so the senate could be a different story than the house. >> always appreciate that breakdown. we'll see you in a little bit on "morning joe." to all of our viewers, you can get caught up by reediading ax newsletter. hallie, stand by. "morning joe" starts right now. >> i'm just saying, i'm not a drinker. i can honestly say i've never had a beer in my life, okay? >> right. >> it's one of my only good traits. i don't drink. whenever they're looking for something good, i say i've never had a glass of alcohol. i've just -- for whatever reason. can you imagine if i had what a mess i'd be? i'd be the world's worst. >> that's the president of the united states yesterday in the rose garden. welcome to "morning joe" on this tuesday, october 2nd. i'm willie gieist alongside kasy hunt. we're not doing the lightning bolt apparently. >> apparently they don't love

you enough. >> there it is. better late than never. also with us this morning, mike barnacle, kattie kay, rick tyler, richer ars haas, higheid prisbella and eugene robinson. joe and mika will be back tomorrow. we have a full house with us today. before we dig into kavanaugh, i want to ask you real quick about president trump's usmca to replace nafta. what do you think? >> it's a good day for the united states. president found his own away to supporting trade. it's not quite as radically difference as he claims, but it's progress.

so all in all, a good day. how different is it from nafta? >> it's modernized. because nafta, 25 years ago, there wasn't even digital commerce. if the president wants, he can go and expand trade agreements. >> and the president ironically acknowledged that tpp laid the foundation for what they announced yesterday. we'll talk more about that coming up in just a bit, but let's start with the latest in the fbi investigation. supreme courtel nom nominee bre kavanaugh.

president trump now says he has no problem letting the fbi investigate the allegations made against brett kavanaugh. >> what i said is let the senate decide whatever they want to do sock with me and also the fbi. i think the fbi should do what they have to do to get to the answer. >> we'll told the white house now has given the green light to investigators to interview anyone they think necessary, as long as the review is wrapped up by the end of this week. that according to two people briefed on the matter. sources familiar with the investigation tell "the washington post," the fbi will not look into kavanaugh's drinking in his younger years or examine the statements he made about drinking during his testimony to see if those answers were accurate or misleading. the fbi has interviewed mark judge, patrick "p.j." smyth,

leland kaiser and deborah ramirez. so hallie jackson, let me start with you on all this. how does the white house feel this is going? it seems like they granted the fbi investigation last week and now they're trying to expand it. it feels like they're trying to cover all their bases here. >> because they kind of have to because that is what senator jeff flake, lisa murkowski and others have to see. especially because of the corner that he put himself in starting over the weekend, right? when he says yes, i want the fbi to have free reign. okay. did that trickle down to the fbi? what we've learned over the last 18 hours is that it did. but the white house -- and let's not go crazy. they're not giving the fbi total cart blanch here. there are still some conditions on this investigation. it still has to be wrapped up by the end of the week. but they're saying yes, talk to whoever you want to.

follow up on the leads you happen to need to follow up on. but when it comes to these accusations, dr. christine blasey ford is one thing. the president has called her a very fine woman and credible. it is the other accusations, including julie swetnick, that.republicans have real concerns about. they simply believe swetnick's allegations are not credible. i think that's where you're going to start to see the story to go from the white house perspective. the president is very confident. he doesn't just say it publicly. this is reflected in conversations that i've had with my sources. he does think that kavanaugh is going to make it through even given this week long delay here. it does put mitch mcconnell in a bit of a tricky spot. he talked about plowing through. now he has to finesse the vote.

>> how firm is this fbi deadline? is it set in cement? during the course of an investigation, you ask someone about judge kavanaugh's relationship with others and they say, well, i don't really know, but here are two or three people who do know. so that keeps the ball of string going. but how firm is the deadline? >> yeah. you keep going down rabbit holes, right? here is the thing. senator jeff flake specifically said he wanted this wrapped up on friday. there is not a lot of desire to extend this and drag it out in their view, so to speak. so i think there will be serious political pressure to have this finished by the end of this week. the fbi -- when you look at jim comey, for example, he said, say, seven days of professional investigators are about better

thanes nos days. you can't be putting it shot clock on. that's idiotic, in his words. you can't stand it beyond friday. >> in anticipation of what this fbi inquiry may or may not find, you've had some democrats calling it a sham because of the time limit. on the other side, how are republican egg feeling about the way this plays out? is it providing him cover now to have a clean vote later next week? >> i don't think that there's a sense that the time limit on this is a problem for the republicans who matter. all of the fbi, jim comey among them, but our own analysts say, look, the fbi can do this in a week.

