father on the golf course after the first big security meeting after a year and a half. >> who's the enterprising person who took that photo? >> i'm glad to have it. bob mueller doesn't get spotted very much in public. hiel m you're reading your twitter mentions. >> thank god it's friday. >> that does it for our hour. i'm nicolle wallace. "mtp daily" starts right now. hi, chuck. >> and they were in the dreaded 35x gate which is the single worst gate to be at. you're already miserable when you find out you have to take off from that gate. guess what, you have to take a bus. don junior and mueller had to be on a bus before they got to get on a plane. >> i'm surprised that you didn't find your own seat on that bus. >> well, i have to work today. no work on fridays for don junior and mueller, right? >> sign me up. >> there you go. thank you. if it's friday, trust but

vilify. tonight, did the president know about the infamous trump tower meeting before it happened? michael cohen may be ready to say yes. the president emphatically says no. what will the special counsel say? plus an invitation from russia with love? why vladimir putin wants president trump to come to moscow. and spy games. inside the real-life washington spy drama made for hollywood. this is "mtp daily" and it starts right now. good evening, i'm chuck todd here in washington. welcome to "mtp daily. " we begin tonight with so many questions surrounding this bombshell claim that michael cohen apparently wants to tell bob mueller, but the biggest question is one you may have heard before. what did the president know, and

when did he know it? a source tells nbc news that cohen, the president's long-time attorney, not currently his attorney obviously, is willing to tell mueller that trump did know about the infamous 2016 trump tower meeting before it happened, because don junior told him about it. that would be a really big deal if true, because the president has said many times that he didn't know anything about this meeting and he didn't know that his son and campaign chiefs were expecting russian dirt on clinton's candidacy to be hand delivered to them by a self-described russian government inform anant. let all that sink in for a second. the allegations are unbelievable. the president's fixer just accused him of knowingly trying to conspire with the russians and then lying about it. but everyone involved from the president to his son to cohen is also unbelievable. i mean would you take any of them at their word, considering their history these days? the president today, again denied knowing about the meeting. why should we believe him? he and his team have misled us

about the motivations behind this meeting multiple times, mind you. they misled us about the people in the meeting. they misled us about what happened during the meeting. and they misled us about the president's role in crafting misleading statements about the meeting. that's right. they misled us about their efforts to mislead us. but right now their argument is simply that cohen is the liar, liar, pants on fire. >> he's been lying all week. he's been lying for years. he's lied all his life. the man is a liar. a proven liar. he'll lie like crazy. an incredible liar. he's got tremendous motive to lie. he lied to people about taping them. he is an innherent pathological liar. despite just them weeks ago vouching for one michael cohen. >> he doesn't have any incriminating evidence about the president or himself. the man is an honest, honorable

lawyer. >> you work with him for a couple of decades. >> i do. he's a good person. >> what's at stake for you, mr. president? >> brian, you know michael. michael has been on your show a lot. michael is a good person. >> so i just heard that they broke into the office of one of my personal attorneys, good man. >> just look at that date again. on april 9th, good guy, good man. here we are, july 27th, pa pathological liar. cohen's job was what? institutionalize some of the president's lies. he is in deep trouble with federal prosecutors in new york who are investigating an array of his own business activities. at this point it seems anything is possible. it's possible cohen is desperately trying to cut a deal. it's possible prosecutors aren't interested because maybe they think he's not a great witness. it's possible the president's team is terrified of what cohen might have on mr. trump. it's possible cohen is terrified

of what prosecutors might have on him. it's possible that all these leaks are trying to hurt cohen by exposing what he's got. it's also possible the leaks are trying to hurt trump by exposing what cohen has got. it's possible cohen is lying, it's possible the president is lying, and it's possible that mueller knows a lot more than we do about who's telling the truth. saul weisenberg was the top deputy to ken starr and joins our panel. geoff bennett, amy walter and dan balz. okay, saul, i want to start with you because i'm trying to understand to see if you have an idea of what you think michael cohen's strategy is this week and what -- in trying to get the very public attention of the special prosecutor? >> i really don't know what his strategy is. i think it's just as likely that

