i'm leaving this set and going to get a latte because i will be here tonight at 9:00 for my good friend rachel maddow. there will likely be no shortage of breaking news from now until then. for now, my thanks to jonathan, doug, matt and elise. that does it for now. >> who do we blame for no cameras in federal courtrooms again? >> you can blame me. >> boy do i wish we had a camera in a courtroom right now. thank you, nicole. if it's tuesday, paul manafort's trial is officially under way. tonight, collusion confus n confusion. the wild evolution of the president's alternative explanations with yet another dimension of denial. plus, midterm sabotage. >> our democracy itself is in the cross hairs. >> facebook you have? s -- snuffs out coordinated attempts of election interference but as the u.s.

government done you have no protect the integrity of the vote? >> mark my words, america won't tolerate this meddling. and day one of trial number one for the special counsel's office. how the paul manafort tax evasion and bank fraud case has nothing and everything to do with the russia investigation. this is "mpt daily" and it starts right now. chuck todd here in washington, welcome to "mpt daily." you are looking live at the federal courthouse in virginia where the criminal trial against former trump campaign chief paul manafort is now under way. the prosecution has just called his first witness, ted divine, democratic consultant who worked with paul manafort on the ukrainian project. moments ago, the jury heard opening statements, mueller's prosecutors basically argued

that manafort felt like he was above the law. while the defense tried to pin the case on manafort's top deputy at the trump campaign, rick gates. this is high legal and political drama going on in this courtroom and we'll speak with nbc's pete williams who has been inside the courtroom in just a moment. remember, no cameras in a federal courtroom. first we'll dive into the other legal troubles impacting this president. folks, if the trump team's arc of denials are any indication of what's coming, buckle up. we've gone down this road and we'll go back to the summer of 2016. >> are there any ties between mr. trump, you, or your campaign and putin and his regime? >> no, there are not. that's absurd and, you know, there's no basis to it. >> so think about that, july of 2016 manafort says that and here's where we are now. >> collusion isn't a crime. >> collusion is not a crime.

>> i have said that over and over. collusion is not a crime. >> guess what? the president seems to agree with that legal advice because today he tweeted "collusion is not a crime, but that doesn't matter because there was no collusion except by crooked hillary and the democrats." let's be clear here. collusion is a crime. there's another word for it, it's called conspiracy and it begs the question, are the president and his legal team laying the ground work for an argument that might be, dare i say, pro-conspiracy and pro-russian backing? that might seem like a bridge too far but look at the bridges that have been crossed, destroyed when i know you trace the arc of denials made by the president and his team. it began with no foreign contacts at all. the campaign said that during the election, that there was no communication during the campaign and any foreign entity during the campaign that won't remotely true so then it became

the trump campaign had no contacts with russia. >> was there any contact in any way between trump and his associates and the kremlin or cutouts? >> i joined this campaign in the summer and i can tell you all the contact by the trump campaign and associates was with the american people. >> well, that wasn't true, either. so then the denials seemed to morph into well, the campaign had no plan to contact with russians. for instance, donald trump jr. initially said did i meet with people that were russian? i'm sure i did but none that were set up. but that wasn't true, either. so then they denied exchanging information with the russians while also curiously defending it. >> nothing illegal about that. even if it comes from a russian or a german or an american, doesn't matter. if there was collusion with the

russians, they would have used it. >> and now investigators are turning up clues suggesting that information may have been exchanged between trump advisers and russian conspirators. it seems as if the denials are morphing into justifications to such an extent that what the president's legal team seems to be arguing is that breaking the law isn't a crime -- at least not when hillary clinton is your opponent. they weren't arguing that back then but now they feel like they have to bring that in now. tonight's panel, julia ainsley ranesh fanuru and rick marcus, editor at the "washington post." julia, we have gone down this road, moved from nothing, there was no contact with the manafort fitting we didn't just choose to pick manafort, manafort was the campaign manager then to where we are today, collusion isn't a