clearly, there was pushback yesterday. jeff flake was in new hampshire. he talked about how he was on the phone and pushed for them to actually reopen the scope of this investigation. but the deadline is real. this was mitch mcconnell on the floor yesterday. >> so soon, i expect that we'll hear from the conclusions of the expert prosecutor who questioned bothness witnesses a the last week aren't reliable or that the fbi's investigation was not endless enough for their liking. maybe we'll hear the real issue is not they uncorroborated allegations of misconduct after all, but rather the fact that judge kavanaugh -- now listen to this -- drank peer in high school and in college. their goal posts keep shifting. but their goal hasn't moved an inch, not an inch. the goal has been the same is

all along. and so let me make it very clear. the time for endless delay and obstruction has come to the a close. judge kavanaugh's nomination is out of committee. we're considering it here on the floor. and, mr. president, we'll be voting this week. >> so just one point, this is still not outside the range of an unusual time period for a supreme court nomination. but what you saw there from senator mcconnell is the reality is all that matters is whether or not they believe this investigation was legitimate. >> rick, mcconnell said he has a procedural vote scheduled for later this week. he would like to vote by this

weekend or at least early next week. they don't seem to think that this investigation will change their minds one way or another. >> whose minds? >> mitch mcconnell and republicans, how they vote on kavanaugh. >> that's been sort of the problem all along, like we don't know who to believe. is the fbi investigation going to change things? republicans think no and democrats think maybe. but why donated we just wa-- do just wait for the fbi investigation. it is a limited investigation. brett kavanaugh had been investigated by the fbi multiple times. i've never heard where, okay, this is what he said during the confirmation. let's go back and check all those things. that's sort of new territory. that's never been done before. specifically, did judge

kavanaugh drink to excess, did he lie about that and if he did, we'll find a new way to get him from being on the court. i think that's unfair. >> part of me wishes we could get a freeze on the next few days and not talk about this one because we have to let the fbi play this one out. every single incident we're hearing, text messages that he may or may not have sent after hearing about deborah ramirez's allegations, the democrats would say, it's possible then that he perjured himself and passed out. every single of reporting is becoming more of the partisan

type. it's not getting us closes to what jeff flake may have intended when he ordered this investigation. >> can i quickly comment on this. i hear the democrats say this is a job interview, not a criminal trial, yet they seem to be holding the fbi to a level of criminality. you can't have it both ways. i don't think that judge kavanaugh -- if he's trying to talk to someone to save his reputation, i think that's different than affecting a criminal trial. president trump took on democrats last night at a rally in tennessee. let's listen. >> this election is a choice between a republican party that is building our future and a democrat party that is trying to burn our future down.

the democrats only know how to obstruct and destroy. as we've seen in recent weeks, democrats are willing to do anything and to hurt anyone to get their way like they're doing with judge kavanaugh. they've been trying to destroy him since the very first second he was announced because they know that judge kavanaugh will follow the constitution as written. and he's a good man. great student, great intellect. never had a problem. all of a sudden, oh, let's go back to high school. and then they want to take a lot longer with the fbi. no, the fbi, they should take -- by the way, if we took ten years, they would want more time. but they want to take a lot longer. but dianne feinstein, she had

this letter for months and she didn't reveal it until everything was finished. then she revealed it. then she said we want more time. they're trying to destroy a very fine person and we can't let it happen. we can't let it happen. >> gene robinson, he put that together with president trump in the rose garden yesterday saying certainly if they find something, i'm going to take that into consideration. in other words, if the fbi comes out with something so damning about brett kavanaugh, i will recontrol my nomination of kavanaugh. but it's a far cry from where he was two weeks ago when the white house had him on message. >> rally trump is always kind of different from other trump. and that was certainly the case yesterday. earlier in the day, especially the rose garden remarks, president trump was kind of playing good cop to mitch mcconnell's bad cop.

