my thanks to phil rucker, shannon pettypiece and evan mcmullen. that does it for this hour. i'm kasie hunt for in nicolle wallace. "mtp daily" starts right now. hi, chuck. >> how are you doing? i'm going to be careful in how i say hi, kasie, how are you doing? the last time we got in some twitter trouble so i'll leave it there. >> thanks, chuck. if it's friday, is mueller about to go mum? good evening, i'm chuck todd here in washington. welcome to "mtp daily." a lot of people are bracing for more indictments from mueller's probe or the u.s. attorney's investigation in new york.

today another manafort associate, this one with ties to russia and cambridge analytica pled guilty and is cooperating with mueller's investigation. we know that one of trump's long-time aides, roger stone, who had a back channel with wikileaks during the campaign is himself expecting to be charged by mueller. stone says he thinks donald trump jr. is going to be charged as well. based on the long trail of mueller's indictments and guilty pleas so far, it seems like some of the folks associated with the trump campaign could be next. we also know high level justice department officials are hesitant to drop any bombshells 60 days before an election. so the clock could be ticking. three of those seven days before we get to 60 is the holiday weekend. so folks, it's possible that mueller stays possible through the midterms. but if the president's newly unleashed barrage of attacks on the justice department are any indication, he either seems to think mueller won't stay quiet or isn't taking any chances.

in the last 24 hours he said i view it as an illegal investigation. i'm not saying anything, i'm just telling you this. you read the great scholars, there should have never been a special counsel. we're not quite sure what great scholars he refers to there. the president also signalled his attorney general, jeff sessions, is going to be out after the midterms and he complained about sessions not prosecuting his political enemies. >> i just like to have jeff sessions do his job, and if he did, i'd be very happy. but the job entails two sides, not one side. >> and finally, the president hit the campaign trail and threatened to intervene in the justice department's affairs. >> but our justice department and our fbi have to start doing their job and doing it right and doing it now. because people are angry. people are angry. what's happening is a disgrace. and at some point, i wanted to stay out, but at some point if

it doesn't stay out properly, i want them to do their job. i will get involved and i will get in there if i have to. >> let me bring in tonight's panel. matthew continetti, shawna thomas and howard fineman. all right, guys, i want to share with you rudy giuliani who is paying his respects to john mccain on capitol hill. garrett haake caught up with him and he brought up the 60-day window. take a listen. >> the justice department has a rule that you should stay out of politically charged investigations within 60 days of the election. i hope he respects that. >> reporter: or what? >> or nothing. it just affects how people look at the legitimacy of his investigation. is it political or is it a real law enforcement investigation. >> all right. howard fineman, let me go through a few things here. first, here's what the inspector general in june of 2018 said. the 60-day rule is not written or described in any department

policy or regulation. nevertheless, high-raning department and fbi officials acknowledged the existence of a general practice that informs department decisions. here's what the doj guidelines say. this is a minneapolis/st. paemo wrote. how about that. law enforcement officers and prosecutors may never select the timing of investigative steps or criminal charges for the purpose of affecting any election or for the purpose of giving an advantage or disadvantage to any candidate or political party. how do you interpret that, howard fineman? >> well, i interpret that to mean that if mueller wants to go ahead for legal reasons, the pace of the investigation, the availability of witnesses, whatever, he can do it if his purpose isn't to affect the election. but i think rudy giuliani has a point. but what interests me about how rudy responded to the nbc question there was remember a week ago he was saying this has to be over before the window. now he's saying, hey, if there's a window, leave us alone for a

while. i think that's a recognition that somehow penetrated to rudy of the slow, steady, continuous pace of this that will go on even if there are no indictments after labor day until election day. >> shawna and matthew, everybody that i've talked to that's been close to mueller and worked with mueller says he's not going to pull a comey. meaning, he's not going to do what comey did 11 days before the election. meaning that comey -- that's why i thought today -- that he would be small c conservative about it and say you know what, i'm not even going to touch labor day or september. >> we don't expect mueller to tell us exactly when he's going to do anything. but i think he is aware of the pressure to make this seem as legitimate as possible. and if it is seen as affecting the election, he may decide, okay, i'm going to just keep on gathering the things i need to gather and keep on doing it. i do think realistically manafort's second trial in d.c. right now we think is going to start next month, september 24th, i believe.