crime. >> we're mincing words between words that are synonyms, chuck, so we do know as you pointed out conspiracy is a crime. there's a federal statute against conspiracy and when i went back today to look at what mueller's mandate was it was to investigate -- pulled it here -- coordination between the russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of donald trump. that's another synonym. it could be coordination, it can be collusion, whatever you want -- >> there's a lot of cs. it's a c word. >> it doesn't even have to start with a c. >> it could be conspiracy to defraud the united states. that starts with a d. >> but for the legal defense of the president and his campaign to hin hirng on this, the fact that collusion is not illegal doesn't past the smell test and the timing that we can put in a vacuum here as manafort goes to trial. we may never hear the words "donald trump in this trial but we know he was the campaign adviser when they were at the

republican convention and put a pro-russia platform on their platform. so it seems like the timing to start mincing words is a little too conspiracy for me. >> ramesh, how quick are we? how soon is it where some of the president's maga defenders go this far. t atlantic wrote "skimming maga twitter -- short for make america great again for those of you that aren't familiar -- it's easy to see the outlines of the pro-russian meddling argument emerging. america interferes in other countries elections so it can't be that bad. exposed democrats' hacked e-mails was a victory for transparency, keeping clinton out of office was so urgent and important that it warranted foreign intervention." how long before that's donald trump's rationale? >> it's going to pick up. i think it will be a bigger part of the talking points for his fiercest defenders, partly because all of the previous ones

have been falling away as evidence has shown them not to be true, as you pointed out. i do think that this is the sort of thing it takes a body of opinion or group of voters time to be softened up. so you couldn't have said in november of 2016, there was low-level collusion with the russians and have had that fly. but thaw you've had enough time and bonding between the republican base and president trump that he can be more successful with the minority of the american people that is solidly in his corner. >> i think the softening up point is important. imagine if during the campaign we knew of the trump tower meeting. imagine if we knew during the campaign that the trump tower meeting was about peddling dirt. imagine if we knew that there was if potential that then candidate now president knew about it at the time as michael cohen seems to be alleging through leaks. >> although i'm confused being

gone a day. there of a second meeting? but that meeting doesn't exist? >> but the interesting thing going on here and maybe the president and his lawyers and mouthpieces are agitated because of the manafort trial but maybe they're agitated because of something else going on because it made sense the way mueller has preceded to have the indictment about the facebook and social media interference, to have the indictment about the hacking. there's another indictment that could be coming. maybe that is being teed up, an indictment that mentions americans colluding, conspiring, whatever. maybe there's a subpoena in the air that has them agitated. i don't know what it is. >> i'm with you, it feels like something, yes. >> the ripple effects feel like even bigger than the pending manafort trial. >> even looking at the timing, we're in late july and we know there's an ambiguous deadline of labor day because we wouldn't regularly see the justice department come out with an

indictment related to politics like this so close to an election, meaning the midterms so with that deadline, we're expecting something of a windfall, we think, if that's what mueller has been holding on to, during the month of august, maybe they're preparing for that. >> detective be the report. >> i don't buy the report. we're not even halfway done with the average. i think it's indictments not a report; i want to make another point about our shifting standards. under normal circumstances, leave aside the larger scandal. the mere fact that the campaign manager for a sitting president is revealed to have been an unbelievable crook would itself be a major political story and we are passing by it. >> probably you could make an argument, if you would have asked me that 20 years ago i would have said impeachable offense. it would have felt like that is -- and it's like -- it's not even -- we joke today it ee's barely a -- because it's a one off trial, there's not cameras in the courtroom. >> and it's one of the defenses

the trump supporters will make. his criminality doesn't have direct tie to his work for trump. the things he's being charged for aren't related. >> it is an amazing defense. it really is, what have we done to ourselves? >> there is many amazes pieces of the manafort defense. my favorite is what i gather to be and if only we had video or audio from that courtroom, the oligarchs made me do it. as a defense to tax fraud. this is like -- you know, if you're getting money from the mob and they say well we don't want you to report it, it's still tax fraud, okay? come on. >> it is sort of -- i want to play a clip that makes the point of how republicans are getting more comfortable essentially defending what is -- what i thought was criminal behavior. here's darrell issa. >> if he's proven to have not told the whole truth about the fact that campaigns look for

