nobody else even comes close. now starting at $7.99. gillette. the best a man can get. not like you needed it, but steve smith adds a new credenti credential, star of "words matter" with our dear friend elise. that does it for this hour. mtp daily starts now with chuck. >> tell schmitt i'm already a subscriber. big congrats to him. if it's tuesday, midterms and manafort making big trouble for president trump. ♪ >> good evening. i'm chuck todd in washington, welcome to "mtp daily."

by the way, big one for the nats. two big threats for the president tonight, on the legal front you're looking at live pictures of the federal courthouse in virginia where the president's deputy campaign chief, rick gates, the prosecution's star witness, is now being grilled by attorneys for his old boss, paul manafort. gates spent much of the day how he and manafort carried out an array of financial crimes and conspiracies. manafort's lawyers are trying to paint gates as nothing but an ungrateful liar. today gates testified about millions being funneled from pro russia associates to manafort's accounts. gates also said manafort directed him to lie about his income, doctor company records and falsify tax filings. for the first time today we heard about how manafort's financial problems intersected with the trump transition. remember, gates a part of the transition. the jury was shown evidence that manafort tried to get one of his

lenders considered for a job in the white house. we'll head to the courthouse in a few minutes for more on this developing story, what it means for the president and the mueller probe. as big as that legal story is for the presidency tonight, we'll begin with a political development that might be bigger for him and his party because it is happening at the ballot box. you are looking live at people voting in ohio's 12 special elections where tonight's results could show a looming disaster for republicans in november. recent polls show this race between two generic candidates here, no real superstar, it's a coin flip right now. folks, in a district like ohio 12 which really is a district that straddles the suburbs and the exurbs out there outside of columbus, in play for a democrat like danny o'connor, the democrats are looking at a

battleground approaching 80-some seats. if republican troy balderson can eke it out, the republicans could claim a bit of a survival, that they would need to win a seat like ohio, the ohio 12 in order to save the house. the president might say we'll see. we don't know what tonight's results might bring. either way you'll see some major fallout tonight. certainly what everybody is going to be staying up tonight to follow. eric headache is on the ground in ohio. also with me tonight's panel, lee ann caldwell, cornell belcher, msnbc political analyst and democratic pollster. garrett, i think the question i have is twofold. it's about the same group of voters. it's about what i would call the kasich republicans. i think we have two questions about them. number one, are they going to

vote today? number two, are they going to vote republican? >> reporter: well, that's been the big fear of republicans here, they cannot get those people to connect republican agenda with troy balderson. even bringing in donald trump over the weekend, which does a lot for the base here, which gets some of those base republican voters out, doesn't do enough to speak to those kasich republicans, those mitt romney republicans. chuck i've been walking around talking to folks at election sites in some of the suburbs, what i heard a lot about, democrats and republicans are talking to me about change. they don't like how things are going in washington. sometimes they don't like it because of the president's behavior, don't like the way he talks or tweets. they're just fed up with washington. of those people danny o'connor is absolutely the change candidate. we're standing in a district where parts of the county leaned towards obama in the past, voted for trump in overwhelming numbers. if they want change, danny o'connor is the guy. the second thing i noticed

balderson, the republican here, seems to be stumbling across the finish line. you don't get a sense he's able to carry what happened on saturday with president trump being here into tuesday. he's had some awkward campaign events. he kind of bad-mouthed one of the counts here that's going to turn out a lot of the vote. it seems like all the bounces are going danny o'connor's way. he still has a math problem. the feel on the ground is that the bounces are going his direction. >> i've got to ask you about the trump rally. i'll ask the panel about this later, too. but did he want it or not? did the campaign ask for it or not? you've got john kasich going out there going, essentially, apoplectic it sounded like, what the heck are you bringing trump into the district for? >> yeah. balderson has gone out of his way to not address that question directly. i tried to ask him a version of that the other day. he basically said, look, i'm honored to have the president here, always happy to welcome the president here, but wouldn't address the case sick part of

