tv MTP Daily MSNBC September 14, 2018 2:00pm-3:00pm PDT
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out there of a lot of things. >> anti-immigrant. >> he's still riding the alt-right train, but i will also say he's scrambling to get back in donald trump's good graces. knowing donald trump hearing steve bannon make the argument that this op-ed piece amounted to a coup -- >> i'm going to hate watching it. >> donald trump may like it. >> thank you. my thanks to john heilemann, daniel goldman. i'm nicolle wallace. "mtp daily" starts right now. hi, chuck. >> i'm trying to decide whether hate-watching is an endorsement. >> it is. >> we'll take it, chuck. >> a viewer is a viewer. >> a viewer is a viewer. that's right. a vote is a vote no matter how unenthusiastic they are. thank you, nicolle, happy friday. good evening. i'm chuck todd here in washington. welcome to "mtp daily." eve got two major breaking news stories tonight. after making landfall this morning, florence continues to batter the carolinas.
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it is now technically a tropical storm, but please, that's simply because it is on land, dropping buckets of water on the carolinas. rescue operations are under way, and there are multiple fatalities. we're going to be getting new information about the devastation on the ground and where this storm is headed next. we're going to have all of the details coming up. but we're going to begin tonight with a bombshell piece of news on the political front. president trump's former campaign chief, paul manafort, has flipped. prosecutors working for special counsel robert mueller announced today in court that they secured a cooperation agreement as part of a sweeping plea deal where manafort basically admits to everything he's been accused of, every single thing. he's not technically pled guilty to every count, but he's admitted to every single crime he's accused of. this cooperation agreement means that the president's former campaign chief has agreed to participate in interviews, provide documents, and testify in an investigation in which the
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president of the united states is a subject. folks, we don't know what manafort is going to tell prosecutors or what he may have already told them. one would assume he's told them a lot. but we do know that president trump was hoping manafort wouldn't tell them anything. remember the president heaped praise on manafort for not flipping. he said flipping should be a crime in itself, and he wouldn't rule out a pardon of manafort, and he suggested that manafort's crimes weren't really crimes anyway. >> one of the reasons i respect paul manafort so much is he went through that trial. you know, they make up stories. people make up stories. this whole thing about flipping, they call it, i know all about flipping. for 30, 40 years i've been watching flippers. it almost ought to be outlawed. it's not fair. >> are you considering pardoning paul manafort? >> i have great respect for what he's done in terms of what he's gone through. i would say what he did, some of the charges they threw against him, every consultant, every lobbyist in washington probably does. >> manafort's cooperation with
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mueller's team obviously opens up the president to some serious legal jeopardy. manafort was in that infamous trump tower meeting. he was the campaign chief when candidate trump publicly called for russia to find hillary clinton's e-mails. manafort was campaign chief when the gop platform was mysteriously changed to make it a bit more russia-friendly when it comes to the issue of ukraine. and one of manafort's closest associates is said to have ties with russian intelligence. for now, though, the white house, the president's legal team, and even manafort's lawyer emphasizing that the crimes manafort has admitted to do not implicate the president or the campaign more broadly. those are by the way both facts. here's manafort's lawyer talking to reporters at the courthouse today. >> tough day for mr. manafort, but he's accepted responsibility, and he wanted to make sure that his family was able to remain safe and live a good life. he's accepted responsibility, and this is for conduct that dates back many years. and everybody should remember
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that. so thank you, everyone. >> joining me now is mimi rocah, a former assistant u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york and an nbc news legal analyst. tonight's panel includes geoff bennett, daniela, and matthew cot nettie, editor in chief of the washington free beacon. mimi, let me start with you. i have to say i have gone back and forth. how significant is this cooperation agreement? how sweetheart of a deal did paul manafort get in your opinion? >> well, as to the first question, chuck, i think it's very significant. i know we use a lot of hyperbole, and especially these days there have been a lot of big events. but i really don't -- i think it's hard to overstate the significance of this. this is, as you said, paul manafort was on the inside, in the campaign. also, you know, intimately tied to russia, to can stan teen kilimnik and others.
