while taking xeljanz xr, and monitor certain liver tests. tell you doctor if you were in a region where fungal infections are common and if you have had tb, hepatitis b or c, or are prone to infections. needles. fine for some things. but for you, one pill a day may provide symptom relief. ask your doctor about xeljanz xr. an "unjection™". we're over today. my thanks to eddie, mike schmidt, eli, bill and john heilemann. i'm nicolle wallace, "mtp daily" starts right now. i owe you 19 seconds. >> that's okay. the bill is in the mail. talk to my lawyer, he might be able to reimburse you. if it's wednesday, iceberg right ahead. good evening, welcome to

"mtp daily." i'm chuck todd here in washington. if yesterday we watched the trump white house hit a massive iceberg, then today the big questions are will the ship sunk and will republicans decide to evacuate? tuesday was an inflection point and arguably the worst day of the trump presidency so far. mr. trump hopes that this ends up the worst day. many other people think there will be worse days to come. michael cohen pleading guilty and paul manafort being found guilty, meaning two more of mr. trump's associates are facing jail time. added to a stunning list of people tied to him who have either been indicted or had to plead guilty. and now it's choosing time. every republican has a decision to make. there's short-term pain and long-term pain. yesterday in that courtroom in new york, michael cohen accused the president of directing him to break the law. cohen says the president told him to pay off women who said they had affairs with mr. trump in order to protect the campaign from damaging news in its final days. think about that for a second. the president of the united states is now cited in a federal indictment as what is

essentially an unindicted co-conspirator. yesterday we saw how the judicial system is supposed to work. now, in a functioning congress, all of the lights would be blinking red today. in a functioning congress, the outgoing house speaker would be directing the outgoing house judiciary chair to be beginning the very similar process of investigating cohen's investigations. i wouldn't say you start an impeachment hearing, but you start the process. the president was accused of committing a crime in a federal courtroom. and if enough evidence is found in a functioning congress the committee would begin to draw up articles of impeachment. of course this isn't a functioning congress. right now it is sort of not around, controlled by republicans w.h.ho have been unwilling to hold its party leader accountable. is there a point riepublicans will decide enough is enough and abandon ship? the house isn't in washington

but here's what some senate republicans said today. >> these are serious charges. they can't be ignored. i don't think he can be indicted while sitting in office, but we'll just have to see where this all works out. >> obviously this is very, very unfortunate. it's very serious. i want to see this go through our judicial system. that's what's been happening and we'll see it through. >> if the mueller investigation is not a witch hunt. >> no, it's not a good day for the president. you've got an accusation by his former lawyer that he did conspire to violate campaign finance laws. i don't know the intricacies of familiar pain finance laws but it's not a good day. >> i'm sure there will be other revelations that come up and i think we ought to just let the process work. >> i don't think we know all the facts. >> so you're not concerned? >> that's not what i said. that's what you said. >> let's bring in tonight's panel, carol lee, george will, syndicated columnist and donna edwards, a former democratic

congresswoman from maryland. welcome, all. george, where are we and what -- i know what you think the republican party should do, but what's likely -- what are the next couple of weeks going to look like? >> not much it seems to me. the base of the party, which is what the candidates care about, is still with mr. trump. at least i see no evidence that this is happening. i mean after -- one of the odd things about all this trouble arising from all this hush money to the porn stars is that it came after the "access hollywood" tape. if they had spoken out on the closing days of the campaign, the country would not have learned anything new about mr. trump. >> what does that tell you? >> that he's irrational, but that's not news either. it tells me that he likes to surround himself with people like himself, hence mr. cohen, hence stormy daniels, hence all these people. but beyond that, i see no sense that politically this is moving. i do not think this is going to

