(laughing) don't settle for your first draft. or your 10th draft. ♪ ♪ you get to create the room where it happens. ♪ ♪ just don't think you have to do it alone. ♪ ♪ the powerful backing of american express. don't live life without it. good morning and welcome to "politics nation." the witch hunt is on. this one, not against president trump, but led by him. this morning, a white house source says the search for the anonymous author of "the new york times" op-ed that shook the political world this week is now just a few people. the piece alleged an internal

resistance to the president from within his own administration. all of this just two days ahead of the release of another explosive book that describes in extremely divided white house. joining me now is yamiche alcindor, white house correspondent for pbs "newshour." yamic yamiche, i want to talk to you also about president, former president obama coming out on the trail. but let me first go to this op-ed controversy. anonymous source, the president is a reportedly very upset and outraged by it. what do you get as covering the white house. what is going on in the white house in reaction to both the op-ed, the anonymous op-ed in "the new york times", saying there's an internal resistance movement, and this pending book, tuesday, coming out that has

made a woodward book, that has really become a collection of interviews that he's done, that really validates and makes plain the same theory that it is bedlam in the white house with the chief officer of bedlam, the president himself. >> well, the president is fuming about this. and mainly it's because, in some ways, it's very clear now that there is a group of people who are working to, they think, protect the country against president trump's wills. i talked to one former trump official who told me that there were times when senior officials would brief lawmakers before they went in to meet with president trump to say, look, whatever he tells you in the oval office, we're not committing to it, whatever he tells you, wihatever deals he makes with you, we're not going to do it. so the president might just say stuff, and we have to talk to you afterwards. that's extraordinary, they're

basically taking away president trump's ability to make the deal. now you have this hunt for this op-ed writer. you have something more than two dozen officials have had to put out statements saying, it's not me from jeff education iducaess coats. you have the first lady coming out, saying this is remarkable and this person is a coward. the fact that you have this many people, that many faces that we're looking at on the screen, all of those people are running to say, it's not me. and because they know that president trump is watching. they want to see everybody else say, it's not me, it's not me, because he's so mad at the person that this could be. and it's really created this atmosphere where people don't trust each other. >> reporter: we're also hearing that they have even talked about giving lie detector tests to people in the white house. i mean, are we in this kind of atmosphere that the president is so obsessed on finding out who writes this op-ed piece

anonymously that we're going all the way down to lie detectors and everyone's a suspect and he only can trust his family. even made the suggestion that the attorney general investigate that this may be treason. i mean, don't people have the right to express themselves? certainly, you have the right to be concerned if someone on your staff is, quote, dropping a dime on you, unquote. but is that treason? >> well, it's -- at least the way that treason is defined, it's not treason. but if you think about it, even in president obama's speech, he said, these people who are around president trump, who say they're part of this resistance, they weren't elected, they weren't people who are accountable, they're not people who are constitutionally given the right to make decisions for this nation. and if you're either the president or a president's supporters, you're looking at these people saying, wait, we didn't elect you, you're not the people who are supposed to be making this decision. and it's not as if president trump is some completely different person than he was in

november of 2016. president trump is the same brash, the same person who was going with his gut, the same person who was talking about jailing his opponent at one point, when he was talking about he would jail hillary clinton. this is someone who has talked in authortorian tones and made people worried for a while. so when he was elected, people knew what they were getting. so if you have that, and you have that fact, when you have his staff saying, we're going to figure out and make sure this guy doesn't actually get done what he wants to get done. that is concerning, even to people who don't like president trump. you don't know who these people are, who are part of the resistance. and now they're making large national security decisions that might have lasts impacts. >> now, when we say they're part of the internal resistance, the author of this anonymous piece made it clear, they do not disagree with trump's policies and where he wants to go. they just want to try and manage and be guardrails to his behavior, his conduct, his shooting from the hip, his