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if there's any one person who can offer information to the special counsel on whether, in fact, there was conspiracy between members of the campaign and the russians, who are already charged with that conspiracy to interfere in the election, then i think manafort is that person. i am not saying that mueller couldn't have finished his investigation without him. i think he could have. but i think that manafort can provide really key facts and inside information. in terms of the sweetheart deal, i don't think he really got a huge sweetheart deal. i mean he's definitely getting a break. there's no question about it. his sentence under the terms of the plea agreement is maxed out at ten years. so no matter what the guidelines are, if you look at the plea agreement, it talks about 262 months. >> yeah. >> he is facing more, but the way they structured the plea is so that each count only is allowed to be sentenced up to five years. and if you put those on top of each other, they would be ten
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years. but he could, in fact, get much less than that. he could have concurrent five-year sentences. it also could take -- be concurrent, run at the same time that means, as the sentence in the other case. so he could get a huge break on sentencing. but my sense is they would only have entered into this agreement if they really thought he had valuable information. >> if the president pardoned him tomorrow, what's to stop paul manafort simply say, i told you everything i can tell you. i've told you everything i can tell you. and he just has this pardon as sort of a get out of jail free card and a get out of testifying to mueller card. >> because he wouldn't get out of jail free. you know, first of all -- and this is more on the political side. but at this point, now that manafort has been signed up as a cooperator and the expectation is that he's providing information about the president or certainly about other members of the campaign, even if not the president, you know, it would really be obstructive of him at this point to pardon manafort.
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so that's point one. point two, though, is even if trump did pardon him, manafort is facing an enormous amount of exposure under state law, and this plea, i think, is structured in such a way that even if pardoned for these crimes, i think there would be ways around the double jeopardy issues in many different states including new york. so i don't think this would get manafort out from under it and out from jail. and the special counsel could then -- there's other conduct, you know, that they probably could still charge him with. we don't know what manafort -- if there were going to be other charges against manafort. >> one would assume mueller had thought of all of those potential angles to this before entering into this agreement? >> yes. and i think mueller has made this as pardon-proof as possible. he is clearly thinking about this. >> okay. >> the forfeiture that has been taken from manafort, that's not going away even with the pardon. so, you know, he's not getting his properties back.
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i think at this point manafort's best chance of his family staying safe, which is something his lawyer specifically mentioned -- >> fascinating, yes. >> -- and him staying out of jail for, you know -- or being in jail for as little time as possible is to fully cooperate. >> well, geoff bennett, you're at the white house. you cover the white house. i got to put out rudy giuliani, on behalf of the trump legal team, put out two statements very quickly. let me put out what the first statement about the manafort deal said. here it is. let's read it in full. once again an investigation has concluded with a plea having nothing to do with president trump or the trump campaign. the reason the president did nothing wrong and paul manafort will tell the truth. ten minutes later, the same statement gets released with the part that we have highlighted on the screen, and paul manafort would tell the truth, was erased. the statement ended, with the period was after the word "wrong." geoff? >> it's amazing because, look,
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it's only a two or three-sentence statement. it's not really a heavy lift in terms of copy editing. but jay sekulow, the president's other outside attorney, says they intended to send out the revised statement all along. that the bit about manafort was actually a non sequitur. you see the trouble that arises in manafort indicates the president in long doing and you have a statement saying that paul manafort will tell the truth. all day we've seen this concerted effort both by the president's outside legal team and the white house to try to inoculate the president. but it's true that when donald trump hired paul manafort to work for him for free, he knew exactly who paul manafort was. it was no secret that paul manafort built his personal fortune, made millions of dollars doing consulting work for shady figures and strongmen all around the world. >> matthew, the book on paul manafort is pretty well known. he comes in with known ties to a russian oligarch, known ties to kremlin money sort of making its way into his bank account. what we don't know is if he
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somehow brought those ties to the trump tower. >> that's right, and i guess that's what robert mueller will be interested in asking. i think he'll also be interested in specifically what manafort can tell him about the trump tower meeting in june of 2016. >> he's an eyewitness now. >> also people are neglecting, remember manafort has a former business partner, roger stone, who is also involved in the mueller investigation from what we can tell. i'm just struck, chuck, by sometime last month when omarosa emerged with her book tour and her tapes and her appearances on tv, the news just turned almost irr irrevocably bad for the president. it's one bad thing after. the mccain funeral. relitigating the puerto rico response. and now today we have this news too. and i think a lot of republicans across the country are asking,