that directly. getting kasich's endorsement was a big deal for him. this is kasich's base of support here. i do think the idea that somehow bringing trump here has a huge negative impact. it's probably a bit overblown. there wasn't anybody in the district who doesn't like donald trump who didn't know they didn't like donald trump before saturday. >> fair enough. garrett, stick around. let me get the panel in here. we want you to stick around because you're our on-the drn ground expert. cornell, how important is this to democrats? >> i would flip it around. how important is this for republicans? not being partisan at all. there are a lot of districts out there, chuck, that are a lot more close than this district. if you have 20-point republican registration advantage. if this is a two-point win for republicans tonight, if you're in the republican congressional committee, you're going, oh, my

god. weave got 60-some districts out there that are closer than this one. >> george, if this town -- and i say this town -- are we underrating democrats chances because we were snake-bit by the 2016 result? how many -- connor landis was more republican than this one. how many more of these do we need to have before we get the baseball bat on the side of our head is go democrats are going to -- >> one. maybe tonight. the future is like the past and it always is right up to the moment when it isn't. this would be a good year for democrats, particularly in a district like this. the most hackneyed, tip o'neill's all politics is -- all politics is national this year. about this visit, the trump -- the half life of a trump visit is pretty short.

he went in about four days before the vote. some people who worked down there thought if he had gone in a day before -- >> i heard this anecdote. it's doug jones' people saying trump went too soon. >> but to that point, also understand this is a district -- this is the district public polling shows trump, a majority are disapproving of trump. as you know, the vast ma jofrt of voters who disapprove, they break against the president's party. >> liam, capitol hill is your beat. this one has been sitting out here, yeah, i bet that one will be close, too. we were talking about it the minute pat tea berry decided to hang it up. there's already nervousness on the hill. does this district add to more nervousness or does it make it even more chaotic among house republicans. >> this district means more. this special election means more to republicans and democrats on the hill than any of the past ones. >> why? >> you have two decent average

candidates, like in pennsylvania special, you had conor lamb who was a superb candidate going against a subpar candidate. it was further away from the election. this is closer to election day and they think this is going to be more telling. you don't have the outside hollywood who have come in to spend a lot of money in this race. you have a republican party throwing the kitchen sink in this race. so for democrats, this is going to be really telling especially for a lot of these red state democrats trying to defend their seats in november. >> garrett, one tell that we've all gotten used to around here in the specials, the polls haven't closed and there's already republican whisper campaign against pour troy balderson, he did don't this right, didn't do that right. does that tell you something? >> reporter: we've heard a little bit of that. some of that focused on fund-raising, the idea that danny o'connor was able to get up in the air and tell his

story. one thing that's different is these two will run again in november. we'll see a replay of this regardless of who wins. so the whisper campaign to distance himself from balderson should he lose tonight will be doubly damning to maybe keeping this district or winning it back in november. this thing is still going to be competitive in a couple of months. it doesn't go away if the dynamics change. you can probably argue danny o'connor needs the win to keep this more than balderson might if he wins this in a situation where we're talking about 60 other seats, this race doesn't get quite as much attention. maybe less competitive in november. >> i'm curious. does less attention mean what to a district like this, less attention mean you're not going to get the last resources that the republicans can throw at it, cornell, or democrats won't get the extra attention to get the fund-raising. >> republicans have spend a ton of money and you project across other districts, you can't

afford to spend this type of money. two things that are interesting. i was with congressman tim ryan, youngstown, ohio, he texted me and said they feel confident about what happened, all the momentum is on democrats' side. to kasich's point -- >> let me pause you. i think people need to hear what john kasich said. i was shocked that he went there before the ballots had been counted. take a listen to what the governor said. >> troy, why did you invite trump in here, the president. he said no, i didn't. i think donald trump decides where he wants to go and they think they're firing up the base. i have to tell you, at the same time he comes in here, i was with some women last night who said, hey, you know what? i'm not voting. they're republicans, i'm not voting for the republicans. >> the concern, trump fires up everybody.

