going to move in an effort to keep them from fleeing. >> what an absolutely staggering number. 13,000. all right. mike allen live in washington, d.c. as always a pleasure. we're going to be reading axm in just a bit. signup.axios.com. that does it for me. hallie, stand by for "morning joe." >> will do. >> starts right now. we've heard from the alleged victim, but now it's time to hear from the hero, judge brett kavanaug kavanaugh. >> i'm going to start at an 11, i'm going to take it to about a 15 real quick. now, i am usually an optimist. i'm a keg is half full kind of guy, but what i've seen from the monsters on this committee makes me want to puke and not from beer. dr. ford has no evidence. none. meanwhile, i've got these.

i've got these calendars, these beautiful, creepy calendars. give me a can of water. >> my god, it is classic "saturday night live." welcome to "morning joe" on this monday, october 1st. we made it to october. donny deutsch is with us and we also have national affairs analyst for nbc news and msnbc and co-host and executive producer of show time's "the circus" john heilemann, former aide to the george w. bush white house and state departments elise jordan. nbc news chief white house correspondent hallie jackson, former u.s. attorney and msnbc contributor barbara mcquaid and former assistant director of the fbi's counterintelligence division frank figlusi. mika has this morning off.

john heilemann, let's start with you. there's so much that happened this weekend. we could talk about, of course, the fbi investigation, the debate over how wide that fbi investigation is going to be. democrats complaining the president saying you do whatever you want to do, of course, kanye wearing a make america great again cap on "saturday night live" and actually my favorite moment of the weekend -- i kind of got moved. you know i'm a romantic guy. donald trump saying we fell in love. >> yeah. >> not of kanye, not of kanye, but of kim jong-un. please, everybody, this morning at 6:01 a.m., please just try to imagine what would happen if bra rack hussein obama had said the same thing while president of the united states. but i digress. talk about what happened first of all on friday after we went off the air.

flake and coons they make a deal. i'm curious do you see this as sort of like, you know, after world war ii began they talked about a phoney war. is this a phoney piece that democrats and republicans find themselves in or is there a positive coming out of it? >> well, there's a couple things. i mean, i think most people probably familiar with what happened in some sense, you had jeff flake who came out in the morning and said that he was going to be voting for judge kavanaugh and then over the course of that morning in the judiciary committee and being confronted in that elevator by two victims of sexual assault, came back and cut -- talked to -- principally to chris coons and his other colleagues and they ended up giving this accommodation to give a week of supplemental investigation by the fbi. in that moment i think there is no doubt that there were a lot of people on both sides of the aisle, in fact, who were a little queasy about the notion of fast tracking the kavanaugh

nomination, having a vote today, a final vote today or tuesday. huge test vote over the weekend. begin the emotions and drama of thursday's hearing to kind of -- >> john, everybody that was screaming on thursday, even lindsey graham was using an inside voice and smiling. everybody it seemed overnight had changed, at least in their temperament. >> i think a lot of people were emotionally runni emotionally wrung out. i felt there was bitterness on both sides, still a lot of acrimony on the democratic and republican side. people trying to wrecken with what happened on the previous day. i think senator flake eventually kind of crystallized this notion that something we've been saying on this show and many people have been saying for weeks which is these are irreconcilable versions of event and due process demanded at least another week and at least to look into some of these

accusations that have been brought against judge kavanaugh for the sake of judge kavanaugh as well as the sake of the accuser. so you got this moment pause. i think we're going to have a big debate i think on an hourly basis going forward over what the scope of that investigation is going to be, democrats are already unhappy with it, they think it's too limited, you have dianne feinstein demanding that the white house put forward the parameters of the investigation, what is the fbi exactly been asked to investigate. you've had representations of that made in the press, sometimes in public. lindsey graham on television yesterday. i do think that that's going to be an acrimonious debate. i will say this, whether it's -- there's -- this is going to be the debate, this a fig leaf that's being created here or is this a genuine fact-finding inquiry. the biggest problem of it as your friend over the weekend, i was with joyce vance at the austin festival, she made the point that when an fbi does an

investigation like this it has a client, there is a client for the work product. >> right. >> and the client in this case is don mcgahn at the white house, the white house counsel. it is also the case that the white house and the white house counsel don mcgahn are the chief advocates on the part of judge kavanaugh. so they are both the clients for the work product and the main sponsors of the nomination and so, therefore, you have an inherent conflict built into this process and i think that conflict is going to be played out and teased out over the days to come. >> well, i mean, everybody knew, frank, that was the case from the very beginning. everybody knew that was going to be the case because it's a white house that orders it up. right now we have a lot of complaints coming in that this is only a week, which of course i think is laughable because everybody was saying, let's just get a week, so democrats got a week and now people are rubbing their hands together going a week is not enough, this is a sham, other people are suggesting that the scope be expanded. i don't know how far you expand

the scope when you only have a week to investigate, but those were the parameters that were agreed to and it seems to me that if you just take the dr. ford incident that she alleges happens and you take the five witnesses that were there and then you take the yale incident and try to get the five, six, seven, eight people who were there, i don't know, does the fbi have more time to do a good job expanding beyond that scope? i mean, we could try to track down everybody over the next seven days, but it seems to me that the time limit and the accusations in front of the committee required that they did limit the scope and do a good job just on these two incidents. am i wrong? >> so it's not the time limit, it's not the time limit that's troubling me the most, joe. the fbi is capable of amazing things because of the resources they can surge in a limited amount of time. the thing that's really

bothering me -- two things really -- is the incredible constraints that are being put on the fbi by the white house. we're making certain assumptions here this morning and the assumptions are wrong. the assumption that the fbi is going to have free reign within what they've beens tasked to do. look at ramirez, you make an assumption you're going to interview all of the witnesses to the ramirez incident, you're going to run down every name she provides you, you're going to go to yale and find people who were living in the dorm at the time. that's not happening. the fbi is not only dictating who you can interview, but also what investigative steps you can take within that allegation. so, for example, this morning we still don't have any word that dr. ford is even on the list of people to be interviewed. in fact, we're hearing from sources it's the opposite. that her statement is always -- is already on record, we don't need to hear from her again. that's a terrible mistake to be

made and i want the public to understand -- >> can i ask you just for a second, frank, do you have inside information that the rest of us don't have or is this more of a question of transparency, we need the white house to be more transparent, we need don mcgahn to be more transparent because we really don't know exactly what the parameters are right now? the only thing i saw quoted overnight was this senior federal official talking about the limits. you've got people inside the white house saying that they don't have those constraints. do you have information that it is that limited? >> joe, i am here sitting here this morning telling you they are severely limited and i know they are and i know there's frustration and i know that the bureau is going to have to come back for every request that they want to add to a very, very short list. the fbi has been handcuffed and the clock is ticking on this artificial one-week deadline. >> frank, is that based on your

sourcing? >> yes. >> okay. so, donny, if, in fact, the fbi has been handcuffed by donald trump's white house and by don mcgahn, well, at the end of the day it doesn't buy them what they wanted to -- it doesn't get them what they wanted to get when they were all talking positively about a one-week extension, an fbi investigation, because then the story is just going to be about what the fbi was not allowed to do. >> yeah, and if kavanaugh gets pushed through we will be in the same place had we not had an fbi investigation. a place that long-term is concerning to me from -- it was interesting over the weekend my 15-year-old daughter was telling me that a bunch of her friends told her for the first time about assaults and my 89-year-old mother was telling me stories that her friends had told her never before. you're going to have half of this country or the majority of the women in this country

feeling so angry, so violated because at this point going forward why does a woman come forward? this is to me so beyond politics. if you listen to anybody talk this weekend it was about women and about how women feel. to me you're going to have a stained supreme court, you are going to have women feeling almost worse than before the me too movement. how does that play out in november? how does that play out going forward? and also, you know, the supreme court was one of the last institutions that was not stained. we've seen what's happened with the office of presidency, we've seen what's happened with the fbi, with the media, everybody is kind of like dumped on, and now for an entire generation of women going forward they will not be able to look at the supreme court the same way, particularly post that kavanaugh performance that as a man i was embarrassed for him. it was the ultimate display of white entitlement.

there's one more point. as i talked to men over the weekend i find that the higher you go on the income curve the more men are like, you know, well, we all did this, we all did this in one form or another. still not getting it. women are getting it and i find the lower you go on the income curve men are getting it. but this does not move us at all any forward as far as indict ld men. i think the stakes are beyond politics, it goes way into where we stand as the genders. >> so elise jordan, let me follow up on what donny said. before on thursday and friday everybody i talked to was talking about how they believed dr. ford and kavanaugh was horrible and he should be driven out to sea and put on a tugboat and never be allowed to return to the continental united states again. i was surprised over the weekend to actually talk to men and

women who i haven't seen anything like this in quite a while. they would sit there and then they would question the veracity of dr. ford's story and then seamlessly they would start talking about how brett kavanaugh was a liar and then they would start attacking democrats and then they would start attacking republicans. you almost wanted to throw -- i couldn't figure out whether they were republicans, whether they were democrats, whether they wanted kavanaugh to go through, whether they thought dr. ford was a, quote, fabulous, which i certainly -- nobody here would ever say she was, but there was just a general frustration that -- do you know what it reminded me of? the duke lacrosse case where there were no good guys, good girls, bad guys, good girls, women, et cetera, et cetera. it was just everybody was negative about everything. >> joe, i think you're honing in on an important part of this

debate, which is facts versus feelings and how it's become so super charged and 20% of america took time out from their day on thursday to watch these hours and hours of searing testimony, just emotional and raw. i know that i cried during both of the testimonies. it was just one of those moments where everyone knows how they feel and they're thinking a lot about how they feel, and we just still are not sure what the facts are. that's why i do think it is important that they have launched this one-week investigation, it's a bipartisan agreement. the democrats forged this agreement with senator flake and republicans are going along with it. so to move the goal post too dramatically seems unfair to immediately launch into dis crediting the investigation that was a pinnacle of questioning

for the democrats during judge kavanaugh's testimony. >> and i agree. i think the democrats are making mistakes if they are every single day picking apart the fbi investigation 12 hours, 24 hours into the investigation. i think what dianne feinstein did was certainly more than called for, demand transparency, demand to know what the fbi can investigate, what they cannot investigate. if there are fbi agents, as drank said, that believe that they're being handcuffed from being able to really figure out what happened, that needs to be fixed and it needs to be fixed right away. that's something hopefully that people will figure out. we can figure out early this morning as the week starts. barbara, let me go to you, and i want to touch on something that elise, she talked about facts versus feelings.