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what is going to change the dynamic? the next eight weeks? >> i don't know what's going to change the dynamic. you're right, a lot of these are self-inflicted wounds and we've seen this from this president since he took office. and i'm very worried and scared about how he's going to react to this and what angry tweets he'll send off at 4:00 in the morning. paul manafort is really key to all of this. he is the one who had the deepest ties to russia, not just the trump tower meeting we're going to find out about. there's a whole lot of things that should have the trump white house more anxious than they already are. >> mimi, what's the significance of the fact that paul manafort has admitted guilt to everything he's been accused of, while technically mepleading guilty t only two of the crimes for the second trial, and he's been found guilty on eight of the 18 counts. but he's admitting get to the other ten, and then of course
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the indictment then becomes just fact, i guess. but what is the other significance of him admitting that all -- that essentially paul manafort's theory of the case is factually correct? >> i think that's actually part of the pardon-proofing strategy that mueller has because now if for some reason mueller -- manafort was pardoned, those fa facts, which are part of a very public record and admitted to, could be easily used in state court for charges. i mean they wouldn't even need to do very much. there are double jeopardy issues, issues with state prosecutions coming after federal ones that would have to be worked out. but this would make their job a lot easier. so i think it plays into that issue. >> i have to say earlier this week, rudy giuliani confirmed that there was a joint defense agreement between manafort's legal team and the president's legal team. i guess -- and obviously that's kind of awkward. i mean i assume that has ended? >> yeah. they would have -- there's a
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point in time in which if you have a joint defense agreement and you're going to be doing something that is sort of adverse to the interests of other members of that joint defense agreement, you have to withdraw from it. so presumably that could be why we were hearing about manafort pleading guilty earlier in the week. we weren't hearing about cooperation, and i think that came as a surprise to everyone. but it could be that, you know, his lawyers notified giuliani or other trump lawyers that they were going to withdraw from the joint defense agreement, and that is why you started hearing more about the possibility of him pleading guilty straight up to a plea agreement. i think the cooperation part of it is what caught everyone off guard. >> mimi, do you assume that mueller already has everything he needs from manafort, that this is done, that there's -- that this isn't for future use? he already has it all? >> in other words, are you asking whether he's already sort of debriefed him fully? >> yes, yes. because it's our understanding he had a very late night last night. i mean i guess it certainly --
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there's circumstancetial evidence that paul manafort has spent a lot of time with the mueller team this week. >> there's reports of him having been at the special counsel office yesterday. there was some time this morning that was unaccounted for. it is, i will say, incredible that this did not leak. i think that really is to mueller's credit. my guess is that this is going to be an ongoing process. normally at this point when the defendant walks in and actually pleads guilty and signs the agreement, you want to be very far along in that proffer or meeting or download of information process. i think here because of a number of different circumstances, including the fact that he's in jail and they really wanted to keep this under wraps, they would not have done this without knowing at least something valuable that they were going to get. so i believe the process has started. there could be attorney proffers that have happened and some download of information. he could have gone in the grand jury already. we don't know for sure, but that's definitely a possibility. but i think it will continue to
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be an ongoing process for them. >> all right, geoff bennett, michael flynn has flipped. he's cooperating. michael cohen is cooperating. paul manafort is cooperating. matthew brought up the anonymous op-ed. you have the woodward book. is there anybody left the president can trust it. >> apparently not. once against the president is learning that loyalty has its limits. this development with manafort is only compounded by the fact that as you mentioned, it's not just manafort. it's mike flynn. it's michael cohen. it's rick gates. it's george papadopoulos. all of these people proving time and time again that there really is no witch hunt as the president keeps attesting. it's another huge issue for the president. >> this trust issue. we know that the president's stewing, and that's the thing. when he stews, unforced errors like conspiracy theories and puerto rico's death toll happen. >> right. this is, again, the worry of many republican candidates. not only do they have to think about the -- they have the economic environment they want to cheer. they also have to think the
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fundamentals that are working against the republicans such as the president's approval rating and just the historic precedent for losses when the majority party is holding congress and the president is of the same party. they also have to worry about what's going to appear on their twitter feed next. one other note what's striking me here. right before the labor day weekend we were saying there's no way we're going to have any mueller news until -- >> we knew the trial was sitting out there. >> i'm still skeptical that we might not have some more coming. >> danielle, i'm going to leave you with this stat. the cost of the first ten months of the mueller probe according to "the washington post" was $16.7 million. this investigation apparently is paying for itself. all of the manafort for fittures are worth $46 million, and that doesn't count the $15 million in unpaid taxes that they actually could force manafort to collect based on the last trial. >> beob mueller putting money back in the american coffer.
