with the russia probe, or is the democratic argument just all about the base? and the government's failure on family reunification at the border. the president says he has the answer. >> i have the answer. tell people not to come to our country illegally. >> this is "mtp daily." and it starts right now. ♪ good evening. i'm katy tur in new york in for chuck todd and welcome to "mtp daily." guys, there are a lot of reasons why president trump would nominate a staunch conservative like brett kavanaugh, but

democrats think they found the biggest reason, if not a talking point. >> why was kavanaugh chosen? because the thing the president is most obsessed with is the mueller investigation, and kavanaugh is the strongest against such an investigation. >> so this seems to be, of all the people the most self-serving person he could choose in order to protect himself from this criminal investigation. >> donald trump is nothing if not a man who protects, first and foremost, donald trump. >> let's dive into this claim. would kavanaugh protect president trump from mueller's investigation? that is an explosive question. here is what kavanaugh said about investigating a sitting president back in 2009 when obama was in office. it would be appropriate for congress to enact a statute providing that any personal civil suits against presidents be deferred while the president is in office. kavanaugh added that congress should consider doing the same. moreover, with respect to

criminal investigations and prosecutions of the president. here is what kavanaugh said in 2009 about interviewing a sitting president. even the lesser burdens of a criminal investigation including preparing for questioning by criminal investigators are time consuming and distracting. and a president who is concerned about an ongoing criminal investigation is almost invariably or almost inevitably going to do a worse job as president. but just as important as what kavanaugh said back in 2009 is perhaps why he was saying it. kavanaugh was a top aide of ken starr, that's starr and kavanaugh together back in 1996. their investigation of bill clinton was criticized for being overzealous and it backfired on republicans politically in the 1998 midterms. and by 2009, it was pretty clear that kavanaugh had soured on their work, too, especially in lieu of what happened on september 11, 2001.

as kavanaugh noted in 2009, the nation would have certainly been better off if president clinton could have focused on osama bin laden without being distracted by the paula jones sexual harrassment case and its criminal investigation offshoots. guys, there is no way kavanaugh could have predicted in 2009 that there would be a special counsel investigation into whether or not president trump colluded with a hostile nation to help himself get elected. ultimately it's not crazy to wonder, though, if kavanaugh still believes now what he wrote back then. it's also not crazy to wonder if kavanau kavanaugh's writing about presidential immunity back then motivated the president to pick him now. >> was that a consideration for the president? >> the white house is aware of his entire public record. >> including this, i assume, then. >> yeah, look. judge kavanaugh has over 300 opinions. he's written about a lot of

legal subjects pretty extensively. >> was this is one a factor? >> a factor is his entire record. >> kavanaugh's entire record also includes what he wrote in 1998, whether the constitution allows indictment of a sitting president is debatable. we're left to wonder which side of the debate he's on right now and how much that issue weighed on president trump's mind when he picked kavanaugh. joining me now is ben whittis, nbc's legal analyst, and author of "confirmation wars, preserving of i understandepends in angry times." and also phil for the "washington post." phil, do you think the president chose kavanaugh because he had these opinions in the past that a president shouldn't be investigated? >> i would be very surprised.

there was an interview with chuck schumer on "morning joe" this morning in which he said, would the fair assumption be to assume that he did or did not base his decision in part on these writings? i think it is certainly the case that we know donald trump is very focused on self-preservation. obviously the white house admitted they were aware of these writings from 2009, and so it seems likely that it was a factor. that said, kavanaugh was on this list of people that the president updated last november of various people who he might appoint to the supreme court. i don't think this was the primary motivation. but as others have noted, if it comes down to ten different people, all of whom hold the same conservative positions on certain issues, and then there is kavanaugh on the record saying you can't investigate a sitting president -- >> so was that what broke the camel's back? >> i think it definitely did. >> you think it's a big reason. >> i think it's a huge reason. i'm curious how kavanaugh would