dirt and if someone offers it you listen to them, nobody will be surprised. there are some things in politics you take for granted. >> you don't think this has any long-term impact? he wouldn't be the first politician or president to misrepresent things. >> businessmen listen to almost everyone that might be helpful and they make pragmatic decisions about how to make bad stories go away. >> i'll be honest, he's going down this oh, donald trump is inexperienced line which i find to be an insult. >> the other thing coming to mind is the drain the swamp motto. if you're going to drain the swamp of people who you think in washington who have been doing politics as usual, working for big money like he's saying, this is just politics as usual, you drain the swamp of what's happening domestically and fill the swamp up with foreign influence. >> darrell issa used to care about this stuff. he used to care about rule of law and things like this. >> especially with clinton. >> the shifting explanations undercut the inexperience

argument. if it was no big deal, why so much deception? >> also we don't grade our presidents on a curve. we elect them president and give them all the toys at the president's disposal, we don't say you're not experienced enough to have these toys. that's ridiculous. >> maybe we should. >> are you saying we should have more than just 35 now? >> training wheels president. >> more than just an age limit. >> and his legal team. we are talking about names we never thought we'd had in the headlines, giuliani or lanny davis working for michael cohen, these are people steeped in the way this works so to have to go back again for someone like jared kushner they have advisers. >> but is giuliani a lawyer or is he spinning. just sort of like desperately trying to spin -- like he doesn't seem to be thinking about a case, he's just spinning like a top. >> if you think it's impeachment. if you think this is

fundamentally about impeachment, the political spinning is the case. it won't be an indictment of the president. >> that may be. if it's about impeachment and the spinning is related to completely undercutting mueller and and arguing he's a corrupt republic, i assy from with what you said, giuliani's spinning doesn't seem to me to be effective spinning, it's just wobbly spinning out of control. >> by the way guys, think of today's three topics we're discussing, facebook says the russians are at it again, the president's campaign manager is on trial and the president said it's okay to break the law. because collusion isn't a crime now or it's tuesday. we got through one of these stories, we'll try to get through the next one in a minute. you're sticking around. up ahead, we'll get inside that dramatic first day of the trial against former trump campaign chief paul manafort. ♪ this is a story about mail and packages.

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welcome back to the trial of the president's former campaign chairman. think about this, the man who ran the president's campaign is still on trial. e it's not wholly related to russia's interference in the election but they are connected. we went from jury selection to opening statements to the first witness all in one day. joining me from outside the courtroom. i have joyce chance former u.s. attorney and contributor.

rick gates is the man in the middle, the best witness for the prosecution and the person the defense wants to discredit. what did you learn from all of this so far? and throw in the tad devine testimony. >> this is the first time since manafort was arrested and charged in the district of columbia that we have ever heard the nature of hiss defense. now that's a point worth elaborating on for a moment. all the filing so far from his lawyer have been to discredit robert mueller and say he shouldn't have been bringing this case. he was wrongly given the task. he went outside his lane in prosecuting manafort. so today for the first time we heard his defense and his defense lawyer said that manafort is here because of one man -- but it's not who you think. he says that one man, as you noted, is rick gates. that rick gates is the one who was in charge of filing the tax returns, handing the operational

matters. he's the one that he says hid the income from the irs and he said for the first time -- we never heard this before -- that gaits was embezzling money from the lobbying firm that he and manafort worked for. yanukovych's supporters, as the prosecution says, ukrainian oligarchs, deposited the money in bank accounts in cyprus and they were transferred to manafort's accounts in cyprus and used to buy luxury goods and buy and do work on properties here in the u.s., the prosecution says. they also say that that whole scheme was the idea of the ukrainian oligarchs.

they didn't know who they were supporting so they did it in a third party way. >> pete, apparently there was an audible reaction. he said he was a patriot. and there was an audible gasp when they talked about his foreign work. was it that noticeable? >> i was not in the courtroom for that ch. it's hard to get a seat in the main courtroom courtroom. it's hard to hear what people not speaking in the microphones are saying.