i think most of the people that we talked to as far as feelings go, almost everybody i talked to had positive, quote, feelings about dr. ford. some people were offended by what brett kavanaugh said, others were very moved by brett kavanaugh's opening statement. but rachel mitchell wrote a letter that we all got ahold of last night talking about how dr. ford, despite the feelings that so many feel for her testimony, but dr. ford said that evidence does support claims against kavanaugh. let me ask you about that because those that i did speak to this weekend that questioned dr. ford's testimony just kept going back to the same thing that probably prosecutors would go back to, which is, you know, that everybody that she

mentioned at the scene said it didn't happen, and it wasn't just because they were intimidated by brett kavanaugh, even her long-time friend who she claims was there with her said she wasn't there with her. that's certainly something that rachel mitchell seized on. i'm curious what you thought about rachel mitchell's conclusion and what you think as a prosecutor generally about dr. ford's story three, four days after the testimony. >> yeah, the issue isn't so much rachel mitchell's conclusion as it is to the question and the premise. there is either an unintentional or a deliberate effort to frame this as a criminal prosecution when, in fact, it is not. it is much more akin to a job interview. in a criminal prosecution the standard is guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and a presumption of innocence. by that standard she's right, you could not prove a case here. others have said you couldn't

get a warrant because there is no probable cause here. that may be true, but that's not the issue. the issue is is this the person that you want to put on our u.s. supreme court. if these allegations had come up earlier, before he had been nominated, i am certain he never would have been nominated because you would say, even if this isn't true, if it's just a credible allegation, we don't need that distraction. we've got this long list of potential candidates. let's put one of them on the court. instead we're locked in this spot where regardless of what happens if he's on or if he's off there's going to be these bad feelings as you talked b but i think if he's on it could besmirch the court. >> you just said, though, even if this is not true, but that's what we're trying to get to the bottom of. even if this is not true. and i agree with you, i actually think that if you just look at that moment where he was with senator klobuchar and the poor

temperament that he showed there, there were a couple other moments, too, where it does not seem that he was being honest and straightforward about some very simple, some very basic things about getting into yale and not having any connections there and some of the terms that he tried to -- tried to put different meanings to. some real concerns are iz raed there. but the fbi is trying to get as much information about what happened and what did not happen. it does matter, doesn't it, a great deal about whether anybody can figure out whether this happened or not? >> well, if we are going to persist in the nomination of brett kavanaugh and not withdraw his name for these other reasons, including those that you mentioned, then, yes, i go he is it does matter if the senate is going to make a decision. the big part of it is millions of women are watching and saying if this is true does it matter? figuring out whether it's true is the first step in that.

it's concerning that, as frank says, the fbi is feeling handcuffed in this instance. one would hope even if they've been given an initial list of witnesses that they be permitted to go back and get permission to follow any leads that may emerge from there. if they talk to the people present at the scene and they say you know who else is present at the scene is person x that they be permitted to talk to person x. that's a very important thing. i am hopeful that that list of four or whatever it is is only an initial list and that they be permitted to conduct any necessary follow-up investigation that they have to ordinarily the fbi isn't told who you get to talk to, they're given a topic and they're permitted to have free reign to decide who they need to talk to feel that they have fully investigated that topic. >> hallie, what can you tell us about the president's attitude towards this fbi investigation? obviously this weekend when democrats were complaining he tweeted out that he wanted the fbi to do, you know, whatever the fbi wanted to do.

>> right. >> follow whatever leads you wanted to follow. that also -- sarah sanders, i believe, repeated that claim, other administration officials did, but then we heard senior administration officials saying that, in fact, it is more limited. what can you tell us? what insights can you give us about what the truth is? >> so here is where i think we are this morning, joe. the president, you're right, and his administration, his white house is saying free reign. that seems to be the word of the day. let the fbi do whatever they want. now, the president has tweeted that, he has said it out loud but that has not apparently trickled down to the rest of the folks who are actually looking into this. a senior u.s. official and another source is telling nbc news that the nba fbi has not received any kind of updated instructions from the white house. so at this point there are still questions about what this limited scope means and that's why senator dianne feinstein has written this learn to the white house counsel, to christopher wray saying we need more

information. i want a copy of what exactly you are supposed to be doing and what you think your mission is so we know as well. barbara said something that struck me as well. she said if this kavanaugh nomination moves forward, let me tell you this, joe, based on my reporting there is no if in the mind of the president, theres no if in the minds of the white house, theres not a backup plan here. multiple sources have told me over the next four days that it's not as if the president is tossing around names for backups, that those conversations cannot happened. that said he just fairly recently this summer nominated brett kavanaugh and went through the interview process with other candidates so it's not like it's stale in his mind, but it is notable that you do not have the white house counsel don mcgahn, the folks involved in the judiciary coming up with names as a backup. they are all in on brett kavanaugh, all of their eggs are in the kavanaugh basket. they think this thing is going forward and he's going to end up on the court. >> all right. hallie jackson, thank you so much. we greatly appreciate you being

here. >> john heilemann, first of all, if you are in the position of donald trump or the position of somebody in the white house what do you say? there is no backup plan. >> correct. >> that puts more pressure on susan collins, that puts more measure on murkowski, that puts more pressure on every republican, flake, that's wavering to say here is the deal, with he can have a ser conservative court if you pick kavanaugh, but if you don't pick kavanaugh we will be tied 4-4 until after the 2020 election. that's a very compelling argument. i don't believe it for a second. what about you? >> well, look, it's not clear that there's time at least between now and the midterms for there to be -- there was another possibility right there, they could put another name up, but right now it seems to me in addition to the point that you're making, joe, which is of course you say there is no backup, on top of that i think the white house is starting to recognize that the politics of this are playing to its favor. that if judge kavanaugh were to go down, much of the republican

base, if you believe that this is a base mobilization election, that the only hope the republicans have is to motivate the trump base to dump out in large numbers, that right now judge kavanaugh and what they perceive as his unfair treatment in this process, is a motivating factor. the court helped -- >> right. >> -- donald trump in 2016, the campaign for the court and the court could help him again in this context. so in some sense the politics of this, whether judge kavanaugh gets confirmed or not, sticking with judge kavanaugh is an important base motivation strategy. but i want to come back to the question i'm going to ask you but i also want to hear from frank and barbara about this. the fundamental question still about this fbi investigation, which is not to my mind been satisfied. forget about even the questions -- you guys have raised great questions about the scope of what the fbi is allowed to do if they're investigating questions of sexual misconduct. here is another question, is perjury an issue that the fbi is allowed to be investigating? there are many people who look at judge kavanaugh and his

testimony last week and say it looks like he lied about a wide variety of things under oath in front of this committee. so is the fbi now allowed to investigate -- >> hey, john, can i list o some of those things? >> certainly. >> you just said he committed perjury. list them. >> there are many people hong that he lied -- you mentioned a large number -- you said there were small things. certainly the question of his -- the question of his drinking, for instance. he has made many assertions that there are witnesses now including his roommates at yale and other places who have said that he was, in fact, a blackout drunk in college. things that he claimed in front of the committee when he was in colloquy with, for example, senator klobuchar that he denied outright about his -- he said he admitted he liked beer and occasionally drank too much. he said he was kind of basically your average beer drinking guy. >> all right. so drinking. all right. >> he made some pretty strong

claims that have been contradicted by people who are named people already on the record right now. >> all right. we've got number one. go to number two. what else do you think he perjured himself on? >> i don't have a list here, although i would be happy to make one for you for a later block. i think there are questions that have been raised earlier in the confirmation hearings, joe, about, for example, his work at the white house. democrats have made an issue about that in the early phases of the confirmation hearing about whether or not he had been truthful about various activities he undertook while in the white house on legal and political matters. they were already concerned about perjury even before we got to the questions of sexual misconduct. so i do think there are people on the democratic side who believe that the judge on matters large and small has demonstrated a looseness with the truth. so the question to me is is that an issue for the fbi or not? >> let's take it to frank and i'm only trying to move this along because alex is screaming in my ear. >> yeah. >> move it along, idiot, is what my e.p. is saying. so, frank, i have to ask you a question.

first of all, perjury, is that something that the fbi would look into? >> so the answer is yes, but only if the victim of that perjury, the congress, right, the charge would be lying to congress, they need to be the complainant. they need to say we want you looking into this and i'm telling you, joe, the fbi has not been asked to do that. >> all right. and, frank, one other quick question, and maybe this is just -- just a failure of character on my part, but i usually -- if the president of the united states -- if i'm an fbi agent and the president of the united states says i give them free reign, they can investigate whatever they want to, i'm going to blow through the doors, i'm going to do whatever i want to do, i'm going to question whoever i want to question, i'm going to push, i'm going to go over every line that's out there and then when i'm called to task, i will say, but, wait, the president of the united states said this, this, this and this.

are there fbi agents who may do that? >> no, here is what i'm hearing is quite the opposite which is that they have written orders that are about, you know, an inch long and they don't take orders by tweet, they don't take orders by press conference. they have written orders from the white house. so what the president is saying to the american public is quite different than what the white house is providing in writing to the fbi. >> barbara, let's get really specific here. if you could guide the fbi agents that are investigating these incidents and brett kavanaugh's testimony, dr. ford's testimony, what is the one area, what is the weak point of brett kavanaugh's case? where would you point fbi officials and say, i really want you to narrow in in this area and push hard? >> the first place i would like would be to talk to mark judge, he is the person that dr. ford puts in the room. i would want to know what he has to say and lock him into that story. but to frank's point, which is

so important, is to not just talk to him, but then to talk to leads. who else did he talk to about this incident? who else was there? there's talk about a former girlfriend. did he make statements to anyone else about this? in the past month has he talked to brett kavanaugh or others about what his story would be if questioned by the fbi. i would push there. but what's important is you don't just talk to him, you talk to those around him to find out if what he's telling you is truthful. >> all right. thank you so much, barbara. thank you, frank. we greatly appreciate you being with us. still ahead on "morning joe," senator flake is speaking out on his decision to slow down the nomination of brett kavanaugh. he was asked about how the politics of the situation is playing in the debate. we will talk about that. a president in love and i just got to talk about the baseball playoffs just for a second. mika is not here. when "morning joe" returns. second mika is not here when "morning joe" returns i know that every single time that i suit up,

