hi, everyone. i'm not nicolle. it's 4:00 in new york. i'm mike barnicle in for nicolle wallace. the president's war on allies are es ka -- trump's attorney rudy giuliani admitting that the president's legal strategy hinges on attacking special counsel robert mueller. giuliani saying -- >> his telling admission comes as key republican senator lindsey graham gives trump cover in his sustained campaign against attorney general jeff sessions, who first ignited trump's rage when he recused himself from the russia investigation. senator graham now agreeing with president trump that sessions has got to go. >> we need an attorney general that can work with the president, that can lead the department of justice. this relationship is beyond repair, i think. he's not the only man in the

country that can be attorney general. he's a fine man. i'm not asking him to be fired, but the relationship is not working. to replace him, you have to replace him with somebody who is highly qualified and will commit to the senate to allow mueller to do his job. >> the president's campaign against sessions, of course, escalated in recent days after trump's former fixer, michael cohen, implicated him in campaign finance violations the same week his campaign chairman paul manafort was confiktvicted tax fraud charges. and now "the wall street journal" is reporting that paul manafort was, in fact, angling for a plea deal with mueller in the second upcoming trial. those negotiations reportedly stalled over issues raised by mueller. joining us today, former u.s. attorney joyce vance, frank

figliusi, elise jordan, former aide in the george w. bush white house, now co-host of the podcast "words matter." sam stein, how did you get here? >> oversight. >> he's the politics editor of the daily beast. and michael steele, former chair of the rnc. all msnbc analysts. joyce vance, let's start with you. during the course of your career as u.s. attorney, i mean, you welcomed and prompted a lot of people to say it at the expense of the u.s. government and various federal prisons. and so let me ask you, as u.s. attorney, what's going on when you have a guy on trial, in federal court in virginia, on tax charges, and he doesn't want to cut a deal apparently with the special prosecutor, bob mueller's office. yet at the same time the trial is ongoing, his lawyers apparently, it's reported, that

he's trying to cut a deal on a second trial scheduled to start in a couple of weeks in september in the district of columbia. what would be the thinking there, according to your prosecutorial mind? >> so there's two possibilities here. one is, and it's just true of some defendants, no matter how good the government's evidence is against them, they don't want to plead guilty until they've heard that evidence come in in front of the jury. it's not a great strategy. it simply doesn't lead to an ability to cooperate or reduction in sentence, typically. but some defendants can't get to the point where they want to talk guilty plea until the jury is deliberating. it's rare but it happens. possibly more likely in this case is the fact that manafort, through his own decision, faced two separate trials. it didn't have to be that way. the government offered him one trial in the district of columbia, but he wasn't willing

to waive some venue and jurisdiction issues that required the counts to be tried in the eastern district of virginia. and there's some consequences to having two separate trials, one of which is under the complicated federal sentencing formula, he would be a previously convicted felon, and that will enhance his sentence a little bit. white collar sentences are never really high. so having faced conviction, he likely wanted to cut a deal and see if he could somehow combine the two into a guilty plea. >> what about the legal costs of two trials? >> legal cost is, you know, an interesting thought. the second trial in d.c. is not a repeat of the virginia trial. his co-defendant is a russian, who is in russia, not available to be tried alongside him. many of the exhibits, now that we've seen the government's exhibit list, are e-mails that

are headlined in russian. this is a lot closer to talking about manafort's misconduct with dictators in the eastern european theater. perhaps issues that are closer to this presidency. so in addition to the strength of the government's evidence, which he's already had a taste of, and yet another near certain conviction in a far less friendly forum than the eastern district of virginia, he does look at this enhanced sentencing list and suddenly he has to be asking himself, are there things that i can do even without cooperating with the government that let me reduce my exposure, both in terms of sentencing time and maybe in terms of the fines and forfeitures, so i can preserve some assets for my family. >> frank, when this was occurring, we have the tweet from president trump, implying his gratitude to paul manafort