tendency to be impulsive. so it's not like they're countering some of the things that one may disagree, like me. they're sort of managing it better and ting that does raise the question of, clearly, he's the same personality he was, but at another level, he walks it way back from treason, because it's not like they're going to stop him from a decision that he makes globally or domestically. because from the spirit of the writing, they agree with his basic political philosophy, they just think he's reckless and out of control, seemingly from the right. >> well, that's what the op-ed said. the op-ed said they're happy with the president's successes. and that they really do agree with a lot of the trump agenda. but as president obama said, if you agree with 90% of it, but 10% they don't like, they're going to not do the 10%. in bob woodward's book, there's this idea that the president was looking at, even taking down and

removing the leader of syria and his staff basically said, yeah, we're not going to do that. there's this idea that president trump, if he does something that they don't agree with and there's another people that they can find a way to thwart whatever the president's trying to do, that could be a big deal. if he says, i want to accepted missiles to syria, and they say, well, we can't logistically do this and make up some sort of excuse, or if they're taking papers off of the president's desk, as is what bob woodward wrote, he said that gary cohen physically took things off the president's desk so he wouldn't sign them, even if they agree with some of his policies, they could be actually saying, we don't want this decision to be made. so we're going to wait for him to forget about it. >> and that would be something that i think would be of concern in any administration, when you start stealing papers off the president's desk to stop a decision or interfere. and i think that's what president obama was referring to, that we did not vote for these people, we did not elect them.

they're not accountable. but when you have someone that everyone seems to at least off the record, agree is out of control, this is the kind of environment you set, where people think they're doing the right thing to protect the country and protect people from somebody that was reckless. but your point is, he didn't just turn reckless, he was reckless, running around, during the whole campaign. oh, i'm sorry, even before that, looking for a birth certificate in kenya that was never there. so i mean, i don't understand how we balance this out now, even with an anonymous writing. thank you, yamiche. for more on this, i want to bring in republican strategist, jen kern. jen, the president is being profiled by this anonymous "new york times" piece and by the woodward book, as being out of

control. being a walking time bomb that could at any point do something that would cause real damage. and yet, for him to be managed by people around him, to protect him from -- us from him, who are not elected, who are not accountable, listen to former president obama on friday. listen to this. >> the politics of division and resentment and paranoia has unfortunately found a home in the republican party. they're undermining our alliances, cozying up to russia. what happened to the republican party? it did not start with donald trump. he is a symptom, not the cause. >> so, when you have former president obama saying he's a symptom, is it that the voters

and the public and your party overlooked all of the behavioral patterns of this president, because they wanted to build on this resentment and they wanted to build on this backlash to the policies that they disagreed with from the affordable care act to criminal justice reform. and they'd say, fine, we know he's eccentric, he's out of control, but we'll get our judges on the federal bench and even the supreme court and we'll reverse healthcare. did we see them so anxious, people that you may agree with, that they overlooked what now has become a potential problem for them, and that is the behavior of this president? >> well, good morning, rev. >> good morning. >> there's no doubt about it that republicans and, by the way, independents, chose to elect president trump, based upon their disagreements with

these eight years of barack obama. but look, as president barack obama said yesterday, you know, what has happened to the parties, what has happened to civility in politics. i have to ask the same question. i think the attacks that are being laid against president trump right now are very, very dangerous. this calling him unfit to be president. and you look at barack obama's comments yesterday, he said, you know, that republicans are cozying up to russia. look at the attacks on president trump right now. those are soviet-era tactics. this is exactly what the soviet union used to do to folks. they used to say, you know what, because i don't agree with you, i'm going to say that you must be crazy, you must be unfit to be president, you must be unfit as my political opponent. >> but these charges, jen, are not coming from the democrats or the opposition. they're coming from his own staff, writing anonymous letters

