ourselves this is not -- none of this is normal. none of this is acceptable. this is -- >> acceptable. >> you shouldn't staff the white house with these kind of people. >> omarosa will be on sunday on "meet the press." we're all heading to the bar. that does it for our hour. i'm nicolle wallace. "mtp daily" starts right now. hi, chuck. >> i've got my tape recorder. thanks, nicolle. if it's wednesday, sometimes when you win, you lose. tonight, blue wave rising. how the extraordinarily tight special election in ohio sets up for a potential big democratic night this fall. >> we have an election in november. the fight continues. plus, damage control. president trump is taking credit for an ohio victory. but has he instead damaged the gop? we'll talk to governor john kasich, who worked to push his party's candidate over the

finish line. and one of the president's first congressional supporters now faces criminal charges. >> congressman collins cheated our markets and our justice system. >> is a wider culture of corruption story unraveling around the white house? this is "mtp daily" an it starts right now. good evening, i'm chuck todd here on a very busy washington, d.c. welcome to "mtp daily." is it really august? once again welcome to a wild day of legal and political developments surrounding, who else, but the president. one of his top loyalists in the house was just arrested on insider trading charges on a plot that was so brazen, it includes the white house south lawn, by the way. as it was described by federal prosecutors today that you have got to see it to believe it.

we've have much more on this story and this culture of corruption stench that's starting to grow around the president coming up. but we're also going to talk about the political fallout from the story as well, because the bigger story is that it arguably couldn't come at a worse time for house republicans, which is where we begin tonight. folks, the anti-trump midterm wave is on full display right now and the president seems intent on diving head first right into it. democrats surged again in a reliably red district that the president carried easily, again. the republican candidate, troy balderson, is barely eking out a load after last night's vote. the result which we deem as still too close to call because there are more votes to be counted than the margin between the two candidates. but this close result should be a giant flashing warning sign for the gop. they significantly outspent democrats in this district and the president swooped in at the 11th hour on saturday to fire up the base. today the rnc said that event is

what carried balderson across the finish line. >> do you think the visit on saturday even kept this thing close? >> the visit on saturday is why we won. >> well, the president also took credit for the apparent victory today as you might expect he would, but that suggests that the situation is even worse than some republicans feared, because that kind of rescue mission will be impossible to replicate in 435 races this november. if you had a base turnout problem in this district, then you have a major problem. so that's why i'm not sure i buy that. but for his part the president insisted as long as i campaign and or support senate and house candidates within reason they will win. and if i find the time, which i must, we will have a giant red wave. a few hours later, this tweet. red wave! but the results from last night suggest that a suburban rebellion is what's actually brewing right now and it's brewing against this president. the democratic candidate surge

in ohio 12 was powered by voters close to columbus and the suburbs of columbus, ohio. democrats significantly outnumbered republicans in another suburban area, missouri's second district, the st. louis suburbs. then you have kathy mcmorris rogers, barely eked out the top spot in the jungle primary out there in washington. a member of leadership whose district includes the suburbs of spokane. if republicans are going to struggle in the districts of america's 101st largest city, then the struggle is going to be real. david is a senior analyst with the nbc news election unit and comes in with tonight's panel of sahil kapur, daniela gibbs and michael steele is an msnbc political analyst and former rnc chairman. all right, mr. wasserman, you said last night, let's see here,

i'm going to get this tweet exactly correct. if anything, tonight's ohio 12 result reinforces our view that dems are substantial favorites to retake the house in november. so let me ask you to go another step. if you look at sort of what the night in general showed, right, with suburban turnouts in spokane and in st. louis and in columbus, what does substantial now look like in your mind? >> what is shows, chuck, is that the seat-by-seat forecast is catching up with our macro estimate which has long been that democrats are substantial favorites to win back the house. now, we see the trump zones, particularly in places like rural ohio last night, they did not turn out. in fact troy balderson owes his margin right now not to the trump zones but rather to governor john kasich who cut a last-minute ad. it's the democratic suburbs like franklin county that turned out at really high levels, and it was those delaware county suburbs last night that kept