for not flipping, for not being broken. let me ask you, when you look at it, how close do tweets like that come to obstruction of justice? >> yeah, i think if you go towards a mindset to intent to obstruct, this becomes another piece in that puzzle, trying to show the president's intention, that's what you have to do when you prove obstruction. i have a theory on this, paul manafort doesn't want this stuff to come out at the next trial. this is about being the agent of a foreign government. this is about, as joyce said, russians and ukrainians. the evidence that's going to come out here is ugly, and it's going to point badly toward the president and who he surrounds himself with. so i think manafort gave it a shot to not let this trial happen. i think mueller heard what he had to say, and mueller said not good enough, we're heading to trial. >> michael steele, he just

raised an issue that befuddles me and i think a lot of people out there, and it is this, that basically we're talking about russia's involvement. sort of an act of war against the united states government, and yet there has been nothing but crickets from most of the members, most of the republican members of the united states senate. why? what is going on here? it's our country that is being attacked. >> well, this was a matter of -- the question of putting party before country, it's putting donald trump before everything else. these are men and women who are looking at their states, looking at the president's value to them in that state, meaning he's very popular or somewhat popular. and that's the calculation. you have that also being buffeted by the fact that they don't want to create a political firestorm around all of this. in other words, if they don't address it, if they don't look

at it, it kind of goes away or it doesn't exist. you and i know that's not true. that's not the case. and in fact, what the republican leadership comes off as is feckless. uninterested. and certainly raises more concerns about culpability and their ability to actually govern, not just in passing legislation, but actually protecting the interest of the country when a foreign government has engaged with us the way russia has under the protection of this president. >> sam, you cover this a lot and other things. what is your read on this? >> i think it's tough to read, because like you, it's befuddling at times. we had a case of a foreign government involving itself in our election. and a lingering threat that everyone acknowledges is out there. yet by and large the legislative

branch is utterly paralyzed by it, not knowing what to do. protective measures are not being pushed forward. so you get a sense that people are waiting for the next shoe to drop. and it's befuddling. the other thing that -- >> do you think he's going to fire jeff sessions? >> i don't think he'll do it before the election. i think the people around him said that would be crazy and politically disastrous. i think he also is aware of the fact that it will be difficult to get someone else in there. the next step is how do you get someone through the senate? >> if you think suddenly the senate will get a vertebrae? >> he will need to take stock of what the next senate looks like. it's possible it will have more republican members. there will be more people in the next senate who are republican supporters of trump.

so it's possible he'll have more leeway in the next senate. but even then, i still do believe fundamentally that for people like lindsey graham, even though he says sessions should go out, but there are enough people who said we don't just want to put an apologist for donald trump in there. but i don't think at this judge ch -- juncture, an attorney general could just bottle everything up. he would still face trouble in the next congress, even with a new attorney general. >> elise, lindsey graham was on the "today" show this morning, and i want you to take a listen to what he said. let's watch it. >> this relationship is beyond repair, i think. >> but senator graham, i mean, the only beef the president seems to have against him is that he's not going to get rid of the investigation into president trump. >> let me finish the second part.

it's much deeper than that. >> what are we mising? >> we won't say on this show, but it's a pretty deep breach, and here's what i'm suggesting, that he's not the only man in the country that can be attorney general. >> okay. it's much deeper than that, and we can't go into it on this show. >> i feel like he might have been on "the bachelor" giving analysis about relationship advice, and there's something i can't say on tv because it's too personal. yet at the same time, he's seemingly auditioning for the attorney general role. you can't help but to feel that part of this facade is that lindsey graham perhaps has aspirations on his own of being appointed to that position himself, the things that he says that oh, there are many people in the country that can fill this role. >> michael steele, i'm going to put it on you again, these are your guys. >> oh, my gosh. >> what's your take? >> i don't even get where lindsey is coming from here. just take the i.v. out of the

arm, lindsey, take the trump i.v. out and stop it. what is this breach? tell me what is the -- that's deeper than recusing yourself from the mueller probe? what is deeper than that for trump? nothing. there is nothing deeper than that for trump with respect to this attorney general. so this is all about exactly as the question was put to him about how this president was to fire the attorney general simply for that reason. so this idea that, you know, the attorney general has done -- sessions has done something so horrible, so much worse than that. what is the only thing the president has been talking about for 18 months? how this attorney general didn't recuse himself. he's never inferred, because he can't help himself. if it's something deep, he'll tell us what it is. >> it might be what he hasn't done with respect to the other side of the coin, which is lots of republicans want the attorney general to launch investigations into hillary clinton, even though it has been investigated.