>> exactly. the trump bomb destroys everybody except property. >> if you're a republican -- let's say it comes out and balderson loses by a point or two. the key thing will be keep trump away from any district that's plus ten or less. what do you do if you're a republican that needs the trump base. >> they all need the trump base. the trick is to keep it without calling attention to the fact that you're trying to keep it, if you take my point. >> without hillary clinton on the ballot, how does that work? >> the president intervened with an endorsement in kansas. people said please don't do that. he went out and did it anyway. he's an unguided missile here. >> oi think one of the key things about this is trump is doing really well in republican primary endorsements, but not doing so well in the match-up against the democrat. i think the dynamics are going

to matter. this is a vanity project for trump. he says he's going to be on the campaign trail every single day, 60 days out. this is one of his favorite things to do, go and rile up his base. >> can i play devil's advocate. do you wish democrats had embraced barack obama more? i say that, would that have helped you hold five more seats? >> are you just setting me up for a -- >> i don't know. i don't know what the rules are anymore. donald trump keeps changing. >> he's the last guy that wants back-to-back majorities. whether a republican o are democrat has done that, there's something special about him. when you look at the young voters and the minority vote and the energy he generated, that's a progressive coalition and that's the majority coalition, and that's the key to the future. i would say this about how you do it without trump being there and you see it.

it is ms 13. it is, i'm going to build a ball. doubling down, where the republican in this district has done because they moved away from the tax cut argument. as we've seen in the past, the tax cut argument isn't working. >> garrett, what are people talking about more, the special election or urban meyer? >> urban meyer in a landslide. it's not even close. >> i assume that's all the area is talking about at this point. >> we can still get sound bites out of people. we can still -- >> is either one of the campaigns touching the urban meyer story or are they steering clear? >> i think they're staying as far away as they can. >> the president came out and attacked lebron. >> how much lebron, garrett? real fast. >> chuck, i haven't heard it. i don't know there's as much crossover on that as i think we would like to see. >> there we go.

there you go, our espn-ification didn't work. up next, we'll take you to the soap opera, the sands of the hour glass comes the manafort trial, extramarital affairs, president trump's name comes up. it's a doozy today. keep it here. crabfest is back at red lobster,

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star witness. he spent today detailing, sometimes tediously, how he and manafort committed these financial crimes. gates testified how manafort directed him to lie about his income and fake company records. now, manafort's defense team is in the middle of cross exam eng gates, trying to convince jurors that gates who is cooperating with prosecutors to reduce prison time can't be trusted. we heard president trump's name come up, the campaign came up because the jury saw evidence that manafort tried to leverage his connections on the trump transition, aka, his friendship with rick gates to curry favor with one of his lepders. joining us nbc news tis correspondent pete williams and mimi rocca from the southern district of new york and msnbc legal analyst. i think she gets to stay dry by contract. anyway, people, let me start

with you. the rain storms were in between. i know gates is being cross examined. in the hours of the prosecution, if you were to say what was the -- probably the most damning testimony he gave as far as the prosecution is concerned? >> reporter: well, it's clearly the fact that paul manafort, he says, told him not to tell the accountants what accountants they had in cypress that manafort was using to pay his bills. don't tell them because that would show as more income and he'd owe more taxes. he said he falsified several documents and e-mails to help manafort get bank loans. three sets of charges, falsifying tax returns, not affording foreign bank accounts and using bank loans when the

money dried up in ukraine to get more cash for the property he brought. what gates did today is what prosecutors hoped. this is a financial crimes case, built largely on paper, tax returns, bank statements. gates is the one who helped those come alive. that's what the prosecutors hoped he did today. >> seem to be two damning pieces of evidence, two e-mails. one i want to put up here, it's paul manafort ooes 's reaction. the e-mail, wtf, how could he be blind-sided like this? that apparently leads gates to falsely reclassify some of the income as debt, and it magically saves manafort $500,000. pete, how much attention was the jury paying -- could you feel as if they were totally focused in and taking this in point by point? >> well, remember, they've heard about this twice before.