troy balderson ahead. that's kasich country. >> yeah, that's what was amazing. i saw that our friends at "the new york times" crunched some numbers. the raw vote turnout in those rural counties was, mediocre at best, 28% to 32%, compared to what we saw in o'connor's strong holds. if the president's visit helped, then how bad could it have been? >> it could have been worse. we're potentially looking at a historic wave election. i think the tendency on the part of a lot of pundits is to be cautious, but this truly could turn into a big set of gains for democrats that goes beyond the 23 seats they need. >> all right. there's a man here who was in charge of the last major wave in the first term of a president. it's my man, michael steel, of the rnc. >> yeah. >> i remember democrats would eke out special election victories in 2010. republicans are eking out a bunch of them. i think wasserman noted it's actually the best record

technically on paper. democrats did really well in special elections in 2010. what do you see? >> what i see here is exactly as has been laid out. this is setting itself up very much like it did in 2010 in that the energy is on the ground. the energy is in spots around the country that quite honestly, the national parties don't necessarily really understand how impactful they can be. i mean just as the point you just made, chuck, about looking at those suburbs and the fact that the turnout based on the plus r ratio, you think, okay, the president is coming in, everybody will be fired up and going to go. you've got to cut beneath that. you've got to get below that surface. there is a lack of energy on the republican side that we are not acknowledging, that we're not accounting for when we're looking at the numbers, when we're looking at the ground game and looking at the november

strategy. >> danielle, there is anything in here that has you going i remember when everybody said hillary clinton is going to be president. >> that clouds my judgment. >> i think it clouds the judgment of a lot of us who do the prognostication. and i think we're underrating democrats personally and i think wasserman is point out we're all being very cautious because of what happened in 2016. >> i think that's right and i think that's fine. i totally agree with your points. there is something almost magical that is happening out in the states right now and there are voters who are being engaged who haven't voted before. if you look at republicans and democrats, we're going to talk about corruption later, corruption matters. i think that is part of the reason why you see republican voting depressed because they don't like what's happening. >> i'm curious to see republican reaction on the hill today, and i know they're technically on recess. the congressional leadership fund, cory bliss, this guy is a straight shooter. what we won tonight, this remains a very tough political environment. moving forward, we cannot expect

to win tough races when our candidate is being outraced and every republican is getting vastly outraised by an opponent needs to raise more money. this is a bit of a guys, wake up. >> in other words, they're saying they're not going to be able to shell out $3 million for every house race that should be safely republican that they shouldn't be competing in. that's a big warning flare cory bliss is sending out there. it's perfectly fair. the divide to me that was so staggering in the ohio special election bwas the urban metropolitan versus the rural. this is the story of the trump era. these two places are right next to each other, in the same district. and the balance of it is going to come down to the suburbs. white voters affluent, college educated, moving away from the republicans. if they turn away from republicans, that's where the blue wave will come up. >> i brought up missouri too, i'm always such a geek, i like

to look at every result because you never know something that's buried that people missed. i feel like there's sort of now -- are we looking at two different types of swing districts for this cycle, meaning normal swing districts so your collar counties around philadelphia, the suburbs of minneapolis, that makes sense. but do we now have a new one, that next ring of districts that straddle the suburbs and exurbs like ohio 12, like washington 5, like -- really like virginia 7, the dave bratt seat. missouri 2 actually sort of qualifies in that category too perhaps. >> yeah, you're absolutely right, chuck. we call these districts urban/rural divides. the danger for republicans is that you could have scenarios like the one we saw in ohio 12 where turnout in franklin county was 60% of 2016 and in the most republican county in the district, it was only 46% of 2016. it was reminiscent of pennsylvania 18 or the alabama senate election. and if you have that kind of

dynamic, we better be watching the 68 republican-held districts that are less republican than ohio 12. and when the battlefield becomes that large, the problem for republican outside groups like the clf is that it becomes financially unmanageable. they can't throw enough money at these races to effectively define the democratic opponents. >> i've got to ask about chris collins today. first, david, lay out the district for us, okay. on paper you have it as solid republican. explain. >> well, we just moved this to likely republican in light of the indictment because when it rains, it pours for republicans. but look, this is the most republican seat in new york state. it was a district that voted for president trump by 24 points in 2016. and yet democrats have a potentially credible candidate in nate mcmurray. he doesn't live in the district. chris collins will certainly point out that he used his town e-mail, he's a town supervisor in grand island, new york, to