he was saying, yes, the u.s. is doing what it was supposed to do. look, the -- there's somebody whose interests need to be protected here and that's dr. christine blasey ford. she came in good faith and testified in a way that members almost universally said they found credible and believable and so if it was credible and believable, they ought to start believing her. ultimately, that's what those senators are going to be looking at. they heard a credible and specific account of of an attack that she says occurred. they're going to have to decide. >> katty mentioned it, the judge and his team were communicating

behind the scenes with friends to refute the claim. according to text messages object stained by nbc news, heidi, take us through what you found out. >> right, willie. so the question now as the white house says it is going to allow a no holds barred investigation is are the people who they think credible information going to be heard? yesterday we spoke with a woman who is a mutual friend of both deborah ramirez and brett kavanaugh who says she has very relevant information. specifically, she said she is in the possession of a series of text messages with another friend who was in their tight circle of friends at yale and that those text messages show a few things. first of all, they show that brett kavanaugh was aware that this story about debbie ramirez was coming, that he may have

known well in advance and he was trying to control the narrative around it. there are specific text messages from her friend, from the one friend to the other, saying that brett specifically was asking her to do things, including to track down a photo of a two of them at a previous wedding they had attended and that brett was pushing the other friend to come forward and to refute debbie ramirez's story. it's important to say the judiciary committee saying it was something debbie ramirez was pushing for. second of all, remember the context of this. these are two women, two friends who have no intention of making this information public and,

yet, the one is texting to the other that at that wedding, which was ten years after the alleged incident, that debbie ramirez was, quote, acting very odd, that she clung to her friend and that she was trying to avoid brett kavanaugh, that there was something weird going on there. now the class made said with these allegations coming out, it all makes sense to me. another things in terms of the reporting, willie, that we found out that was very odd is that apparently at the time around september 22nd when brett kavanaugh was desperately seeking this photo, three days later he was asked specifically whether he attended this hearing and he said he had no recollection. so something there that needs to be looked into by the fbi. at this point, we're not sure if it will be. >> heidi, can i clear something up. do these text messages

definitively knew that "the new yorker "article was coming out? >> when he was asked by orrin hatch, he said orrin hatch asked him when did you find out about the story? he said when he read it in the new yorker. in the text, brett was specifically mentioned as someone who was approaching hiss classmate personally and asking her to come forward to refute the story. other references in the text messages in advance of the story referred to brett's guy, brett's team,i team, asking for information that predated the publication of the story. >> specifically in reference to the story that brett kavanaugh was asking for this action to be

taken? the text would say that he knew the report was coming? >> no. he didn't say, hey, there's this new yorker story, i need you to come out. he was seeking information. in the second case, yes, he was asking his classmate to specifically refute what debbie ramirez was about to say. >> rick, are you surprised at all that a nominee or a candidate or someone in the world of politics wouldn't know the story before it hits the ground beforehand? >> yes, you're going to hear about the story because reporters call around to people that you know and those people will alert you. >> if this were a criminal case, it would be tampering. but this is not a criminal case.

in his testimony, he did not say the first time i saw it was when i read about it in the paper. he said i was aware of it because there was a reporter working on the story. >> that's an interesting distinction. >> it's important, though. one suggests that he would have lied and then there were the texts. >> i could have said i learned about it in the new yorker. >> well, we have to rack it up somewhere. >> right. but i think he was referring to the fact that that story was out there and he was aware of it. he didn't say -- >> i mumbled something before he addresses the point of the question. >> i personally would like to watch it again. >> why don't we do that. we'll get the tape and come back to you. heidi, hallie, thanks for being up with us this morning. still ahead on "morning joe," president trump gets a

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high-speed connections. is the world ready for me? through internet essentials, comcast has connected more than six-million low-income people to low-cost, high-speed internet at home. i'm trying to do some homework here. so they're ready for anything. joining us now, the co-founder of axios, jim vandehyde. how does the president trump rip up nafta and replace it with this new approach? >> the approach that he uses, you have to give him credit. it does work at times. he was able to get rid of nafta, change the name. obviously put together a deal that's more favorable to america than the previous one. even chuck schumer praised the deal.

that is a win. he trashed trudeau. he created a lot of ruckus, but ended up getting a deal. you look at the economy, look at how the markets soared yesterday in reaction to the trade deal but continues to soar every day. a lot of that is a tax deal. it continues to pump money into the system, keeping consumer confidence high, keeping joblessness low. and then you you just look at his approach and it kind of works in terms of what he does at press conferences and at this event. he so controls the public perspective. i think one of the reasons that republicans stay committed to him, he's at 80% plus with republicans, and there's some evidence that that number might be moving up, they think back to the campaign and they look at