that we expect to take three or four weeks. so there is going to be some other shoe that drops, unless they move the case, unless they decide to push it off for some reason, there's going to be some other shoe that drops no matter what between now and the election. >> that's been scheduled for a long time, though. >> mueller might not pull a comey but he could pull a lawrence walsh, who indicted cap weinberger days before the election. it seems to me to be an abstract concept. you mentioned comey. if you have a prosecutor who's after a target or feels some compelling reason to intervene, they're going to do it. i don't think robert mueller or his team is exempt from that. >> knowing mueller and the way he operates, first of all, this other case of manafort was set long in advance. it's not like he's suddenly springing it. and i think he's got plenty of other -- they have a flowchart somewhere in the prosecutor's office of what they hope will happen when and i think they have taken account of this.

i think they probably like the fact that they can have some time now. rudy is basically conceding them the two months there. >> yes, he is. >> which is actually pretty important in the politics of it. rudy is saying, hey, you know, we know this is going after the election, let's leave it. >> obviously the spec laulation this town is are americans going to get indicted. the reason we assume some americans will get indicted is what rod rosenstein said when he issued the indictments for the actual hackers of the dnc e-mail. let me bring that quote up. this was only six weeks ago. i know it feels like six months ago, but take a listen. >> we confront foreign interference in american elections, it's important for us to avoid thinking politically as republicans or democrats and instead to think patriotically as americans. our response must not depend on which side was victimized.

>> so that was always like, okay, he knows what's coming next because remember there were a lot of redacted references to a few americans in that indictment. rosenstein knows whatever american gets indicted, that's going to be electric. >> absolutely. it will definitely kick the probe into another level of debate and controversy, though it strikes me, chuck, talking right now, even if mueller doesn't enter into the election and politicize the election with the new indictment or new revelation, that doesn't mean donald trump will refrain from politicizing the investigation for the next two months. so either way, we're talking about this investigation for the next two months. >> look, let's talk about the person, because this might have been a more significant plea agreement. the gentleman today who pled guilty is sam patton. this guy has ties to russia, paul manafort and cambridge analytica. a little bit more about him. he worked with manafort and on

the ukrainian campaigns and worked on microtargeting operations with cambridge analytica. and then our friend constantine kilimnick who is paul manafort's russian right hand man back in the ukraine who patton was starting his own businesses with separate from manafort. a lot of potential ties with russian intelligence. this looks like a more significant figure than maybe we realized. >> i think he's connective tissue between cambridge analytica -- >> he could be. >> he could be. what efforts cambridge analytica and others, including russian intelligence, worked on in ukraine, which was kind of the test bed apparently for what went on in the united states and paul manafort's state of knowledge. i mean mueller has been working his way up the chain, and i think he's trying to figure out how much manafort, who obviously kilimnick was his guy and this guy worked with that guy and that guy worked for cambridge analytica. how much does manafort know, if

anything, about how cambridge analytica operated and then what did he tell donald trump, if anything, about what cambridge analytica was doing. that is crucial because then that ties into -- back into the russian efforts. you know, this is an important little dot being connected here, i think. >> and then we have to remember that kilimnick is also charged in the same case as paul manafort now in the two witness tampering charges. but that gets you -- that gets you back to russian intelligence. and then this guy, patton, basically one of the charges in there that i guess he didn't plead guilty for or did but they're not going to charge him for is the campaign donation to the presidential inaugural committee. someone from ukraine wanted to come, couldn't buy the tickets because that's illegal, had a straw purchaser, so that gets us back to what did the presidential inaugural committee know. >> remember, rick gates was a big part of the inaugural committee. >> exactly. so it becomes the mafia