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investigation? >> you want a real investigation? then just look at -- look at my calendars. >> judge kavanaugh, would you say in high school that you were a frequent drinker? >> look, i like beer, okay? i like beer. boys like beer, girls like beer. i like beer. i like beer. >> i only have one question for you, i want you to look me in the eye, in front of god and i want you to answer honestly. that beer you like to drink, are we talking foreign or domestic? >> i drink american beer. >> you ain't drinking heineken on us? >> i drink american beer. >> no further questions. >> boy, i tell you what, john, a great "snl," you start with that, and end with kanye wearing

a make america great again hat and some sort of speech to america at the very end. "snl" had quite -- i mean, in terms of headlines, that's about as good as it gets, isn't it? >> it was a great season premiere, joe, and it certainly appealed to a wide diversity of ideological conviction in its representations. i will say i thought the cold open was brilliant on every level and it tells you exactly how kind of iconic and searing and just how many people watched it. i mean, the fact that they could do such a long cold open with so many of the senators represented. >> right. >> it was playing to the fact that we saw an audience for that hearing we now know that was the size of like an academy awards audience or an nfl playoff game. a lot of people in america watched that hearing very closely and "saturday night live" exploited that and did a brilliant job with the cold open. >> watching matt brilliantly do

that, here we have kavanaugh kind of dodging the truth as you said, acting angry, pushing back much like our president does. if he comes through, which he probably will, we have just teaching men in america and boys in america that's the way you lead. >> donny, if you're going to keep saying that i'm going to ask you what would happen, let's just assume, we don't know whether he's innocent or not, let's just assume that he's innocent. there is still an america -- >> sure. >> -- with a presumption of innocence. i know it's not a criminal trial, but he was accused in a week's time after living as he said almost 54 years on this earth of attacking this woman, putting -- thrusting himself into the face of somebody at yale and being part of basically a gang rape factory and holding parties in high school where women were continually -- young girls were continually inebriated and they were trying

to get them drunk so they could gang rape them. i'm just curious, donny, how would you have responded if you were innocent under those circumstances? would you have stayed calm? would you have been calm after hearing time and time again that you victimized women and you actually ran gang rape factories in high school? i'm just curious. >> a lot of people and the point that you're making if you're innocent you would act that way. i still think there's a way to be angry and firm versus disrespectful. you are going for the highest office and you should be put in this position. >> i agree. >> my point is the temperament. >> but hold on a second. you know, his temperament, i think it is disqualifying, the temperament that he showed was disqualifying. i'm not saying that it wasn't, but your point you keep coming back to is that, oh, these rich white privileged men, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. if you were accused of doing something as he was and your children have to listen to it

day in and day out, lies about you day in and day out, that you were -- took part of gang rape factories when you were in high school, and it was just one accusation after another, if you were innocent, then, well, maybe you decide i'm going to fight like hell, maybe it disqualifies me from the court, but i'm going to defend my reputation. that doesn't necessarily have to do with white privilege, clarence thomas did the same thing, others have done the same thing. so i'm just wondering if this really is an indictment on all men or maybe he just disqualified himself from the court while trying to defend his honor in front of his wife and his children. >> joe, you bring up -- >> and parents. >> you bring up a great point. my point is the net take away when for decades we watch matt damon and every day of our life we see president trump, the new winning formula -- because the point you're bringing up is a valid point, but the net net take away is that the winning

formula for men is to just dance around the truth and bark back harder and that's the net net the message that's out there that to me concerns me raising daughters right now. >> but, elise -- i'm sorry to cut you off but we only have a limited amount of time and alex lets me know that every second in my ear. elise, i don't think it was a win for kavanaugh, the further away we get from that, the yelling at the beginning, more and more people even if they like trump, even if they -- a lot of people are saying that's just not what we want on the supreme court. him being that rude to a woman, to senator klobuchar, if he had done it to patrick leahy that would have been one thing, but to be so disrespectful to a woman who was actually showing a great deal of respect towards him. i don't think it was a big win-win for him. in fact, i think he loses as a federal judge.

maybe he feels like he defended his honor, but i think it will forever hurt him if he goes to the court. >> well, in that opening statement i was glad that judge kavanaugh showed vulnerability and that he showed emotion and sometimes on the flip side men are discouraged from showing any emotion in the public sphere. so i thought that that was positive that you could see just the raw depth of how much these allegations had affected him and his family. that said, i agree that it was unfortunate that his tenor shifted and did become more angry at certain points in the testimony. it shows how just traumatic this entire process, if by the point of, you know, the sustained hearings, just the anger level, the vitriol -- i read something this weekend that, you know, justice alito will not walk past

the senate building where he testified because he still is so traumatized. it's become this politicized process of judges who are used to, you know, presiding over their bench and certainly are used to public speaking, but they suddenly are thrust into television mode and are judged on the level of a performer and not as to their judicial qualifications. so the back and forth was more about drinking habits and yearbook than any of the actual allegations at hand. so it became much more tense and fraught than it should have been if it was more fact-based. >> again, i think there were a couple of moments as you look at the entire hearing, it wasn't the opening statement, which i agree with elise, he had a right to be impassioned, a right to be angry. i can understand why he choked up when talking about his daughters, i think any dad or

any mom that went through what he went through would have done the same thing, but it was the unscripted moments that were so telling, two in part one when dick durbin kept trying to push him on an fbi investigation and it was -- he was -- he was far too resistant to a point where it didn't make any sense and, number two, how rude he was to amy klobuchar when she was being rerespectful. in fact, he even pointed out that she had been respectful through the entire process. i think if you believe that brett kavanaugh is entitled, that he's a bully, that he's broodish, that is actually the clip that you look at instead of his very impassioned some would say overheated opening remarks. i think that may have been more of a window into his soul and that for me is the most troubling part. i've known a lot of federal judges in my lifetime and i know none of them have been through

what he's been through, at the same time every federal judge i've ever known has shown extraordinary discretion and even in the worst of circumstances would have never responded the way he did to senator klobuchar. >> but, joe, can i just say having worked with judge kavanaugh when he was at the white house as a low level staffer who had -- judge kavanaugh had plenty of opportunities where he probably should have been quite angry at me for my speech writing, clerical errors and so on that had to go through, i never saw anything like this. this really was a moment that is so removed from the sober, thoughtful man that has risen to the heights he has because of that temperament. so i do -- you know, you look at -- you're seeing someone in their moment of extreme trauma and greatest struggle and so

that's the sound bite that a lot of people are choosing to take. >> all right. thank you for that insight. we will keep talking about this and the big question, whether brett kavanaugh is going to get confirmed in the end, even after the fbi investigation. still ahead, overnight the united states and canada actually reached a last minute deal to salvage nafta and this morning donald trump is tweeting about it. that's coming up on "morning joe." ♪

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talking about outrage that was used at the hearing. really quickly, that also could be a sign of guilt as well, feigned outrage. there are no easy answers here. >> there aren't. and i would say, you know, one of the things that i think troubles people is not just i think the examples you gave, joe, are two that speak to temperament, but i actually think that in the prepared testimony that he gave or at least his opening statement, to

have raised the notion of -- of himself as a victim of a conspiracy and to cite the clintons retribution. >> right. >> i think that is one of the things that i think troubles a lot of people, not just about temperament but what will happen on the court going forward. you know, there are -- there are future potential litigants coming before the supreme court who are talking now already about using that statement against judge kavanaugh and using it as the basis for a request for recusal on the basis that having said those things in his senate testimony that he's given the indication that he can't judge certain cases fairly if he believes that he's the victim of a partisan smear that tried to keep him from getting on the court. so just as a matter of fact there are lawyers who will use that and a i know there are people who care about the supreme court as an institution hong that that is potentially poisonous dynamic to set in motion going forward.

whatever you believe about judge kavanaugh's behavior with dr. ford, about his past, that having someone who has behaved in such a partisan way in his confirmation hearings and this hearing could be problematic for the court going forward and will also potentially open the door to impeachment hearings if democrats take back control of the house. there are democrats who are already talking about this now and that's also troubling for the court as an institution. al the court as an institution.

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i like him, he likes me. i guess that's okay. am i allowed to say that? that was a big, big problem. you know the interesting thing. when i did it and i was really being tough and so was he, we go back and forth. and then we fell in love. okay. no, really. wrote me beautiful letters. and they are great letters. we fell in love. >> yeah. wrote these beautiful letters to donald trump, and the ink was red and had the consistency of blood. very romantic for valentine's

day. >> getting a lot spot in the gulag and he can see how his love feels then. i saw this over twitter and i saw it as trump and kim were in love. at first i had hoped he was referencing kim kardashian and he was talking about criminal justice reform and i would be totally happy and fine with that if he's talking about kim kardashian. you just can't imagine that why would he speak about someone who is one of the world's most egregious human rights violators and dictators in chummy terms. it just blows my mind every time he does it. he'll keep doing it. >> for eight years conservatives like myself were critical of barack obama the only relations that imbrofd the united states and foreign powers were dictators in iran and extra.

and, again, i just can't imagine if barack obama had ever said anything remotely like this. so you have, have donald trump in love with kim and vladimir putin in helsinki. trump supporters and the republican party absolutely have no shame if they don't criticize this guy. >> you can go down the list of who are the biggest hypocrites in the modern day republican party? it's amazing that you have, you know, the national security adviser john bolton and his previous stance on talking to iran, talking to north korea and it's amazing what people will give up to, you know, have their place at the foot of power and i would call it the foot of power because we all know this esteem donald trump holds his advisors in. >> supreme court begins today with the nomination of brett

kavanaugh still in question. we'll talk about the could be of the fbi investigation and does he still have a good chance of guesting voted into the court. plus the "new york times" jeremy peters and washington post bob costa will be with us. "morning joe" is back with us in two minutes with the rage, steve kornacki. rage, steve kornacki how can we say when you book direct at choicehotels.com you always get the lowest price on our rooms, guaranteed? let's say it in a really low voice. carl?