feel about the fact the president is distracted with enriching himself through this ofls a office and his family and enriching his family through this office. sure, the president should be distracted, but it seems like he's doing less and less and less in consideration of the american people and more in consideration of himself, and this pick is an example of that. >> even if he said, i picked him because of this, would democrats have a stronger argument that would pull someone like murkowski or collins away? >> they would, but it's confused with the democratic argument here which consists that the trump doj is going to change the conclusion of the clinton doj which says he cannot be indicted while in office. it is in the constitution, it is impeachment. at what point does the supreme court intervene in that process? >> but there is discussion about whether or not the president refuses to sit down for an interview with the special counsel, and if he gets subpoenaed and fights that

subpoena, that would potentially go to the supreme court, and he's going to have somebody on the supreme court who could be the deciding vote on whether or not he has to sit down for an interview. >> it still doesn't intervene with the constitution. if it is decided that violates the president's responsibilities, then he would be subject to impeachment. but just refusing to sit down for a deposition, i don't believe, is necessarily going to constitute an impeachable offense. >> the question is whether or not -- rudy giuliani, who has been advising trump, has said repeatedly he doesn't feel like trump has to respond tie subpoena necessarily. that's the question you were raising, if trump says, no, i'm not responding to that subpoena, that will eventually end up in the supreme court, and if kavanaugh is sitting on the supreme court based on that 2009

essay. >> do you believe it's fair what he said in 2009 given these new circumstances? >> not only have i known brett kavanaugh for 20 years, but i was actually in the room when he gave that speech in minnesota, and, in fact, if you look at the table of contents of the minnesota law review article in which that appears, my article is next to it. and i spoke to him at the time he wrote that at some length about it because it involves a set of issues that he worked on in the special counsel's office for ken starr and that i wrote a book about. the more important article that he wrote was not the 2009 minnesota law review article, it was a 1998 article that you referred to earlier. and i actually think if the president appointed him because of his writings on special counsel investigations, then the president is a much bigger fool than we understand. that 1998 article describes what

brett kavanaugh believes a constitutional and appropriate independent counsel law would look like. it looks almost exactly like the bob mueller investigation. and in a passage at the end of the article that almost nobody is focused on, he then goes on to say that the president of the united states has no privilege, executive privilege, before such an investigation. in the 2009 article, he argues as a policy matter on behalf, ironically, of barack obama, that congress should revisit this and should create additional protections from the president. but his view of the actual law is extremely favorable to mueller. >> so we should point this out. this was not an opinion that he wrote on a court case, this is not a judgment he made, this was just literally an opinion he had that he wrote an article about. >> and it's a policy opinion. it's an argument about what he

thinks congress should do, not an argument about what he thinks the law actually is. and he's very careful to say that. >> so this does go -- let's say it's worst case scenario for bob mueller. he has to subpoena the president, the president says no, this goes to the supreme court. how is brett kavanaugh going to rule? >> obviously i don't know the answer to that, and, you know, the irony is that one question he doesn't treat in either of these two articles is the amenability of the president under current law to a subpoena by a grand jury. so there are a lot of questions that he teases his view of, including executive privilege, including the question of whether the president can be indicted, but he does not actually treat that question, so i don't really know. what i do think is that if i were the president's lawyers looking at his view of the law rather than of what the law

should be, it seems very favorable to the special counsel, not the president. >> i just wanted to note that in the 2009 article, he does actually refer to the decision in clinton versus jones, which was clinton going down a nefarious path. but he said that was decided that clinton had to respond to a civil lawsuit, which i think is bort noti worth noticing. >> so ben, i want to get another opinion of you. what does brett kavanaugh believe in more? he was a political animal. he worked in the white house. he has a broad knowledge of politics than others who have been appointed or nominated for the berchl nch in the past. he's being nominated by a man with very serious charges,