investigation. little things, little things, little things, to get to the big fish. >> matthew, i still to this day am not sure, if there was some sort of conspiracy, was paul manafort involved with that conspiracy or was he so dirtied up somewhere else, right? i think we've all wondered here, is paul manafort an outside player who had and others connected to him were part of it? that's been an unknown factor here. >> there is a feeling of choose your own conspiracy, right? what strikes me about this latest indictment is that he's being charged on a fara violation. it's very rarely charged and very rarely used. so what this says to me is when the full force of the united states department of justice is after you or looking at you, they can find a violation. even if it's a statute that normally is not being charged, that no one talks about --

>> i had a u.s. attorney say to me you know why your parents when you were a kid said to you don't make a federal case of it? because federal cases are much more complicated than city attorney cases and district attorney cases. >> but i would argue if there was ever an occasion where you were going to use it, the question of whether there was collusion with a foreign power in an election is just the time that you do use it. so i don't think it's necessarily a punitive thing regarding patton. i think these are very high stakes because this is a very, very big case here. that's the reason why they went after him. by the way, on manafort, i was in -- i was up in trump tower some of the times during the campaign when manafort was moving in and out of the office. i also believe the account of the famous trump tower meeting where trump -- where manafort is there doing other stuff on his phone. >> supposedly. supposedly. >> then gets up and leaves. that's plausible to me because i'm not convinced he didn't have

his own thing running and that's what mueller is trying to figure out. >> we sit here and do either/or a lot. it could be both and i think that that's something we don't fully appreciate. >> manafort could have been looking at what he regarded as a minor operation by don jr. to try to get in his kitchen and say, hey, i've got my own thing going. we just don't know. we do not know. >> we all hope somebody does. >> we know mueller is trying to pressure him to telling him something, if there is something to be told. right now paul manafort doesn't seem to be making a deal. so is there something to be told or is he scared of something that's bigger than the federal government? i don't know. >> let me get back to donald trump, because the president -- and we talk about this a lot. it feels like you can say any 20-day period an say, boy, it feels as if he's reacting as if the walls are closing in and yet it's another 20-day period. is his reaction this week to something he thinks is coming or is it simply john mccain is getting too much attention? >> it could be all of the above.

we frankly don't know. the truth is as you alluded to in your question, the behavior we've seen from the president this week is not much different from the behavior we've seen the last three years. >> right. >> so i think there's a tendency to read a lot of motivation into a president that's operated the same way since he entered public life. we might try to assign causes to it but maybe the simplest answer is he doesn't like the mueller probe, he doesn't like how jeff sessions handled it and he's threatening to do something about it. >> and he's lived his whole life with the feeling the walls are closing in. >> 3:00 in the morning tweets, you're always wondering. >> but when you go back to the paperwork for michael cohen, there is employee 2 in there. we don't know who it is. there aren't that many high-level employees who work for the trump organization. we know roger stone we assume employee 2 is. if we're talking about his family, that would be more worrisome for him. >> i think you're right.

coming up, another guilty plea, another agreement to cooperate with the special counsel. who might be next? counsel. who might be next?

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ukrainian man banned from making the contribution himself. to get more i'm joined by ken dilanian and tom winter, one of our investigative reporters in new york. tom and ken, welcome. ken, we've done a little bit of leg work here explaining who mr. pat tten is to our viewers. how important does he appear to be? >> it's not clear. he appears to fit in the manafort orbit and he's pleaded guilty to lobbying in the u.s. even though he was paid for by this ukrainian -- russian-backed ukrainian political party. he said he wasn't lobbying at all and it turns out that he was. more interestingly he's also pleaded guilty to funneling a $50,000 to trump's inaugural committee so his yukrainian client could attend the nomination. was that because he wanted to curry favor or just go to the parties. >> or was paul manafort trying