they've heard about this from the accountants who were involved in the various stages. they've seen other e-mails from the bankers. this is 2014. this is when the money from ukraine is starting to dry up after yanukovych woman nah fort earned millions working for, after he gets booted out of office, gates tells him what the taxes are. that's when manafort says, i didn't see that one coming, this is a disaster. what gates said is the accountant fudged the information that was used to get a bank loan. >> now we've had the cross examination and the biggest shock and awe of that is the defense got rick gates to admit he embezzled money from the firm in order to keep a romantic hide dloet away in london. do i have this right? >> reporter: gates has already said -- remember this is his second day on the stand. he's already admitted he

embezzled money from manafort. the jury heard about that yesterday. today they heard the sort of gory details about how he did it, how many times he did it. they showed e-mails, they showed statements. they were trying to nail down the evidence on that. but today we heard for the first time as the defense ripped into him to basically say why should the jury believe you, they said that he lied many times to mueller's prosecutors during the time when they were negotiating the plea and they say they discovered he was leading a secret life, that he was lying to his own family in essence, that he had an apartment in london, that he had what he himself called -- gates called a relationship, presumably an affair. he even said at one point when they asked is it possible -- remember manafort stepped down from the trump campaign. gates stayed on to help with the inauguration. the defense said today, is it

possible that you even sub schmitted personal expenses to the trump campaign. he said it's possible. >> interesting. mimi rocca, so the prosecution had to do two things today, right? they had to use rick gates as their star witness and show -- he's the guy telling them -- connecting all the dots. they also had to hope his credibility withstood cross examination. how has the prosecution done with their goal of keeping rick gates a valuable witness? >> i think they've done as well as the prosecution can do under these circumstances. whenever you have a cooperating witness who has committed crimes himself, admittedly lied to the government and who is there because he's a criminal who participated in crimes with the defendant, it's going to be bumpy. during cross examination many times i literally wanted to crawl under the table until it was over. you're just kind of holding your breath and hoping that you get

through it with some bumps and bruises but no major crashes. it looks like so far that's what's happening. what you don't want on cross examination is for something to come out that you didn't know about. i have seen that happen. i have experienced that. so far it hasn't happened here. it may sound like a pretty low bar. remember, we're going through this in minute detail. at the end of the day, the jury is going to have closing arguments from the prosecutors and from the defense, and the prosecutors are going to try in those arguments to refocus the jury on the evidence and make it about the e-mails. the e-mail that you put up is a really good e-mail. there is a line at the end of it, though, that wasn't in your visual that said, i thought you had this under control. >> interesting. >> if i were the prosecutor, i would hammer that home. it wasn't just i thought you had my tax returns under control. i gave you authority to take

care of my finances. that gives agency that anything gates does is now on manafort. >> mimi, somewhat the bar of proof that you think the prosecution has to pass? meaning, it looks like manafort's defense is crimes may have taken place, but he didn't make it -- somehow he didn't do it on purpose, or he didn't realize it was happening -- admitting to something but not really. these are paper crimes. these are i didn't fim out the right forms crimes. first of all, is that what they are? second, so what? is that a so what to the jury, or does the prosecution have to prove that this -- well, he purposely did this? >> i think it depends which charges we're talking about. the bank fraud, for example, i think it's easiest to say sort of how it's not just a paper crime because you see them

actually falsifying documents and turning income into loans when they're not. and that's much more sort of active than just signing a tax form that's not true. at the end of the day, i think if the jury convicts him on one, they're likely to convict him on all. at the end of the day, the government probably doesn't care. as long as he's convicted on some, he's going to have pretty high sentencing exposure. >> go ahead. finish up. >> the other thing is, i think the judge -- the jury will get jury instructions from the judge, and the judge will do a good job of explaining the law is the law. even if you think this doesn't seem like an important crime, signing a tax form that's false. if you find the facts that he violated it, that's a crime. >> you brought up the judge. pete, i want to ask you, first of all, any dramatic moments between our friends and the prosecution and judge ellis,