either obstruction or coordinating with a foreign government. who knows what's going to happen. brett kavanaugh as a justice, what does he value more, a man who puts him into that position or the -- what's going on with this probe and the severity and seriousness of this probe? >> so, look, i obviously don't speak for him, and you're asking me to tell you what my gut about his heart is, and so i'm happy to do that. i think any justice in that circumstance who is going to be there for decades is going to be much more concerned about the way the history and law will treat his treatment of the thing than he is going to be concerned about loyalty to the person who put him there with whom he has no known prior relationship. kavanaugh has a deep relationship with the bush white

house. his relationship with donald trump, as far as i know, is nonexistent prior to the nomination process that culminated yesterday. and so, you know, i know donald trump values loyalty a great deal. i don't think any president should expect loyalty from a supreme court nominee, and i don't think that that will weigh especially heavy in brett kavanaugh's mind if this issue ever comes up while he's on the court. >> let me change gears really quickly and go to roe v. wade. democrats right now are saying to reporters that there really should be a clear and concise answer when it comes to roe v. wade, not just this muddlei imu around and saying, i'm going to agree with what past decisions are. listen to chuck schumer saying

kavanaugh will deceive his thoughts on the subject. it's actually a tweet, i'm sorry. it is not good enough for the judges to hide behind this shibboleth that will follow existing law, because when they get on the bench, they change. bakely he's saying it's empty words. do you think kavanaugh will just lie? >> trump always picks liars. i'm being facetious. the people on that list of 25 or whatever the number was presumably were for roe v. wade, said women would be horrible for the affordable care act. he picked people with that idealogy, so i think there is a little less reason to think so short-term, but we should actually be having a bigger conversation about what this lifetime appointment means to the people, to the nation in terms of overturning law that currently stands and how he's interpreting the constitution. i believe that he is not a friend of roe v. wade. no one believes he's a friend of

roe v. wade. and certainly donald trump has stated on the campaign trail, he's stated it multiple times, that his objective is to get rid of it. so he's picked a justice who will do that. >> i will say donald trump said on the campaign trail he wants to get rid of roe v. wade. no question about that. thank you for being here. we appreciate it. we'll find out how democrats plan to fight the kavanaugh nomination. plus a key deadline to reunite underage children with their parents was not met. what will happen to those kids now?

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now? welcome back. the trump administration has had

trouble reuniting families that were separated at the border. the government failed to meet a deadline today for turning over 100 migrant toddlers to their parents. that's because of complications by parents who have been deported. only a fraction of those kids are expected to be back with their parents today, and then the government faces another deadline in a couple weeks to reunite nearly 3,000 more children. meanwhile a judge rejected the trump administration's request for indefinite detentions in children crossing the border with their parents. so what happens now? president trump doubled down on his deterrent strategy when asked about the missing deadline. >> well, i have a solution. tell people not to come to our country illegally. that's the solution. don't come to our country illegally. come like other people do. come legally. >> i'm joined now by msnbc news correspondent gabe gutierrez who has been covering this story for

weeks and is at the border in el pa -- el paso, texas. gabe, the question right there was asked about the kids who are not being reunited with their families. these kids were under five years old and are not being reunited with their families. his response was, they shouldn't cross the border. some might call that response heartless. the people you're speaking with, how are they reacting? what's it like down there? >> reporter: hi there, katy. well, the migrant families we've been speaking with do think it's heartless, and they are incredibly frustrated they have not been able to be reunited with their children. as we've reported, we spoke with one woman yesterday. she is 37 years old. she's been at the shelter for several weeks and she's barely been able to speak a few times with her son who is nine years old, her daughter who just turned six years old.