to make good. he had his own debt issues with these various ukrainians. >> paul manafort when he was working for donald trump was basically broke and grasping for cash and in debt to some of these ukrainian oligarchs. >> tom winter, the thing that raised the eyebrows of a lot of us is the fact that mr. patten -- it's not just ties to paul manafort, it's not just ties to the inaugural committee, but cambridge analytica pops up in here. walk me through that. >> so my understanding, chuck, a little bit on patten's background is that he has -- he has some ties to cambridge analytica. of course the cambridge analytica thing depending on who we talk to, it's either the big piece of the puzzle that's yet to be put down on the board or it is kind of the ghost that really doesn't have anything to play here. i mean the question is cambridge analytica, they're polling where the president needed to be, the efforts that were directed there

as far as who does the president need to speak to, who do they need to target online and what are the efforts to put out the president's message or to put out a message about an opponent. and did they receive any help from any foreign entity. of course they have denied all of this and said, hey, we were just really good with what we did, we were on top of our business and we learned they didn't have a tremendous amount of business other than the trump campaign leading up to their ultimate demise. so it really is kind of a -- we go into an area where we don't know what it is exactly that cambridge analytica's role might have been as far as any sort of ties to russia and if they had a role at all, frankly. >> and now there's a third item on mr. patten's, i guess, dossier here, if we want to call it that. the senate intel committee put out an interesting statement that only raised more questions. here it is. we can confirm that mr. patten produced documents to the committee and was interviewed by

committee staff. due to concerns about certain statements made by mr. patten, the committee made a criminal referral to the department of justice. while the charge and resultant plea do not appear to directly involve our referral, we appreciate their review of this matter. okay. >> that's pretty interesting. >> that's very interesting. >> you would think it would have been about the foreign lobbying but apparently that's not what it was. this guy was in business with a man named konstantin kilimnick who had ongoing ties to russian intelligence. all these figures appear to be linked. the question we don't know the answer to, was this all a conspiracy to funnel russian help to the trump campaign? >> but i also want to go back, this is the first known criminal referral from the senate intel committee, is it not? >> i believe that it is. >> they kept this under wraps, which by the way once again kudos to burr and warner. they are operating in a bipartisan way. this has never leaked. this came out after. for all the accusations of

leaks, that says a lot. >> there are a lot of people that they have talked to that we don't even know they talked to. >> we didn't know they talked to him. tom winter, help me out here, the bruce ohr report. there's a food fight going on between democrats and republicans on -- democrats accusing the house republicans of cherry picking texts and e-mails to boost the narrative about bruce ohr and christopher steele. i know i'm shocked, shocked that that would happen in the house -- with house republicans. they have done this multiple times. what are democrats doing about it, and does it matter here? >> you know, chuck, i really don't think -- in the grand scheme of things i don't think that it matters. i'm continually curious as to how bruce ohr has become such a key player in all of this. bruce ohr is somebody who has tremendous knowledge of russian organized crime. it's something that we're continuing to report out. it's something i'd like to know a lot more about and i've been making some calls over the last several days. but you have somebody here who

has keep knowledge of russian organized crime. you have russian organized crime people that are key players. we've been talking about paul manafort here and konstantin kilimnick. you also have to talk about owe l -- oleg derapaska. he was around when the fbi and u.s. government talked to him and kind of dangled a deal to get real insight into the entire russian organized crime enterprises and as it relates to the putin government. i think that's something ol oleg derapaska knows a lot about. i'm curious as to how bruce ohr has become such a talking point figure and is somebody who frankly in most investigations is somebody that unless you covered every inch of the justice department every day is not necessarily somebody you would talk about. >> tom, you were very careful with what you said there. i'm going to put it more