lots of them want to go back to the e-mails, and lots of them have these conspiratorial ideas of the steele dossier and how that came to be and the fisa application. jeff sessions hasn't gone down those rabbit holes. i understand, you can't take the crazy step of firing bob mueller, but maybe divert attention towards this other field. >> except when you listen to the way lindsey graham said what he said, you're thinking, does he know anything about the grassy knoll? >> i think that's my personal ambition -- >> i want to key in on one thing lindsay said. when he says the next attorney general will have to allow mueller to finish his work, that's very different than how his work is treated. remember, there will be a report

turned in at the a.g. level, and something has to be done with that, released to the public, perhaps a request to indict, articles of impeachment. that next attorney general is not someone who should say i let mueller finish and put it in the garbage can. that's what i'm concerned about. >> joyce, what happens to that report once it goes over to justice, given the turbulence around whether jeff sessions is going to be there or not, what happens? where does it go? what are the mechanics of that? >> we're operating under a set of regulations called the special counsel regulations. they were written when the independent counsel who investigated a number of other cases back in the bush administration, when those regs were allowed to sunset without being reupped. special counsel is a little different. so at the end of the special counsel investigation, there's a sort of a triggering mechanism is the best way to describe it, where mueller, if he chooses to

deliver a report to rod rosenstein, and he could also make a recommendation at that point. he might make a recommendation that folks involved in that report be indicted. he might make a recommendation that there be no indictments. but the key is, rosen stein's response. if rod rosenstein overrules the special counsel, then his report goes up to the hill and is broadly available. it's possible that rosenstein could agree with whatever mueller's request is, and then the report would have limited circulation. but the bottom line here is that whether or not mueller writes sort of a fulsome report, the amount of circulation it gets will largely be a function of rod rosenstein, the deputy attorney general's call in this regard. >> sam, what do you think of the over, under as to when the report will leak, 10, 15 seconds? >> no one has picked up on this. about a week ago, rudy giuliani put in a tweet that the president's team was preparing

their own report. now, i don't know why or what they're doing here. i don't know if they're interviewing people. but i have a feeling that they're going to drop that report about the time of the mueller report. >> i'm sure president trump's report will be a tweet. >> very honest, very formative, based on pure facts, i'm sure. >> joyce vance, thank you very much for joining us. always a pleasure. >> thanks for having me. coming up, president trump rejects the norms of being a president and he's finding out that it goes both ways. plus, after president trump had to be forced to do the right thing in honoring john mccain, it begs the question, why haven't any of mccain's republican colleagues publicly admonished the president's behavior? and why the president woke

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the unnecessary controversy president trump created after john mccain's death illustrates what has become a reality. that the president makes no attempt to undertake or even understand the duties the american people have come to expect of the leader of the free world. ashley parker of "the washington post" calls him the president nongrata and she writes this morning in "the washington post" --