her birthday was a few weeks ago while in custody, and she hasn't been able to be reunited with her children. we spoke with another man. his name is mario. i didn't want to use his last name, but we just heard in the past few hours or so that he was finally able to have lunch with his 10-year-old daughter today but still doesn't know when they will be reunited. katy, there is a lot of questions today. they were supposed to provide an update to a judge in california talking about this timetable. there is a new deadline that's been set, but the parties will get together on thursday to provide an update. but katy, as you said, now there is the larger question of what to do with the nearly 3,000 children older than five years old. that's another deadline that's approaching on july 26. and as you mentioned, in a separate ruling, a judge said that the government can't detain migrant families for longer than 20 days, so still a lot of questions right now. and the president essentially dodging the question or changing the subject, rather, when he was

asked about it today. katy? >> does the government have any answer whatsoever about why they can't find these families? does anybody have any idea what was done, if anything, when these families were separated? did nobody just pick up their iphone and take a picture of these families? just easy, here's a picture of me, here's a picture of my kid, here's how you find us? >> that is the frustration of many of the aggregates here and the families. the government says, look, it's complicated to reunite these families, because they say among the reasons given in some cases, these children, the people that said they were these children's parents, in some cases they're not, they have a different type of relationship, they weren't able to be verified by dna. hsa also says that along background checks, some of these parents have criminal records and it's not safe to put these children back this their parents, and in some cases the parents have already been

deported. hss says they know the status of all of these people that have been deported, but was ice able to track down the parents, and was it able to speak to one another when the policy went into effect that they were going to separate these kids? that's the major frustration that a lot of immigration advocacy groups, the aclu, filed that lawsuit a couple months ago that is now forcing these deadlines. the aclu says there was absolutely no plan to reunite these families, and now we're seeing it play out in realtime, and these families and their children are caught in the middle. >> we're giving the evidence that there was no plan to reunite these families. the other part of this, guys, the flores settlement and the president using or the administration using the flores settlement as a reason why they couldn't keep families together, that's why they had to separate them. then they appealed to a court

saying overturn the settlement. nobody expected that a judge would allow him to do that. so what happens now? does this administration go back to separating families? do they release people with ankle bracelets, noah, any idea? >> i think this was an attempt to change a policy of catch and release through an executive approach, and it failed. it backfired pretty spectacularly, and it's not the first time we've seen the white house execute a policy they had not thoroughly contemplated, had not run through the legal department, and it backfired on them. the original draft of the immigration plan couldn't pass judicial review and it was a pr disaster for this white house. this was a very similar pr disaster for this white house with the exception of the fact that the public does not appreciate and does not like the idea of separating families, but also of not deporting families. they want to keep families

together but they do want to deport illegal immigrants, sources have suggested. so the white house does have something to stand on when it comes to hard line on immigration. it was a pr disaster. >> i would agree with the response to puerto rico. president trump today, first of all, he had historically blamed the democrats, now he blames the migrants themselves. the administration was not prepared for what was happening and later realized it was a disaster for them. i think this is something that could have been prevented. but i think it's important to note the numbers we're talking about here. the department of justice came out yesterday and told the judge, of the 102 kids under the age of five who they knew about and who they were tracking, only two of them had actually been

released, came to the -- it was three. came to the border with their parents. when we talk about, oh, this is trafficking -- >> it's. >> dhs suggested that fewer than 1% of those apprehended at the border with kids were with people that weren't their own kids. many of these didn't know where their kids are. i think in part that's why he says, blame the migrants, which does not make sense. >> what are they trying to do? what is the real goal of this? >> they were trying to keep out people that were -- it's obviously racist, right. they don't want brown people crossing on borders from the south. we keep talking about these families, these little people,

and these are families coming from 2,000 miles away from central america and south america. these are not druglords coming from mexico trying to sell cocaine. they are literally trying to seek asylum. they are refugees putting their children on their backs and coming a thousand miles through danger, fleeing, prosecution. they're getting here and this president brashly is not saying, oh, my god, let me help you, let me protect you because we know the violence in your country. he's saying, you're just adding to it. >> the border patrol, according to them, and dhs have come out and said they believe apprehensions were down 18% the past month and they attribute zero tolerance as being the

reason for that. you know, critics have said, look, there are fluctuations in these things quite a bit. some of the factors are it's hotter in the summer. the overall trend has been, over the last several years, that the numbers had dropped during this time. but the supporters of the zero tolerance policy will look at these numbers and say, look, apprehensions were down 18% along the southern border according to the customs and border protection, and they say that zero tolerance is working. >> thank you very much. panel, stay with us. is there anything the government can do to stop the kavanaugh nomination? what is their plan? do they have a plan? stay with us. , it might even bring a blue screen of death. having it problems? ask a business advisor how to get virus and spyware removal, and 24/7 tech support. office depot now offers on demand tech support for as little as $15 a month.