>> so tad devine, one of the chief advisers to bernie sanders campaign, had separate dealings with manafort on ukraine, he's a government witness, has he been cross-examined or was it just the part one so far. >> the government has lots of e-mails between manafort and tad devine. a wlolt of wolot of work he did yanukovych. the defense is trying to limit how much the jury is going to ha hear about that but so far the judge said he thinks the government can peare down the amount of exhibits he has on that. the defense is saying this is a financial fraud case, this is about taxes and bank loans so

let's not hear about ukraine. >> pete williams, we know you have a lot to work to do with our sister broadcast at 6:00. joyce, you've been on the prosecution's side. first of all, we went from jury selection, opening statements and our first witness in a day's work. a bunch of us didn't expect that much today. >> it's a surprise in the district of virginia with its notorious rocket docket. even trying to ferret out things and find for-cause strikes, jurors who might have reasons where prosecutors would haven't to exercise one of their voluntary strikes to have them excused so that process moved quickly with the jury being struck by the end of the morning and then moving on to the opening statements and now this

first witness on the stand. >> let me is you this. i'm not a lawyer, i swear i don't play one on tv. it seems like things have gone in a standard way, is that a fair take? >> for someone not playing a lawyer on tv, you're doing a fine job. this is white collar 101. i wondered if we might not see a little bit more nuance, frankly, of a story about gates that they might not have portrayed him as down on his luck and being forced to plead because of his financial situation rather than turning on him. but here they have today he'll be the bad guy and this will be the boss trying to put it all off on the underling. that's a strategy that only

rarely works for a defendant. this case was already in process before mueller took over and it was likely the first situation that presented it to hiss team. we've heard the judge repeatedly admonish the prosecution but it may be that the evidence in this case ties up somehow with the larger russia and the collusion investigation in ways we don't see yet. but even if it doesn't -- this is a prosecutor's job, when you here in the middle of an investigation and you have a prosecutable case you go ahead

and do it. about this early on in the investigation, they would have had the capacity and resources to move forward. obviously manafort is a tempting target for the government. he's someone i suspect they would like to have flip and cooperate because he can narrate much of what went on during the time he was the head of the campaign and during the time where the campaign plank about russia changed. >> it was about a 72-hour period over the last week where it looked like where manafort decided to drop the civil suit against mueller and suddenly it's obviously they had a plan "b" here to try to make rick gates the bad guy. it almost looked like they were trying to curry favor with the special counsel's office. do you think it's possible this trial doesn't go to its conclusion? that it gets stopped because they cut a deal? >> that's always a possibility. some defendants don't plead

guilty until they see the whites of the eyes of the jury and decide that they don't like the looks of the juries. other times a defendant wants to hear the evidence come in, maybe hear gates before they make a decision but my read on what happened in the civil case and this was the challenge that was made to mueller's lidge egitima that was likely dropped at the appellate stage for financial reasons. >> it would have been expensive to go forward, they were unlikely to succeed. he's probably a little light on resources. >> mueller can't afford to lose this, can he? the pressure on him since this is basically the one test he's got pre-whatever he'll file against the president? >> prosecutors never like to lose cases but the job prosecutors have is to tell the jury what happened. to relate to them the evidence

and the facts and thin it's up to the jury to make a decision so sometimes unusual curious things happen with juries but the bottom line here is that even more so than in most cases mueller will want to win and a win here will both signify that he is here for serious legitimate reasons, not a witch-hunt and give him an edge going into the rest of this year's precedings. >> joyce vance, msnbc contributor thanks for coming on, much appreciate it. >> thanks for having me. >> up ahead, the new facebook threat, yet something else that could have been the lied story today, the social media site says it's uncovered a new campaign to undermine the midterms and russia seems to be behind this one, too.