>> ashley parker joins us now. ashley, i love great newspaper leads. so here you go, kid. shunned two funerals and one royal wedding so far. president trump may well be on his way to becoming president nongrata. great job, great job. now, my question for you, after reading the piece, and it jumped into my mind, reading a very fine piece this morning in "the washington post," is how difficult it must have been, what did you hear, according to your reporting, how difficult must it have been for general

john kelly, who spent his entire life in the marine corps, dedicated to fighting for freedom, and as part of that job, knows what to do when someone dies? >> so this is one of these stories the president's behavior surrounding senator mccain's death that looks good for no one in this white house. it made the president himself look small and petty. but you're right, it's also the people around him who sort of know what is called for in these times, especially general kelly. but also even someone like white house press secretary sarah huckabee sanders who was one of the people who came to the president before senator mccain had passed with a statement and had to listen to the president sort of say no, i'm -- we're not going to call him a hero. we're not going to praise his

life and military service. and i'm just going to send out a tweet. she too is the daughter of a prominent politician, so there's that little extra parallel or poignancy. so this was something everyone in the white house sort of understood or most everyone in the white house understood was unacceptable behavior. >> michael steele, i don't say this as an indictment of you, trust me. but you are of washington. you've lived in washington for a long time. you understand politics. you are a part of politics, chairman of the republican national committee. am i correct in thinking that maybe, beneath the surface of what happened, in the aftermath of john mccain's death, with the flag and the president's behavior toward mccain and his refusal to lower the flag to half staff, that washington and most republican senators failing to stand up in outrage over it, that they don't understand that

one of the commonalities of life in america, life in the world maybe, but life in america specifically, is people know what to do when they go to a wake or when they go to a funeral. they know what to do. they know what's right. what do you sense is missing in the political establishment in washington, specific chi tally republican party and republican senate, what is missing, and why? >> umm, cajones, backbone, spine, whatever you want to call it. it is appalling, it is galling, it is embarrassing. particularly among members of the senate who, having served with john mccain, and even engaged in battles with him and all that good stuff, knew the kind of man he was, knew his service to the nation, could not find it within themselves on this one thing.

let alone when the president, you know, ridiculed mccain's service and said he wasn't a hero. "i like people who don't get caught" and all of that crazy. regardless of that, in this moment, could not find the words to say to the nation, but most specifically to the president, this is wrong. it tells you everything you want to know. these folks are more concerned about returning to washington in their elected seats come january than they are about anything else right now. we sugarcoat this stuff and talk about analysis, but this is the bottom line. we can't psychoanalyze these folks any more than that. the most important thing for a member of the united states senate, a member of the house of representatives who is a republican, is to maintain that seat, regardless. and so values, principles,

ideas, standing for one of their own who is being assaulted to the degree that john mccain has been assaulted by this president, no, that's less important than getting re-elected. it is a damnable offense, i think, that will be paid for in spades starting this november. >> that's quite an indictment. thank you. i appreciate that. you served with people who have died in the line of duty. >> i served also with some great leaders in government service, who understand what it means to adhere to tradition and custom and care for your people. and so not getting it right, when a long-term heroic u.s. senator passes, not getting invited to places because of your own personality flaws, undermines your ability to lead. we need leaders to show up to things that are traditional and customary, and when he doesn't do it, he erodes his own ability to shine. >> elise, you're from mississippi, where there is

deservedly so, a great emphasis put on patriotism and service to the country. so what about this, we just seen a spectacular and upsetting display of pettiness and jealousy, envy really, from the president toward an individual, john mccain, who died. what happens in your -- what is your assessment of what might happen in the country the next time this man, president trump, tweets about the need to support and be loyal to veterans? >> well, i think that this episode has been more of a washington story than it has actually trickled down to people in red states where donald trump is hugely popular. i called up my mother and asked her what she thought about the way donald trump was treating john mccain. she said well, i heard he didn't lower the flag and had missed all of the hoopla, the back and

forth and the pettiness before president trump was forced to make that play. so i think a lot of it -- our news silos are so extreme now, and if people don't seek out news outside of what is reinforcing their preconceived notions, you might not necessarily get that. and it might not even be for lack of trying, it might just be you're not plugged into the 24/7 news cycle. but president trump's supporters know by this stage in the game that he isn't some gracious statesman. they don't expect that behavior from him and they've been willing to excuse it time and time again in the past. >> in the campaign, when he insulted campaign's service, and the assumption was among people like us stupid people, that it was going to cripple his campaign, that would be the end of donald trump. of course, it wasn't. i think to a certain degree, trump is no dummy. he recognizes he got away with stuff like that.