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welcome back. former national security adviser michael flynn had a big day today. flynn was back in court for the first time since he pleaded guilty lying to federal investigators in the russia probe. he's been cooperating with investigators, but he still could be facing jail time. but that has not stopped him from land ing a new gig. yes, the "wall street journal" broke that flynn has a new job. he's joined the global consulting and lobbying firm. yes, the former national security adviser who has also admitted working as an unregistered lobbyist to turkey will be the firm's new director of global strategy. but wait, there's more.

the "wall street journal" also reports that flynn's new partners previously worked with qatar officials, associates of president trump. but wait, there's more. one of flynn's new partners is being sued by a republican fundraiser and one of michael cohen's three clients, elliott brady. you cannot make this stuff up. oh, and none of the partners said they knew him but approached him because, quote, his experience speaks for itself. more "mtp daily" right after the break.

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and i am a senior public safety my namspecialist for pg&e. my job is to help educate our first responders on how to deal with natural gas and electric emergencies. everyday when we go to work we want everyone to work safely and come home safely. i live right here in auburn, i absolutely love this community. once i moved here i didn't want to live anywhere else. i love that people in this community are willing to come together to make a difference for other people's lives. together, we're building a better california. welcome back. the big event of the summer will be brett kavanaugh's vote.

i want to talk to you about what you are going to believe from brett kavanaugh when he is in his confirmation hearing. in the past he said he would uphold precedent when it comes to roe v. wade. he said this in 2006 when he was being confirmed as a federal judge. if he were to say that again during his confirmation hearing with you for the supreme court, will you take him at his word? >> unfortunately, a tradition has developed of judicial nominees from republican presidents coming before the judiciary committee and professing their respect for precedent or for originalism, and then when they get onto the court, they make the decision that is in the best interests of the big special interests and donors for the republican party, very often violating those very

doctrines of, say, respect for precedent which we saw completely violated in the janus decision or the citizens united decision. name me a founding father who thought the corporation should spend unlimited money in our elections? didn't happen. so you have to take what they say in the committees with a very big grain of salt. >> so what's the point of having a committee hearing if you're not going to believe what they say? >> that's a very good question, because the committee hearings have become so rote and the dodges have become so standard, and the time that senators are allowed has become so short that it really is beginning to appear much like a sham performance. so i hope that we can actually have robust hearings and explore these questions and try to get real answers. but it's an uphill struggle to have these hearings be anything

other than rote proceedings that lead to the end result. >> you're deeply skeptical of the procedure. why not just come out and say, i'm not going to support him? harris did, schumer did. why not you? >> i want to take a look at him and get answers to a bunch of questions. i have plenty of time before i'm obliged to cast a vote on him, and i think for a while, it's actually really important for the american people to understand that these republican judicial nominees are coming through a special interest obstacle course moderated in secret by the federalist society, that there is a whole dark money operation that goes into action to support their confirmations politically. one donor gave nearly $18 million into the garland to

gorsuch fight. so there is a lot of smelly stuff that happens in this process that i think is going to be educational for americans as we look later at brett kavanaugh. but we shouldn't look away from this messy process too early and have the american people not understand how this is the early stages of rigging. >> looking forward, i know you disagree with citizens united. if democrats retake control of both chambers, if they get a new president in power, what do you think the democratic party should do -- >> i think i may have lost audio. i'm not hearing anything. >> can you hear me now, senator? senator? i think we lost senator whitehouse. unfortunately we are going to try to reconnect with him but we'll take a break in the meantime. senator whitehouse, thank you. why republicans might have just given a big -- i don't even know what i'm reading -- a big hand at democrats. i think that's off. we will be right back.