wind up a legal battle. it's a political problem. >> rudy giuliani has made that clear. he's not fighting a legal case, he's fighting a pr war. >> and i think the trump people probably have in mind what happened with the democrats and republicans over clinton in 1998 when the country said the president clinton has behaved aboauomb naly but over turning presidential election is disproportionate. if it turns out the attack on mr. trump is that he violated a campaign finance law, the company will say shouldn't have done it, but really? >> donna, the pressure from the base with bill clinton, you were active in politics then, that was real. >> it was real. and i think part of what's happening now, though, even though republicans i think are clearly fighting their base, a lot of hand wringing you heard coming from senators. but i think over time i don't think it's just going to be a campaign finance violation. that's what we know about right now. we haven't even touched yet on

the mueller investigation and that report. i think it's going to be the combination of those things that will then provide at least a means, a mechanism for the political process that i agree is going to take place. >> i guess the question i have, carol, is there are some republicans that need a steam valve here. the most powerful argument in a midterm election in good times for a party is we'll be a check on the president. how do republicans make that case if they're in a swing district outside of philadelphia. >> especially while democrats are saying, look, it's not just trump and there's a number of people in his cabinet who have had issues, but it's also his first big supporter in congress, his second big supporter in congress. it's going to be really tough. i think if you look at what republicans have said, they're really trying to drill down on collusion. they're banking that it's no collusion, no collusion. but the interesting thing about the cohen investigation is while rudy giuliani and the president's legal team are

fighting this political team against mueller, the cohen investigation is not part of the witch hunt per se, it's a separate thing. so you're starting to see them try to conflate that and discredit him. but it's not over and it's not entirely -- it's not entirely linked to mueller. >> that's what i'm wondering about the relief valve. they're trying to win suburban voters. these guys, they're not doing anything with trump. that's why i thought speaker ryan has more leeway here to give that wing of his party something. >> what wing? it's a one-wing party now. which is why it flies in circles. >> what about the ones that want to win in competitive races? >> i don't think they have it at this point because they are tied to the president. you're either with him or you're against him. this business that you can split the difference. i like gorsuch, i don't like the other stuff. i don't think that sells anymore. >> i think they have pretty much lost independents and moderates

in exactly those districts that they have to gain them, and i don't think that this helps. it would have been one thing if you could begin to add some of those, but what this indictment -- well, not even an indictment anymore, it's a guilty plea and it's manafort being found guilty by a jury of his peers. what that does is it solidifies the opposition, i think, of moderates and independents and gives them a reason to go to those democrats in the swing districts. >> let me play sarah sanders today, because her denials today just felt like they came up with something they could say and they didn't have much else to say. take a listen to how she pushed back. >> did president trump commit a crime? >> as the president has said, we've stated many times, he did nothing wrong. there are no charges against him. he did nothing wrong. there are no charges against him in this. just because michael cohen made a plea deal doesn't mean that that implicates the president on

anything. >> does the president feel betrayed by michael cohen? >> he did nothing wrong and there was no collusion. he did nothing wrong. there are no charges against him. just because michael cohen has made a deal doesn't mean anything with regards to the president. >> no controlling legal authority, referring to that famous al gore press conference when he kept trying to say she's technically trying to say the president wasn't named. yeah, he's unnamed in all of those things. i get what she was trying to do because it's all they have to hang their hat on. >> it is all they have to hang their hat on. >> his name wasn't in the pleading. >> he did nothing wrong, his name is not in there, he hasn't been convicted of anything or accused of anything in an actual court. but you also see her and she's increasingly done this with things involving president trump, which is she'll say the president has said or to the best of my knowledge or there's a lot of -- >> she's protecting herself there, as the president has said. >> increasingly protecting

herself. >> and that's what i'm wondering, george. that's -- this is where governing gets challenging for the president. you're going to have a whole west wing starting to wonder about themselves. >> they already are. it can't be a happy place. i can't imagine that the chief of staff is having fun. no one is having fun there, as a matter of fact. and when you have a really unhappy west wing of the white house, people looking over their shoulder and looking under the table and all the rest, i don't know how they function. but when the dust settles from the last two days, i think lawyers are going to look at what michael cohen said that the president did, he directed me to spend this money, and to try to make that into a crime is not as easy as it looks because they're going to have to say that he wasn't spending campaign contributions the way edwards was. he took his own money and tried to silence someone who could have been awkward during a campaign. that doesn't quite come under