he's built it into part of his brand. for people like the average voter in mississippi, president trump's cult of personality has far more gravitational pull. >> michael, can you hold on to that thought so we can make some money. we'll be right back. we'll take a quick break. more on this story. and more from lindsey graham speaking out about his late friend's relationship with president trump. with president trump.

it is going to be a lonely journey for me for a while. i'm going to need your help. and the void to be filled by john's passing is more than i can do. don't look to me to replace this man.

look to me to remember what he was all about and try to follow in his footsteps. if you want to help me, join the march. if you want to help the country, be more like john mccain. >> i believe there's a little john mccain in all of us. >> senator lindsey graham remembering his friend and colleague, john mccain. he later acknowledged it's been difficult to be caught between his friend and the president. even though he says there's a little john mccain in all of us, lindsey hasn't been showing a little john mccain in him for the past several days. joining the panel now, "new york times" media writer jim littenberg. ashley parker is still with us. and michael steele is still with us. we interrupted his train of thought. michael? >> just real quick. i thought elise put her finger

on my point when she talked about her mother and what she knew about this whole episode with the president and the nag a -- and the flag and all of that. if you can imagine her u.s. senator came out and stated categorically that this was improper, that the president should not treat the mccain family this way, that her mother would know. and that's the problem i have, is how complicit republican leaders have been in sort of shielding the public away from some of these episodes. if they speak to it. listening to graham on the floor talking about having a little bit of john mccain. do you think john mccain would have responded with silence if a fellow senator had been treated in death the way he was treated? absolutely not. so where is that little bit of john mccain in all those members to stand up and call out the ugliness of what this president is doing and has done?

>> jim, one of the things that elise mentioned in the last segment that michael steele was just speaking about, maybe you can help us with it. it's an item that makes me feel like i'm about 135 years old. and it's this, that things happen after john mccain's passing that we all know about because we keep up with the stuff, his refusal to lower the flag to half staff over the white house, when the flags around the washington monument were lowered to half staff, as was every other flag in washington, d.c. the news cycle now is such that it's so accelerated that people can lose track of this outrage, of what happened over the weekend, in what, six hours, ten hours, 12 hours? what are we doing? >> you know, that is true. and we've seen it since the

campaign. but i want to say that in this instance, something tells me that -- look, the white house obviously at some point and the president himself thought better of it. and they reversed themselves, and that doesn't happen easily, and maybe cooler minds prevailed and said this is the respectful and right things to do. but made the political calculation, that the flag is half massed throughout the country, in every state from city hall to town halls. so to the extent that people heard about this, the reaction might have been the same, even amongst many trump fans. >> jim said the white house thought better of it. did the white house think better of it or did they hound it into reality over what they allowed to happen? >> i think the answer is a

combination. you had originally, again, a number of the people around the president doing something that is worth mentioning that is -- having a statement ready, an appropriate statement ready that the president nixed, and that includes initially refusing to lower the flag. there are certain people that always wanted to do this. and i think the president himself, jim is right, he rarely reverses himself. it's very notable. but he watches cable news nonstop, and the president is up to date, especially on something like this. he was consuming all the coverage, consuming all the headlines. none of them were particularly flattering for him. so it was that combination of the incoming he was getting from television cues, and also from his own aides that eventually made him backtrack as we saw

yesterday. >> i would like -- i do think it's rare that trump reverses himself, but it's not that rare. after an incoming on his performance in helsinki, he tried to clarify that he knows russia meddled in our elections. after the outrage over his family separation policy, he reversed course because of the criticism. what ends up happening is he will reverse and then reverse the reversal. and by and large, we move on. we have an incredible metabolism for news, and our attention is diverted. look at helsinki. we still have no clue what was said between him and putin. and congress have given up any attempt at all to find out what was said because mike pompeo doesn't know what was said. look at the family separation

policy. he reversed course, but to this day, hundreds of kids remain separated. we moved on to a million other things. and i don't want to be cynical, but i have to believe that yes, he reversed course on the flags for john mccain. but come next week, something else will have emerged. we'll be closer to a government shutdown, and we'll forget largely that this happened. >> and also to sam's point, when president trump is forced to go back on a statement that he clearly believes, you know, what we saw at the helsinki press conference when he was standing along side putin, is really what he believes when it comes to russian interference. usually he tweets and goes back in defense of his original statement in some way. and helsinki is one example.