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numbers to examine investment opportunities firsthand. like a biotech firm that engineers a patient's own cells to fight cancer. this is strategic investing. because your investments deserve the full story. t. rowe price. invest with confidence. welcome back to "morning joe". it is monday, october 1st, 2018. mika has the morning off. donny deutsche is still with us which is one reason why mika has the morning off. also with us, national affairs analyst for nbc news and msnbc and co-host and executive producer of showtime's "the circus," john heilemann. former aide to the george bush white house, elise jordan.

steve the rage steve kornacki. his new book "the red and the blue, the 1990s and the birth of political tribalism" is out tomorrow. they are lining up around barnes and noble stores all across new york city and america. amazon has shut down. don't even try to order anything today. everybody wants the rage's latest. and joining the conversation we have former justice department spokesman now an msnbc justice and security analyst matt miller and capitol hill correspondent and host of kacie d.c., kasie hunt. i'm wondering, were you able to get one more question within him? >> it was unclear, joe. >> wow. every time you tried to ask a

question, he goes don't interrupt me, let me finish. it was like 30 minute answers. unbelievable. tell me first of all do you think avenatti is running for president? >> yes. he was just in new hampshire yesterday. he's more than anyone else doing all the things you normally do in the invisible primary phase. >> last night he was spitting out all of this if you or your family members have been arrested and brought in $4.5 billion verdict -- he sounded like lionel hunt on "the simpsons" last night. let's ask the question everybody is asking this morning, if the fbi investigation is limited, and we'll know more, i think, by the end of the day, but if it doesn't come back with any new

information on brett kavanaugh, where do we stand? does donald trump get his supreme court nominee on the court by the end of the week? >> joe, i think that there's an overwhelming sense that if this inquiry goes forward and doesn't turn up particularly new, that this nomination is going to go forward. now, i do think there's an x factor in the degree to which this investigation is limited and has been limited and i was talking last night as well to somebody who is familiar with these probes. typically when something like this comes up they do set an initial scope. the committee will say we want you to go talk to these people to look into what we've heard about but not a limit then on how far the fbi can follow those leads. so there's some very real questions right now and i think the sense that i'm getting it's the fbi that's particularly frustrated with what they view as political hamstringing here. so i do think ultimately in terms of his confirmation those are the real two questions for

susan collins and jeff flake. is there any new information that's disqualifying and do they believe this was a credible probe. my gut is that, you know, and we haven't heard a lot from these thee folks or at least from collins and murkowski. collins is looking for a way to vote yes so i think she potentially could get there. there's a memo that went out late last night from republicans, actually rachel mitchell. that's the first time i've really seen republicans lay out arguments that question dr. ford's credibility and i think it's a strategy because they are letting somebody else do it. they are letting rachel mitchell say, okay, these are the inconsistencies in her story. all these things are just mixed up. you know, what orrin hatch said in a sound bite she's laying out on paper. that shows me there's a back

half to that strategy. they were worried about the optics of the hearing but now they have somebody else carrying that water for them. >> they have to be able -- the fbi it seems to me, matt miller, i understand the limiting of the scope as far as the witnesses that you're going to talk to, these are the two incidents that were brought in before our committee, these are the two incidents that we want you to investigate, these are the key players we want you to investigate. i understand in a one week investigation that makes sense. what makes no sense, though, and what collins, flake and murkowski must insist on, it seems to me, is if you get something, if you get a lead you have to follow it. if they are not allowed to follow leads then it's a scam investigation, right? >> that is exactly right. look, it is not unusual for information to come to the fbi or committee or the white house after a background investigation has been completed and what usually happens is the client agency which in this case is the white house will go back to the

fbi and say okay we want you to go investigate this. they will say this is the scope we want you to look at these allegations and whether it's true or not. what i never happened and didn't happen in the obama administration saying to the fbi we want you to go interview only these four witnesses. this is where it becomes inappropriate. kasie is right about the fraugs within the fbi. it's not a coincidence the limited scope of this investigation has managed to leak out. the fbi knows what's going on here, that these are being used by the white house. the white house wanted to use them to give them a good stamp of approval when the investigation success limited from the outset where it can only give a pre-ordained outcome. fbi won't take kindly of being donald trump's patsy especially when he's attacked them and und undermined them. whether they can get to the truth which is their job.

which is what they would like to do. >> the fbi is going to be getting a letter from senator feinstein today who is the ranking member of the senate judiciary committee to director wray and be asking him about the scope of the investigation. let's hope that, again, the fbi is going to be allowed to do what they need to do. john heilemann i want to ask you the question that i asked00 hunt. if we move forward no shocking revelations come out, do we see flake, murkowski, collins and manchin end up voting for brett kavanaugh? >> well, look, first of all jeff flake has said publicly over this weekend that he intended to vote as he said for judge kavanaugh and that he still intends to vote for judge kavanaugh unless something changes. he's on the record. kasie is right in my interactions with susan collins she's looking for a way to get

yes. joe manchin is more inclined to vote yes than no. lisa murkowski is different because of judge kavanaugh's stance on native issues and some politics in her state. she's the most likely in that group to be inclined to sfloet. if you have flake, collins and manchin you're there. the absence -- again a lot of questions we discussed about the scope of this fbi inquiry and how it's conducted. if we get to the end of the week under whatever set of circumstances and it looks as though we're still in a he said/she said mode and no break throughs on the investigative front i think president trump and brett kavanaugh will have the votes to put him on the supreme court. >> last night yef flake along with senator coons they were both on "60 minutes" talking about the compromise they made on friday. jeff flake said now i personally don't understand this but i guess this is how people think in washington these days, but he personally said that if he were

running for re-election there's no way he could have done what he did last night. again, he might as well have said that he had monkeys growing out of his ears. i don't understand that line of thinking. i always found in my district a very conservative district that if you took a courageous stand and then you explained to it your voters, even the most conservative of voters who may not have agreed with what you did or even the most liberal voters they actually rewarded you for that. but jeff flake, steve kornacki said the last night if he were running for re-election he could never done what de. that feeds into the central thesis of your book which is we are two nations, a red nation and a blue nation and this stark division prevents compromises the likes of what we saw on friday. >> yeah. it's funny you mentioned flake. flake is somebody, when you get

caught between that polarization, when you get caught between that tribalism this is what happens to your political career. he took some steps in the last two years to distance himself from president trump and that sort of turned the republican base in his state and nationally against him. then he'll take other steps, though, that anger the democrats who are eager to embrace him because the conservatives want to cast him out and left him this year heading into re-election where he was sort of poisoned with both juries. the republican community didn't want to re-elect him. so he chose not to run again. yes, you mentioned the bulk. we've been talking about polarization in politics for a long time but that's the theme of my book. we're living in a world that was created a red and blue america in particular. that form of polarization, that form of tribalism, where that color sinks up with the party deep geographic distinctions

between parties, that those distinctions those lines were drawn in the 1990s and been living in that world ever since. >> so there's a stat i keep hearing and that is that 18% of americans control 50% of the votes in the united states senate and it's the most intense part of that 18%. but is part of the problem that we're seeing the fact that you have the democratic party that is geographically isolated on the coasts and a republican party that basically owns the central and western time zones. central and mountain time zones and democrats can start figuring out how to win in the center of the country again? a lot of these problems might go away. >> it's interesting because we talk about this, the blue and red america as they are now defined. as i say the 1990s. think of it this way, the number

of counties in the country, over 3100 coins in the united states. when bill clinton became president in 1992, bill clinton was able to carry in '92 and '96 half the counties in america, geographically bill clinton was able to carry them. that tribalism, that polarism, that red and blue, you said red and blue to anybody in the country it would have had no political meaning. fast forward to the 2000 athletic, shake out the events of government, government shut down, impeachment, you have that near perfect tie on election night in 2000. how many counties al gore carried? 500 counties out of 3100. even in victory barack obama was only able to get up to about 800 of them in 2012. hillary clinton less than 500 in 2016. blue america as it was created in the '90s and as we have been living with sense, it's a

metropolitan, predominantly metropolitan phenomenon. huge growth in democratic strength, there making big population centers, big population dense areas but the vastness of the country, those rural areas, those sundburban areas that's the strength. >> let's talk about bill clinton for a second. i remember as a republican looking at the states bill clinton won and i was shocked, and i was outraged that this guy from arkansas somehow managed to win every state on the mississippi. he won louisiana. he won arkansas. he won missouri. he won iowa. he won minnesota. you go straight up the mississippi river, and bill clinton knew how to win in the heart of america. i still, i understand, there are a lot of issues that democrats

and republicans have with bill clinton right now, but a politician like that is not like democrats can't find other politicians that know how to win in the center of america while we're all talking about how extreme republicans are. democrats are cloistered on the coast in very limited counties. they have to figure out how to win in the middle again. >> there's a feeling and can you look at the numbers and the tension that democrats give to certain races in the south that democrats have somewhat ceded candidates, democratic candidates in the states. look what's happening in tennessee, bredesen has a good chance. in mississippi where we were just there, the former secretary of agriculture mike espy on the

show who is running for the senate seat in the special election seat and has a pretty incredible name i.d. for a democrat in a state that usually would just doesn't happen because, again, at the national level they see looking at, you know, a state like mississippi as a possible pickup opportunity. steve, you in this book do, you deal with that at all about how you go from bill clinton who was able to kind of bridge the divide and wasn't a coastal lead, the man from hope, arkansas. how did we get to this point where it became so culturally segregated. >> part of the kin story. part of the legacy of bill clinton and his success in the '90s he was able to straddle that cultural divide. he had that bubba image. he could win back the reagan democrats. but it was always in very

delicate balance because bill clinton was in alliance with the national democratic party that was a lot more liberal. when bill clinton became president in 1993 the first thing he got sucked into as president, think back 25 years the social dynamics in this country was the fight over gays in the military. politically for bill clinton what he campaigned about, a different kind of democrat to win those states to have that be the defining issue that began his presidency set him off as a cultural liberal, that sort of track and you think of bill clinton he won in '92 and he won in '96. in between was the lowest moment for the democratic party at that point after the second world war. republicans gained control of the house in 1984. they called at any time republican revolution. newt gingrich became the speaker of the house. he completeed a 16 year rise from gadfly to speaker of the house. republicans thought avenues genius at that point. that was the back remember to

bill clinton not able to estrada tell divide the first couple of years. joe has some experience there in '95 and '96 and then a backlash to newt gingrich and rise of blue america in '96. bill clinton's impayment. that turned off those culturally sensitive voters. a series of batles atles and flareups. bill clinton and al gore in 1992 were nominated to win back the south, nominated as moderate from the south, the face of the democratic party and in 2000 al gore would have been president. forget about florida, if he could have won tennessee, his home state of tennessee. by 2000 he couldn't do that. by 2000 bill clinton was the face of the south, arkansas base, he and hillary said the future is new york. he built his future and she built her future on the heart of blue america. >> john heilemann i saw a

picture of the '92 convention, bill clinton, hillary clinton, al gore, tipper gore standing there smiling and waving and somebody noted that three of the four people on the stage that night would win the popular vote for president but only one of those three would become president. >> yeah. extraordinary thing. i'm listen to steve kornacki talk about this. those of us in our age group went through that in the 1990s. another thing to steve's point is fact we can all remember in bill clinton's term, he won west virginia. there's literally not a state in the country right now that's not more pro trump than the state of west virginia. a state in our adult lifetime a state democrats could win and now it's so far outside that the democrats don't even compete in presidential elections. this speaks to profound changes

that's happened in the democratic party. bill clinton's role as a modernizer of the party was successful. in other respects his attempt to moderate the party was a total failure. in many respects the party is now more, looks more like the party of the 1980s in terms of its ideological disposition than the party of bill clinton in 1990s. >> the san francisco democrats that republicans ran against until bill clinton clobbered them in 1992, and, again in 1996. matt miller, if you could -- if you could direct the democrats or direct jeff flake to put pressure on the white house, to make sure there's a fair fbi investigation this week, what would your one recommendation be? >> it would be very simple. that career investigators decide what to investigate and who to interview and not political

people at the white house. it's very simple. if you're looking for the truth and not looking for a rubber stamp then you ask people who are trained to do this, to go out there and do their investigation. i would be happy to have the time extended. i don't think there should be a time limit on finding the truth. if you want to stick with the time limit that's fine but let the fbi decide who they will interview. >> let's hope that yef flake, lisa murkowski and susan collins heard that because it certainly makes a lot of set. matt miller thanks so much. coming up next two of our favorite reporters, bob costa and jeremy peters from the "new york times" will be with us. of course everybody is our favorite reporter. everybody is a winner. everybody goes home with a trophy. you're watching "morning joe". we'll be right back. ♪