pursue some political aims and try to tie him to hillary clinton, that way to neutralize his own legal problems. but look, we have to pay attention to races like these where republicans are under indictment in safe seats. he's the only one so far but duncan hunter in california, we're watching that too. >> you know, it's so funny, daniellea and michael and sahil, if you look at the '06 wave, if you look at the '94 wave and i'll throw in the '10 but certainly '06 and '94, with the indictment, he'd never lose that district, that's chicago. actually he lost it. so you never know but corruption is that -- it can be the exclamation point of the wave. >> what i finding interesting on the corruption front is that back in those races, corruption was something that was pointed out by the opposing party, so

they were going after and used it as a weapon. in this situation, you had an administration coming in talking about we're going to clean up the corruption and in fact have embraced it, have promoted it in some instances and now have to go on the defense this november against a very simple narrative by the democrats, like really? this is what you're going to put up? >> look, it is sometimes that special added sauce. i look at '06, you had the mark foley situation, the jack abramoff situation had blown up. it was in addition to the iraq war. >> there's a lot happening here. there's corruption, there's everything surrounding trump from his corruption just to the person that he is to the fact that republicans really haven't done anything since they have been in power. they haven't passed any meaningful legislation. the tax cut is totally unpopular with people. they don't feel the effects and if they do, it's negative.

>> i have an idea. this is a good time to have a fight over funding for the border wall. maybe a good government shutdown is what house republicans need in september. no? david, is that good strategy, the white house is contemplating it? >> i tending not to think it is, chuck. >> i'd call it inadvisabilivisi >> one of the fascinating things about ohio 18 is national republicans came in saying, hey, look at this tax cut, isn't that great? it didn't work. people didn't respond to it, so it shifted to a cultural message talking about the liberal resistance, going after illegal immigration. this is what galvanizes the base. through these ads, the party is telling us what they think galvanizes and motivates their voters in the trump era. >> david, i'm going to let you have the final word here. when you look -- do you now look at this whole what happened last night and do you re-evaluate every race almost looking at it

by geography and you're literally going to shift everything one slot over? is that how much you think this environment is sort of baked in at this point? >> yeah, it's actually a puzzle peas that fits the existing picture. and typically it's not a case of the bottom falling out for one party as you get closer to election day, it's a case of things just not getting any better for the party in power. you're right, we saw this in 2006 with mark foley as kid of an exclamation point. we have chris collins today. the fact of the matter is if danny o'connor had shown maybe a little bit more separation from his party, maybe if he had strongly disavowed nancy pelosi, maybe we'd be talking about a win for the democrats from this r plus 7 seat. >> let me follow up on that. is this -- do those folks, democrats sitting in those marginal districts, do they look at danny o'connor coming up short and say, you know what, i'm going to say no to the pelosi question. >> we're already starting to hear it, chuck.

we've got a candidate in northern indiana who's disavowed her who might have a shot. there are democrats all over the map in similar districts who know that this is what they have to do to show separation and show that they're the candidates of change. >> all right. david wasserman, pretty much the only person you need to follow on an election night on twitter. david, thank you very much, sir. >> i dispute that, chuck, but thank you very much. >> i know you do. this is why we're throwing accolades at you so thank you. up ahead, what does this too close to call race in ohio mean for the fight inside the gop? who's gop is it, john kasich's or donald trump's. we'll ask the republican governor of ohio, next. ♪

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welcome back. we don't know for sure if president trump's visit made things better or worse for republican troy balderson in ohio. but woe do know turnout gap between the suburbs and rural counties should be making a lot of moderate republicans or shall we call them more chamber of commerce pro business republicans nervous. joining me now is a politician you might say is representative of that wing of the party, maybe the trump skeptic wing of the party. it's ohio governor john kasich. he, by the way, represented ohio's 12th district in congress for nine terms. governor kasich, good to see you, sir. >> yeah, i also as governor had a win in those areas too. >> yes, you did that. >> i'm not some chamber of commerce type -- look, i'm a positive pauopulist. >> i know you are. >> come on, don't be defining me that way. >> let me ask you this.