to t"the new york times" or anonymous op-ed pieces. they're talking to woodward. i mean, we have never seen a presidency where someone in his senior staff writes an op-ed on the "new york times." so you can't blame that on the opposition. and by the way, for a fact check, when you say that the country and independents voted against obama, president trump got almost 3 million less votes than hillary clinton, so let's not get into the same distortion of facts like we did the size of the crowd at the inauguration. the fact is, he lost the popular vote, so let's not act like most americans disagreed with where the direction was going. it's just that the electoral map put mr. trump in the white house. >> well, look, regarding the anonymous op-ed, we don't know yet who wrote that. and i suspect at the end of the day it will be either an obama holdover, that's someone who was an obama appointee, who

president trump allowed to stay in the white house, so it's probably a democrat, or it might be a republican who just so happens not to agree with president trump. and there are many. i have many friends who are never-trumpers. but, look, president trump made it very clear from the beginning that he was going to the swamp to blow up the boxes and to change how business as usual happened in washington, d.c. and people don't like it. even republicans don't like it. i have friends in many places in the republican party that still talk about him behind his back. so it doesn't mean that the charges are anymore legitimate, just because they come from a republican. there are many republicans who liked the status quo in washington, d.c. they don't like that he's come along to upset the apple cart. but again, i go back to -- i think we're in very dangerous territory here, when you start to charge people with being unfit to be president. we saw this in apartheid south

africa, we saw this with nelson mandela. they said, oh, you must be crazy, you've got to be jailed for a while to keep a lid on you. we saw this in the ussr back in the day -- >> wait a minute, wait a minute, just a second, jen. i've got to stop you there. how do you compare people talking about this president getting up, talking about shooting heads of state and this president being out of control with nelson mandela refusing to submit further to being treated less than a citizen in his own nation, based on the color of his skin? they didn't put nelson mandela in jail because he was eating big macs in the middle of the night, tweeting words that didn't exist. now, let's at least keep this within the boundaries of making sense. >> i wrote about this at the hill last january, so more than six months ago. look, these tactics have been used. they were used in apartheid south africa, they were used in communist china to jail

people -- >> yeah, but they were protected against the ideology. we're not talking about people that disagree with his ideology. those were the tactics. they would say they were terrorists, they were communists. that's not what they're saying about trumps. they're saying he's incompetent. they're saying that he has diminished mental faculties. and these are his people. these are omarosa, these are michael cohen, these are people that worked for him. these are not people that are opponents. and they all have the same line. when everybody's describing you the same way, how is that some kind of tactic that was used in russia or south africa? >> because, again, this is being driven mostly by democrats and those within the party who are not tea partyers that put trump in office. they're not people who like the status quo in the swamp being upset. and again, it goes back to look at the people that were imprisoned, look at the people who were called mentally unfit. and that is the exact campaign that's going on.

look on twitter this morning, there's a hashtag, unfit to be president, unfit to serve. it's a tactic of the soviet era that democrats and some republicans go to all the time. when you can't get a person on anything else -- and reverend, they're not been able to say -- >> but these are not democrats! >> and it doesn't matter. >> these are republicans. these are trump staff members. these -- this is his personal lawyers. -- lawyer. you're talking about the swamp, i mean, have you noticed the indictments and the guilty pleas that come out of trumpland? i don't think y'all ought to be mentioning swamp too often, but thank you, anyway, jen, for being with me this morning. >> well, look, it crosses party lines, these type of attacks. trump was not their guy. trump wasn't even the republican party's initial choice. there were a lot of people in the rnc and elsewhere rooting against him, because they knew he would do exactly what he's doing, which is going his own line, going his own way. that's why the american people elected him.