bluntly. how well known was bruce ohr to these russian oligarchs? was bruce ohr a known hurdle, if you will, a known stumbling block to russian oligarchs being able to move money into the united states? did they figure bruce ohr for a decade? >> there's no doubt they know who the top russian organized crime prosecutors are in the united states. to me this is an example every time the republicans try to attack this investigation, they end up hurting trump because this story today was very damaging to donald trump. >> no, it is. all right. ken dilanian, tom winter, oh, it is -- we keep talking about the russian novel for a reason because every thread seems to have three other avenues that we want to go down and pull. anyway, thank you both. coming up, republicans are deciding which of their candidates will no longer get financial support because their chances are winning are collapsing. they don't want to waste money. and ahead, the emotional

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moms, we can't wait. ♪ welcome back. you're looking live at the u.s. capitol rotunda where senator john mccain is lying in state. public viewing is going on right now and there are thousands of people waiting in line outside the capitol. pretty hot and humid day here with rain intermittent. but all wanting to be there to

pay their respects to an american hero. in a place usually overwhelmed p by partisanship, today it was all about common ground and honoring somebody who was an uncommon leader. >> john mccain coming to his beloved u.s. capitol for what will be the final time. >> the sound of rain as the casket was coming into the u.s. capitol. we often don't get a chance to just pause and experience a moment like that. >> in the long history of our nation, only 30 americans have lain in state here in the united states capitol rotunda. today as a reflection of the esteem in which his colleagues and our country hold him, senator john mccain joins those ranks. >> generations of americans will continue to marvel at the man who lies before us.

the cocky, handsome, naval aviator who barely scraped through school and then fought for freedom in the skies. >> we have this beautiful thing, the chance to do for this man what he did for us, to stand up. because all of this, all of this is worth fighting for. >> lord, we are grateful for his efforts to do what was in the country's best interests and for providing inspiration that kept our nation strong. it's kind of like playing your own version of best ball. because here, you can choose any car in the aisle, even if it's a better car class than the one you reserved. so no matter what, you're guaranteed to have a perfect drive.

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with pg&e in the sierras. and i'm an arborist to help protect yourself from a stroke. since the onset of the drought, more than 129 million trees have died in california. pg&e prunes and removes over a million trees every year to ensure that hazardous trees can't impact power lines. and since the onset of the drought we've doubled our efforts. i grew up in the forests out in this area and honestly it's heartbreaking to see all these trees dying. what guides me is ensuring that the public is going to be safer and that these forests can be sustained and enjoyed by the community in the future. welcome back. house republicans are looking at the massive midterm battlefield this fall and realizing they need to make some tough choices. republican officials are telling

politico that as many as 45 of their seats are at serious risk and there's no way they can save each one with limited resources, so it's becoming survival of the fittest. incumbents at risk right now of being cut off from republican party help include, and we're in august and they're saying this publicly, barbara comstock, pennsylvania's keith rofus and iowa's rod bloom in the northeast district, not the des moines district. comstock has been preparing for a rough race from the start but the odds are against her in a district that went for hillary clinton by ten points and democratic governor ralph northam by 12 points. in another sign of the expanding battlefield and how republicans are triaging, president trump announced today that he's going to hold a rally for republican senator ted cruz in texas. joining me now, nbc news national political correspondent steve kornacki, and our panel is back. all right, steve, so let's put up -- the fact that we're triaging now, that we're seeing this decision, normally we know

the decisions get made now but we don't hear about it until october 1st. >> right. >> does that mean more are coming? >> yeah. first of all, i was looking back and trying to put this in some perspective. 2010, the wave when democrats lost control of the house back then, how many races did the democrats end up cutting their incumbents loose. i think the number ended up about eight where they either cut it off altogether, started paring it back and that was around columbus day of 2010. so i imagine there's more. comstock is such an obvious one. not only did hillary clinton win that district by ten points, monmouth, a pretty good pollster, has been doing some of these house race polls. they have her running at 39%, 10 points behind her democratic opponent so that's a very obvious one. starting to wonder about the tougher choices they face with all of those incumbents in those expensive markets in california, southern california in particular. a bunch in the new jersey/philadelphia, even some of the new york districts, probably tough decisions there