they seem to be having quite the back and forth. yesterday's back and forth read like a humiliation. did it feel that way when you witnessed it? >> reporter: no, but judge ellis runs hot and cold on that. maybe he was chilling out today. he's still pressing the government to try to get things done as quickly as possible. my colleague, ken dilanian has come out of the courthouse as things were wrapping up. what gates was trying to do is salvage his credibility as manafort's lawyers were bringing out this pattern of lies and fraud that he's committed over the years that he's now admitted to. according to what ken has just told me, he said toward the end, look, i regret what i did, but i've taken responsibility for it, and that's a path that was open to mr. manafort, meaning i pleaded guilty, he could have pled guilty, too. of course, one thing we did

learn today is that -- this was brought out from questioning by the judge, even though under his guilty plea rick gates could face many years in prison, the government has -- his lawyers intend to ask the judge to give him basically probation. and the government has written a letter saying, if they make that request, the prosecutors will not oppose it. now, it will still be up to the judge to sentence him. that's an enormous concession from the government. it just shows how highly they prize him as a witness. >> pete williams, thank you very much. mimi rocca, would judge ellis scare you as a prosecutor right now? >> prosecutors have thick skins. i think you have to have a really thick one with judge ellis the way he's been. at the end of the day, it's part of the job. >> mimi rocca from the southern district of new york, thank you as well. whew, what a day.

more on today's courtroom drama ahead. and my man, steve kornacki on the big board coming up next. keep it here. your brain changes as you get older. but prevagen helps your brain with an ingredient originally discovered... in jellyfish. in clinical trials, prevagen has been shown to improve short-term memory. prevagen. healthier brain. better life.

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welcome back. tonight, facial hair is growing on me. rick gates has had beards of all kinds, from the santa style down to the hipster strubl.

and now it's gone! sketched right off his face. what does art mean to do? it doesn't appear mr. manafort approves at all. why would you get rid of the beard, rick gates? are you playing to the court? you may be insen eighting something about those who sport a beard. we beardies are in good company. at till la the hundred had a beard. you know who else had it? sigmund freud, mark twain, william shakespeare, even frederick douglass. not only did douglas have a beard, but the president said douglas dowels an amazing job and getting recognized more and more. the beard helps. who doesn't want to be in that kind of company? so i say, rick gates, don't succumb to the pressure. chin up, let the 5:00 shadow last around the entire clock. maybe it's time for me to let my

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welcome back. to might on "meet the midterms," the ohio 12 isn't the only place where ohio voters are voting. it's primary day in four states. pretty significant states, real ones. all our states are real. kansas, michigan, missouri and washington. you know what that means? got to bring in my pal, fellow's elections nerd msnbc's steve kornacki. brother, we have a ton i'm obsessed with. we agreed to narrow it down to three things. i'm focused on two. we'll start in kansas. kansas kof, trump endorsement chris kovac, a sitting governor replacing sam brownbeck. i'm not convinced what trump's endorsement does. >> in a dynamic, a sitting

president who is not endorsing the sitting governor. take a look. one reason why republicans -- this is the wrong one. let me see if i can get it one. one of the reasons republicans on the establish side are nervous, there was a poll taken where they tested possible match-ups. you've got lawyer are kelly, the democrat, greg orman from a few years ago. if the incumbent kof nor jeff kolyer, this poll shows him out in front. put co-back in front and you have a dogfight between kelly and kobach. it was interested in the span of a couple hours you had trump make the endorsement of kobach

and mr. kansas republican politics bob dole come out and say not so fast, i'm with the governor. >> we'll stake with an i-40, taking us from kansas city, kansas, to st. louis, missouri. i think i have it right. it's i-70. my bad. i remember the i-70 series back in the day. missouri, statewide, a major statewide election have people on the ballot that a lot of people with washington addresses care about, a labor union issue. tell us about it. >> right to work. the backstory, republicans last year in missouri passed this. activists said not so fast. they put it on the ballot. unless it passes in the referendum, and it's today. the polling on this shows the right to work in referendum in missouri that looks like it's likely to go down to defeat. a wide margin.