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>> where does forfeiture money going? >> it depends. generally it goes to someone in the federal government, usually in the first instance, the different agencies that were involved like irs, fbi. they take possession of it, and then, you know, like the properties will have to be auctioned or sold and someone will take that money. but i think it's usually divided up amongst the different agencies that work on the case. >> well, the paul manafort bridge in our next infrastructure bill. i doubt they'll name it after him, but who knows. mimi rocah, as always, thank you, especially on a friday evening. jeff, daniela, matthew, you guys stick around. we've got much more ahead on manafort's cooperation deal with a man who knows all about paul manafort, been writing about him for years. plus we're tracking tropical storm florence as it pounds the carolinas. al roker will join me with the storm's latest track. ever get in the way?
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time because you've seen him as sort of the face of sort of the dark side of k street, i guess. >> the rotten core of washington. he's a guy who is not an incidental figure. he's not a bottom feeder -- he is a bottom feed heer but has b a pioneer in inventing this world we live in. >> the world of the rich political consultant, is it that? >> he's reinvested washington several times over. he created the first firm in the 1980s along with roger stone and charlie black that both had political consulting and lobbying. so they were getting guys elected. >> that wasn't happening before. now it happens all the time. >> yeah. so it was an incredible scheme they created where you get people elected to office, and then you turn around and lobby them on behalf of your corporate clients. that was invention number one. invention number two was that they rapidly expanded this idea that they could become all-purpose firms on behalf of foreign clients. so they were doing both their
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lobbying at home in d.c. then they would go back to their countries and they would help them win elections in order to legitimize their power. >> we have you on today to try to read his mind because you're as good a person as any. >> yeah. >> this is a guy i've been wondering why he didn't cooperate sooner, and there had been one thing hanging over my head, is does he fear the russians more than he fears the federal government. what's been your sense? >> my sense is this a guy who thought he could win. he's done audacious things throughout his entire career. so in the first trial, i went there. i watched him. i observed him. there was a swagger to him. >> he had a glint, a gleam in his eye. >> yeah, and he hired this army of top-drawer lawyers, which is what he does. i think he thought that he could take on the jury. the jury would be like voters in michigan and that he would be able to win them over. and when that failed, when his
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own powers didn't carry him through, i think he started to panic. and when you're alone in a jail cell and you're staring at the abyss and you're starting to think about what's going to happen to your wife and kids. >> yeah. >> and if there's going to be ever a day when you're going to see the light of day again, you start to rethink things in your head. and i think he started to get scared. i'm not sure he's scared about russians. >> you think he's finally -- he's scared about serving time? >> yeah. and the timing of this was so awkward. he was hanging on for a presidential pardon at a certain point. >> it seems like it was still there to be had. that's why i'm mildly surprised he did this. >> but he had to make certain strategic choices. if he was going to go through with this trial, he was going to have to spend a ton of money, and he'd have to count on the fact donald trump is an unreliable character. if he's not going to give the pardon now. you go through midterm elections. democrats start to investigate. >> what if they won both, does
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that make a pardon even harder for the president? >> exactly. what does it compound? make trump at a certain point begins to worry about obstruction. so if you're just running through manafort's head, you have to say, i've got this deal now. i don't know what's going to be better in the future. i don't know what i can count on. >> by the way, there was another thing that happened after the trial that was -- and i can't help think it had an impact on him. word that his daughter wanted to change her name. >> yeah. >> you can't tell me that doesn't have a psychological impact. >> of course it does. he was close to his daughters. he did a lot of things over the course of his life to make them extremely angry. but, you know, there was a lot of evidence that he was a loving father. and then to have that happen is just a psychic blow. and to think that, you know, all of this was going to culminate in costing you -- >> by the way, he was really proud of his name. why else would you have it monogrammed on everything? like i'm sorry. the "m" on -- it was a pride thing, and here his daughter