him now and they say he's kind of delivering. the rest of the stuff is noise. >> that's what the white house is saying, promise delivered on. >> to some extent, some is forgiven with because it's a deal that helps everybody. on the other hand, this is a very different united states. we don't cut anybody any slack. the fact that they're allies orrer part nrs doesn't count for much of anything. but the president said at the u.n., we believe in america first. you should believe in canada first, india first, you name it first. this is a very different world

he's trying to bring about where everybody shly charts their own course. but in the larger sense, i think when we look back on this period, we're going to say he was yanking the thread of a lot of the fabric of a lot of people. he is breaking a lot of the relationships or at least weakening them and in a lot of cases, we're going to find we have a lot less influence. this is a transactional approach to the world. it's not a relational approach. this is something much narrower, much more calculated. they're not going to take our interests into account the same way. >> we're going to get into the nis nitty-grit nitty-gritty of the new trade deal in just a bit. but first, do you think we're going to see more of that? he was a guy bathing in the attention that he got from both

of these press conferences that he got within the last week. >> i think you're going to see a lot more of that. i think bill shine and a lot of others in the white house see that he's more comfortable, that he can only the news cycle. he likes doing it and he's able to shape these things on his terms. he feels like if you look at his language in the last couple of event webs the one in tennessee and the one in west virginia, he's now saying, you know what? this whole election, it's about me. so if you don't get out and vote, you're not voting for me. he believes that will rile republicans, that that will sort of get him out of the slumber or the false belief that democrats are doing well. and he believes if he goes to each one of these states, if he stays on tv, if he's on fox, if he's doing press conferences, that he can jack up republican turnout. we'll see if that is true. the truth is, we don't really know, but if you look at the polls overnight, what's happening in north dakota, what's happening in missouri, what's happening in new jersey although that's probably about

menendez and his own baggage, you are seeing republicans doing better. conservatives are rallying around trump or kavanaugh or the media or whatever it is, that's helping. so i think trump is all in on trump as always. we'll see if that cranks up the conservative base. >> republicans may be on the ballot this fall, but really, i'm the one who is on the ballot as the president said yesterday. still ahead, we'll dig further into what is in the new tra trade deal with mexico and canada. trade deal with mexico and canada [ beep ] first man is "the best movie of the year."

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and i plan to sign the agreement by the end of november. i then will submit it for

approval to congress where in theory, there should be no frubfrub trouble, but anything you submit to congress could be trouble, no matter what. they'll say, well, trump likes, therefore, we're not going to approve it. without tariffs, we wouldn't be talking about a deal. just for those babies out there that are talking about tariffs. oh, please, don't charge t tariffs. without tariffs, we wouldn't be standing here. so because of the power of tariffs and the power that we have with tariffs, we in many cases won't even have to use them. that's how powerful they are and how good they are. >> president trump discussing america's new trade agreement with canada and mexico yesterday. and the chances of the deal beat ral phied by congress got a significant boost. chuck schumer said in part, as someone who voted against nafta

and opens dollars it for many years, i knew it needed fixing. the president deserves praise for taking large steps to improve it. however, one final agreement needs looked at. joining us now, josh barrow. good morning. are you one of the babies that the president is talking about with tariffs or is that richard haas? >> that's all of us, isn't it? >> yes. we got richard's first blush for this new deal. what's your take on it? >> i think the biggest significance of this and the revisions of the south korea trade agreement that the president announced a week earlier are basically the president is now an owner of the global trading system that he used to complain about. the deal is very similar to what it was before. but now he has to go out there and say that it's great, it's fantastic.

so going forward, we have to -- through his further years as president, i think we can expect him to have to stabbed up for these deals that he used to criticize, so now they're his. so i think in a way that's a big win. now he has to go out there and defend the thing he gets to criticize. >> and that's why, richard, he says this is a good day. >> the president has basically become a de facto globalist. >> uh-oh. >> after all this trashing, this is 25% different than nafta. it's a welcome step in the right direction. and you're right, essentially any trade deal he didn't negotiate is awful. now any trade deal he negotiates is good. i hope he goes on. i'd love to see him ultimately have a trade deal with japan, with europe. that would be a good thing. and these deals, god knows, have to be modernized. they have to be improved. but he's come a long way with.