>> the american people did vote in the electoral college for the man, but the question is about whether he is their guy is coming from the people who told us that he was their guy and they're saying, our guy has a problem. >> i'll bet you a state dinner, rev, it will be an obama holdover. >> i've got to keep going. >> yep. >> well, if it's an obama holdover, i don't think michael cohen and omarosa and others were. may have heard 49 hours of confirmation hearings for supreme court nominee, brett kavanaugh, but now we realize we didn't get many answers. that's next. be right back. dear foremothers, your society was led by a woman, who governed thousands... commanded armies... yielded to no one. when i found you in my dna, i learned where my strength comes from. my name is courtney mckinney, and this is my ancestrydna story. now with 2 times more geographic detail

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president, uh, trump claims he has an absolute right to pardon himself. does he have? >> the question of self-pardons is something i have never analyzed. it's a question that i have not written about. it's a question, therefore, that's hypothetical question that i can't begin to answer in this context, as a sitting judge and as a nominee to the supreme court. >> this week, senate confirmation hearings for president trump's supreme court nominee, brett kavanaugh ended without much cause for opposition optimism. of course, to be fair, it's hard

to craft the most effective response to a former presidential counsel, when only a fraction of his white house record is available, even after dozens of e-mails from that time were released this week. and as you heard at the top, democrat senators got no answers from kavanaugh on whether a president can ignore a subpoena or pardon one's self, a crucial question as the mueller investigation racks up indictments and guilty verdicts. joining me now is conservative radio host and msnbc contributor, hugh hewitt. hugh, let me go right at it. why would the american people be comfortable with the fact that this nominee, we've not seen but a, i think, some say 10% of the

records that could and should be made available. when we saw all of the records for other supreme court nominees. whether they are a lot is still 10% and we don't know what's in the other 90%. why would we have confidence that we know the total background of the work and thinking of who may have a permanent lifetime seat on the supreme court? >> well, al, good morning, i don't think they have confidence that they have the record, obviously. presidential privilege applies to a lot of those documents. and they have confidence in this judge they watch for 38 hours and has 300-plus opinions. it is a mortal lock. it is a certainty he will be confirmed. and the opposition, as you noted, is down to desperate measures, you know, "the handmaiden's tale" robing, kind of crazy, performance art theater going on.

they're so desperate, because you might have a president that's very volable, and as you said to jen in the last segment, often angry and a staff that's chaotic but he's very effective at putting up nominees like brett kavanaugh who sailed through 38 hours up in the senate. not in the white house, but crazy time in the senate. and he's going to get confirmed, whether or not the documents come out. i sat down with leader mcconnell on thursday. we showed some of that interview earlier today on the network. and he is 100% certain that the judge is going to be the justice by the end of this month. 100%. it's done. >> well, the fact that he may be confirmed doesn't give comfort that he should have been confirmed and it's kind of hard, as you describe the craziness, in the senate, it's kind of hard for people to deal solid, if they're not given all the evidence. i mean, if i or you went to court and whoever was on the other side of whatever the legal argument is, could only use 10%

of the evidence, they're not crazy. they are just handicapped to be able to argue a real case. so how can the senators argue a case if they're not given all of the evidence on who they're looking at? >> you know, al, i was so disappointed in the democrats not listening. and i thought your side would be very upset, because, for example, in a colloquy with senator lee, judge kavanaugh said his favorite federalist paper, there were eight of them, one was number 69. in that, it says the president can't be indicted, he can't be prosecuted, you have to try to impeach him, remove him. if the democrats had paid attention and donezeroed in on . what do you mean by 69. but they had a plan, a strategy that was flawed from the beginning. and as a result, they played right into the strength that judge kavanaugh brought, which is the ginsburg standard. first, articulated, i think in