he's still trying to get a pardon as it is that he's trying to get the southern district or mueller interested. i mean the southern district -- typically what happens in a case like this, when the u.s. attorney's office is investigating a case, when they feel that they know enough, they call up the defense attorney and say come on in and we'll tell you what we've got and you can tell us what your guy can offer us. my understanding is that southern district has not been ready to talk to mr. cohen yet, so it's -- as other people have pointed out, it's very weird if you want your guy to be a government witness, it's very weird to be going out and talking about what he's going to say on tv. no prosecutor likes that. >> so is it possible -- >> to have your spokesman doing that. >> according to some folks i've talked to that are close to the legal team of michael cohen, they believe this is an intentional leak to discredit michael cohen and that it's about -- they think it's coming from giuliani in an attempt to

discredit him with mueller. >> i don't -- i mean anything is possible. i don't -- that doesn't make much sense to me. now, if they know -- if they know that the news is really bad in this area, it could be a thing where they're putting it out now so they can say old news later. the interesting thing here is this is very -- if it's true what cohen is saying, it's certainly very embarrassing to the president and it may portend problems for don junior because of his congressional testimony. but in terms of the actual meeting and what took place in the meeting, it's very unlikely that it's a crime or that it's a conspiracy, assuming that nothing went beyond that meeting. >> right. it's about -- is there action after the meeting. that's where the crime may have taken place, right? >> right. and there's a law, there's a campaign finance law, title 52

u.s. code 30121 i believe is what it is that says if you're a foreign national, you cannot offer or donate money or a thing of value to an election campaign. if you are working for that campaign, you cannot solicit, accept or receive. solicit, accept or receive. and when you think about this, as embarrassing as this episode was, this was not instigated by the trump people. that e-mail came from the russians and they sat down with them for 20 minutes and left. so i think in terms of criminal exposure directly for that meeting, there's not much chance of that. but the real question is in addition to don junior's congressional testimony is what happened after that? well, you know, there was a lot of time left in the campaign. you know, what happened? and that is something that mueller probably knows much more

than we do about. >> well, you brought up the denials a couple of times. let me bring the panel in on here. first let me play for everybody trump junior's original denials to sean hannity about what he did or didn't tell his father. >> do you tell your father anything about this? >> no. it was such a nothing, there was nothing to tell. >> did you know at the time that they had the meeting? >> no, i didn't know anything about the meeting. >> but as sol just pointed out, guys, this is from the congressional testimony of trump junior. did you go up and talk to your father about the trump tower meeting? trump junior, no, i wouldn't have wasted his time with it. in fairness, did you go up? not necessarily a phone call here. but who do you believe? michael cohen or donald trump? amy, there's a lot of evidence -- >> i guess the question is does it really matter. >> does it matter? >> i think at the end of the day that we're left where we always are talking about the president and when we're talking about these issues, which is he has said stuff that's not true a

lot. and this would not surprise anybody to find out that, yeah, maybe he knew about it. but we are going to just then move on to whatever comes next. to me the question is what this is going to say or what michael cohen has to say about stuff that is much more problematic to the president himself. this does seem very problematic if mueller already has this information about don junior and his peril going forward. >> dan, i'm curious if you just view watching the president this week and rudy giuliani, that they seem to be fearful of something, that it's not -- it feels more like they fear something is coming. it's not like they're annoyed that they think it's worse. >> it's hard to tell. watching the president come back last night and walk the south lawn back into the white house, he looked combination of angry and sour and worried. but i don't know what that would involve. i mean clearly there's a sense of betrayal. >> yes.

that's got to be the anger. >> and legitimately so. i think that's the case. but what do they have to fear? i mean if you have been working with michael cohen, you know, for years and years and years, he knows things that could be embarrassing and maybe incriminating. we don't know that. but i think in this particular case, as amy suggests, the credibility problems on all sides mean that this is not going to get resolved by donald trump saying one thing and michael cohen saying another, it's got to have corroborating evidence and we don't know if that exists. >> and what we're seeing in realtime, i think, is the reason why the consensus view among the president's friends and allies has been that the cohen investigation has always posed a more direct threat to this president than does the robert mueller russia investigation. one person close to the president described his reaction to all of this as being unnerved. he's really been rattled by all this. apart from rudy giuliani's to downplay the significant and undercut michael cohen. >> so how would you go about

trying to improve michael cohen's credibility? if you need this testimony and he's -- you know, and all he is, he was basically somehow observed in some form that donald trump jr. informed his father of this meeting beforehand but all you have is his word, right, you don't have a physical piece of corroborating evidence, tape, whatever, how would you go about trying to make michael cohen credible to the grand jury? >> well, it's not the grand jury you're worried about, it's a trial jury somewhere ultimately. and i think the way you make somebody like that credible is have them plead to a serious felony so they can stand up and say, yeah, i've had some credibility problems in the past, just like my employer, who i served for 20 years, and i'm taking the blame for it. i'm accepting responsibility. i've pled to a felony. i may be going to prison. that's the typical way a prosecutor would do it. >> i want to play something rudy giuliani also said last night and ask you three here and the panel who rudy giuliani is talking about here. take a listen.