there's obviously a slice of the republican party you speak to better than donald trump does. and it's this slice of the republican party that seems to be wavering on him. is that a fair statement? >> chuck, there's no question that people sent a message to the party, to republicans, knock it off. the chaos, the divisions, i mean kids being separated from their parents at the border. these crazy tariffs. hey, we're going to take your health care. we're going to kill obamacare, which means you're not going to have any health care. or if you have a pre-existing condition, well, you might be out of luck. this is kind of what gets communicated. and what's happened here, i cannot describe to you how amazing it was that the race was close because this delaware county, for example -- >> explain that. >> well, the republican in delaware county would normally get about 70% of the vote. this was like 50-50. and so if you look at how donald

trump did in the general in delaware county, he probably got around, i don't know, 65 or 70. but then this candidate gets 50%. and it's because a lot of republican women, they don't like this noise. they don't like this division. it was interesting what one of your panelists said about the democratic candidate who is not that forceful. he was just not -- neither of them really emerged great. i think it was basically a vote on what people thought about trump. >> that's interesting you say that. i've been telling people that you could characterize this race, this is no personal knock against either candidate, but that many voters saw it as generic democrat versus generic republican. is that a fair assessment in your view? >> well, i don't know what that means, chuck, but here's what i do know. i know that in areas, suburbs particularly where republicans would win, the republican lost. i know that there were these republican women that i've heard

talking whenever i'm out and about, they just were either not going to vote or they were going to vote for the democrat. we may be in the beginning of entering in some ways a post partisan environment where people are going to stop listening so much to the party and start taking the measure of what they're seeing. i mean it's a really interesting time. but if you're not positive, if you don't have a vision, if you don't unite people, if you don't lift people and you're not an idea candidate, you're going to struggle and maybe lose. >> you on another sunday show, a fine broadcast, you made mention, you said you had a conversation with troy balderson going why did you ask president trump to come in? and then you said he didn't. where do you fall? do you think president trump's appearance on saturday helped o'connor, helped balderson, or was it already baked in? >> you know what i think, chuck, is i think the attention of the national media got more people

to vote. i think that happened. i think that the fact that there was a focus. >> left or right, do you know which way? do you know which way? >> no, i think it just got people. but you see, again, there were people who voted for trump who now are either not voting or voting for the democrat or, you know, you have -- you have some of these democrats who kind of supported trump who kind of go back to their party, i think, here. but this was so close and so stunningly close in a district -- look, the congressman that was there before it in the last election won by 17 points. this is a more and more republican district than when i had it, much more republican. you know, even in a special election, there were more votes in this special election than people had anticipated. but again, when you -- here's the challenge for the republicans. if you are losing college educated women, if you are losing millenials, if you are losing minorities because you're not getting much of that vote at

all, you've got a problem. the democrat problem, the question is they need to be more center left. they're way out on the left. now, this guy wasn't. this guy who ran here wasn't and it's going to be how for other democrats should be more moderate. >> let me ask you this. it seems like some republicans simply because of the makeup of their districts, and i think that this district proved extra challenging to mr. balderson, which is to appeal to the trump base to get them fired up, you actually turn off the delaware county suburban voter, and to convince them to come to you, you might turn off the trump base. is that what the president has created here, where a candidate has to make this basically impossible choice? >> okay, chuck, chuck, if you're going to be a candidate, why don't you figure out what you're for. >> tuouche.

>> let's not do all these calculations like you're in a laboratory and you've got these test tubes. figure out what you're for. if that doesn't work, why would you want to win? why would you run if you don't have a passion for what you want to accomplish? and so my advice to candidates, i had a democrat come in to see me. what do you think i should do. i said you have to be mindful of your base but make sure republicans and independents have respect for you and that they like you and that means that you conduct yourself in a different way than if you're just reporting to the party apparatus. forget it, i've never done that. in my re-election, chuck, i never attacked barack obama. i talked about health care, i talked about job growth. i won 86 out of 88 counties in this state. so that's the message for politicians in these. be yourself, have a vision, say what it is and try to be in touch with people. >> is there any -- you're not afraid of saying when you