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said, i can't walk around in this country with that last name. >> yeah, yeah. that stings. >> that had to sting. >> that definitely stings. >> he doesn't turn on people, though. one manafort thing -- i mean the guy has been a keeper of secrets. do you think he really does flip on trump? >> and when he has clients, he serves them forever. >> he does. i mean, look, you can say it's misguided loyalty. >> yeah. >> but, boy, i've never seen him flip on somebody. you know, he and charlie black aren't in business together, and he's never -- and i don't think it ended well, but he doesn't ever say a negative thing, and he doesn't trash roger stone, none of this stuff. >> i think he does turn. if he's locked in, he's locked in. you saw what happened to rick gates, who went in, talked to the prosecutors. he wasn't straight with them, and it came back to sting him. so i think he's got that precedent to observe. and i do think that he knows
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things. i think that there's this whole catalog of untidied narratives about -- >> you, at the end of your piece today, essentially said when you read the indictment, it ends right when you feel, no, no, no. tell me what's next. it ends essentially in the spring of '16. >> yeah. >> right when paul manafort accepts an unpaid job with donald trump. >> yes. as i've watched mueller build this case against manafort, i've been very interested in the gaps. there are these important things that you know mueller is obviously focusing on, but they haven't played a central role in any of the indictments. so, for instance, one of manafort's most important relationships is with a russian aluminum magnate called oleg deripaska. they have a longtime business relationship, and it became -- sorry. manafort was his consultant, and then they became investors together. >> by the way, when you see in the indictment, 2005 to 2016,
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doesn't he meet deripaska right around 2005? >> just a little bit before. and he's clearly receiving money from him, and it comes up in bits and pieces where you see that he's received -- he's got a $10 million loan from oleg deripaska he hasn't accounted for. but the crucial thing to look at is there was a series of lawsuits and legal filings that deripaska weighed in against manafort where he accused manafort essentially of taking this investment that they'd made where they were supposed to be investing in assets in ukraine and russia, and manafort just squandered them. and deripaska comes right out and says essentially, you stole my money. >> right. >> and he says, when i came to look for it, you disappeared. and so that's the narrative, and it goes up through the campaign. >> so your theory is he obviously must have done something for deripaska to repay him in some way? >> well, it's not even a theory because we -- i mean it's a
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theory, but we have some actual hard evidence. >> that leads us to this? >> that is at least suggestive where manafort was ee-mailing withes a aide and sending all of the press clippings of him getting this fancy job with donald trump to oleg deripaska. and it was done in the hope of, quote, getting made whole again with deripaska. what does that mean? it's clear that manafort was proposing clthrough kilimnik th they give deripaska. that's the outlines of theory, but we don't have the concrete stuff to back it up where this cooperation might come in. >> i have to pause it there. i encourage everybody go read the piece in the atlantic. it really is a great sort of tutorial. it gets you up to speed to what's coming next, and your book. we look forward to that. >> thank you. >> techi is taking over all of us. up ahead, the carolina coast
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already devastated by florence. we're going to live to our nbc crews all over the area to show us what's happening next. plus an updated track from al roker. welcome to the place... where people go to learn about their medicare options before they're on medicare. come on in. you're turning 65 soon? yep. and you're retiring at 67? that's the plan! it's also a great time to learn about an aarp medicare supplement insurance plan, insured by unitedhealthcare insurance company. here's why...medicare part b doesn't pay for everything.