>> there's no doubt in my mind that he's just not credible. i would not accept him as a witness, as a prosecutor. if mueller has any other kind of case, this is the kind of witness that can really destroy your whole case because any finder of fact loses confidence in the case when you rely on a guy like this. when you rely on a guy where before you're finished with him, you're going to have such a string of lies, you just can't trust him. >> i don't mean to play games here, rudy giuliani never referred to whether it was cohen or trump. i mean we're being a little facetious here, but that gets to the core of this. >> it gets to the core of this, that the waters are so muddy, none of the parties involved have a good deal of credibility. setting aside the cohen and issues with the president, this really raises a lot of questions about donald trump jr.'s role in all of this. we talked about his congressional testimony. you now have two democrats on the senate judiciary committee calling for donald trump jr. to come back and testify under oath in public about what he knew and when and what did he tell his

father about. look, we do know based on the evidence that donald trump jr. made a couple of calls to a blocked phone number around the time of this now infamous trump tower meeting. then candidate trump had a blocked phone number. if mueller's investigators tie all that together, it certainly at the very least gives credibility to cohen's claims. >> is this the best thing that cohen has? i know that he said he didn't know about this meeting, but he knew about it. if that is the most sort of incredible evidence that he has that is getting out there, that seems to me the kind of thing that, again, for a lot of folks out there who are sort of peripherally paying attention, that doesn't rise to the level of, oh, my gosh, this is a president that is willing to do this, you know, at a level we've never seen before. >> very quickly, dan balz, do you think the lanny davis into the michael cohen team, you saw president trump in his tweet refer to a clinton crony, that type of thing. does he actually help the president sell his story of the

clinton connection because now lanny davis is membershhelping cohen? >> i suppose but i suspect that's more of an inside game than anything. i think the president's attacks more broadly are the thing that are threatening to undermine mueller and threatening to undermine the whole investigation. >> sol, final question for you. the other thing that's sort of been sort of gnawing at me this week, is it possible mueller has already said no to sort of a queen or king for a day meeting with cohen and that's why this is so public? >> well, anything is possible, but i -- i doubt it, i really do. the way these queen for a day agreements are written, they're really not worth the paper they're written on from the perspective of the defendant. the loopholes in them are big enough to drive a truck through, so mueller would lose nothing by having such a session with michael cohen. >> and would you expect a session like that to happen

sooner rather than later given where michael cohen seems to be at this point? >> that's the kind of session where generally speaking a prosecutor wants to do that when the prosecutor feels that he or she is ready and has a good enough grasp of the case, because you don't want to end up sealing a deal with somebody before you find out everything they have done. i would just urge people to keep in mind when you talk about all this stuff, focus on what the crime is. i understand there are larger issues, political issues, but what are the alleged crimes? what we're talking about is either a conspiracy to violate these campaign finance laws or a conspiracy or an agreement having to do with hacking of computers. and so that's really the areas where people around the president and potentially the president are vulnerable. >> all right, sol wisenberg, thank you very much. panel, you have to stay. up ahead, vladimir putin invites president trump to moscow. hmm, somebody is trolling

american -- the american political community, are they not? do you get the sense that putin feels he now has an ally? that's next. are you ready to take your wifi to the next level?