1993, by justice -- now justice ginsburg, that she would give no hint, no preview of how she would rule on any single case. and he wrapped himself up in the ginsburg standard and because they did not listen, didn't pay attention, engaged in all this kind of crazy talk. i mean, the senate was a lot crazier. the senate democrats on the judiciary committee were a lot crazier this week than the president was in the woodward book or anything like that. it was just a wild show. and i think america turned it off. >> well, i don't know that anybody could be crazier than the president in the woodward book, but put that aside. i think when you look at the fact that what you just said, that when this nominee, kavanaugh, steps out after all of these hours, 39 hours, and the american people that he is nominated to sit on the supreme court still don't know his position on pardon, his position on whether the president can be

subpoenaed, his decision on whether he can be prosecuted. and the answer from your side, you is, well, he was slick enough to go and use ginsburg, do we really want somebody slick or somebody that is forthright and says, this is my position, because he's under the situation that is very unique in american history, where you have a president under active investigation, that nominated him. and he should be forthright, whether he thinks the senators asked him a smart way or not, forthright and be clear after 39 hours, where he stands on whether the president could pardon himself, whether a president can, in fact, be prosecuted. and not have some shrewd or savvy way getting around it and saying, oh, you weren't smart enough to catch me. we're talking about the supreme court here. >> well, i teach this every single year, al, and he is very, very smart and very, very competent. but it is right and proper to

embrace the ruth bader ginsburg standard. and it has been embraced by every previous nominee -- by the way, justice breyer was nominated when president clinton was under investigation and it did not slow him down either. what matters most is the character and temperament of the judge and the decisions that they have handed down previous. and on those issues, both character and temperament, not a dplo glove was laid on him. and the democrats didn't even talk about their decisions. the they made a strategic choice to try to turn the absence of the papers into an issue. it fails miserably. every time that they try. they were not prepared to listen closely and go after him. chuck schumer may be under serious pressure to step aside, i think, in the new congress like nancy pelosi, because he has failed to do what mitch mcconnell is effectively. and i think what you saw was the collapse of the democratic resistance in the senate. and i think you'll see at least three, perhaps as many as five democrats vote for brett kavanaugh within three weeks, by the end of the month.

because we -- >> well, we will see, but i think what you saw is that the republicans did not produce the evidence for trial. i think anyone going to trial that had that kind of situation, would not consider themselves victorious, but they would consider themselves having an undue advantage, but you will disagree, but as always, thanks for coming on. >> thanks for having me, al. up next, president trump attacks nike for featuring collcolin kaepernick in their newest just do it campaign. who will win this battle? be right back.

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>> most of the nfl teams will take the field today, competing not just among themselves, but with this culture moment we've been in for the last two years, around the place of politics in sports. as nike's new ad campaign featuring former nfl player colin kaepernick triggered the expected response from the right this week, whether it was president trump throwing the prime red meat to his base or members of that base lynching their three-figure running shoes. but the left also had its own dissension over the campaign this week, divided on whether the campaign is a real good faith effort to acknowledge kaepernick's message or just a craven ploy to sell more sneakers under the guise of corporate wokeness. joining me now is allyna

bergeren, editor in chief of "sb nation." and allah johndroe, editor in chief of "shadow league" and producer for espn films. let me go to you, alana. as expected, president trump took issue. as expected, he went straight to energize his base. people said they're boycotting some on the right, burning three-figure items. but the question is, in the middle of all of this, what kaepernick stood for or, i should say, took a knee for, the fight against police abuse and racism in this country, shouldn't get mixed up in between all of this debate on ads and debate on whether or not

someone should wear someone's sneakers or not. >> well, no, it shouldn't get lost in that. and i think nike is making a very smart play, by continuing to keep it at the fore. you know, as a black woman in america, i have all sorts of issues with the idea that the revolution has to be commoditized, but i recognize the enormous power of sports to change culture. and as for nike who is a huge partner with the nfl, who do the jerseys this year and all of the equipment, to keep kaepernick at the fore and keep his movement during prime-time in nfl, we saw this commercial aired right after halftime of the season opener, to force the league to keep confronting kaepernick, when it seems that owners will conspire to keep him out of the league, i think that is commendable. >> now, allah johndroe, let me ask you, doesn't that really, in effect, bring the issue and keep