the rubrick of trying to influence a federal election. >> right. the crime he may have committed is failure to disclose. to george's point, you're sitting there saying, all right, so he didn't disclose. >> but it wasn't a campaign contribution to disclose. >> well, it was his own money. >> and it wasn't to the campaign. >> but it was to benefit the campaign. it serves as an in-kind contribution. >> exactly, which still requires disclosure. it still requires reporting as an expenditure. he didn't do those things. i mean the key here is that they didn't do it intentionally because they wanted to get around the campaign finance laws. and so this is an intentional violation of the law. this wasn't some accident. it wasn't because they didn't understand. what you read in the cohen plea agreement is that they intended to violate the law. you know, whether or not they actually ever end up going to the president on this -- >> i don't think that's the

point because it's a political solution. >> look, let me put out a theory here that this is less about the specific incident and more about a pattern. george, if how cohen handled this for trump fits the pattern of everything else mueller is looking at, which is how they do this, then they move money over here, then suddenly you have a pattern of how they make things. if it becomes part of a pattern, then what? >> then you have a pattern of seedy behavior, which is neither a crime nor a surprise. might be a crime. but seediness itself is not a crime. >> but if some of that seediness is with russians. >> let me give you a thought experiment. suppose what was at stake here with these two women, $280,000 or something like that. suppose mr. trump had said late in the campaign it would help me if i gave $280,000 to the american cancer society. is that an in-kind contribution to his campaign if he did it because it would improve his

standing with voters? i don't think so. i think it's a hard argument to make in court. >> i think this is obviously an important moment, but right now it's serious, but this is a snapshot. i think the thing that we don't know is this may not be the end of all that we're talking about. we also have another paul manafort trial in a month, which is in the middle of the election. and then you just -- the unknown of what is in the mueller investigation is what has the white house on edge and is what lea leaves all of these conversations kind of lacking. >> i go back to my metaphor of the boat. it's hit the iceberg. i talked to one republican who said i just want to know if there's a hole in the ship. this person said i'll suck it up and defend the payoff to the porn star. >> they're in the sarah sanders problem. >> but if it's something else, i'm out. >> but the question is what's

the something else. >> nobody knows the risk. is it worth the risk and say maybe there's not a hole in the jump ship or do you jump? >> either way we're going to find out because we're going to get a mueller report. then today you hear there's a subpoena in the trump foundation case as well in new york state. >> let me put it to you this way, george. this is an opportunity to jump off the train, an opportunity to evacuate if you want. it's another opportunity. will republicans regret missing this opportunity if something else comes down the pike? >> suppose you're a republican who's thinking of jumping. what do you say is the reason why you're jumping now? what have you learned that you didn't already know about this? >> and that's the -- that's why they call it a faustein bargain? stick around. up ahead, now that michael cohen has agreed to a plea deal, what happens now and how could it impact the white house? there's a gentleman that has

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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. power of options based on your budget! and! ♪ we'll make heaven a place on earth ♪ yeah! oh, my angels! ♪ ooh, heaven is a place on earth ♪ [ sobs quietly ] as the president has stated on numerous occasions, he did nothing wrong. there are no charges against him in this. just because michael cohen made a plea deal doesn't mean that that implicates the president on anything. >> welcome back. well, white house press secretary sarah sanders is right when she said today there are no charges against the president. but the part about cohen's plea deal not implicating the president on anything, well,

that's dead wrong because as we've said, that's exactly what cohen's plea deal did. the president's former lawyer pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance law with hush payments to women and said then candidate trump, the plea deal said a federal candidate because it can't name him, told him to do it right before the 2016 election. i'm joined pby lanny davis, the lawyer for mr. cohen. mr. davis, i hope you've been able to take a walk around the building there throughout the day. >> lots of coffee has helped me. >> let me start with this. i keep hearing the words deal, deal, deal, plea deal. michael cohen still is facing jail time. michael cohen does not have immunity from anything. michael cohen has other things. what deal did you cut? explain what the deal is when i heard the words deal. what makes it a deal? >> i have no idea. he pled guilty in a