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that will win them over. crest. healthy, beautiful smiles for life. we carry flowers that signifyn why we want to end the disease. and we walk so that one day, there will be a white flower for alzheimer's first survivor. join the fight at alz.org/walk. welcome back. do you get the sense vladimir putin is feeling a bit emboldened lately? just 11 days since their one-on-one meeting in helsinki, t he invited trump to moscow. president trump is open to visiting the russian capital once he receives a formal stwa takes and looks forward to having putin visit washington, d.c. after january 1st. last week president trump invited putin to the u.s. but the offer was pushed down the road because of the mueller probe, or so the white house

says. the national security advisor john bolton said in a statement at the time, and he said the president believes that the next bilateral meeting with president putin should take place after the russia witch hunt is over so we've agreed that it will be after the first of the year. joining me now is former u.s. ambassador to russia, michael mcfaul. also an msnbc and international affairs news analyst. ambassador, thanks for being here. i know that you've been in the news over this but i want to start with the news of putin's invite. there's part of me that thinks he's trolling america, literally days after the white house has to pull the invite before pompeo goes before -- >> just for kicks, right? >> and then suddenly putin isn't o offended. no, no, no, no, come to moscow. what's that about? >> it's very strange. in one way, they can control the summit over there a lot better than we can here. >> i bet. >> for one thing, i couldn't go to moscow to be part of the color commentary and he can control the press better, they

can control those movements, but i do think it was just a bit of trolling. you know, as a way to signal, as he did and i think sincerely, that he thinks president trump is good for russia and good for russian interests. he wants to keep the lines of communication open. if it's too hard to have the summit here, move to moscow where he can control it better. >> the fact that they have been so eager to set up a second meeting -- >> crazy. >> within months. >> makes no sense. >> what does that tell you about the first meeting? i'm trying to figure out you have to hurry up and have a second meeting because, what, things went great or things were such a disaster? how would you characterize it? >> well, for me, of course, it was a complete disaster. >> no, no, no. in their minds. that's what i'm trying to get at. >> well, for putin, it was a fantastic success. why wouldn't you want another one of those meetings? he got everything you wanted. none of the hard things were brought up. beyond his wildest dreams our president stood there and said i believe you because you were strong today and my intelligence

community i'm not so sure about. and when he rolled out this cockamamie crazy scheme of interrogating alleged american criminals, which i later became known that i was on that list, the president said it was a great idea. so if you're putin, it's obvious why you want it. why president trump wants it, i don't understand. >> well, one explanation, he may want a do-over. >> yes. >> does he realize how disastrous it was? do you think even seeing mike pompeo get battered by not just democrats but bob corker and other republicans too? >> maybe so. what was striking to me about that press conference, chuck, was something you and i have talked about many, many times. there's a policy by the trump administration towards russia. and i think it's pretty good. i actually agree with most of it. >> you have said they have done things you wish the obama administration had done. >> lethal assistance to ukraine, i applaud them for that. but when it comes to the president, he doesn't agree with the policy. and you saw that yesterday when he kept saying, well, our policy

on crimea on this, our policy on protecting people like me is this. the president doesn't seem to agree with the policy. >> you're here in washington and it's hard to assume it doesn't have to do with this issue that you're personally dealing with. you have an op-ed this morning talking about this. what putin wants is in exchange for the indicted intelligence folks who committed the crime here in the united states, that he would let mueller interrogate them if they get to interrogate you, bill browder, the magnitsky act. putin's anger at you and this bill browder character, explain it. >> well, they're different angers. i'd want to make that clear. bill browder was a successful investor in russia in the '90s. later lost some property, was stolen from him. he hired a lawyer, sergei magnitsky to protect him. under false charges he was arrested and died in pretrial detention. to right that wrong, bill browder has pushed first in our

country something called the magnitsky act. president obama signed that into law and now he's going around the world trying to get other countries to adopt that so really striking. >> putin is going after that guy. >> yes. what's this -- why are you on this list and the other folks on this list? >> it's a strange list. some are related to magnitsky, some are related to other things. i seem like i was just kind of thrown in because i know putin doesn't like me. i wrote a whole book about it to try to describe and explain to people there are nasty ways at disinformation and harassment. by the way, i thought when i left russia, they then put me on the sanctions list. that was four years ago, that i was done. here they came back at me. but i want to be clear about it. >> is the american government going to protect you? >> well, it's great what they said and now have said and finally got right about not allowing us to be interrogated. that is not going to happen. what the next step is, however, is scary.

they could put an indictment on me, the russian government, and then go through interpol and request my arrest. so when i show up in a third country, i could be detained. and that part needs to be pushed back onto. >> do you feel comfortable leaving the country right now? >> well, some countries yes, other countries no. >> if it were canada, one of our closest sort of the ones that would basically worry about america before interpol? >> i'm not going to tell you my travel schedule because people are watching. but i'll tell you one thing i was invited and planning to go to belarus in october. i'm not going. and that's a country that i just don't feel comfortable with. now, i -- as i said in my piece today, i think it's a low probability event that i could be arrested given who i am. >> you're high profile, you're on television. probably the best thing for your safety is to be on tv. >> and i did nothing wrong. even what they said i did was what i did working at the white house.