disagree with the president and you're pretty tough on him. you're tough on the environment that's been created right now because of some of his policy choices. >> yeah. that's why i didn't endorse him because of the negativity. >> many republicans are afraid of making that contrast. do you think that is making it -- that is why the swing suburban voter is hesitant to trust a republican candidate for congress, that they're not afraid to say about the president's policies what you are doing? >> yeah, but i think they should stay away from personality. this is not about attacking the president for his personality, this is about issues. what i don't understand is if you're a republican, why aren't you standing up and saying if you have a pre-existing condition on health care, we're going to make sure you're able to get health care. if the president says no, why are you putting up with that? when you see family separation at the border, why don't you say it's wrong? and these tariffs, or when we're overseas and we're into this wrecking ball foreign policy, just say you don't agree with

it. if people don't like it, first of all, i don't believe you've got to cater to anybody to win. >> right. >> i think you've got to be who you are and say what you believe. chuck, if you don't win, guess what, you'll have a better life than if you do. that's the dirty little secret in politics. >> before i let you go, your beloved ohio state university is in a tough position right now. there's a sexual abuse investigation involving the wrestling program, the urban meyer situation where it is did he do enough looking out for somebody who's a victim of spousal abuse. do you think there's a cultural problem in the ohio state athletic program? >> well, first of all, let's find out what we know about coach meyer. they now have mary jo white is my understanding. >> do you have confidence that this investigation will be fair? >> oh, in terms of urban meyer, the answer is yes. now, the wrestling problem and the diving problem, chuck, it

was at least a year, maybe two years ago when i asked my people to make sure that in the university that students have a place to go that is confidential when they can report either an assault on them because they may want to think about prosecuting a little bit further down the road or a place they can go where they can blow the whistle and have confidentiality. and we have asked the universities to be able to set this up. many of them are moving in that direction, not all of them are where we want them to be. but this has been an issue across this country for a significant period of time. and the universities have to make this a priority. i've got two daughters getting ready to go to college here. one we take on sunday and one three weeks later. i want them to know where they can go and they can report and they can be safe and they will not be compromised. this is happening all over the country. >> would you feel comfortable if your daughters were starting in a sporting program at the ohio state athletic program that they wouldn't be mistreated? >> sure i would.

i am confident in that. but everybody needs to up it. everybody needs to look at it and you need to examine it and that's what we're trying to get them to do more aggressively across the state. ought to be done across the country. >> governor kasich, i appreciate you making time for me today post election. i have a feeling we'll be talking again, sir. up ahead, the stunning insider trading allegations against chris collins. how prosecutors say the new york congressman basically in broad daylight tried to cheat the system. sfx: [cell phone dialing]

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welcome back. tonight i'm obsessed with the company the president keeps. the best people, despite the president's vow to drain the swamp, does seem to be getting a bit swampier by the day. three men, a lawyer, a doctor and an entertainment executive are actively running the veterans affairs administration. they spoke with va officials daily, reviewing all manner of policy and personnel decisions. their blockbuster story, by the way, based on freedom of information act requests. not one of these three gentlemen has any military or government experience, but they do have one thing in common. each of them is a member of the manag mar-a-lago club. they're known as the mar-a-lago crowd.

they have no direct influence over the va and have not broken any laws. they are not denying they're calling the policy shots. this is a seemingly unending drum beat of headlines of trump-connected sometimes just weird access, outright corruption, grift, graft, and it's starting to make you wonder what's going on with some of the people in the president's inner circle. "forbes" reported wilbur ross siphoned millions, called grifting. his first supporter in congress, chris collins, was just charged with insider trading. not to mention the campaign chief, paul manafort, is on trial. paul gal rick gates is testifying about crimes he admitted too. the prosecution said manafort tried to leverage his trump connections to get one of his lenders a job in the white house or get on the short list.