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welcome back to "morning joe". this just breaking. general electorate will be

naming a new ceo replacie ining flannery. that company is tougher to run in the 2000s than venezuela. that's yet another change for general electorate. let's bring in "new york times" reporter jeremy peterser and political reporter for "the washington post" and the moderator of washington week on pbs, bob costa. bob, what have you learned this weekend? >> down in austin, texas you see the democratic party moving forward trying to look ahead to 2020 but the story remains president trump and a lot of talk among political players in texas as they look at the senate race there and across the country as the 2020 race really kicks off for mid-term season about judge kavanaugh and talking, joe, now how about gender and issues of culture are fuseed into this mid-term debate in a way they weren't just a few weeks ago and the democrats are adjusting talking not just about economic fairness but things

about the me too movement. >> engineer me, republicans were behind the eight ball when it came to women, especially when it came to college educated white women. they were former staple of republican support. bleeding away towards democrats. we saw that in virginia in the governor's race. we saw it in alabama. this seems it makes republican candidates case that much more difficult at least for that demographic. >> that's absolutely right, joe. if you look last week at kavanaugh's testimony and lindsey graham's eruption, i think what you saw was this boiling over of this anger on the right. this primal angry white male conservative. lindsey graham said i know i'm not supposed to say this but i'm a single white male and nobody

cares what i think. regardless of what you think of his argument the merits of it, that has a very resonant appeal to a certain part of the electorate. that's trump's base. that's trump's playbook. get in their face. do what kavanaugh did. shore anger. hold nothing back. what's even better, punch at the left because trump was especially never conservative as we all know but what made him so appealing and what made his message so powerful is he was anti-left. he took it to the democrats. that's what kavanaugh did last week that i think really ende endeared him to conservatives. it was surprising to me when i was interviewing people, after kavanaugh's testimony on thursday they were talking about how they were tearing up watching him speak and talk about his daughter and his family and what this process has done to them. so the left and a lot of women

and a lot of men, of course, are very sympathic to dr. ford watching her testimony and how compelling and convincing it was but at the same time there's this group of americans experiencing this story in the exact opposite way. >> there were people moved on both sides. i can tell you mika was watching it. i was too. mika teared up watching dr. ford's testimony and also teared up watching brett kavanaugh's testimony when the talk turned to his daughters, when it turned to his parents, when it turned to remembering his high school days. so i think elise both statements were very moving to a lot of people. they were both moving to me. i think, again, you go into the moments after the prepared remarks that steam be more appealing. i want to ask you somebody who worked for brett kavanaugh and never saw him explode like this,

it sounds just like what i heard on tv from nicole wallace and from others who worked for brett kavanaugh and i'm just curious did it seem to you like he was auditioning for a role of conservative right-wing martyr? did it seem so out of character that this was actually his attempt to revise what clarence thomas did in 1991 ? or did you take this coming from him genuinely. >> i took it as authentic and place of defense for his family and being all about his family and speaking from an anger as to what it had done to his family, you know, separate of him, you know, just the side carnage of it, being the collateral damage of what the process had, you know, done to his wife and

daughters. and so i think the emotion was certainly genuine and authentic and i think that when you are in that position you have no idea what necessarily this process is going to bring and so i think that it has been just a complete roller coaster of looking at someone who, you know, i knew at the white house as he was there at 4:00 a.m., he left at 11:00 p.m. and now he's being parodied on snl as a party frat boy. you see these different portrayals from different parts. >> elise, i am losing my mind we're so concerned. i found his behavior offensive. this is a potential supreme court justice. the way he cut off klobuchar. you want to be a justice and dick durbin asked you a question would it basically be just for the fbi at this point when we

have two sides just to find more truth and this man wants to define the future women's bodies, the future of health care can't see that as just. i saw him as obnoxious, belligere belligerent. a lot of men would not behave that way. is that a man in temperament, in attitude that he had the audacity that a witness would not behave the way he did when he went back to klobuchar, had the audacity not understand justice would be an fbi investigation. i do not feel -- that man was entitled and he was angry not one bit of audacity he was angry he was in that position and how you put me rich, white, entitled male in that position. >> do you think he was angry in this hearing, as angry as you are just now >> i'm not somebody sitting on the supreme court thank god for this country.

>> thank god for that. kasie hunt, you walked right into it donny. i'm wondering, kasie as you talk to democrats and republicans on the hill, what are you hearing? especially from republicans behind-the-scenes, what are you hearing about that remarkable day on thursday? are there moments? did the klobuchar moment make republicans wince and say wow that really seemed to valley him as a bully or when he shied away from dick durbin's very straightforward request, have him call for an fbi investigation. did those moments matter to republicans? did they matter to the three or four swing voters or did nothing at the end of the day matter? >> i honestly -- i think that this is a case, joe, where so much doesn't matter in washington. thursday's hearing matter and

those moments mattered and we're still sorting through which ones meant the most tom people. i'll tell you that moment with amy klobuchar, first of all has stood out and has gotten a lot of people talking about how she handled it and how that might bode well for whatever ambitions she has in the future. i think that a lot of the women -- i've not spend to lisa murkowski or susan collins about this but i've spoken to other women senators who watched that happened and were just absolutely blown away by the audacity that it took. i think for many of us women who are sometimes having conversations in public with men, you know, we're familiar with the phenomenon and for somebody who was trying to stlit a -- it is there and convince america he's someone that looks out for women was not a good look. >> it really would have been, i think, far better for him, if he had done that to dick durbin or done that to pat leahy or done

that to a man. no. wasn't a good look, especially since amy klobuchar had shown, i think, about as much deference as any senator showed on either side to brett kavanaugh and dr. ford. so bob costa, where do we stand after all of this, the fbi investigation runs its course, if everybody stays in their box and if mark judge comes back and repeats the same things, if dr. ford's long time friend says i believe her but i wasn't there, do we -- murkowski and collins and flake, do they say well i checked that box, the fbi investigation, now i can support kavanaugh and go back to my voters and tell them that i represented them. >> there are two challenges now facing judge kavanaugh as he deals with those sort of

questions about can some of the senators come from no to yes. it's not only about the fbi investigation and the process about that. now you have to pay attention this, democrats raising the question of possible perjury and asking the question did judge kavanaugh potentially commit perjury in some of his comments. they will raise questions not just the way the fbi is moving forward but about the whole context of his comments about his days in high school, about college, to raise scrutiny and to raise a big question mark about whether it's okay to support him whether long term. this is political viable. democrats know this nomination still hangs on the razor's edge. >> does it sound, steve kornacki, like when you heard kavanaugh speak did that play right to type from the sort of tribal politics that you said began in the early to mid-'90s and may have started really, you know, a lot of people after the

'94 sweep were talking about the ross perot impact. rightly you point out pat buchanan reshaped the republican party and may have reshaped in his failing bid in '92 and '96, may have reshaped the future of the conservative movement in a way that few others did. it was not just newt gingrich and it's not newt gingrich's party from '94 that we're seeing in 2018. is it not, in fact, pat buchanan's party now >> boy, you can draw a straight line from what pat buchanan was talking about on running on and galvanizing in the 1990s to what donald trump campaigned on and elected on in 2016. the republican establishment was terrified of it in 1990s and certainly terrified when donald trump was tearing through their primaries. pat buchanan challenged george h.w. bush. he did fairly well especially in new hampshire. it was understood as a protest

vote. bush had raised taxes, decent couple of other things that irritated the rights. folks said that's all buchanan tapped into. in '96 when bob dole was the front-runner on the republican side and main conservative alternative was phil gramm, economically conservative from texas, pat buchanan campaigned on a five year freeze on all immigration. the construction of a border wall along the entire southern border. tearing up nafta. tearing up gap. renegotiating trade deals. restoring european-american cultural values. fighting multi-culturalism. that was the pat buchanan campaign. bernie shaw broke within the news, a political tsunami has just think it republican party. he called himself buchanan did pitchfork pat. in '96 the republicans were able to stop him eventually nominate dole.

he lost in 2000. buchanan ran third-party, the reform party nomination. by the way guess who stepped forward to run against him for a few months, late '99 early 2000, wide-open, donald j. trump. donald j. trump in '99/2000 looked at that buchanan platform he called it racist. he called it bigoted. he said it was anti-semitic. he noted david duke was endorsing pat buchanan and said i want nothing do with a party or a movement that wouldn't repudiate david duke. donald trump in 1999 and 2000 stepped forward to run against somebody who ran on what would later become trumpism. yet you can draw a direct line. from that experience he took something from it. >> 16 years later on the eve of the super tuesday primaries, where a lot of southern voters were going out, donald trump

actually claimed he had no idea who david duke was. had nothing, no idea historically about what the ku klux klan was. but how ironic it is that we're talking about all of pat buchanan's position, we're talking this morning, talking about how this is pat buchanan's republican party and yet jeremy peters what did donald trump do last night? he just submitted an extension of nafta. >> yeah. that's exactly right. i think bringing this back to donald trump, joe, is actually an interesting point given everything that's gone on over the last week. that's what makes the kavanaugh spectacle different. donald trump has been a part of it, yes. he's been inserting himself every now and then with that press conference and occasional tweet. but he's been a side player in all of this. this has been much bigger than trump. this has been about a clash

between how we see women in this culture. how we are to believe their accusations of sexual assault. and this ongoing question -- really what type of country are we? and donald trump really hasn't been at the center of the conversation to that point this week. this is the first time we've had a real national trauma that he hasn't played an instigating role in. i think that's part of why you see people so troubled because when they look at all that's gone on in the last week and how broken that process was in the senate and how angry people were and deceiving from members of the senate they realize this is something much more fundamentally broken in our system. >> we got to go. robert costa real quick what's feeling among republicans in the senate? does kavanaugh pass? >> they think at this point it's all going to be how the fbi reports its findings and they

are more concerned about trade at this point as the president continued to egg on his fight with china ahead of the mid-terms even as he cuts a deal with canada and mexico. >> all right. robert costa and jeremy peters thanks so much. always appreciate you guys coming on. 36 days left until the mid-terms, 36 days the threat of impeachment is growing for donald trump so says some. we'll get an inside look at the president's fight against the russia investigation, including his unprecedented war against the special counsel, the fbi, and even his own attorney general, a man he once said was the smartest man in washington. "morning joe" will be right back. back ♪