i was a u.s. government official. but it's not a zero probability event. i'll wanting to make it a zero probability event and that's where i need the help of the trump administration. and it makes them look weak too in the eyes of putin. just so i don't quite think they understand putin yet. by not pushing back, they look weak. i personally think that putin thought that the president was going to push back on that idea. i honest lly do. he threw it out there. he was trying to equate equivalence between those who were indicted and we americans. >> have you been surprised at how little public support you've gotten from this administration? >> well, public support has been outrageous. i got a 98-0 vote in the u.s. senate. there was a #protectmcfaul. on the streets here, chuck, i've got people coming up and shaking my hand. former veterans, people everywhere, saying we have your back. and i am glad -- i am delighted

that i met with the white house, the state department and justice department. >> all that happened today and yesterday? >> the last couple days. this is not just about me. the united states government needs to stand up and to protect all americans. >> do you get the sense they are going to do this or that they paid you lip service? >> you need to go ask them that question. >> i'm going to end it there. michael mcfaul, former ambassador to russia, thanks for coming in. thanks for being here. stay safe. up ahead, the infiltrator. how did an alleged russian agent manage to find her way into the inner circles of some intriguing conservative american political circles?

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welcome back. tonight i'm obsessed with your obsession with my obsession. let's go back to yesterday. tonight i'm obsessed with one word, a word we've all been using and using wrongly. >> meddling. >> meddling. >> meddling. >> meddling. >> meddling. >> meddling. >> i say it's time to stop calling what russia did meddling. what should we call what russia did? post your suggestions on social media. >> quite frankly we were blown away by the response. hundreds of you have tweeted your suggestions using the #unmeddling hash tag. you can see them running at the bottom of the screen, the suggestions. they have run the gamut from the tame to the explosive to the

downright bizarre to the ones we're not going to put on screen. but we did hear from plenty of people who suggested assault, but then there were others like ronald smith 46 suggesting hack jacking, kind of like hijacking, not bad. how about gary michaels who offered up trump bumping. brad maxwell suggested democrifraud. and dan in pittsburgh threw it all the way back to 1919 with the whole black sox scandal going with white soxed. bill of the bills suggests cofefeing. but the leading suggestion has been sabotage. but guess what, we want to keep those suggestions coming. send us more ideas. you can now go to facebook and twitter and use that #unmeddling. we know it's unsettling. we'll be right back. ooh, heavee on earth ♪ uhp. i didn't believe it. again. ♪ ooh, baby, do you know what that's worth? ♪

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it sounds like a plot right out of the americans. in fact the reboot is probably going to happen now, except it's real. while russian intelligence officers hacked into the dnc, a young russian woman tried to hack into conservative politics. actually not tried, she apparently did. marina butina is accused of having ties to russian intelligence as she cozied up to influential people in some conservative circles, that included the leadership of the nra. u.s. officials charged her as working as a covert agent to which she has pleaded not guilty. they're not saying she was an operative, basically an unregistered agent. she was officially a graduate student at american university, right down the street from us actually here in d.c. she also introduced herself to fellow activists as the founder of a gun rights group. but she didn't try to hide her ties to russia. her cell phone case was emblazened with a photograph of vladimir putin riding shirtless on a horse and she bragged to

classmates that she had worked for the russian government. so not really a secret agent, maybe a not-so-secret agent. i'm joined now by roslyn helderman from "washington post" who's been covering this story and has done an unearthing of who is maria butina. let's start with that simple question, who is maria butina? how do you feel like you now can answer that question after doing your extensive dive into her days here at american university? >> yeah. she's just a simple gun rights activist from siberia. >> there it is, case closed. >> she's a 29-year-old woman who graduated from a.u., received a master's degree in may. she had grown up in the wilds of siberia where she told people that she learned to hunt bears and wolves, and she had over the course of a number of years, as you said, built these important