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way to his nomination. was there actually a deal with justice kennedy that he would step down if his clerk kavanaugh were appointed? and then what did this pre-nomination process look like? how did he get the assurances of the big republican donors that he would be good on their issues and rise to the top of this list? we've come a long way from the day when people were appointed based on their credentials and were expected to be independent when matters came before them. now when the interests of big republican donors are involved, i think these judges are expected to rule in a certain way. and if you look at the 5-4 partisan decisions that have just poured out of the roberts' court, you'll see they all point in the same direction, toward republican election advantage and towards big corporate

financial advantage. >> how do you remedy that? you're talking about the courts getting co-opted by special interests and dark money. how do you remedy that? what is the solution? >> i think part of the solution is actually to point out that this emperor isn't wearing clothes. and for as long as nobody is calling out the five republican justices on the court, they're going to continue to deliver for those interests. but i do think if we call them out, and the american public sees the pattern of these 5-4 decisions, it's really an astonishing pattern. it's very hard to deny when you see the pattern. so i think calling that pattern out matters, and focusing too early on brett kavanaugh is not necessarily the right idea when you've got this bizarre pre-nomination, pre-clearance process by big special interests and this terrible track record of partisan decisions. >> so when you have your very is limited time in this hearing, are you going to be focusing on roe v. wade, are you going to be

focusing on obamacare, or are you going to be focusing on -- >> too early to tell. we don't have the paper back from this guy. i don't know who will be asking questions ahead of me. i'm still up and down in the chair. i have to play that by ear. >> what about when we were talking about the special counsel? if anything having to do with the russia probe goes before the spreechl cou supreme court, will you demand that kavanaugh recuse himself, that gorsuch recuse himself? >> it's very important that we look into that. this is the first time that we have ever had a president who was the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation appointing judges to the ultimate court that will decide the fate of that investigation. and to make sure that that is completely separate and the rule of law prevails rather than rule of the political boss is going to be very, very important in all of this review of mr.

kavanaugh. >> senator sheldon whitehouse. senator, we were so happy we were able to get you reconnected. thank you for sticking with us. >> thanks. and we'll be right back. [ screams ] ♪ [ laughs ] ♪ whoa, whoa, whoa. your one item would be the name your price tool? it helps people save on car insurance. why wouldn't it save me? why? what would you bring? a boat. huh. comdeeper than the oceanrld as unfathomable as the universe a world that doesn't exist outside you, but within you where breakthrough science is replacing chemotherapy with immunotherapy where we can now attack the causes of disease

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you hear that? this is frank's record shop. and this is where life meets legal. >> the u.k., that's a situation that's been going on for a long time. so i have nato, i have the u.k. which is in somewhat turmoil, and i have putin. frankly, putin may be the easiest of them all. who would think? >> time now for "the lid." that was president trump just before leaving this morning for the nato conference. he also fired off multiple tweets today continuing his tendency to criticize nato more harshly than he criticizes president putin. our panel is back. he said, who would have thought? i think he would have thought because he likes vladimir putin more than he likes anybody else.

>> it's as though i have two bullies in the kid i'm bullying. you have an heeasier time with e kid i bully. it makes no sense. he's choosing united kingdom and he is the one choosing not to have a tense relationship with putin. all of this may be part of the foreign tragedy that donald trump has espoused on the campaign trail but it's disingenuous to stay look how well i get along with vladimir putin when you haven't demanded anything of him. >> ian bremmer was on the show and i asked him who has more to lose? our allies or donald trump? >> he said our allies. i would suspect the president believes his meeting with putin will go smoother than his meetings with nato officials because he is offering putin