too coming because of the cost if nothing else. >> should we go major market? for instance, we know miami, that's probably one that's on the don't fund bloc. you brought up philadelphia and new jersey. might we see something in denver, for instance? >> yeah. that's the way i start to look at it. like i said, there are seven republican incumbents in california in districts that hillary clinton won. some of them are in more of the central valley/fresno area. but you get down into san diego, orange county, l.a., anaheim area, extremely expensive. in new jersey, leonard lance, you've got to buy new york television time to get into that district. there's an open seat there and i think there's a question there. so extreme cost in some of these cases. >> howard fineman, one of them that looks like it's on the chopping block is rod bloom and he's the first district

republican congressman in iowa. what's interesting about that district is on one hand it is a traditionally labor union district, the heart and soul of the iowa democratic party at times, but there's a trumpy feel to it at times too. the fact that iowa -- that this one is early on the chopping block, that would have me nervous in every iowa district if i were a republican. >> i think so. i think iowa has become a sort of classic swing state. >> it's back being vacillating back. >> it's now back in that category. i think that's very, very important. i think the one in western p.a. is too, because don't forget, unlike some of the other places, that really was trump country in this last election. outside of allegheny county, which is pittsburgh, every county in western pennsylvania went for trump. the fact that they're thinking of giving up on that race there, not the one that connor lamb won but next door i think is quite significant because it shows trump country can be vulnerable for house members who won in

those areas. >> i've got to bring up the decision that cruz feels like he needs trump in october, so they're looking for i think donald trump tweeted the biggest stadium possible. we've calculated that. if you go by stadium, it would be the taj majerry or the texas motor speedway which seats a lot more but isn't a stadium. what does it say that ted cruz, the man who said this about donald trump -- >> 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. the man cannot tell the truth, but he combines it with being a narcissist. a narcissist at a level i don't think this country has ever seen. donald will betray his supporters on every issue. if you care about immigration,

donald is laughing at you. he will betray you on every issue across the board. >> matthew, what this really tells me is ted cruz has a trump voter problem. it's not a swing voter problem that he may have in texas, it's a trump voter problem. >> that's right. you left out his remarks at the convention. >> oh, i left out something? >> vote your conscience. so his beef with trump continued even past that date you showed, which the republican nomination was effectively over. i think obviously everyone will be looking at the texas senate race. beto o'rourke is a candidate that vaults into the presidential contenders if he pulls off this upset. >> how about one campaign at a time. but i hear you. >> i also think the campaign hasn't started there yet. just today there is reporting out of houston about a dui that beto had had some decades ago, but you have this sense of the candidate who's received a lot

of positive media, not really any opposition, especially in the area. conversely, ted cruz is being kind of held aloft by a pretty high rating among hispanics. i wonder whether those numbers will go down once beto hits the air. >> steve kornacki, it seems to me that one of the mash unit doctors is actually donald trump. where they have to -- where he'll be used the most is to do things like this, shore up -- go to west texas where they love him there for instance, lubbock or whatever. but shore up shaky incumbents where trump can actually help. >> yeah, i think in that sense he becomes a lot more useful to republicans when it comes to senate races potentially than it does to house races just because the battlefield for the senate side is being waged in so many red states, so many trump states. trump going into a west virginia or north dakota, missouri, indiana, texas, to try to prop up ted cruz. there are a lot of options there

where i think you've got a significant number of trump voters where you could tap into that i think as a republican with less of a risk of the sort of backlash potential you have in some of these more swingish house seats that are out there. >> shawna thomas, you're our texan here at the table. >> yes. >> houston native. >> yes. born and raised. >> beto. he's a phenomenon outside of texas and i guess we're trying to figure out is he a real phenomenon inside of texas. >> i think so. i think the interesting thing is and i believe abby livingston wrote about this recently, about seeing lots of signs. yard signs for beto outside of texas. so there's something coalescing around him and he also would be the best example if he were to win of turning something blue because of donald trump. the only thing beto has done and we've covered him a lot in vice news, he has gone to a lot of little towns that democrats, and this is pre-primary, a lot of little towns democrats in texas