corroborative statement. the word that the prosecutors and michael cohen agreed he would say to the judge under oath, at the direction and coordination of the candidate. >> and what did he get in return, a promise of a lesser sentence? >> no. >> what did he get in return? >> nothing. he has said i will tell the truth to whoever asks me to appear. but he hasn't done that in return for anything. that's why he called me. >> let me ask you this. is this a deal in order to make a deal? >> no. >> is he hoping to get something in the future -- >> no. >> -- from the feds? is he hoping that he has more information that will help him get less jail time? >> no. he said in court under oath using words provided and corroborated by prosecutors that the president of the united

states committed a felony. that's exactly what he said. i don't know what miss sanders is talking about. if he's guilty of doing what his client tells him to do, which is to pay money to keep somebody silent for the principal purpose of political effect, that's a crime, that's a felony. if that's guilty, then the client who instructed and coordinated him doing that, hiding the fact that he was behind it is also guilty of the same crime. there's no way to escape that conclusion and no deal. >> let me ask you a few questions about -- you have teased out that he has some interesting things to say to prosecutors in new york, prosecutors in washington, d.c., including mr. mueller. first let me ask you about in new york. i know there was a subpoena that was issued by the state of new york involving their investigation into the charitable aspects of the trump foundation. they issued the subpoena today. is michael cohen going to comply? >> of course. i received a phone call about

receiving the subpoena. i referred it to my cohort, guy petrillo, who is the criminal defense lawyer who handled the case for michael with the prosecutors. it will be received and accepted in new york. but mr. cohen will accept subpoenas. he will do exactly as he did with the fbi agents who raided on a sunday morning everything he ever possessed, including his children's cell phones. he thanked them for being polite. when he was processed through the court house, he thanked the individual marshals for being polite. that's who michael cohen is. >> do you believe he's still under investigation by the southern district of new york or by robert mueller when it comes to things like his relationship with novartis or at&t and what may have been promised? >> first of all, i don't know what you mean by relationship. he had clients. only innuendo would suggest -- >> no, i wasn't trying to innuendo. >> i wasn't accusing you.

the answer is no. >> is he still under investigation for this? >> not that i'm aware of. the answer is no. he made a plea of guilty to that responsibility. >> does that mean sdny promised they weren't going to sue about the pay to play? >> he took responsibility and pled guilty. i am again giving you the big story. >> i understand that. >> the big story is that president trump is guilty of a felony according to the southern district of new york prosecutors. >> do they have more than just michael cohen's word? do they have physical evidence -- >> physical evidence -- >> -- in addition that helps -- that helps corroborate michael cohen's testimony? >> the trump organization and the spokesman, mr. giuliani, has already stated publicly that the

$130,000 payment was made, despite miss hicks, the campaign spokesman, saying it was never made. >> but does the sdny prosecutors have evidence in their hands or is it just michael cohen's words versus the president's word. >> i was trying to give you your answer, chuck. the answer is number one, the trump team and mr. giuliani have admitted that the money was paid. number two, there is physical and electronic evidence that the money was paid to miss daniels from the trump conduiconduit, w mr. cohen, and it's all documented. so the answer is if you're looking for a documentary electronic evidence that the money was paid two weeks from the election for the principal purpose of avoiding the bad publicity, that is documented in the case, yes. >> can you say that michael cohen consulted with anybody else on the campaign other than

mr. trump? >> consulted about making those payments? >> yes, sir. >> there were other people involved. some of them named individual one, individual two from the campaign, some named as people within the trump organization without their names attached. there were other people involved in the chain of events. just to remind your viewers, it's pretty simple. $130,000 needs to be paid to miss daniels. mr. trump directed personally him to mr. cohen to pay $130,000 and it's all documented by the prosecutors in new york -- >> i understand that, but do they have evidence on one specific charge, this idea that president trump, then candidate trump, directed michael cohen to do this? other than michael cohen's word that the president directed him to do this, do they have other physical evidence that the president directed michael cohen. i understand the physical evidence of the money transfers and all of that. but does he have evidence -- is it more taped conversations?