you have charlottesville. just recently when he call eed omarosa horrible names. he might try to do the right thing, but if he doesn't feel it, he reverses to his original position. >> are the two of you intentionally trying to get me more depressed? >> they told me that's what i needed to do to get on the show. >> ashley parker, great piece today in "the post." we thank you for your appearance here this afternoon. still ahead, first he called it fake news. now trump is fixated on the fake internet. what starked his new fight with google? that's coming up next. that's coming up next.

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don't stop taking eliquis unless your doctor tells you to, as stopping increases your risk of having a stroke. eliquis can cause serious and in rare cases fatal bleeding. don't take eliquis if you have an artificial heart valve or abnormal bleeding. while taking eliquis, you may bruise more easily and it may take longer than usual for any bleeding to stop. seek immediate medical care for sudden signs of bleeding, like unusual bruising. eliquis may increase your bleeding risk if you take certain medicines. tell your doctor about all planned medical or dental procedures. eliquis, the number one cardiologist-prescribed blood thinner. ask your doctor if eliquis is what's next for you. does the president believe or does the administration feel that there needs to be some form of regulation for google? what was the president referring to? >> we'll let you know. >> could you explain what you would like to see happen there? >> no. we're just looking into it.

>> what are you looking into specifically? >> we're going to do some investigations. >> is there any evidence that they are censoring search results? >> we're looking into it. >> that's great. they're looking into it. nothing to worry about. president trump is conrinsed go -- convinced google is out to get him, tweeting -- >> google was quick to respond with a statement that said in part --

>> jim, did you ever think you would have a president of the united states who didn't know one of life's basic rules, never google yourself. >> i have an idea that might help him a little bit, that is say don't decide or fight taking the flag down to half-mast when senator john mccain dies. and maybe work on that approval rating a little bit. so the results reflect what is happening in the world and there's something very healthy about watching these tech companies in the way that they collate how things will be taken in. >> i don't think anyone would disagree with you about the power, the unchecked power of things like facebook and google. twitter, stuff like that.

but are you sitting down there where you are? because i want you to watch and listen to this. this is president trump, just a few moments ago, at the white house. listen to this. >> i think google is really taking advantage of a lot of people, and i think that's a very serious thing, and it's a very serious charge. i think what google and others are doing, if you look at what's going on at twitter and facebook, they better be careful, because you can't do that to people. you can't do it. we have tremendous -- we have literally thousands and thousands of complaints coming in. and you just can't do that. so i think that google and twitter and facebook, they're really treading on very, very troubled territory, and you have to be careful. it's not fair to large portions of the population. >> so jim, could you deal with that while the rest of my head explodes? >> well, i'll be really interested to see what the -- what regulatory steps the white

house and allies on the hill propose. i also wonder how republican rank and file will feel about regulating speech. but it's an astounding moment. fascinating, if you think about it, twitter made president trump's candidacy. it's what he kind of really communicates through. yet he's also tapping into suspicion of the tech giants, some of which go to both sides of the aisle. so it's just -- i'm going to have to sit and think through this one, as well, maybe with a calculator. >> what do you think? >> make no mistake, the strategy and behavior is called victimology. his defense is going to be, they're framing me. i'm a victim. the courts are out to get me. doj is out to get me. the fbi is out to get me. the intelligence community, the courts, and now google and social media are all out to get me. if that's the best he can do in his defense, then we're going to