relationships mostly in the nra but in other parts of the conservative movement where she was -- people were very interested in her and her story and were eager to get to know her. >> first of all, are you convinced that her russian -- her siberia story is truthful? >> i don't know. we haven't seen any evidence yet that it's not. there has been some reporting from russia, but it is quite a fabulous story. she opened up furniture stores and they were quite successful. >> why did she leave? >> she wanted to make her way in the world so she moved to moscow with the proceeds of her stores and started a pr business in moscow and started in the gun rights activism area. >> the oddest part of your extensive profile of her was the fact that it was clear to you

after you spent not too long on the campus, there were plenty of students who suspected she was some sort of russian agent. she didn't hide this very well. >> not at all. so you mentioned the phone case. she also was a frequenter of russia house, a restaurant here in washington that a lot of russian diplomats like where she was a big fan of stereotypical but true, vak achlvodka. she liked horseradished infused vodka. >> i want to try that, by the way. that actually made me interested in that vodka. anyway. >> she also defended russian policy in classroom discussions. she defended russia's invasion of crimea. in a classroom discussion about the interference in the 2016 election, she talked about how a lot of countries do that kind of thing. there were some suspicions, especially because there's been

media coverage of her for some time, there were some professors on the a.u. campus who actually complained to the administration and said we think this is a problem. they felt as though the administration did not take forceful enough action. >> let me bring the panel in here a little bit. there's so much to unpack here, dan. there's parts of this that feels like she actually could be the real life grandchild of the fictional philip and elizabeth in "the americans." page could be her mother. the nra angle to this story, they have not commented on this. they're a very aggressive organization and will defend themselves when necessary. they seem like an organization that is ready for the anvil vil drop. >> i think everybody is struck by the silence of the nra given the way they push back against any kind of criticism or anything that impugns their -- >> or if they don't, their surrogates do it. >> and they put a ton of money into the election. >> the most they have ever done.

>> the most they have ever done. and i think people have looked at that. nobody has ever quite gotten to the bottom of it, i would say. this adds to the intrigue of it. in a sense, the story that ros just described here of her going from the wilds of siberia to moscow to the united states almost -- it does sound too perfect in the way all of that happened. you wonder how she actually was identified by the russian government or intelligence to become an agent. >> right. why would they -- what was it about her and why they -- and how they chose her. was it her decision to make these contacts with people? >> can you answer amy's question? do you get the sense she was recruited to do this? what do you feel like you found out? >> i feel like we certainly don't know the full story yet. she had a key contact in the

russian government. she was working on behalf of this guy, alexander torshin, who was a rather powerful figure in russia, former senator from vladimir putin's party, now a central banker. a lot of this was about her connecting torshin, this close to putin semi oligarch, with american conservative thought leaders. >> the thing i keep coming back to is it's hard to believe that she's the only one. how many other maria butinas are out there. i think ros's reporting rchlts the success of this apparently years-long. >> she wasn't a good spy because she got caught. >> i think it reflects the success of this years-long effort by the kremlin to curry influence with american gun enthusiasts and conservative republicans which apparently worked. there are pictures of her with david clark, the former milwaukee sheriff, with rick santorum, with wayne la pierre, so it's stunning. >> the boyfriend, the south dakota boyfriend, paul erickson,

i believe is the name, the question is was he duped or was he in on it? he did her homework for the grad school. that seems to be the open question? >> yeah, absolutely the open question. i mean obviously he hasn't been charged with anything, not accused of any wrongdoing. but when you look at the evidence that the government has started to submit in court, there are e-mails and the like in which it certainly seems like he had some knowledge that she was working with the russian government and was trying to build ties between the united states and russia certainly in concert with them. there was even a document seized from his apartment that said something about considering an fsb job offer, fsb is the successor agency to the kgb. >> there you go. well, it was quite the profile, well done. >> thank you. >> thank you for being on the show. panel, you guys stick around for one more segment. up ahead, president trump says his economic wins are

historic. are they really? and how much can they mitigate the tariff damage in the midwest? that's next.