is that the evidence? >> well, the prosecutors may have evidence they haven't revealed. all i've read is the criminal information in which they state that there are individuals from the trump campaign and from the trump organization who were involved and mr. giuliani said, yes, mr. trump knew that he had to reimburse mr. cohen for the advance made for this payment. is there any independent evidence that mr. trump said to mr. cohen you need to do this, i don't want to do this? that may come down to mr. cohen's word versus mr. trump's and now we'll have to wait and see if mr. trump is willing under oath to say what mr. cohen said under oath, which is that he was directed to mr. trump to do this. >> has the southern district of new york released michael cohen to the point that if congress wants him to testify tomorrow, let's say he got invited to the house or senate judiciary

committee to testify tomorrow, could he do that? would the southern district let him do that or are they not done with him yet? >> i really don't know the explicit answer, but i think there's an implied answer. he is allowed to travel to washington under the terms of whatever arrangements have been made. it strikes me that they would not block a congressional request, but i don't know specifically whether that's true, chuck. >> can you say definitively if you know whether michael cohen was in prague in 2016? >> never, never in prague. did i make that? never, never in prague, ever. ever. and the reason, just to let your viewers know what we're talking about is that the dossier so-called mentions his name 14 times, one of which is a meeting with russians in prague. 14 times false. it was posted as an extensive letter rebutting, but about

prague, which is an illusion that's been repeated infinitely no. >> yesterday the senate chairman and vice chair said they had been in contact with you, i assume it's you, the lawyers and mr. cohen about perhaps new testimony involving the infamous trump tower meeting. you had said that he had information on that. but the two senators said that mr. cohen's testimony that he stands by and doesn't change, which means does he have information about that meeting or not, and should -- is it accurate that his testimony shouldn't -- his testimony that he gave six months ago to the senate intel committee is still accurate? >> the testimony was accurate. you noted something that i said. in fact what i said was i'm not the source and can't confirm that story. at some point all of the story will be able to be told.

i can't go into it any further now, but his testimony was accurate. >> lanny davis, i will leave it there. >> thank you. >> one of the attorneys for michael cohen. thanks for coming on. mush appreciated. >> thank you, chuck. up ahead, a supreme question. will the cohen legal drama swirling around him, should president trump still be able to choose a new supreme court justice? so you have, your headphones, chair, new laptop, 24/7 tech support. yep, thanks guys. i think he might need some support. yes. start them off right,

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plea and paul manafort's guilty verdicts, the democratic drum beat to delay brett kavanaugh's supreme court nomination got a little louder today. senate minority leader chuck schumer and dianne feinstein, the ranking democrat on the senate judiciary committee are among a growing group of democrats calling for a delay. feinstein said the possibility of criminal wrongdoing by the president combined with existing doubts that brett kavanaugh believes a president can even be investigated, demand further review of this situation. chuck grassley said no way. calls for delays are political tactics and will go on as scheduled in early september. joining me now is mark warner, vice chair of the senate intel committee. probably heard that last question there. i'll admit, i'm still confused about michael cohen. do you believe michael cohen testified honestly to you in that committee? >> you know, chuck, i don't know. he testified one set of facts.

we asked after we heard some of those stories whether he stood by his testimony. his lawyer said yes. but it seems like mr. cohen is now willing to perhaps tell all to mueller. i understand to our committee, so my hope is we will have a chance to have him back and ask him about that, the trump tower meeting, ask him about the attempt to try to build a trump tower ain moscow that he was involved in. and one of the more critical questions which his lawyer alluded to, that he has knowledge that mr. trump knew of the russian e-mail hacking and potentially was coordinating some of that release. i don't know what to believe. again, when you're talking about cohen and mr. trump in terms of both of their willingness to tell the truth, you get into a fairly shady area. >> hey, would you be willing to give him full immunity to testify before the senate intel committee in an open hearing? >> we have not granted immunity to anyone. my understanding is that at