the timing on this is maybe the most crucial part of it. the republicans backing this thing said we don't want to put this on the general election ballot in november. what else is on the general election ballot in november? claire mccaskill, democrat, fighting for her political right. if you're going to rile up labor, put it on the summer ballot, then you have a better shot perhaps at mccaskill in november. >> it is a reminder, and i know a lot of people work with the bricks and mortar unions. there's pro union, pro trump people. people shouldn't read a lot into it. you want to stay in missouri. there's an upset brewing perhaps in the city of st. louis that we should be paying attention to. >> in this era i hesitate to say it's going to be a loss for the incumbent. at least interested in the margin. this is a house primary, lacey clay, the song of the long-time democratic member of congress.

cori bush, who is the most prominent backer is alexandria ocasio cortez. she toppled a speaker in new york a couple weeks ago. she said cory bush, you can do it, too. i'm looking at the district, skeptical bush has much of a chance. we will see. i am curious, does she get close? does she break 40%. if there's a sign here of moment that that ocasio cortez thing was bigger than that district, i think about a month from now in massachusetts because mike cap juana is getting a challenge. >> you're telling me lacey clay is an 18-year incumbent? >> yes. >> oh, my god. wow. we've been doing this a long time. steve kornacki, a great primary night to watch. enjoy, thank you, sir. we'll be following all along with mr. kornacki on the big

board and watch the results as they come in. not just ohio state, but washington state ballots for weeks. up ahead, why are new hampshire democrats changing the name of their funding raising dinner for the third time in less than a decade? but allstate actually helps you drive safely... with drivewise. it lets you know when you go too fast... ...and brake too hard. with feedback to help you drive safer. giving you the power to actually lower your cost. unfortunately, it can't do anything about that. now that you know the truth... are you in good hands?

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its motto to live free or dine. the annual fund-raising dinner renamed for the third time this decade. like many states, new hampshire democrats had an annual jefferson/jackson day dinner named after america's third and seventh presidents respectively, many deciding they were the founding member of the party. many decided to rebrand the dinner and distance themselves from the legacy of two slave-owning presidents. in new hampshire, the first try, it became the kennedy-clinton dinner after john f. kennedy and bill clinton n. the age of me, too, apparently that was not a good idea. the new hampshire democrats decided they'll break bread and want some big checks, so now they're going to call it the eleanor roosevelt denner in. in a press release today, in the spirit of the pioneering first lady, their state has the first all female democratic delegation

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if your social security number is found on any one of thousands of risky sites. time for "the lid." the panel is back. leigh ann i'll start with you. lindsey graham was caught -- >> spelling the beans? >> a little bit. in a golf outing with the president over the weekend. a greenville county republican party event. radio station was doing the show there. a audience member asked why senator graham and jim duncan, why don't they step up and end the mueller probe. lindsey graham said, did trump ask that question? he must have mentioned it about 20 times on the golf course. we laugh about it. that's another form of

interference. i'm sorry. it really kind of us. >> well, it's interesting. there's always reporting that trump is obsessed with the mueller probe. he tweets about it. people on background talk about it, how this is a thing. for lindsey graham to come out and say, yeah, he would not stop talking about it, but, yeah, congress is currently investigating it. lindsey graham is not on the committee, but still, that's why richard burr doesn't go to the white house anymore. he does not want to be caught in a conversation with trump about this investigation. >> i have to say, i think richard burr has handled this as well as anybody in that situation. he has kept himself above the fray as well as anybody. i want to talk about one of the other big developments in the manafort trial. i think it's going to be a big part of the mueller probe story overall. this is an e-mail. the jury was shown an e-mail from manafort after he left the campaign requesting a guy who was basically in charge of the

bank with one of the loans, stephen cox, be considered for secretary of the army. manafort was e-mailing gates about that and got him on the list of economic advisers and got him floated for

talented lawyer, yet in an island planted thick with talented lawyers he got michael cohen, and he comes to washington and says i'm going to drain the swamp and found the swampie swampiest creature of all to bring into his campaign. he has an odd sense of talent. >> you're saying is, should the president be judged by the company he keeps? >> yes, we all should be judged by the company we keep. there is a bigger thing here, millions and millions of middle americans don't think their system works for them. they think the system is rigged. to george's point, it is rigged. >> we're seeing a piece of it right now. >> how does somebody become secretary or the army, hold annette for paul manafort. >> and all the sort of big money, and affairs. one of the things we say in the south. it's not the one thing, but it is the dismal tide.