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they have one more piece of news for the president-elect. brennan, clapper and rogers left the room. james comey stayed behind to deliver it. >> comey pulls the president aside and he tells him hey listen, i need you to know that there's this, what we now call

the dossier. >> his assumption is that comey is giving this to him to show him that he's got something on him. >> trump feared the story would leak. and soon it did. the next day trump went before the cameras to fight back. >> that information that was false and fake and never happened got released to the public. >> he now has viewed the entire intelligence community and the fbi as, as enemies. >> that's a look at the season remere of "front line." airs tomorrow night on pbs and the episode called "trump showdown" takes a close look how russia interference in the 2016 election has grown now to threaten donald trump's presidency. with us let's bring in the film's director, co-producer and

co-writer my kichael kirk. whi john heilemann has the first question. >> this has been an intensely covered story about donald trump, james comey, russia investigation. we talk about them all day long on ka on cablevision. what wail viewer learn tonight that they did not know if they were relatively familiar with this topic. what's your news in this work? >> the whole story, john. it's something we pistons to do, step back to 30,000 feet, pull the events together, take a look at trump's collision really with the forces of the rule of law. unlike president nixon, what trump has managed to do, you'll watch it happen, he has managed

to hold together his own approach how to fight against the federal justice system, the law enforcement community and come out almost on top. he's challenging the values and norms in this society in a really extraordinary way, in a way nixon did not. and i think if you watch the film you'll understand where that comes from and how he's managing to do it and also i think you'll feel that noose tightening around trump through every one of the major events where it feels like the justice department feels like there's obstruction of justice going on. >> i glad you bring up the notion of obstruction of justice because it goes to an incredibly important issue one of the things that bob mueller is looking at in his investigation. as you talked to all these sources and examined trump's behavior and how he's managed to that have investiga navigate this, trying to figure out in the moment how trump

fights his way through as he fights these challenges and threats. there's another thing going obstruction, there's a whole strategy here and that that strategy, if you unveil it or reveal it points to the key element of obstruction of justice which is corrupt intent. so if i watched "frontline," which of those is closer to the mark in terms of how trump coped with this threat to his presidency? >> one of the things we do, we go back to cohen in the beginning. there's a familiar name for you, who was part of the initial showdown in washington back in the '50s. cohen was the father to donald trump, taught him what he knows about how to fight back, how to be aggressive, about how to never let anybody win, how to always declare victory. you're seeing an awful lot of that at every step of this process. at some moment people in the film say he spent his life looking for another roy cohen. at some point in this process,

john he becomes his own roy cohen. that's what people tell us. his strategy as a life long strategy of using the law and resisting certain kind of rule of law, you also of rule of law. you also watch him test what will work all the way through the film leading up to that failing when michael cohen is taken down and you see him take another kind of lawyer on, rudy giuliani. and alan dershowitz tells us in the film this is a red/blue division strategy that's all about the midterm elections. and that's what you see take place in this film and it resonates with rosenstein and the moments you saw last week and kavanaugh even now. for me, pulling that all together and getting a real sense of how strong trump is coming back at all of this is astonishing. >> what was the most surprising

element that you discovered as you put together this documentary, something that made you look at donald trump in a different way? >> it's the extent to which the chaos is not uncontrolled. i believe that down inside he's got a plan. he has a natural narrative rolling inside of himself that is both for those who dislike him alarming and for those who like him it feels exactly the way a guy like this, an unexpected president should act when up against the forces that are arrayed against him. so it was sort of surprising to me the extent to which given everything that comes at him, there is this sort of pattern inside him. and my job is pattern recognition, after all. i see a lot of that happening inside this man right now, especially as we head for the midterm elections.

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the kids all across new york city and the world are lining up to buy your book, just like they did when the harry potter books came out. so you diagnose the problem, but what is the cure? could we see independents possibly being elected in the coming years? >> i wish i had a good answer to this. in writing this, i was looking for it. one of the things that struck me putting the research for this

book together was almost how the '90s corrected what a mess american politics had been before. what i mean by that was there was chaos and disorder within the parties. the democratic party before the '90s you had conservative southerners and northern liberals sharing a party. the republican party you had liberals from the northeast. the '90s sorted this thing out. they defined themselves by their opposition to each other. new medica cable news sprouted p that enforced this. it seems there's almost an element of human nature that wants polarization. >> too many people in american politics right now define themselves, starting with the president of the united states, not what they're for but what

they're against. we've got to move beyond that. the book is "the red and the blue, the 1990s and the birth of political tribalism." that is officially out tomorrow. the kids are lining up outside of bookstores today. make sure you get yours. still ahead, president trump reopens the fbi investigation into brett kavanaugh but there are a lot of questions about whether the president is serious about getting to the truth. he says fbi agents can investigate whatever they want to. fbi agents and other people in the government are saying that's not the truth. aying that's not the truth. how can we say when you book direct at choicehotels.com

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we've heard from the alleged victi victim, but now it's time to the hear from the hero, judge kavanagh. >> i'm going to start at an 11! i'm going to take it to about a

15 real quick! now, i am usually an optimist. i'm a keg is half full kind of guy. but what i see from the monsters on this committee makes me want to puke and not from beer! dr. ford has no evidence, none! meanwhile, i've got these. i've got these calendars, these beautiful, creepy calendars. give me a can of water. >> my god, it is classic "saturday night live." welcome to "morning joe." on this monday, october the 1st -- we made it to october -- donnie deutsche is with us. we also have john heilemann.

former aide to the george w. bush white house and state departments, elise jordan. nbc news chief white house correspondent hallie jackson. barbara mcquaid and mika has this morning off. john heilemann, let's start with you. so much that happened this weekend, we could talk about of course the fbi investigation, the debate over how wide that fbi investigation is going to be. democrats complaining, the president saying do whatever you want to do, of course con yeah wearing a make america great again cap on "saturday night live" and actually my favorite moment of the weekend, i kind of got moved. you know i'm a romantic guy. donald trump saying, we fell in love, not of kanye but of kim

jong-un. please everybody this morning just try to imagine what would happen if barack obama had said the same thing while president of the united states. but i digress. talk about what happened on friday after we went off air, flake and coons make a deal. do you see this as sort of after world war ii began, they talked about a phony war. is this a phony peace that democrats and republicans find themselves in, or is there a positive coming out of it? >> well, couple things. i think most people are probably familiar with what happened in some sense. you had jeff flake saying he was going to be voting for judge kavanagh. and over the course of that morning after being confronted in that elevator by two victims of sexual assault, came back and

talked to chris coons and his other colleagues and they ended up reaching this accommodation to give a week of supplemental investigation by the fbi. we've already moved way past that. in that moment, i think there's no doubt there are a lot of people on both sides of the aisle, in fact, who were a little queasy about fast tracking the kavanaugh nomination, having a final vote today or tuesday, a huge test vote over the weekend given the emotions and drama of thursday's hearing -- >> but you notice everybody that was screaming on thursday, even lindsey graham was speaking using an inside voice and smiling. it seemed everybody overnight at changed, at least in terms of their temperament. >> in that committee hearing there was an awful lot of bitterness on both sides. there was people trying to

reckon with what happened the previous day. senator flake kind of crystallized this notion that something that we'd been saying on the show and many had been saying for weeks, which is that these are irreconcilable version of events and due process demanded at least another week and at least to look into some of these accusations brought against judge kavanagh for the sake of judge kavanagh as well as the sake of the accuser. now we're going to have a big debate on an hourly basis going forward over what the scope of that investigation is going to be. democrats are already unhappy with it. they think it's too limited. you have diane feinstein demanding that the white house put forward the parameters of the investigation, what has the fbi exactly been asked to investigate. you've had representations made of that in the press. i do think that's going to be an

acrimonious debate. this is going to be the debate. is this a fig leaf being created here or is this a genuine fact-finding inquiry? and the biggest problem of it -- i was with your friend joyce vance in austin at the tribune festival. she made the important point that structurally when the fbi does an investigation like this, it has a client. there's a client for the work product. the client in this case is don mcgahn at the white house, the white house councisel. they're both the clients for the work product and the main sponsors of the nomination. so therefore you have an inherent kind of conflict built into this process. i think that conflict is going to be played out and teased out over the days to come. >> everybody knew, frank, that was the case from the very beginning. everybody knew that was going to be the case, because it's the white house that orders it up.

right now we have a lot of complaints coming in that this is only a week, which of course i think is laughable. everybody was saying, let's just get a week. so democrats get a week and everybody's rubbing their hands together saying this is not enough, this is a sham. others are suggesting the scope be expanded. i don't know how far you expand the scope when you only have a week to investigate. those were the parameters agreed to. and it seems to me if you just take the dr. ford incident that she alleges happens and you take the five witnesses that were there and then you take the yale incident and try to get the five, six, seven, eight people who were there, i don't know, does the fbi have more time to do a good job expanding beyond that scope? i mean, we could try to track down everybody over the next seven days. but it seems to me that the time limit and the accusations in

front of the committee required that they did limit the scope and do a good job just on these two incidents. am i wrong? >> it's not the time limit that's troubling ne ining me th. the fbi is capable of amazing things because of the resources they can surge in a limited amount of time. the two things bothering me are the incredible constraints that are being put on the fbi by the white house. we're making certain assumptions here this morning and they are wrong. the assumption that the fbi is going to be free rein within what they've been tasked to do. look at ramirez. you make an assumption they're going to interview all of the witnesses to the ramirez incident, you're going to go to yale and find people who were living in the dorm at the time. that's not happening. the fbi is not only dictating who you can interview, but also what investigative steps you can

take within that allegation. for example, this morning we still don't have any word that dr. ford is even on the list of people to be interviewed. in fact, we're hearing if sources it's the opposite, that her statement is already on record, we don't need to hear from her again. that's a terrible mistake to be made. >> can i stop you for a second, frank? do you have inside information that the rest of us don't have, or is this more of a question of transparency? we need the white house to be more transpoiarent because we really don't know exactly what the parameters are right now. the only thing i saw quoted overnight was a senior federal official talking about the limits. you've got people inside the white house saying they don't have those constraints. do you have information that it is that limited? >> joe, i am sitting here this morning telling you they are severely limited and i know they

are. and i know there's frustration and i know that the bureau is going to have to come back for every request that they want to add to a very, very short list. the fbi had bes been handcuffed the clock is ticking on this artificial one-week deadline. >> is that based on your sourcing? >> yes. >> okay. donnie, if in fact the fbi has been handcuffed by trump's white house and by don mcgahn, well, at the end of the day it doesn't buy them what they want it to get when they were all talking positively about a one-week extension, an fbi investigation. because then the story is just going to be about what the fbi was not allowed to do. >> if kavanaugh gets pushed through, we're going to be in the same place had we not had an fbi investigation. in a place that long-term is concerning to me.