least in one of the earlier snippets i heard mr. cohen's lawyer said he would testify without any promise of immunity. i think it's most important that he testifies in front of us and it's also important that he talks to mr. mueller. clearly that's where most of the final action about the collusion issue will be decided. >> let me ask you about this supreme court question. is this just a convenient talking point for democrats? oh, look, michael cohen. let's -- now let's try this to stop brett kavanaugh. or is this a legitimate complaint in your view? >> well, i think i'm going to go ahead and give judge kavanaugh the courtesy that was not afforded judge merrick gaurlarl. i've had questions around the litany of traditional issues, health care, labor and human rights. i've got serious questions about his expansive views of executive power. i believe there is no one, including the president,

particularly this president, that's above the law. but i'll give him a chance to have that meeting. as the back and forth on the schedule, i'll leave that to dianne feinstein and chuck grassley. >> so you're not calling for a delay yourself? >> i think if we can slow this process down until we get all of the documents that we've requested, that would be appropriate. at the end of the day, though, that's going to be probably fought out in the judiciary committee. what i've got are questions for judge kavanaugh and real questions about both his views and particularly his questions around executive privilege. >> what you're saying is you don't connect, because some connect, you don't connect the michael cohen accusation of the president committing a crime with whether the president should have the ability to fill this appointment under this cloud? it sounds like you don't believe that should be connected or you do? >> no, chuck, i'll leave you to make those connections and others. what i'm concerned about is getting this investigation

finished, finding out what level of collaboration or collusion took place between the trump campaign and the russians, how we make sure it doesn't happen again. that is my major focus. it's been the focus for the last year and a half. it's the reason why we've kept our committee bipartisan and are still pursuing the facts. i've got huge concerns about kavanaugh, but they are secondary to my focus on this investigation. >> i've got to ask you, i know you guys had a hearing today about threats. i think it was a closed hearing. how secure is 2018? >> i feel for a lot of the trump officials. they all realize russia is still a current ongoing threat. we just look at some of the takedowns from microsoft, facebook and twitter in the last 24 hours. it's got to be pretty disheartening for them to be fighting this battle, yet you have a president that's still calling and questioning the russian intervention, calling the mueller investigation a witch hunt, even though his intelligence officials are looking at the people that

mueller is prosecuting to potentially be on the sanctions list. i think we've gotten better, but the fact is this is still a voluntary system. even if we notify a local community, we don't have the full tools to make sure the community will actually remediate. how do we make sure we can bring in the dhs experts as opposed to a local registrar saying i'll turn it over to my brother-in-law who knows i.t. >> do you know definitively right now if there are election systems that have been hacked this election cycle? because i'll be honest, that's been a very frustrating thing for a lot of us. i've heard you say i can't say or i've heard others say we can't -- well, how does that reassure the public, right? >> chuck, i think that's a fair question and one of the things we are trying to push on, particularly this question chairman burr, richard burr and i are on this last mile. how do we make sure if we tell someone that they actually get it fixed if we inform the community or the state. but there is i think a real

sense from the intelligence community that we've got to start declassifying more of this information. one of the things that drove me crazy the first year of the trump administration, the dhs would not even tell the 21 states or more that were hazed or hacked that they were attacked because they said the secretary of state didn't have enough clearance. that's craziness. as we get closer and closer to the election, i think we've made more progress. i think we've seen more people cleared. but i agree with you and the viewers, we need to get more of this information out but i'm not going to release classified information until it is declassified. >> all right. i'll be honest, senator, and you know this already, there are a lot of reporters, a lot of candidates, a lot of elected officials who say some things and confuse people more than help people. >> you're right. the one thing that i guess -- the message i would give to your viewing audience is i think our systems are safer. i think we've got more room to go. i think perhaps the biggest vulnerability is our campaigns right now because they have had

none of that cyber security baked in. >> that's for sure. senator warner, vice chair senate intel committee, democrat from virginia, thanks for coming on and sharing your views, much appreciated. coming up, are we seeing some new shades of blue in deep red texas? we'll see. liberty mutual accident forgiveness means they won't hike your rates over one mistake. see, liberty mutual doesn't hold grudges. for drivers with accident forgiveness liberty mutual won't raise their rates because of their first accident. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty ♪