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welcome back. new york republican chris collins was the first congressman to endorse then candidate trump in 2016. frequent guest actually on this show. and today the fbi arrested him on insider trading charges. in less than an hour from now collins is expected to hold a press conference in buffalo. the indictment doesn't just lay out how collins used nonpublic information to trade on the stock of an australian pharmaceutical company, it also is how brazenly collins went about it. joining me now is our nbc news investigations reporter tom winter. tom, look, it was an impressive made-for-tv display this morning by the u.s. attorney. i noticed he even wore a mic to make sure he could walk through and show everybody the various posters he put up to show this collins indictment.

but the brazenness, walk us through this crime. >> in insider trading cases, notoriously it's been difficult for prosecutors to prove the intent and content of conversations for them to be -- without a wiretap for them to be able to accurately say this is what this person told another person and then they acted on it. one of the easiest things is trade data. so i want to be able to show a graph right now to help explain just how out in the open this was. this is a graph of inate immune therapeutics limited. if we look at 6/19 through 6/22 we see the shares traded every day. then on the 23rd, the first day after the trading information was shared. >> it's laughable. >> so you've got collins' son, collins' son's fiance and the other person charged trading 400,000 shares that day alone just themselves. that's four times the average

volume. so if you're the s.e.c. and you have tons of computing power and you have the ability to look at all of these -- all of the shares that are traded, you know, i looked today, facebook, apple, they traded about 20 million shares each today. but if you're looking at a stock that only has 100,000 shares traded and you move 400,000 shares, it's like robbing a bank at 3:00 a.m. trying to drill into the safe and you set off fireworks. it just could not be any more obvious that something is going on with this stock or something has occurred here. for regulators and investigators to look into it and say, okay, who was moving all these shares? and what nexus do these people have in common with people that may work for the company? well, it's the son of a board of directors who's moving a lot of these shares. from there you can pretty quickly develop a case. >> all right. well, the brazenness doesn't end there, now, does it, tom. this is what was amazing. at the time that he okays the trade, i want to walk through another timeline here. collins knew he was being watched and did it in iway.

march of 2017, the office of congressional ethics notifies collins that it was conducting a preliminary review because of this overheard stock tip business that was going on. april of 2017, the ethics committee tells collins, it was conducting a secondary review. june 5th of 2017, he's interviewed by the ethics committee and then of course to pick up your timeline on the stock time line happened, june 22 nnd is when it takes place. i got the impression prosecutors were almost taken aback by almost how brazen or stupid this was. >> i think when you see an indictment like this, a 30-page indictment and see the level of detail they put in there, that's just to let everybody know. and the southern district normally has a lot of detail in their indictments but it's really to let everybody know, hey, we've got this. there's not a lot of ambiguity here. they clearly have his e-mail communications because he can't

even claim he didn't get the information. not only does he get the information from the ceo, which is not illegal. but then he tells them, he responds to them and says i can't believe that this occurred. so there's ireally leaves them no option but to push forward with the prosecution, chuck. >> tom winter, we never know how you are day is going to ending, do we, especially in the world of investigations. >> or when it's going to start. >> tom winter, nice work. thank you very much. by the way, a quick note to you viewers, it is legal for a sitting member of the house of representatives to serve on a corporate board. it is not legal for a sitting member of the united states senate to do that. one gets a feeling the house will be changing its rules come 2019. we've got more on the culture of corruption surrounding the president up ahead. but then we also got this update. the other tuesday night cliff hanger that's still too close to call and why this recount may get bonkers. fidelity is redefining value for investors.

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time now for "the lid." panel is back. sahil, daniellea and michael. so there is something about this week, and i made a point of it earlier with the obsessed. we have this chris collins thing. i'm sorry, the entire manafort/gates back and forth. if you're the jury there, you're like, oh, these are just two crooked individuals. but they all -- these store aie have one thing in common. they're friends of donald trump. does it matter? >> yes, there's a strong smell of swampiness emanating with the manafort trial and the chris collins allegations. there's no evidence donald trump did anything wrong but there's a pattern here. his own officials, people like tom price and scott pruitt have been caught up in this. yes, this is the argument democrats will try to make. nancy pelosi wants to reprise her 2006 culture of corruption case. we'll see if that works. voters do not like this. this cuts across ideological