the issue where it needs to be, and that is in the mainstream dialogue and conversation in the country? i remember when i was a teenager and we all were protesting the war in vietnam, when i was in high school. when muhammad ali, who was the heavyweight champion of the world, stood up and said, i won't go to the war, it made it a mainstream issue and it added to the anti-war effort. so isn't kaepernick, who's not facing jail or poverty like ali, but by making this stand and then by having the nikes of the world put it in a mainstream commercial, isn't it really advancing the conversation and advancing those of us that want to see these issues addressed? >> without a doubt. you know, i think the nfl made a wild miscalculation by trying to ostracize and isolate colin kaepernick and now that he is

back as the face of the new athlete activists, now that this add campaign is just beginning to gain some steam, we are going to see a reemergence of the issue. we are going to see people siding with and getting a better understanding of what it is he did. and we're going to see people really evaluate the fact that this man is no longer employed in the nfl. and why is that? and i thought it was a sense of poetic justice that the nfl tried to say that they didn't want to alienate their corporate sponsors and this was a big reason why they were coming so down on the silent protests, when one of their biggest corporate sponsors, basically said to them what rick james told charlie murphy. what do the five fingers say to the face?

slap. >> well, you quoted rick james correctly, i might say. let me go back to you, elena. the question here becomes, does this also -- you know, a lot of people, you know, i have had conversations with, what is nike's motivation? and you know, that is, a corporation is a corporation. i think we ought to be focused more on the motivation of the players like colin kaepernick and the continuing issues that they're fighting for, because we're still fighting. i mean, i did stephen clarke's eulogy at his funeral, he was killed by police this year, this is two years after the knee started. so the issue is still there. and i think that what they've done and what colin kaepernick has done is put a spotlight on issues that are still needing, needed to be addressed in this country. does this also put pressure on

other athletes, as the season starts tonight. what are you going to do? are you going to take a knee, are you going to continue this? or are you going to start backing up now and fall in line, so to speak? >> well, i think it does put more pressure on athletes, not just in football, but across the board. because the athletes that are part of this nike campaign and the athletes that they're focused on promoting right now, the lebron james' and the serena williams of the world, are people that not only move sneakers and merchandise, but people who are taking a stand. and so one of the great ironies of this ad campaign is it foc focuses on the people make to play sports. but colin kaepernick has actually sacrificed his supporting pursuit in order to stand up for what he believes in. and nike, through this opportunity, has sort of given him a way to make a different livelihood, outside of the realm of the nfl. they've taken what the campaign is doing and the deal they've signed him to, as a way not only to give him a platform, but also to cut him a check.

and so what this does is athletes, hey, you won't lose endorsers, at least not the nikes of the world, if you do stand up, so what are you going to do. >> alejandro, i think the other part of this is just looking at it from a pure marketing what i. how do you tell people to stand up for more than themselves, showing serena, showing lebron james, and not show ow colin kaepernick stood up for more than himself, stood up for people that he didn't even know, that were shot down, at the risk of his career, which has been stopped. how would they have, in all honesty, done the theme they chose, without including him? >> well, i think that, you know, they were very intelligent by including him, and as elena, you know, so succinctly points out, we are at a new age of athletes who are utilizing their platforms and their resources to

bring about not only awareness but societal change. and it's not just simply the lebron james of the world and the serena williams of the world, who are following behind the ancestors of people like, you know, kareem abdul-jabbar and arthur ash in terms of their spiritual advisers around bringing context to these issues. but, you know, i think what's really going to happen now and i think nike was very digital in assessing this, is, there's a huge collusion case against the nfl, which colin kaepernick is fighting now. so there are a bunch of different factors that went into this decision. and colin kaepernick is going to reemerge, you know, as we've already said, as one of the main topics, in the sport's landscape. and i believe this is going to be a watershed moment, because you have athletes, you know, building schools. you have athletes doing such

remarkable things and putting their money where their mouth is. >> i think i'm going to have to cut you off, because we're out of time, but i think they're continuing a tradition that kareem and the olympics '68 track stars and others did and they're bringing it to another level. and i think colin, certainly, has become the face of that. thank you, elena. thank you, alejandro. coming up, a new film that has guns aplenty, anti-government crazies and a touch of madness. and a provocative statement on the second amendment, that's next. to breathe better, i go with anoro. ♪ go your own way copd tries to say, "go this way." i say, "i'll go my own way, with anoro." ♪ go your own way once-daily anoro contains two medicines called bronchodilators that work together to significantly improve lung function all day and all night.