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welcome back. tonight i'm obsessed with all the republicans who now have a chance to say i told you so. they can say i told you so that donald trump is not fit to be president. they can say that. some of them could say i told you so that donald trump is not a real conservative. they could say it. they could say i told you so that donald trump would debase the presidency. they could say that. and they could say i told you so, because guess what, many of them told us so. mitt romney told us so. >> donald trump is a phony, a fraud. his promises are as worthless as

a degree from trump university. >> lindsey graham told us so. >> donald trump is not strong, he's actually weak. he's a bully, he's a cartoon character. >> rand paul told us so. >> i don't think he'll be missed. in fact i really don't think donald trump is a conservative. i think he's a fake and a charlatan. >> and ted cruz, well, he really told us so. >> this man is a pathological liar. he doesn't know the difference between truth and lies. he lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth. and in a pattern that i think is straight out of a psychology textbook, his response is to accuse everybody else of lying. >> so there you have it. has president trump done anything to convince these three senators and one senator wannabe that he's not a bully? that he's not a fake

conservative? that he doesn't perpetually lie? that's what they told us then. what will they tell us now? alzheimer's disease is out there. and the alzheimer's association is going to make it happen. but we won't get there without you. join the fight with the alzheimer's association.

mom: okay we need to get all your school supplies today. school... grade... done. done. hit the snooze button and get low prices on school supplies all summer long. like these for only $2 or less at office depot officemax. welcome back. tonight in "meet the midterms" we've got some new nbc news/marist poll numbers and they should be seen as a wake-up call to senator ted cruz. the poll has the incumbent republican senator up by just four points on his democratic

challenger, beto o'rourke. he has ignited democrats and sits at 45%, cruz sits at 49%. cruz can't write off this small lead as the product of a democratic outlier poll or something because the other numbers in this poll are much better for the gop. our poll has president trump with a 47% job rating net positive, by the way. republicans have a 7-point lead on the generic congressional ballot in the state of texas and the republican governor, greg abbott, has a 19-point lead in his re-election bid. so the lone sore spot for republicans in the lone star state is mr. cruz. so with less than three months of the campaign left against a well funded and energetic opponent, this may be a warning sign cruz can't let pass by. we'll have more "mtp daily" right after this. i couldn't catch my breath. it was the last song of the night. it felt like my heart was skipping beats. they said i had afib. what's afib? i knew that meant i was at a greater risk of stroke.

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to help protect yourself from a stroke. had a little incident witht kia moped in bermuda.e. oh. even with insurance, we had to dip into our 401(k) and it set us back a little bit. sometimes you don't have a choice. but it doesn't mean you guys can't get back on track. great. great. yeah. no judgment. just guidance. td ameritrade. welcome back. time now for "the lid." the panel is back, carol lee, george will, donna edwards.

all right, this brett kavanaugh thing looked like it was getting a little momentum on the democratic side before mark warner threw a screeching halt. here was -- this was the dem basically talking kavanaugh and michael cohen. take a listen. >> i will be casting my appointment with judge -- because i would not extend my -- >> the hearing should be postponed. he's been nominated by a president who's been implicated in a criminal conspiracy. there is no way that his nomination will be untainted. >> no american citizen should be able to choose the person who will be judging them when they're a subject of a criminal investigation should the matters come before the judge. >> you know, donna, i thought as the day was going on, i thought it was interesting, going to put pressure on joe donnelly, and then you see mark warner there. if you can't -- if you don't