what he wants in syria which is a free hand in order on the hasten the american withdrawal from east of the euphrates which is something the president wanted from day one. i take issue with the notion that we are not holding vladimir putin to account in fashion or form in this administration. they have executed a variety of sanctions on russian officials, exported arms to ukraine, provided interceptor missile and liquefied natural gas and weakens putin's hold on the continent. that being said the policy in syria has been pro-retrenchment executing the united states from that region which is the same policy the president has in europe, retrenchment, dissolve our responsibilities and obligations in that region. >> why do you think it's dangerous? >> it's an anti-atlanticist

strategy. europeans are starting to notice and spend more on their defense and be prudent about their futures but that doesn't benefit america in any fashion. >> i wonder if the europeans would agree. i think they've said hey, we're confused why you're turning on us and this president continues to embarrass our country and create hostile relationships who we've had good relationships with in the past. if we are going so hard against russia and vladimir putin why is he the person that the president is always hugs? why is it the dictator he seems to have these friendly ties with. >> why does he call him and his own national security team stupid people. >> it's bizarre. i keep coming back to this. we can talk about the depth of the policy all we want.

there's something interested about the man who sees himself reflected back at him in a dictat dictator. >> vice news spoke with ammon aguilar a -- is that the son to the russian oligarch? and asked him if he spoke to don jr. on the phone about the trump tower meeting and he says yes i did, i did speak to don jr. about the trump tower meeting. this is him saying don jr. spoke to a russian about this meeting. don jr. said in front of testimony that he had no recollection of the phone call. >> it's a big deal because it helps us flesh out the timeline leading up to the trump tower meeting. there's a nebulousness about who they spoke with. the testimony last year said he had phone calls with manafort

and kushner and agalarov, all of which he said he doesn't remember speaking. so that lends to the idea that donald trump jr. is not being forthright. that's important because he is still the primary person telling us what happened in that meeting. so yet again we've seen this pattern of obfuscation. i mean, this is agalarov making this claim but all of the evidence suggests they spoke. trump jr. insisted he couldn't remember whether it happened. it's another reason to suggest trump jr. may not have been forthright about what happened. >> interesting times. noah, aisha, phil, guys, thank you very much. ahead, finding common ground on dangerous terrain.

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and lets you control your network with the xfi app. it's the ultimate wifi experience. xfinity xfi, simple, easy, awesome. in case you missed it, we find ourselves at a very contentious moment. we are a nation, maybe even a world, deeply divided. but there was one thing that brought us all together. we found it in an unlikely spot, a cave in thailand. 12 boys and their soccer coach trapped there for 17 days were pulled out alive, one by one and all the while the world watched. waiting, hoping. the journey to safety was treacherous and by no mines a su -- no means a sure one and it didn't come without cost. one rescuer died. but what happened in thailand is

amazing and it shows that maybe we as americans are not as divided as we think. when is the last time you saw president trump and a democrat like chris coons celebrate the sa same tweet. about what about these tweets that come from the often malicious comments from conservative and media outlets alike. there will be more political fights ahead but for the moment, let's enjoy the fact that there is some common ground in america. just had to go to thailand to find it. one other thing before we go -- and this is my producers indulging me. let's look at the champs-elysees in paris where fans advance to the world cup finals. they beat belgium 1-0, a header from utiti in the 51st minute. it was awesome, it was freaking

awesome and i hope england wins the next round because, frankly, a france/england final would be even more awesome. i have only awesome superlatives. that's it. we'll be back with more "mtp daily." now "the beat with" with ari mel burr starts right now. >> katie, it seems your love for the world cup could eliminate all of our bantering if it were an all year long type of thing. >> maybe i'll keep doing it. >> you look so happy. i feel more guilty about trying to create the awkward toss that has become my -- >> i had the most awkward -- like severely deeply uncomfortable toss with peter alexander at the top of the show which makes our tosses look like a walk in the park. >> you know what they call? it's made out of turtle meet, it's an awkward turtle sandwich if you have awkward on both ends of the broadcast. >> am i doing that right? >> perfect. we turn from the goofy to