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welcome back. tonight i'm obsessed with big foot erotica. no, wait a minute. i'm obsessed with the political obsession over big foot erotica. let's start at the beginning. this is lesls leslie coburn runn virginia's primary. this is the republican running for the fifth congressional district. wriggleman has a fascination with big foot. in fact, he's writing a book about it. he says he gets some gruff about it from friends who like to post memes on his social media pages, parodies of sort. coburn picked up on one of those

parody posts, one that let's say is not exactly g-rated. well, out came the heavy artillery via twitter. quote "now he's been exposed as a devotee of big foot erotica." this has been a joke inside and out of washington. but you know who isn't laughing? big foot and people are wondering if he has a dog in this fight. is he a democrat? you have to think he's a pro-environment anti-gun save the whales and prehistoric species kind of guy. or is he a republican? maybe he wants government out of his life, values self-sufficiency and growls at high taxes benefitting inting dwellers. so is he a republican or a crunchy twigs and leaves eating democratic vegan? i'd say his political views are best described as blurry. and regarding the erotica part, what of it? it's nobody's business by yours and the sasquatch you care about. washington, if you're wondering

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up that russia is looking to sabotage our elections again. there's more evidence that people working on behalf of the kremlin or someone acting like them is back at it. facebook revealed it had uncovered a new covert campaign to spread divisive political messages using their network. companies said it had removed 32 pages and accounts that were "involved and coordinated inauthentic behavior related to protests planned in washington next week." now facebook said it can't definitely say that russia is behind it but they say the effort bears resemblance to the kremlin-backed social media efforts during the 2016 campaign. and, by the way, this all comes after senator claire mcmacaskel

of missouri said russian hackers targeted her office last year. homeland security secretary kirstjen nielsen, perhaps already knowing facebook was coming out today, had this stern warning that the u.s. haas to act decisively to prevent more russian election hacking. >> mark my words. america will not tolerate this meddling. we are in a crisis mode. the cat 5 hurricane has been forecast and now we must prepare. i'm joined by fbi special agent clint watts, the author of "messing with the enemy." if you remember, clint, from before when we talked about the social media influence campaign, no one can explain this better than you, mr. watts so welcome back. >> thanks for having me. >> i know you've preliminarily seen what facebook is saying had happened. from what you've been able to study, how similar is it to what

these folks were doing in 2016? >> it's an exact repeat of the campaign they ran in 2016. if you look at what we learned in the past two weeks we see the hacking against senators. that started last fall. 2017 is when you hack so if you get something, influence in 2018, we saw that going back to the dnc, starting in 2015, influence in 2016. the next part is the facebook pages. they have used a very similar technique which is to create social issue pages and try to drive audience around the pages and they pick any contemporary issue, race, religion, social economic status to drive wedges. the goal is to take every crack and turn it into a chasm so later you can do political influence as the election approaches. >> let me pause you and put up one of the examples they said was out there. this was something the russians

or perhaps somebody connected with them were doing to rally folks on the left. it says here "if trump wants to beat barack obama's twitter for twitter record for most liked tweet, he needs to tweet two words, i resign." this was the type of organizational tool facebook says they were using, russians were using to rally the left and then that goes to what you just were explaining, they were trying to gather followers. >> we have to remember everything they do in terms of a placement, the goal is dual purpose. you use it to rally one audience so any audience that is some sort of crack in the democracy that are actually anti-government or talking about degrading government institutions, confidence and trust in the government officials, they use those provocations and try to rally people in one sense but they'll point the opposition to the issues as well. so look at the protests for and against islam they tried to arrange in 2016 in texas.