it was interesting over the weekend, my 15-year-old daughter was telling me that a bunch of her friends told her for the first time about assaults and my 89-year-old mother was telling me about stories that her friends had told her. you're going to have the majority of the women in this country feeling so angry, so violated, because at this point going forward why does a woman come forward? this is to me so beyond politics. if you listened to anybody talk this weekend, it was about women and about how women feel. to me, you're going to have a stained supreme court. you are going to have women feeling almost worse than before the me too movement. how does that play out in november? how does that play outgoing forward? also, the supreme court was one of the last institutions that was not stained. we've seen the office of the presidency, with the fbi, with

the media, everything is kind of like dumped on. and now for an entire generation of women going forward, they will not be able to look at the supreme court the same way, particularly post that kavanaugh performance. as a man, i was embarrassed for him. it was the ultimate display of white entitlement. as i talked to men over the weekend, i find that the higher you go on the income curve, the more men are like, well, we all did this in one form or another, still not getting it. women are getting it. the lower you go on the income curve, men are getting it. but this does not move us far forward from entitled men and what they think they can get away from. still ahead on "morning joe," we're going to get to where the president stands on all of this. hallie jackson has the very latest white house reporting. first, bill karins has a check on the forecast. >> we're going to go through a

very warm stretch to start october. all eyes continue to be out west where we're watching what's left of hurricane rosa, now a tropical storm. it went into the yuma area. this was the beginning of some significant flooding that's going to take place. yuma is one of the driest locations in the country. very unusual sight thers there. here's what's left of the storm. it's spinning off the coast of baja, mexico. all the heavy rain is spreading inland now heading over the top of phoenix and drifting up towards flagstaff. here's the footprint of where the rain is going to go. we have 11 million people under the flash flood watches. arizona has these washes and when the rain fills them and travels through highways and roads. there will be a lot of travel issues throughout this area. it includes las vegas.

by the end of the week as we dry things out, we are going to be very warm throughout the southeast, whereas we're going to be colder and almost early winter like in areas of the west. a lot of areas of the southeast just finished the warm es septemb september ever. october is staying that way. new york city is going to enjoy well above average temperatures in the 70s for seven straight days. that's pretty rare in october. t days that's pretty rare in october. so, how's it going? well... we had a vacation early in our marriage that kinda put us in a hole. go someplace exotic? yeah, bermuda. a hospital in bermuda. a hospital in bermuda. what? what happened? i got a little over-confident on a moped. even with insurance, we had to dip into our 401(k) so it set us back a little bit. sometimes you don't have a choice. but it doesn't mean you can't get back on track.

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whatever leads you wanted to follow, that also sarah huckabee sanders repeated that claim, over administrations did. but then we heard senior administration officials saying that, in fact, it is more limited. what can you tell us? what insights can you give us about what the truth is? >> here's where i think we are this morning. the president and his white house is saying, hey, free rein, that seems to be the word of the day. let the fbi do whatever they want. the president has tweeted that, he has said it out loud, but that apparently has not trickled down to the folks who are actually looking into this. a source tells us the fbi has not received any updated instructions from the white house. at this point, there are still questions about what this limited scope means. that's why senator diane feinstein has written this letter to don mcgahn, the white house counsel, and fbi director

christopher wray saying we need more information, we want to mow what you think your mission is. based on my reporting, there's no if in the mind of the president, there's no if the in the eyes of the white house. there is not a backup plan here. multiple sources have told me over the last four days or so that it's not like the president is tossing around some names of backups. that said, he just fairly recently nominated brett kavanagh and went through the interview process with other candidates. it's not like it's stale in his mind. it's still fairly fresh. it is notable you do not have the white house counsel don mcgahn or other folks sitting there coming up with names. they think this thing is going forward and he's going to end up on the court. >> hallie jackson, thank you so much. john heilemann, first of all, if

you're in the position of donald trump or the position of somebody in the white house, what do you say? there is no backup plan. >> correct. >> that puts more pressure on susan collins, on murkowski, on every republican, flake, that's waveri wavering. to basically say, here's the deal, we can have a conservative court if you pick kavanaugh. but if you don't pick kavanaugh we're going to be tied 4-4 until after the 2020 election nap's a very compelling argument. i don't believe it for a second. what about you? >> look, it's not clear there's time at least between now and the midterms for there to be -- there was another possibility right there. they could put another name up. but right now it seems to me in addition to the point you're making that there is no backup, on top of that i think the white house is starting to realize that the politics of this are playing to its favor.

mu the only hope the republicans have is to motivate the trump base to turn out in large numbers. right now judge kavanagh and what they see as his unfair treatment is a motivating factor. in some sense, the politics of this, whether judge kavanagh gets confirmed or not, sticking with judge kavanagh is an important base motivation strategy. coming up on "morning joe," what the fbi will and will not tackle in its check of judge kavanagh. we're going to break all of that down, plus ask whether it might change as the week moves on, straight ahead on "morning joe." , straight ahead on "morning joe." ♪

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pg&e wants you to plan ahead by mapping out escape routes and preparing a go kit, in case you need to get out quickly. for more information on how to be prepared and keep your family safe, visit pge.com/safety. is perjury something the fbi would look into? >> yes. but congress needs to be the complai

complai complaintant. >> all right. and, frank, one other quick question, and maybe this is just -- just a failure of character on my part, but i usually -- if the president of the united states -- if i'm an fbi agent and the president of the united states says i give them free reign, they can investigate whatever they want to, i'm going to blow through the doors, i'm going to do whatever i want to do, i'm going to question whoever i want to question, i'm going to push, i'm going to go over every line that's out there and then when i'm called to task, i will say, but, wait, the president of the united states said this, this, this and this. are there fbi agents who may do that? >> no, here is what i'm hearing is quite the opposite which is that they have written orders that are about, you know, an inch long and they don't take orders by tweet, they don't take orders by press conference. they have written orders from the white house. so what the president is saying to the american public is quite different than what the white house is providing in writing to the fbi.

>> barbara, let's get really specific here. if you could guide the fbi agents that are investigating these incidents and brett kavanaugh's testimony, dr. ford's testimony, what is the one area, what is the weak point of brett kavanaugh's case? where would you point fbi officials and say, i really want you to narrow in in this area and push hard? >> the first place i would like would be to talk to mark judge, he is the person that dr. ford puts in the room. i would want to know what he has to say and lock him into that story. but to frank's point, which is so important, is to not just talk to him, but then to talk to leads. who else did he talk to about this incident? who else was there? there's talk about a former girlfriend. did he make statements to anyone else about this? in the past month has he talked to brett kavanaugh or others about what his story would be if questioned by the fbi. i would push there. but what's important is you don't just talk to him, you talk to those around him to find out

if what he's telling you is truthful. coming up on "morning joe," we're going to tackle another huge issue. according to the cdc, opioids kill about five people every hour in the united states. in t.

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moments ago president trump announced on twitter that he's going to be holding a news conference at 11:00 this morning in the rose garden. the topic, the overnight news that canada is going to be joining the administration's revised agreement with mexico. the president tweeted earlier about it, writing this. quote, late last night our deadline we reached a wonderful new trade deal with canada to be added into the deal already reached with mexico. the new name will be the united

states, mexico, canada agreement or usmca. it's a great deal for all three countries, solves the many deficiencies and mistakes in nafta, greatly opens markets to farmers and manufacturers, reduced trade barriers to the u.s. and will bring all three great nations close together in competition with the rest of the world. the usmca is a historic transaction. and he ends con garage haitianulati -- congratulations to mexico and canada. she is the only non-coastal member of the democratic house leadership where she serves as cochair of the democratic policy and communications committee. also kristin solstice anderson. is the new deal a better nafta?

>> it's a little early to say it's a better nafta. i think there's two signs that are promising. i come from farm country and the fact that there is an agreement worked out on milk and how we can trade better with canada on milk and the other opponent, the $16 an hour minimum wage for the auto workers out of mexico. i didn't read the whole agreement. i woke up this morning and saw that it had been signed. on any trade agreement, i want to make sure that our farmers will be in good shape, but also our workers. i have 90,000 labor households in the congressional district i serve in central and western and northern illinois and want to make sure those kind of jobs are protected as well. we've got a united auto workers plant right outside my congressional district, the

world headquarters of john deer and the birthplace of c catapillar. >> we talked to steve last hour. we talked about how democrats have been confined for the most part to the coasts and shut out of representation in middle america. you certainly are one of those exceptions. you are, i think, the only non-coastal democrat who's in leadership. if democrats take control of the majority, are you going to be trying to stay in leadership? are you going to try to move up in leadership? >> i'm focused i would say probably 99.9% of my time making sure we do win back the majority because we have so much at stake. it's an honor to serve in the

majority. i come from a donald trump district. there's only 13 democrats in all of the us house of representatives who come from a district that donald trump won. i also won by 20 points. it was the largest margin of any democrat in a trump district also. my goal should we win back the majority -- and i hope the american public will put their bathe ba faith back in its again -- is to run for the assistant democratic leader position. in the whole rank of leadership, that's the number four position. it's not enough to win back the majority, but we've got to keep the majority. that's the kind of experience that i hope that my colleagues would say i could bring to the leadership table, making sure we are smart in the two years that would lead up to 2020 and keep the majority after that.