usually ignore because the democratic party in texas hasn't really been a thing in a long time. >> by the way, you're describing the andrew gillum campaign in florida. he was showing up in places people hadn't gone before. >> and beto has been all across the state. if i can go to a bar and get 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 democrats who didn't used to tell people they were democrats to show up, if i can get enough of those people out plus the big cities in texas, maybe we've got something. >> howard, very quickly, last word. >> there isn't enough of donald trump to go around. in kentucky there's a house race at the desperately want him to go into lexington to save andy barr. is he going to do it? probably not. he's not going to have enough time. >> senate matters more to his future than the house does. >> totally. >> totally. >> steve kornacki, thank you, brother. >> sure. >> mush appreciated. panel has to stick around and you get to start your labor day weekend. deal or no deal? did president trump tank negotiations with canada? p tank negotiations with canada it's time for the 'biggest sale of the year' on the new

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but prevagen helps your brain with an ingredient originally discovered... in jellyfish. in clinical trials, prevagen has been shown to improve short-term memory. prevagen. healthier brain. better life. welcome back. tonight in "meet the midterms" there may be one more major primary upset this season. if it happens, it's going to be thursday in delaware. delaware, not kidding. incumbent democratic senator tom carper is being challenged from the left by a woman named carrie harris. harris is hitting him on his senate record that includes his votes for the keystone pipeline,

confirming rick perry as energy secretary. she's also running on a platform of $15 minimum wage, medicare for all and eliminating student debt. have you heard this story before? harris is on the trail today with alexandria ocasio cortez who pulled off the big establishment upset of her own earlier this year. carper is still the big favorite. this guy was governor and held every office in the three-county state. but he is feeling the heat. he rolled out a robo call from joe biden earlier this month. first time biden ever got involved in a primary. good news for harris is voter turnout will be low. it's thursday that they're having this not a tuesday and there is a history of party insurgencies scoring primary upsets in this state. who can forget christine o'donnell's shocking upset of congressman mike castle back in 2010. it was a republican wave here and the republican base was ready to oust moderates as well as democrats. now, it may only be a chance, but keep an eye on delaware thursday night. more "mtp daily" right after

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welcome back. time now for "the lid." the panel is back. nafta. you know, there's a lot of like under the radar news that used to be above the -- or on the radar news. the renegotiation of nafta, shawna thomas, today canada and the united states are in a contentious moment because of an off-the-record comment that the president made to bloomberg that seemed to say, look, i'm not going -- i can't say to you that canada has got to take it or leave it because then they'll get mad essentially and somehow those comments leaked and canada this morning said, hey, tell us about these comments. the president then confirmed that these -- so now he's comfortable saying, okay, canada, take it or leave it. >> yeah, i think the president also tweeted or said now they know how i feel. presumably they knew how he felt anyway. >> i think they knew. >> the thing is, all three of

these countries, the united states, mexico and canada, we are just -- we are linked in an economic way that all three need to get on the same page. plus congress is involved in this. congress is basically said to do president, hey, if you want to renegotiate want to renegotiate with mexico, that's great but you've got to do it with canada, too. we want to deal with all three. they have to ratify this deal. they can fight about it or not. there's congressional machinations they are going to get around. canada can stew over the weekend. apparently they are coming back to the tables next week. >> everybody blinked here, including president trump, though canada is blinking more. they all have to be in this. matthew, it is a result of the president saying i'll force them to the table. he forced them to the table. now, you can do this with mexico and canada because we're the big guy on the street, but it's still a win for him and it's a win for his way of negotiating.