they can create that content, try to make a provocation or that something dangerous is about to happen in hopes that if that unfolds they have pictures and content they can message. one rally they were talking about is in washington, d.c. so can you imagine if they had white supremacists and counterprotesters confronting in washington, d.c., the nation's capital, that's damaging, good propaganda material. >> what do you make of facebook trying to be proactive. they're trying to impress regulators and the government that they're on top of this. as somebody who did this for the government, do you think they've gotten better or do you think facebook is behind the eighth ball? >> their attribution has gotten better and they've done more than any social media company in trying to quell this. they've put he sourresources to. tomorrow there's a hearing on

capitol hill with the senate intelligence committee where they're talk about social media and influence in 2016 and social media companies will be on the hot seat so this is good timing as well. >> well, you have facebook as the producer reminded me lost $100 billion in value. twitter got pounded as well. and they've been trying to quietly do some work in getting rid of bots. when you said facebook's doing better, are you referring to twitter when you say other social media companies need to step up? >> i've been very harsh on twitter but they've done two things that i'm supportive of. one is taking down social bots. the consequences, the negative part of social bots outweighs any benefits and the other thing they are trying to do is reshape community conversations so that there isn't so much trolling by downgrading or tamping down accounts that are aggressive so those are positive changes. will trust with the consumer

come back? if it can't keep people on these platforms it's going to be tough and facebook is trying to move it back from cats to kids. >> problem for twitter is that politics seems to be the engine on a pr front so they can't walk away from it the way facebook thinks they can. clint watts, as always, thanks for sharing your expertise. >> thank you. up ahead, there's hugging trump and then there's what one florida republican is doing. it's beyond hugging. well, we'll have to come up with a new word of phrase. we'll be right back. it's the ford summer sales event and now is the best time to buy. man: (on tablet) preparing classic campfire trout. say what? trout. trout. alright. you don't think i need both? why does he have that axe? make summer go right with ford, america's best-selling brand. now get 0% financing for 72 months plus $1,000 ford credit bonus cash on a great selection of suvs. during the ford summer sales event, get our best offer of the season:

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at low prices all summer long. save $200 on this dell laptop at office depot officemax. sprump president trump is i florida where two republican candidates are taking two different approaches to his visit. first there's ron desantis who will be campaigning tonight. if some republicans are hugging president trump,desantis, i guess, is bear hugging him. or something more. look at this ad. >> ron loves playing with the kids. >> build the wall! >> he reads stories. >> then mr. trump said "you're fired." i love that part. >> he's teaching madison to talk. >> make america great again! >> people say ron's all trump but he is so much more. >> big league. so good. >> i have to say, where was the

word "florida" in that ad? while desantis is positioning himself as close to the president as possible, another florida republican isn't. it's the incumbent governor and the likely senate nominee rick scott who spent this afternoon with the president but is not going near the rally to want. in fact, president trump's name doesn't even appear on scott's schedule today. his actual name. and keeping his distance may be paying off. scott is up three points over incumbent democratic senator bill nelson. multiple polls have shown scott with a narrow but consistent lead. is it better for gop candidates running statewide to tie themselves to the president or better to have distance in red states? or purple states? we'll find out in november. particularly in the state of florida. back with more "mpt daily" in just a moment. ♪ uhp. i didn't believe it. again. ♪ ooh, baby, do you know what that's worth? ♪ i want to believe it. [ claps hands ] ♪ ooh i'm not hearing the confidence. okay, hold the name your price tool.

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ruth? >> $15,000 ostrich jacket. >> okay, the ostrich jacket. >> i claim that one. >> i'm reading the opening statement about the ostrich jacket and literally my producer is going -- i start laughing and he goes that sounded like the ostrich laugh. i'm told ostrich is more like leather? >> well, if you spend your time on twitter as i have on the ostrich jacket there are kind of feathery possibilities which is too great to imagine and nice sleek leathery looking ones. i'm assuming it's the leather one. >> i'm hoping for an ostrich boa. >> it was probably not a hardy sigs for the prosecutors to decide to share that factoid. >> the judge did lecture saying show your evidence, it's not a crime to basically overspend. >> or have questionable taste, i

suppose. the judge also instructed the prosecutors not to

. why do i have a feeling donald trump's defense is going to be michael cohen. whatever the reason. >> if manafort ever slips, it will be paul manafort duped me. >> if this is a case with an enormous amount of documentary evidence, money in manafort's accounts, money not paid on your taxes. >> a lot of countries, too. >> money not paid on your taxes. you know, you do not have to be a robert mueller level prosecutor to be able to bring this case and win it.