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♪ turn the tv on. >> there's been another mass shooting today. >> i take a lot of heat where i say guns -- >> this seems to be happening with more and more frequency. >> it's like a ticking time bomb. a lot of people say, he's like a public hero. >> it felt like the right thing to do. >> you're messing with our second amendment, chief. >> i'm an american. i have the right to bear more arms than anybody on this planet. >> he's got a gun! filmmaker mario van peoples has been tackling america's obsession with violence for nearly 30 years. and his latest thriller "armed"

examines the phenomenon of gun violence as complicated by mental illness, politics and media culture all wrapped up in the age of trump. joining me now is the director and star of "armed," mario van peoples. mario, the film comes out, tell me what we can expect when we go in droves to the theaters to see "armed." >> i wanted to make a film, sometimes people say, nothing stops a gad guy with a gun like a good guy with a gun. i play a good guy with many guns. and he's on the no-fly list and yet he's able to purchase these weapons. the tagline in "armed" is what can go wrong? a lot of things can go wrong. "armed" is based on a number of real stories i threaded together. there are three times of people, people that watch things happen, people that complain about what happens and people who make

things happen. since we have a family in the business cinema, we go out and put this together. don't give me your number, i will call you for the funding. what i try to do is, whether you like new york city, whether you like badass, posse or not, there are films you like to remember. i got a new hat the other day. make america think again. >> wow, make america think again. and the thing about the film is, this is not a documentary. >> no, sir, there is a thriller. >> it is entertainment and action-packed. but it makes america think again. >> if you make a documentary, you're preaching to the choir. if you can make entertainment that is going to take people in, then you can hand them a glass of merlot. it turns out to be politically explosive. we just screened it last night at the new york film festival. audiences went craze z for it

and we started a great dialogue. the definition of crazy is not just being crazy, but it's being crazy and somehow expecting the same thing with a different result. we as americans have to stand up and do something different. we have to do more than what we're doing now. so i try to make films that notice i do not solve everything because i'm a filmmaker. but i will continue a conversation we need to have. >> all right. well, who would have ever thought that in the age of trump you would have to go to new jack city to make america think again. thank you, mario. >> all they have to do is go to armedmovie.com and see what theaters it's playing in. go to mario van peebles. if you don't, i did the catering. >> mario van peebles, be sure to

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there will be those that debate that former president barack obama going out to

campaign for the midterm elections will be good or bad for the democrats. the fact of the matter is that in one of his last interviews as president he did on this show with me, and he said that if donald trump were to be elected, that it would be the beginning of those that would try to reverse everything he, he being barack obama, did as president from the affordable care act to criminal justice reform to climate change and on and on. not only is barack obama in my judgment the best one to go out and challenge this age of trump and those that have empowered and enabled trump in the congress and the senate, he has a personal obligation to try and save what he did and to salvage

the legacy of the age of obama that gave millions health care and led to criminal justice reform and commutations. so it's a little deeper than just the midterms, it's about history. will obama help save what obama did and many of us supported him doing? that's what you're looking at. that does it for me. thanks for watching. up next, my colleague alex witt. >> hey, reverend, we'll have the conversation that you talked about, the debate on the pros and cons. and i'm going to say, isn't it somewhat disheartening that president obama had that clear of a crystal ball as to what president trump would do with all his actions? got to say, thank you so much, rev. looking forward to seeing you in the studio. good morning to you, i'm alex witt. it is 9:00 out east, 6:00 out west. here's what is happening, never, the vice en