be okay. but here's the problem and the serious part of this. while he's talking about google being biased against him, the reality is that the russian bots are still out there, trying to influence search engines, trying to influence twitter, facebook accounts, and messages. so he's right when he says it's rigged. but unfortunately, it's rigged in his favor, because the russians are still out there doing this. >> michael, do you want to rush up to the hill to tell the republican members of the senate that frank just pointed out the russians are still attacking us. >> they don't care. they obvious hi don'ly don't. to hear the president say that is drivel. the idea that he looked at google and considers it rigged against him, because again, it's all about him, not the fact that millions of people search fogooe and get all kinds of

information. now it's a national crisis, where he's going to ump h it all together, and to frank's point, create this new narrative of vict victimology, victimhood about poor president trump. and that again is one more offense that i suspect a lot of folks on capitol hill will be silent about. >> sam, you realize that google is out to get me for years. >> yeah. i think if anyone had a complaint, it would be you. >> thank you, sam. i appreciate that. up next, it's been nearly a year since hurricane maria devastated puerto rico. in a study out today, it puts the death toll at almost 50 times greater than the government's official number. we'll be right back. 's officialr we'll be right back. (man) managing my type 2 diabetes wasn't my top priority.

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i hate to tell you, puerto rico, but you've thrown our budget out of whack because we've spent a lot of money on puerto rico. and that's fine. we've saved a lot of lives. if you look at the -- every death is a horror. but if you look at a real catastrophe like katrina and you look at the tremendous hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people who died and look here at a storm that was totally overpowering, northbound's seen anything like this, what is your death count as of this moment? 17? >> 16 certified. >> 16 people certified. 16 people versus in the

thousands. you can be proud of all of your people, all of your people working together. 16 versus literally thousands of people. >> it wasn't a real catastrophe like katrina, though. but the official death toll from hurricane maria was just raised to nearly 3,000 by the island's governor following a new study by george washington university. this is over 46 times the previous government count of 64 people. who wants to take a crack at the following question? how does this happen that we're nearly a year out from the devastation that this hurricane caused to part of america, part of the united states of america, with american citizens living there? many of them went without electricity up until about a month ago, and they -- it was the casualty count was 64 for nearly a year. >> i'll take a crack. >>th. >> it's a -- >> go ahead.

>> it's combination of everything. we have an incredible metabolism for news. we moved on quickly from some some to something else. we have politicians in congress that refuse to look -- if you look at congressional oversight, it's sorely lacking. we have a situation in which the main culprits, terrible fraps on the island -- infrastructure on the island, terrible federal government response, and a mix of climate change and hurricanes, all combined and congress basically said, all right, it happened. let's not study this and figure out how to prepare for the next even though we know hurricanes are going to get much more powerful in the future. those combined and donald trump being donald trump and saying, yeah, i deserve a ten. praise me for my job, well done. that's it. >> it was a fatal combination of incompetence and incompetence that you see the outrage in so many americans across the government as can't step up up to the plate and meet the needs. then you have incompetence. then you have the government

flat-out lying about what 89 results are on the ground. you have the death toll going from 64 to almost 3,000. so basically 98% of deaths not accounted for in the initial toll. >> jim, less than a minute left. and i don't want to hang this on our profession which, as you know, is -- with skimpy resources and dwindling resources, but what about the role of the news media in trying to cover what happened in puerto rico? but not really covering it? >> yeah. i'm going to say,lo look, we've invested resources, we as an industry need to do more, needed to do more. when you hear, hey, also what if this had been in the american heartland what would the coverage have been like, there would have been more, you have to take race into account and income levels and it's not part of the continental united states. but there needs to be more

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janssen wants to help you explore cost support options. thanks to michael, jim, elise, and sam. that does it for this hour. i'm mike barnacle in for nicole wallace. and right now, our old pal starts -- yeah, chuck, you're there -- >> here's what i'm trying to figure out. you have a michael steele, i have a michael steele. how are we -- amazing coincidence. >> it's tv all day -- >> the magic of tv. thank you, mike. >> thank you. if it's tuesday, president trump is warning there will be violence if republicans lose the midterms. >> good evening, i'm chuck todd here in washington