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for us it's time to get tested. it's the only way to know for sure. welcome back. we turn now to today's other big story. of course it's florence, which is now technically a tropical storm. the national weather service downgraded it from a hurricane just a few minutes ago. it made landfall, of course, as
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a hurricane just after 7:00 this morning near wrightsville beach. that's actually a long time before you get downgraded. it just shows you how long it's taken this storm to fully come ashore. florence is being blamed for five deaths including a mother and baby when a tree fell on their house. the storm has dumped close to two feet of rain on portions of north carolina. moves at a snail's pace of three miles an hour. let's go to al roker. he's been tracking florence all week, let alone all day. all right, al. the prediction has been this thing is going to be like a turtle and just dump water and dump water and dump water. i assume unfortunately it's playing out as forecast? >> yeah, it is going right according to the script unfortunately. as you mentioned, it is now a tropical storm, but don't let that fool you. it's still plenty potent. we've got 70-mile-per-hour winds. and as you said, it's only moving west at 3 miles per hour. so myrtle beach, you're going to
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see those tropical force winds and conditions through early tomorrow morning. then it continues past columbia just about as a tropical storm. 15 million people under flood watches right now, chuck. so that's going to be a day and a half of that. and then it's going to last right into here in the northeast until the middle of next week. and we're looking for another 10 to 15 inches of rain throughout the southeastern coastal part of the united states. and we're looking at wind gusts anywhere from 25, 35, to 50 miles per hour right through tonight and lasting on into tomorrow through the southeast. it's just going to keep the snail's pace, and it's going to cause more and more problems. plenty of flooding. a real mess for the southeast and later on the ohio river valley as we get into the beginning of next week, chuck. >> that's what i was curious about. i've heard, for instance, i had somebody tell me for new bern, north carolina, that they have a flooding problem now and in about ten days because of the water gets collected on the mountains, they're going to have a flooding problem again. >> that's right. the problem now is you're going
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to see all this runoff going on. you're going to see rivers that continue to rise. so even if the storm itself is gone, the aftereffects are going to linger for days, if not weeks, especially when it comes to cleanup and all the power outages and all the infrastructure damage that's happened because of this storm. >> very quickly while i have you, i'm just curious. the modeling wars, if you will, the american model versus the european model, i've heard explanations for why one seems to sometimes be better at doing certain things. the american model seemed to finally get one right. >> well, i'll tell you, the national hurricane center's official track back on sunday -- on, i should say, september 9th was right where it came in. it came in two miles away from where the predicted track was. and that is a win in anybody's book. >> well, there you go. we have our own wars in politics and modeling and polls, so obviously so does meteorology. as always, sir, thank you.
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msnbc is live across the carolinas as tropical storm florence continues to batter their coast. the very latest from our crews on the ground next. hey allergy muddlers. are you one sneeze away from being voted out of the carpool? try zyrtec®. it's starts working hard at hour one. and works twice as hard when you take it again the next day. stick with zyrtec® and muddle no more®.