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president trump will visit tampa next tuesday four weeks before the state's primary to do what presidents normally don't do but this one loves to do and that's to campaign in a primary for congressman ron de santis who he first backed without an actual endorsement last december. how important is that support? look at these poll numbers from january and february. adam putnam, de santis trailed adam putnam by four points. now look at the numbers released this morning. desantis has a double-digit lead. this poll does not look at how he would stack up against gwen graham, the democratic front-runner, but this does illustrate just how much the republican party is the party of trump. he weighs in on a primary, katie bar the door. more "mtp daily" after the break. when i found out i had age-related macular degeneration, amd,

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once again, we are the economic envy of the entire world. when i meet the leaders of countries, the first thing they say invariably is, mr. president, so nice to to meet y congratulations on your economy. you're leading the entire world. >> time for the lid. the panel is back. jeff bennett, this is your beat. a new setting for the president. improving the stage craft for the president. the facts of today's economic news were good enough, but apparently they weren't good enough for the president, were they? >> they weren't good enough. if you own the highs, you also own the lows. the president really cut out the second part of that and went out there and really touted the economic success, even though, you know, certain things, like the surge in factory jobs, that started under president obama. but look, this was something the president wanted to use the turn the channel away from michael

cohen and all the other stuff of the week. >> not what any president does when they have a great quarter like this. same style of let's get an event before the newscast. >> for good reason. >> he did oversell it. >> he deserves to go out and crow about the state of the economy. >> did he eversell it? >> he oversells everything. he's a serial exaggerator. president obama had quarters better than this quarter. >> he can't ever get his facts straight on this. nobody had ever done this, ever. that's not true. >> on the other hand, you know, if -- to the degree to which this continues, we know from history that -- you know, that the economy in the middle of the summer tends to be a perception people take into the election. so he's going to tout this. he's going to push this, and more power to him for that. but he has to stick with the

facts. >> we were having this debate about whether we think the economy -- the good economy is already baked in, the question is, let's assume that trump's at 45%, two ways to look at that 45. because of the great economy, it should be at 55, and everything's holding him back to 45, or he should be at 35. >> i don't know where i fit on that, that it should be lower. he would be here -- opinions of the president are totally disconnected from things that would normally color the way that you think about -- >> good, bad or negative. >> the people doing the best in this economy, if you think about suburban, upper white middle class america who are seeing their 401(k)s go up, all of those, his numbers among those voters are terrible. and so i think for voters, this election especially, this is

really a statement not about how well i'm doing, but how well is the country doing. and that is -- even with people who aren't doing as well, and they want to support the president, they may not be personally feeling great about the economy, but they want to show the president that they stand with him in the way he's doing his job. >> he did sort of have competing messages. yesterday, he goes to the midwest, be patient, give me time, i've got $12 million here, don't worry, this will be great down the road, and that's the conflict here. >> that's the thing. the president wants credit for awakening the animal spirits of the u.s. economy. and this could all be undone by these tariffs. that's why there's so much hammering on the hill. >> it won't happen before the election, it might not happen -- it may not happen until 2019. >> on the ag front, i disagree. >> the rate the economy is going. >> that's the problem he's got, the immediate, you say people vote on their pocketbooks, perceptions of the economy, in the midwest, it's not a

perception. >> and the $12 billion band aid fund doesn't address. >> our affiliates in california say none of that assistance is given to those farmers. >> in those areas of the midwest, he still has a lot of support among the farmers who are getting -- >> he does. will the republican party in 2018? >> that's a good question. but one thing we can see from what he's doing already is he is going to be a very aggressive advocate to try to elevate beyond, you know, the local candidates to the larger message of stick with me because they're really after me. >> that's the last answer. well done. but i have to tell you, we go from a president in barack obama, who some of his supporters thought he didn't talk up the economy enough, to one that may be overtalking it.

thank you very much. up ahead, here's looking at you, mike pence.

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time, right? right? >> i will say this, right now, and i'll say it strongly, as the trade deals come in one by one, we're going to go a lot higher than these numbers. and these are great numbers. >> that's right. the smile didn't crack there. >> that was just a few seconds. so let's crank it up here at double speed. still held it. you realize how long that actually was. now let's speed it up to ten times speed so you can see how long the vice president kept that expression. he never cracked. that is impressive, mr. vice president, impressive. anyway, good to know in this chaotic time there's someone in

the white house who truly captures that pence-ive look. it's friday, we had to have a little fun, a little pun. that's all we have tonight. back monday with more "mtp daily." "the beat" with ari melber starts right now. >> i want to know more about this vodka. >> maria butina, apparently it was her favorite. >> it sounds like perfect vodka for passover. >> i like that. that's an answer -- that's the better answer to any of the four questions. >> chuck, have a great weekend, we'll be watching. i will tell you, watching "the beat" tonight, we have quite a show. talk with michael avenue gnaw toe, the stormy daniels hearing today. trump team going all out civil war with michael cohen, a