it is all this guck and muck coming out to the surface. it damages the president with middle america. >> he's supposed to be the outsider. it's mueller that's draining the swamp right now. >> but everyone that trump touches, their lives seem to unravel. the only person who's still standing is the president at the top. it's amid chaos. but everyone, you know, you have paul manafort, papadopoulos, all his campaign team. >> you haven't mentioned gary cohen, or mark short, or mcmaster, none of these people have been able to get hired in jobs outside academia, and that's been difficult. >> a lot of people haven't left the white house yet because they haven't found jobs. that's why the white house is currently staffed. they're not filling any of these positions. so, i mean, zinky is under scandal, the new story about wilbur ross today and about

grifting money, pruitt. everyone that comes into trump's orbit comes into scandal, whether it's because the spotlight is on him or that's the people he surrounds himself with. combination of both? >> birds of a feather. >> george, the numbness. i'm concerned -- yeah it's been going on, going on. we're at new totals of it going on. it was -- it was shoplifting in the '70s and '80s. this is grand theft. i don't mean to -- it feels like we -- it's like they got away with it for so long. they said, boy, we'll go all in. >> there is a point at which a difference of degree becomes a difference of kind. however, let me say this to my progressive friends. big, intrusive, administrative state, the government we have, inevitably redistributes wealth upward. there is a reason why five of the richest counties in america are in the washington metropolitan area. big government is opaque, it's

complicated, its levers can be manipulated by the articulate, the affluent, the well lawyers and the confident. >> you made steven brill's argument. and ralph nadder's accidental where he's admitted that, yes, we gamed a system that actually rewarded those who know the most. >> well, yeah, i can make the argument that people who know how to game the system do well. they do that in every game, right? but the idea that that's about as progressives are behind that is a little odd. >> he's saying size of government, in fairness. >> when is the last time republicans have actually done anything about big government? when have republicans -- >> that's why i'm not a member of the republican party anymore. >> big government or shrunk a deficit. >> okay, fair enough. >> $1.3 trillion spending bill as some republicans point out, $300 million more than obama's. >> i'm doing this quickly at the end. but apparently mark lebovich

makes this observation. ryan basically says there's not much they can do because they're stuck with trump. he didn't want to be the one making the counterargument to trump's style of politics. nobody's tried. >> of course not. look, if time was congress was involved in governing, they declared wars, they supervised foreign policy to some extent at least. they didn't give the president the power to increase taxes, which he's doing by unilaterally imposing tariffs. but congress doesn't matter anymore. >> is that paul ryan's legacy? >> yes. >> i will leave it there. leanne, cornell, george, thank you. all, we'll be right back. ♪

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i'll admit, this was a tough day to only have one hour, manafort trial, major primary day. so, before i let you go, a few things to just have in your back pocket while you're watching the election results tonight. number one, in this ohio 12 race, if democrats overperform by the average they've overperformed in every other house special this year, tonight's contest will be a coin flip and we may not know the winner until tomorrow. it is that kind of district. now, how to watch other things, two other story lines i am watching tonight. number one, emily's list versus

bernie sanders, they're facing each other in a kansas house primary, and they're facing off against each other in a primary in michigan. and then my favorite thing about tonight's primaries is washington state. it's a jungle primary, top candidate in each one, but everybody's on the same ballot. it's basically like an actual poll of voters. so that's all we have for tonight. that's how i'm watching tonight. back tomorrow with more "mtp daily." ari, my favorite about your primaries, everybody is on the same ballot and it's a real poll of actual voters. >> it's a real poll. we love the ever green state and that system works pretty well, we think. thank you, chuck. >> see 'ya, brother. big news inside the paul manafort trial right now. bob mueller's star witness, rick gates, is now under cross-examination. this is big. it means that manafort's lawyers get their turn