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we've also had two fatalities here in the city from a tree that fell on a house. this is a dangerous situation, still a very dangerous situation because of the amount of rain that beef had as well as we're going to still be dealing with tropical force winds for the next several hours. >> that was the mayor of wilmington, north carolina, and those two fatalities he was referencing were that mother and baby i talked about earlier, crushed when a tree fell on their house. those were two of five deaths being blamed on florence, which as we told you is now technically a tropical storm. the white house says it expects president trump to travel to the carolinas next week to see the devastation firsthand once rescue and recovery efforts have concluded and his entourage
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doesn't become a distraction. let's start with kerry sanders in carolina beach, north carolina. kerry, i can see the wind. how bad is it? >> reporter: it's been consistent really for a while now. you know, we were here in early morning. we had the eye pass over us, and now we have the wind which shifted when the eye came through. and then what you're looking at right now, if i step out of the way, is we take you down to the beach. what's interesting is on a good day you'd have about 25 yards, maybe more from the sand dunes out to the water. we're at low tide right now. so you'd think there might even be a little bit more beach, but there's no beach at all. the water is lapping right up to the sand dunes, and you can see the furious nature of the wind blowing that storm surge. there's been minimal storm surge here, but nonetheless there has been some, and that's a result
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of the fact that the wind pushes the water up. but this natural barrier here, this sand dune doing exactly what it's supposed to do, what mother nature intended it to do, stopping that water from invading into the city. the problem here in carolina beach mostly is a lack of power smr , some downed brick walls, some damaged roofs and roofs ripped off. the good news is nobody dialed 911. nobody was in trouble for the few people who decided to stay, chuck. >> all right. kerry sanders with some silver linings there in carolina beach. let's go to garrett haake in new bern, north carolina. kerry dealing with wind. you've got a lot of rain, it looks like. >> reporter: yeah, chuck. this has not really been a wind event here in new bern. in fact it started raining here yesterday about 3:00 in the afternoon and has not stopped.
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it's just been pouring and pouring and pouring here. that's made life difficult for the folks who have been out trying to do rescues. we d we had about 500,911 call 911 c. the neuse river is right up here in the middle of the street with us. the storm surge had pushed another 100 yards into these neighborhoods earlier today, but after the last high tide, it has been slowly retreating. that has made it easier for folks to get people out of these flooded houses. but we are still going to have one similar problem. two-thirds of the city is without power. >> all right, garrett. it looks like we lost you. that's not a surprise given some of the obviously weather challenges we're dealing with. now let's check in in the other carolina. myrtle beach, south carolina. ali velshi is there. ali, i've been watching you all day and watching essentially things deteriorate all day as
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you've been narrating. >> reporter: yeah. that's right. we are probably 2 1/2, three hours from even getting sort of the one end of this storm that we're going to get the other end of. all that rain you've been talking about for the last 24 hours, this has been deteriorating. this is probably as bad as it's been so far. these winds are pretty heavy. my sense is they're about 70 miles an hour. this is probably as bad as it's been getting, but it's gusting a lot higher than this. we've got power outages here in myrtle beach and along this part of south carolina. the numbers aren't as big as they are in north carolina because this storm is probably about ten miles up the road here. it isn't even here yet. we've got 600,000, almost 700,000 people out of power in north carolina. last numbers we have for south carolina, about 80,000 or 90,000. i know in myrtle beach alone, we've got about 8,000 without power, so it's got toing more than that. the issue here is as it moves inland, 15 miles from here we've
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go got a river that's going to flood. you've got this thing moving inland maybe to columbia, which is again preparing for floods. so there are a lot of people and populations that are still going to get affected by this rain that you're seeing. storm surges are not as big a deal here as they were going to be in north carolina. but we are still seeing power lines down here, street poles down, trees down. with that rain that just keeps on coming in, it's loosening the sand. the wind keeps on putting pressure on those trees and sign posts, so there's going to be a lot of damage, and this is going to go on probably well through midday tomorrow. chuck? >> all right. ali velshi, stay as safe as you can, sir. thanks very much. up ahead, primary season officially has come to an end. what are some lessons that we can take away? in jellyfish. in clinical trials, prevagen has been shown to improve short-term memory.
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call today for a free guide. td ameritrade select securitiese 24 hours a day, 5 days a week. so i can trade all night long? ♪ all night long... let's reopen the market. trade 24/5, with td ameritrade. ♪ welcome back. today in meet the midterms, primary season is officially over. so what have we learned? for starters, women dominated the 2018 primaries. a whopping 476 women ran for the house this cycle. that shatters the previous record of 298 set in 2012. and 53 women ran for the senate up from the 40 women who did in 2016. and it isn't just that more women ran for office. more women won their nominations for house, senate, and governor than any other previous cycle we've ever held. here's what else we learned. president trump was a major factor for republican primary
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voters. his favored candidate won nearly every time whenever he publicly intervened. and the president's clearly motivating democratic primary voters too. turnout is way up, especially on the democratic side. states with key races like arizona and florida, both had record primary turnout for the democrats. but for the most part, democratic establishment candidates prevailed. we saw yesterday with new york governor andrew cuomo's nearly 30-point win over cynthia nixon. the kinds of progressives who scored upsets tended to be candidates of color. we'll be right back with more "mtp daily." (vo) this is not a video game.