>> that's right. i think that's the way trump voters view it as well. this is a promise he made during the campaign. i think the key decision was freezing canada out and then negotiating directly with mexico. >> which was a surprise. who would have thought the president, what he said about mexico. >> ambassador bob lighthizer plays a big role. kushner is getting a lot of credit as well. once that fwreemt was basically esht goed, -- once ayatollah agreement w -- once that agreement was negotiated, the president understands the economic power in many ways others do not. it seems to have worked here. it also seems to be working in turkey, it seems to be working in iran, it seems to be working in russia where the sanctions are really hurting the russian economy as well. so this idea of economic coercion i think is new to president trump. it's a tool that i think has

become useful to the united states. >> obviously the big test is going to be china. this version of bullying tactics work? >> no, not with china. by the way, i would say as always with any trump deal, the important thing is to look at the actual details. >> the irony, it will be barely a change. >> it's a lot of muscle flexing. in the case of canada, don't forget the states that put everyone did over the top, pennsylvania, michigan, wisconsin, they care about trade with canada. >> particularly michigan and wisconsin purcha wisconsin. >> particularly michigan and wisconsin. we had to do the muscle strength, flex thing. fine. let's see what he actually gets out of it. also take into account the many billions of dollars he had to spend to keep the farmers whole during the time that he was doing this. if you follow his business career and follow everything else, did he build a bunch of

buildings? yes. let's look at the details of what the bottom line is. that we don't know and won't know. i agree with you lighthouizer i fantastic. >> the difference between china and canada, chinese have a way to manipulate in ways canada and mexico cannot. he can put pressure on them, they can put pressure on us and also manipulate the country. the chinese president can say, you know what, we don't like american products anymore. part of the culture there is maybe they stop buying american products. it is a different situation in china than it is in canada. >> all the reporting i see from china says chinese leadership is very confused, bewildered and even intimidated with all the economic signals from the white house. i think he has more leverage with china, lighthizer has more leverage with china than we're giving him. part of this is increasing

original for auto parts and supplies. auto workers in michigan and ohio will be paying attention in 2020. >> they upped labor standards. canada had to say, okay, i have to consider it. >> what a great way to end a friday. remembering another american icon with a celebration fit for a queen. >> we did not -- did not trade weapons or anything else for hostages.

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tribute and celebrating the life of aretha franklin today at a funeral that's already spanned multiple hours so far. it began with pink cadillacs, a reference to her hit "freeway of love." soon it became a fitting tribute in song. ♪ when my soul was in the lost and found ♪ >> america is big, america is bold, and nobody had a bigger voice or a bolder soul than our aretha. ♪ i didn't know what was wrong with me ♪ >> it has been said hers was a once in a lifetime voice. that is simply not true. her gift was almost other worldly. there has never been, there will never be another voice melded to the constant artistry that was miss aretha franklin. ♪ you make me feel he make me feel ♪

>> she lived with faith. not without failure but overcoming her failures. she lived with power. not without weakness but overcoming her weaknesses. i just loved her. ♪ you make me feel >> she represented the best in our community, and she fought for our community until the end. >> it's still going. we're waiting for stevie wonder. you'll be able to see that, i hope, when he comes on to have his tribute soon. that's all we have for tonight. we'll be back with more mtp

daily. start now ayman mohyeldin siding in. >> she'll be missed for sure. thanks, sure. i'm in tonight for ari. we begin with breaking news this hour. another associate of paul manafort is pleading guilty today to a federal crime and admitting to arranging an illegal foreign donation to trump's inauguration. samuel patent pleading guilty to failing to register as a lobbyist for a foreign agency. he agreed to work with bob mueller's team. he referred the case to the d.c. prosecutor. perhaps the most striking part of the case is this, admits helping a russian and ukrainian making a $50,000 donation to the trump inauguration committee. of course, foreigners aren't allowed to donate money to inaugural committees. there's no sign