have mark warner on the strategy, you're not going to get joe donnelly. >> i started the day the same way, especially when i saw senator horono say that. i was surprised through the day, i was stunned to hear mark warner say, no, let's have the hearing. >> i was skeptical it would get traction. i thought it's a -- it's a potentially good argument if you hadn't already been playing games to try to slow it down before. >> yeah, i mean, this is -- but it came at a time when they've tried a bunch of other things, basically a done deal, they get what the democrats see as a gift. i don't know, it hasn't even been 24 hours, and warner just popped the balloon. maybe he didn't watch chuck schumer's comments. >> make the confirmation hearing about what you're upset about, and in this case, this to me

will now be the center piece of the hearings, his belief in expansive executive power. >> he's been here since the garfield administration. the idea he's going to be influenced by this is passing strings. nowhere in article two does it say the president's power to nominate for the advice and consent of the senate, article 3, court judges, is in any compromised because some guy in new york accused him of doing something wrong. >> merit garland's confirmation shouldn't have been compromised. >> what would the republicans? >> they would be united. they're not going to back down on this. as we werie talking about in th last segment, before the boat

goes down, we want to get this thing through. >> mitch mcconnell, it would be the boat's sinking, he would still want to get this confirmed. >> mitch mcconnell says we, the senate, are in the personnel business, we are to staff the executive branch and the article three courts. that's something they can actually do no matter what the otherwise dysfunctional nature of the senate. >> duncan hunter, i thought the most interesting thing is how he's trying to borrow a page from trump's playbook and say deep state, peter strzok, hillary clinton, and hope that works. chris collins tried that for a day and then somebody showed him the evidence. >> he and his wife used their campaign account like their personal pocketbook. and i think this is where, you know, people across the country just get so sick of washington because you have people who come and some come to serve their constituents, and others come to serve themselves and to treat the congress like a frat club.

and that's exactly -- >> sadly, donna, i'm old enough to remember when what duncan hunter and his wife did was legal. you could have walked away with your campaign money and turn it into a 401(k). >> there is a stench now, i think in axios, they had a quote, the republican party, it looks like a criminal enterprise, like it all happened on the same day, that's how you get exclamation points on waves. >> that's how you also, if you're directs, you don't make it just anti-trump, you broaden it out to be something larger about, you know, corruption or people in washington are not, you know, doing what they should be doing for american people. you know, i spoke to republicans who said that duncan hunter is determined to stick with this strategy, thinks it's one for trump, and, you know, thinks that he could bring out some sort of evidence to point to bias in the department of justice. but it's risky. >> san diego's conservative, but

not that conservative. >> wouldn't it be fun, if on election night, they need 23 seats for democrats, they've got 22, and the seat that's hanging in the balance is in san diego? >> if that's what we're doing, though, it was already a good night for the republicans. if we're actually hanging on that. anyway, terrific panel. up ahead, some feats of strength. ♪

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the news moved pretty fast yesterday, so fast, in fact you very well might have missed it. 20 minutes before we went on the air tuesday we learned about the paul manafort verdict, not by phone, but by foot. see that blue flash tearing across your screen? that's kassie semiian, an intern for msnbc, too fast, you say, well, here she is again in slow motion. federal courts count allow recording equipment inside. news organizations put their interns to work running the breaking news out the door. sound familiar? this is the lower court equivalent of supreme court running interns, young journalism pledges lace up their sneakers for the sprint of their lives. so we here say well done, kassie. she's a journalism student in philadelphia, well-known for its tributes to great athletic

heroes. all i'm saying is maybe it's time for a new one. i like it, kassie. it looks good. that's all for tonight. back tomorrow with more "mtp daily." and now we have "the beat." i'm in tonight for ari melber, who's on vacation, the nation's capital rocked as the white house confronts legal danger on its own doorstep. ahead, i'm going to talk to michael cohen associate sam nunberg live right here on "the beat" about cohen's guilty plea, and democratic senator who says all remedies should be on the able, including possible indictment of the president. but we want to start with the jaw-dropping new defense from donald trump's allies. first, it was truth isn't truth, you may remember that one. today it's crimes aren't crimes. >> believe that michael cohen pled guilt