and so for a defense lawyer, there are only a number of techniques that you can use. it's this guy and this guy is a proven liar. okay, that's -- you know, that's an issue. it's a challenge for a prosecutor. he is a proven liar. i didn't realize what was going on. the suite of defenses when a reasonably clear cut case like this is pretty limited. >> i hadn't put that together. their whole defense is to discredit a witness. it's not a witness case, it's a paper case. we've been saying it, it might be more boring than we want it to be because it's just documents. >> all rick gates is there to do -- the best way to use rick gates, questionable, did you sign that? he's there almost as a -- so you can authenticate that piece of paper too. >> right. and now tad devine, who we last saw when he was advising democratic presidential candidates -- >> that's not good for your pitch meetings for 2020. by the way, our principles of

the manafort trial. >> he's now the first prosecution witness on the stand. let's be clear, in the swamp as we've learned to call it, a lot of democratic political consultants and a lot of republican political consultants made tons of money advising foreign candidates. he is busy testifying that, in fact, paul manafort was the one who ran the show. and rick gates worked for paul manafort. >> the joke was politics at the water's edge, the reason for that, everybody had a bunch of money to be made in that water's edge. >> the facts that devine and manafort were working together does, i think, show that trump really was onto something, in calling it a swamp. but it's such -- >> sure. manafort -- >> he hired the swamp. >> he hired the swampiest person. >> let's not forget in rick gates, manafort got fired sooner than rick gates ever did. >> he's transition. >> he was tom baric's guy that helped him run the inaugural.

>> we were rwondering for so long. i remember being at 30 rock the day we found out he was going to flip. it wasn't just insofar as as to flip manafort to get the trump. rick gates had enough on his own about the way this campaign was run. >> this is why mueller's team better hope they don't like -- if manafort does damage against gates, it may hurt him for other uses of gates down the road. thank you, guys. what a day. facebook attacks, manafort on trial, and suddenly conspiracy's not a crime. by the way, nothing with a side of fries. fact is, every insurance company hopes you drive safely.

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in case you missed it, there's one thing on the menu all over washington these days. it has us asking one question. gary hart's favorite question, where's the beef? >> the underlying meeting is a nothing burger. >> the biggest nothing bugger ever. >> there's a lot of nothing burger. >> the nothing burger. >> the nothing burger. >> the big nothing burger. >> nothing burger. >> the big nothing burger. >> reince priebus called it a nothing burger. >> much ado about nothing burger. >> the massive nothing burger. >> a nothing burger. >> it's a cool new phrase everyone's saying, nothing burger. >> yes. >> of all the things washington serves up.

none quite as unsatisfying as the nothing burger, medium rare. and have you noticed a lot of things seem to be called nothing burgers these days, the cohen tapes, the trump/putin summit. the russia investigation itself. all that nothing sure seems like something, doesn't it? it's been a d.c. term for a while now, it's a lazy, overused crutch. but it's a lazy overused crutch i think i can capitalize on. if you're in the d.c. area, please try out our new restaurant, the nothing burger, each patty is hormone free, on the biotic free and calorie free. if you skip the bun, it's gluten free too. and, hey, maybe you're saying, chuck, i can't handle an entire great big nothing burger all by myself, well, good news, try our nothing burger sliders. it's the same total lack of benefits for a traditional nothing burger, but conveniently

bite size. maybe you get the tomato and the mustard. what it lacks in substance it makes up for in, well, nothing. that's all for tonight. we'll be back tomorrow with more "mtp daily." "the beat" will be very fulfilling and satisfying. >> we try to start medium rare. thank you, chuck. the first day of the first time bob mueller has put anyone on trial. that's kind of big when you think about it. paul manafort facing a jury of his peers selected today, mueller's prosecutors doyling down their message to those jurors, i can report directly from the courtroom where reporters have been eyeing this, quote, paul manafort lied. that's their case, and that will be covering this historic news tonight with house intelligence leader adam schiff. later, a league breakdown on how collusion is a c