lines. >> michael steele, the base of the republican party is convinced that politics is now -- has been practiced this way for a long time. i can't tell you how many e-mails i get. so what? the clintons did it for years. so what, the bushes did it for years. now they're making blanket statements. that's the rationale, so what. so these guys are doing it, guess what, they all did it. at least these guys are honest about their crookedness. >> the rationale emanates from an internal strategy that promoted that narrative without the facts or the real baseline to prove this is in fact how it came about. we were talking about off air how in the old day how some elections were what's the number. we know that's not the reality 50 years later, 20 years later or whatever. but the narrative is what sticks. and so you now have this generation of activists -- activism within the party that really has taken that narrative, taken ownership of it and

applies it to everything. everything. >> daniellea, i am convinced that some of these folks, and i don't want to call inside the heads of the scott pruitt or ryan zinke, thinking i'm just getting mine. there's this weird rationale -- trust me, someone is doing something worse, this isn't harming anybody. >> yeah, it's really disgusting. somebody should do a swamp-o-meter so we can track how gross things are in d.c. i think you're right, there is this feeling of, yes, other people have done it before so it's okay that it happens now. there's something particular with the republican base that they overlook everything. >> all you have to do is say two words, hillary clinton. no, she's more corrupt than all of them so what does it matter. >> with no facts behind it. 42% are okay if donald trump shuts down the -- what's happening? >> but the clinton foundation. that's the culture of corruption. what are you guys talking about. >> there will be that and the one thing republicans can legitimately point to is

democrats did overlook senator bob menendez and basically stood by him all through the way. the ethics committee gave him a strong reprimand for accepting gifts and that whole thing did not reflect well on them. >> every single democratic senator is endorsing bob menendez for re-election, aren't they? therein lies how a trump voter says, see. i mean i know where you're going to go, but right? >> but that's legitimate but that is a legitimate space to occupy when you stop and think about the totality of it. and the understanding why the underlying narrative is the way it is. it's trump has sort of credit t -- crystallized that for these voters in a very personal way. he is now the champion on a day-to-day basis that pushes back and exposes the lies, and that's what matters. >> look, neither party has their hands completely clean when it comes to this. but what seems to always be left out of these conversations is

like proportionality. you have what happened with bob menendez and everything that's happening now. you don't have a democratic president of the united states doing an saying the things donald trump does and surrounding themselves with these people -- >> i go back to what happened to two wrongs don't make a right and what happened to that mindset on the right? they don't believe in it. >> president trump has managed to create his own reality in a way that previous presidents have not. he has an echo chamber that will support almost anything he says. i think this is what he uses to paint a narrative and to make people believe that he is innocent of these things and that people are coming after him and trying to persecute him unfairly. >> this is -- it's going to look -- if this were happening in another country, we'd say, god, that looks like a kleptocracy. wilbur ross, ew.

>> maybe that's the space at this moment in our american history we're comfortable with. i think that's one of the truths of many. >> who's we? >> we the people, because we the people -- no matter how you -- look, i understand, i understand. but this is where democrats again still get it screwed up in their heads. you've got to depersonalize this. the 2016 election was not a personal attack on democrats, it was a failure of democrats to understand exactly what the american people were saying. now, you can walk that around, but keep remembering 52% of white educated women voted for donald trump after everything they knew about him. >> fair enough. >> yes, i know. >> and you need to understand that. >> daniela just says matter of factually. i have to go or i'll get in trouble with melissa and then you'll be in trouble. thank you. coming up, a hollywood plot twist. a quick programming note, a "meet the press" exclusive this sunday. omarosa newman has written a

book about her time with the president and her first interview will be this sunday. we'll see you then. ♪

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getting. who says you can't get something for nothing. so you may be bummed about movie pass, but hey, they made a business model mistake. we're doing it the right way. we're not trying to sell you something for cheap that costs us a fortune to do on the back ending. that's all for tonight. we'll be back tomorrow. "the beat with ari melber" starts right now and i know everyone is a subscriber to the full season pass of ari. >> we hope we're worth a little more than what we cost. that's all we hope. >> boom. >> thank you, chuck. we're reporting several big stories tonight. there are more tapes. this bombshell report that omarosa, the reality show star, secretly tape recorded donald trump himself inside the white house. interesting. the reporter who broke that story joins me live tonight. also the political world is waiting to hear from a newly indicted republican official. not the mueller probe, this is congressman chris collins charged for insider trading. he'll speak for the first time since getting charged and we'll bring that to you live in our hour. also the