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november. i want to start with this, it's interestin to me, those who say the establishment, democrats prevailing they have a big case they can make. who's winning in. >> how about this, the best candidate for the race is winning. >> what does that mean? >> politics is local. i know it's easier. people want to put everybody into one basket and tell one easy narrative story. the candidates connecting the most with the people who are the most energized and passionate and can tell a cohesive story, those are the people winning. >> the republicans want to ploo
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believe the progressives have won. they want to define every candidate based on medicare for all or abolish or reorient i.c.e., however you want to look at it. if you look at it on a whole, in you're the republican, you look in the midwest and the candidates they were hoping would win did not. >> that's right. the republican tack is to move to the most high profile left wing candidates. that's why she's back the face of the democrat. >> i think the right. >> she's celebrating. >> she's written about more in the daily caller than any other place. >> that's fine. she's been written other places too. they want to nationalize it and make it a choice between a trump republican imism and the left w
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republican movement. how successful they are is an open question because of this democratic enthusiasm we see across the board. >> what does the trump white house political team say privately? i know what they say publicly. >> they say these cultural issues that he talks about on the stump work for him. if you talk to establishment republicans they want to president to talk about two issues, a strong economic numbers and expected confirmation of brett kavanaugh. the president knows and it's amazing watching him. if he will deliver a line, he sees how it lands. if it doesn't work, he'll recalibrate a bit. >> it's exactly what you wrote about today. what works for the president doesn't seem to wok rk for the rest of the party.
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>> no. the republicans who are likely to remain in office will be the ones who are much more receptive appeals that jeff is talking about. it become a trumpier party. >> even as the shrinks. the people that lose were less trumpy. >> that's a problem. >> the moderate democrats were first ones to go because they're many the swing seats. >> it's so interesting you talk about him recalibrating, he's such a showman. those crowds will not be enough to propel republicans to vic trip in november. it's not enough to bring him over the finish line. >> i want to finish up with progressive versus establishment. what should 2020 democrats take away from what they watched in this democratic primary season? what should they learn from this? >> that they have to have a strong conviction when speaking. they have to know what they stand for. they have to give people a clear alternative to what they have right now. >> you can't say the word
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electability, can you? >> yes. it has to be somebody who can win. at the end of the day just being anti-trump will not be enough. you have to stand for something. you can't say we're going to focus on these voters and not these over here. i know that's what the right wants to do. your message should be strong enough that a person who is living in the bronx can identify it and a person living in rural america can identify with it. >> matthew, today's republican party, trump led republican party has its roots in the 2010 wave. perhaps it will say the same thing about the 2018 wave about democrats going forward. what's some lessons you'll be watching that you saw with the tea party to trump that perhaps 2018 teaches us about where the democratic party is in 2024. >> 2010 we saw this huge out burst of enthusiasm. the tea party republicans wanted
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to take the fight to barack obama. barack obama was ready for them and he fought them back. one big question i have is in the aftermath of 2018, how is trump going to respond to these new democrats. if you take away one thing from the primary, democrats want a fighter. a fighter that can reach all voter groups. how is trump going to respond? is he going to be donald trump? >> he's figure out some trumpian version of it. excellent column today. thank you. we'll be right back. today thank you. we'll be right back.
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obviously a busy day. hospitals of breaking news. that's all we have tonight. we'll be back monday. sunday is meet the press. msnbc continuing breaking news coverage of both big stories with the beat with ari melber. i know you're doing a split screen lead as well. take it away. thank you very much. we will have later tonight in this show live reporting on tropical storm florence. mu much to get to as so many americans are concerned. we begin with the breaking news you don't hear every day. president trump's campaign chief pled guilty to felonies and flipped. the news tonight is a true rarity in politics and in law. a man who ran the current president's campaign marched into court today, pled guilty to
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