>> so we talked last hour about red state america, blue state america. you've been seeing a lot of democrats complain about the fact that -- democrats have been confined to the coast. there aren't a lot of people who control middle america districts. it wasn't so long ago that you had a democratic president that won every state up and down the mississippi river. do you get the sense that this year democrats are finding candidates in middle america that may actually be able to represent non-coastal districts a bit better than they have in the past? >> i think democrats have done a reasonably good job of trying to find candidates that will be good fits for districts to make the challenges that they're putting against republican

incumbents really tough ones. it hasn't been the case everywhere but you've got a lot of places where republicans have not faced strong challenges that are suddenly in this tough political environment. they're also facing a candidate on the other side who's a plausible candidate. the reason why a lot of folks in middle america don't gravitate toward the democratic party, it's not just that may disagree over tax rates or size of government. there's a real sense that folks in the other political party have contempt for me so i don't want anything to do with them. i think a lot of folks in middle america feel like the coasts have contempt for them, which is something donald trump was able to tap into. by finding candidates from this community given the flexibility by the national party to focus on the district itself, that makes things much more challenging for republicans trying to hang onto their seats,

which is a little derchts than what we saw in 2010 for republicans when you had a lot of opportunities for pickups. this was the tea party movement moment. they wanted folks who were id l ideologically pure. giving your candidates the ability to be more flexible to fit the district you're in is really crucial for any national party wanting to expand their ranks. >> the democrats from a branding point of view have clearly lost their way. if i annointed you right now chief marketing officer of the democrats, give me your brand going forward. >> that we're fighting for the people and it's a clear contrast between what we're fighting for and what the other side is fighting for. you look at the republicans and it's of the rich by the powerful for the lobbyists.

>> that message -- unfortunately what trump has been brilliant at getting out there is we are the pop yu getting out there is we are the pop ylist party. to just say we're for the people, we've got to do more than that? how do we put more of a sharp edge on that? >> i don't know if it's a sharp edge, but we have the policies to back that up. when i go home and walk the supermarket aisles and talk to everyday people, they want democrats to know or anybody in congress to know what are we going to do to bring down the cost health care, what are we going to do to rebuild america? when you've got a 7,000 squire mile district, you are dodging potholes everywhere you turn, you're seeing the side of roads crumbling. in what are we going to do to rebuild america? and maybe most importantly what

are we going to do to clean up this mess in washington, make sure we don't have so many folks who are self-dealing. we've got to address the corruption before we can get into the real policies. i know that's not like overly sexy, so to speak, but those are the things that people want us to work on. >> kristin, i'm going to throw it back to you. a new cbs poll now 35% are for voting to confirm judge kavanagh, 37% are saying vote against nap against. that's a change of plus seven. what does this poll tell you, and what does it say about judge kavanagh versus the political climate that this nomination exists in? >> i think the nomination right now was already sort of fraught even before the allegations. it was like lly that he was goi

to be confirmed, but it was likely going to be along straight party lines. his numbers were less rosy even than neil gorsuch. when it comes to the supreme court, folks are viewing it through was it my political party who nominated this guy or not. the allegations have raised the profile in a very substantial way of what otherwise might have been a second or third tier issue. i think to the extent that independents are looking at this and especially independent women are having an emotional reaction to say this just isn't right. this isn't just i'm having a rational conversation about tax rates or something. this is something that hits you in your core either as you feel this man has been wronged or you feel this woman has been wronged. i think that makes the situation dicier for republicans, because

you've got a lot of independent women who republicans may have had a strong message, but you've got this other thing that's going to bubble up. it's going to be more of a first tier issue. i don't think that favors republicans. >> thanks for being with us. now to the nearly 60 people who gathered in central's -- 60,000 people who gathered on the great lawn for the global citizen festival, this was a moment of panic when someone stepped on a bottle which made a popping sound, cascaring attendees, some of whom thought the sound sounded like gunshots. as for the day's great music and more important message, let's take a quick look at what concert goers and viewers here

on msnbc saw on saturday. >> hello global citizen! new york city! >> we want to send a message loud and clear to survivors here and all over the world. we hear you! >> we hear you! >> we believe you! >> we want equal justice for dr. christine blasey ford and all victims of sexual assault. >> it's not enough to talk about it or tweet about it. we've got to do something. are we voting everybody? e we vo? ♪

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of an opioid manufacturer or distributor has been sentenced to a single day in jail. as a pharmaceutical industry comes under increased scrutiny, a lot of people are wonder is the "washington post" editorial board recently did, if congress is doing enough to get at one of the root causes of this epidemic. with us now to talk about that and much more, someone who has devoted himself to calling attention to the opoid crisis, best-selling author and host of "america" on crtv, eric bolling. he's alongside deanna de la garza, the mother of singer demi lavoto. also with us, back with us again, founder of the online health newsletter thrive, dr. dave campbell, author of the team formula, a parent's guide to helping your child avoid

substance abuse. i want to get diana and eric in a minute. first, dr. dave, i saw the 60 minute special last night, and even as a guy from florida who knows florida, i was blown away by the fact that something like 500 million opoid tablets came in to the state of florida. pharmaceutical companies flooded this state and guaranteed a health care epidemic. >> this is, now, fortunately getting under control, thanks to action such as state attorney dave aaronburg and even the governor and so many of the legislation over the last few years. florida was the pill mill capital of the united states. it is not now. >> and eric, i'm sure you saw the 60 minutes special last night, and, i mean, if you're a

parent, like yourself, who's lost a child to this epidemic and you see that pharmaceutical companies are flood -- i mean, again, 500 million pills coming into the state of florida. that's happening all across the united states. bad actors with an md at the end of their name basically being pill mills for americans. it's unconscionable. what do we do? what do you tell the president to do when you're talking to him? >> well, very good question, joe, in fact, i did watch that. i did see a doctor who had little or no remorse after prescribing at one point 1,000 opoid tablets to a pregnant woman. people were dying. we're trying to create awareness. yes, pharmaceuticals have been pumping opoid pills into doctors. what are doctors going to do? prescribe them, make sales. doctors at fault, pharmaceuticals at fault. also, there's a lot of illegal opioids coming across the border. my son passed away after taking

one pill. he was in college. he bought what he thought was a xanax. it was laced with fentanyl. a chinese knockoff. and it killed him that night. what i think is important, you know, you talk about dem yi la voto. diana called me and said, look, i want to get involved in this. this is a scourge that's killing too many of our children. how can i do this? she said, as soon as demi's safe and feeling okay, we're going to team up. that's what we did. i think the awareness that people have to understand. here are two parents who, like any other parents in the world, love our kids, right, and things happen. you have to be vigilant. you have to be aware. that's what i wanted to bring diana on, to create awareness to millions of people so we can save some lives. >> and diana, it is an ongoing

battle. anyone with a loved one who has an addiction problem knows that it is for a lifetime. it is a fight that you battle five minutes at a time. >> addiction is actually a disease. it's not a moral choice. like so many people may have been led to think. and so that's also something that, you know, i want to raise awareness and let people know that the addiction that is fueling the opoid crisis is something that needs to be looked at and, you know, provide ways for people to get help. >> joe -- >> so the point -- >> -- that have had addiction problems and it is -- boy, i'll tell you what, eric, it is sad. you realize it's a disease and it's something that everybody around -- around the loved one, they have to come together and

be patient and try to help any way they can. >> so joe, you were amazing when we lost our son. you called so many times. but here's the point. you have two different situations. you're talking from addiction at one point. you're talking an accidental overdose in another situation. we need to remove the stigma from addiction and overdosing and drug dependent. we need to make people aware it can touch anyone. i can't tell you how many parents have said i thought my son or daughter was just too popular, too smart, too white, too black, too gay, too straight, whatever, but they were touched by it. opoid and drugs. i think that's the force, that's what we can do. i'll be honest with you, i think congress isn't doing enough. i've been pushing them to do more to remove the stigma. they're not very good at removing the stigma. that's really important. >> well, as long as the justice

department, as long as congress only focuses on doctors who are bad actors, dr. david, instead of focusing on the pharmaceutical companies that are pumping pills into states, that are making a massive profit on it, we're not going to get to the root cause of this problem. >> it's an evolving problem also, joe. 2018, we're seeing a dramatic spike coming from china, up through mexico. literally with postal services bringing in drugs. the new bill does address that. this is an evolving crisis that is much different today than it was in 2010. we've seen synthetic opioids now responsible for 30,000 deaths last year. that's dramatic. 72,000 total deaths. but 30,000 fentanyl and some of the fentanyl analogs. >> can i just jump in here?

i sat down with kirstjen nielsen, the homeland security security secretary, and she said there are funds for upgrading how the postal services views packages coming through. again, it's really, really crazy. they need to work on that. they're working on it but they need to focus a lot more attention. >> eric, i haven't spoken to you in a long time. your loss, i can't even fathom, brother. >> thooshank you, donny. >> i have a 15-year-old. we have talks where we'll say things. the best i can say is i know you want to experiment, everything in moderation. what do i say to my daughter because i know -- the thing that happened to your son could happen to anybody. >> i had that conversation with eric chase 100 times.

just in moderation, just be careful. >> give me a better playbook. >> i got this dad. what's your son's name or daughter's name? >> london. >> london. one pill can kill. look at my story. my son bought one xanax, sophomore in college, great kid, lots of friends. took one. they need to understand that taking one pill from the wrong place can kill. there's another kid at the university of -- denver university about 20 miles from colorado, 19-year-old, son of a military -- a navy -- i think an admiral. died the same night. it was likely a bad batch of xanax laced with fentanyl. one pill. you put it in your mouth. you don't tonight know what's g happen. >> you look at diana's challenges. it has to do with addiction. something we've all dealt with loved ones before. you look at what happened with eric and it was one pill. it's what i tell my kids after

talking to eric, one pill can kill. but for those on it is a diction side of this, which is such a problem, there is hope. talk about -- talk about what's being done right now to help people get off of offopioids. >> prevention falls both on the young people to prevent the naive kid who's never used opioids. very importantly on the treatment and recovery side. so giving recovery support services. and making sure everyone understands that this new batch of pills that may be used for fun are actually poison now and they weren't ten years ago. >> and narcen you say -- >> the antidote is widely available. it needs to be made more widely available so we can save lives. so we can offer recovery support services to those valuable individuals that have just come on hard times. >> all right, eric, thank you so

much as always. come back. diana, thank you. and dr. dave campbell, the author of the team formula, thank you as well. the team formula is a critical resource for parents that are dealing with this difficult issue. take a look at it. that does it for us this morning. we now turn it over to stephanie ruhle who picks up the coverage. stephanie. >> i'm stephanie ruhle. starting with a lack of clarity. democrats want more information about the scope of the fbi probe into sexual misconduct allegations against supreme court nominee brett kavanaugh. as the white house insists it is staying out of the way. >> for them to limit the fbi as to the scope and who they're going to question. i wanted to use the word farce. >> the white house is not my cr micromanaging this process. >> the u.s. and canada have reached a last-minute breakthrough agreement for a nafta replacement, but what will it mean for middle class amic