this does represent, in a very ugly way, where he got to the a better point. yes started the year by going to davos, hanging out with all of those globalists and ends the year with all these new trade deals. >> we're going to sink it here if it's not terrible. >> it shows how good he is at branding, right? why was the name change so important to him? >> all of the people that voted in these midwestern states, they know what nafta. now he can go out and say we don't have nafta any more. we have usmca. i keep thing about the united states marine corps. i keep getting confused. so now he can say oh, no, we have some much better thing. second of all, the labor provisions, the democrat stoert h has lined up way more than republican leaders. >> this is like ripping off the

nafta page, doing little edits and adden an appendix. doesn't this give automakers the incentive to automate faster? is it really going to lead to higher wages for americans because the mexicans now have to put in labor that's $16 an hour, which was still out of synch with the united states? it's closer, but is it really going to lead to manufacturing? >> that's the real driver that's going to change jobs and all that, but still, the way you put it is not harsh. it's an edited agreement. this is the trade pact formerly known as nafta. if this allows the president to take ownership, then that's a good thing.

>> and maybe we can do that. >> like these auto rules, for example, you have the fanfare around this $16 minimum wage, but it's only for workers who make x percent of the car. if they make it with parts from nafta, they're meeting that threshold. so a lot of the cars made in mexico, they meet that requirement because of other content that they have that's made by higher wage content elsewhere. so some of them will decide to raise the tariff rather than to pay the wages. >> and the bigger benefit, it seems to me, is that it gets mexico and america on the same page when it comes to who everybody recognizes as opposed

to america going it alone and trying to take on china themselves. we have to see what he does with the european union, but it's much better than america alienating its allies. >> gene robinson, will not the president view this as an affirmation of his style, which is to say he muscled around justin trudeau, he went after one of our close allies, shocked people in america, shocked people around the world, and here is what he got, the new deal that he promised on the campaign trail that nafta will be gone. will he not see this as an affirmation of his style? >> totally. he is see it as a indication of the new deal. he loves tariffs.

and as you know, to move full steam ahead, knock over the furniture and break the china and then you have a deal the that everyone can love. >> in this case, it's a modest improvement on nafta and something that probably is not objectionable at all. but it does get something. sometimes it doesn't work. but this time he's going to claim, i was right. >> how much of this is a message to china, as well, richard? and what is china thinking as he watches this play out?

>>. >> yes, we're pressing them on trade with tariffs and there's a whole range of behaviors we might find unacceptable. they have forced companies into joint ventures. they haven't played the game by the rules. but we're now broadening the dispute with china. the chinese just canceled our secretary of defense. this relationship, i think, is probably the most important bilateral relationship in the world. this relationship is in its worst shape in modern times. this is a relationship without a foundation. the economics used to be the floor. that's what used to make the u.s./chinese relationship tick for 30 years. this relationship i think is on the edge of a very different cold war.

the united states and china are increasingly at logger heads, begin, trade but now it's expanding to everything. taiwan is in the mix again. we're seeing it on military issues in the south china sea. sth a big, big story that i think is not getting the attention it deserves. >> and a big part of the advances that china is making in that story and particularly ai and facial recognition, for a long time, america felt the chinese were just copying. that's an old story. the innovation today is happening in china and they are ahead of where the u.s. is on critical issues surrounding ai. that puts china at an advantage in terms of tech. >> you can add to richard's list, 48 hours ago in the china sea, china's warship coming within 45 yards of the u.s. destroyer saying the united states is becoming increasingly

aggressive. that's adding another layer of tension the to the relationship partnership. >> and then you have the president yesterday saying he expects china is going to he be helpful to us on north korea. i think in a sense he has not picked his shots here. >> xi jinping has a lot of politics. the chinese stock market is down this year as much as our stock market is up. so this is just a space worth watching. >> good stuff this morning from the anti-tariff baby corner. well done. thank you very much. good to see you. >> coming up, best selling authors walter isaacson and lewis. "morning joe" is coming right back. lewis. "morning joe" is coming right back

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joe". we'll take a breather here and talk some baseball. playoff baseball. regular season tiebreakers. >> i don't want to talk about playoff baseball. >> orioles finished 61 out. >> 115 losses. >> in chicago -- >> is this the earliest anyone failed to qualify. >> they were out in march. >> in may. >> when pitchers and catchers reported. lorenzo cain gave the brewers a win. milwaukee awaits for their opponents for the start of the division series on thursday. chicago now will host the rockies in tonight's nl wild card game following colorado's loss to dodgers in yesterday's

tiebreaker. los angeles shut out the rockies until the ninth inning until bellinger and munsey launched two-run home runs on a 5-2 win. l.a. sixth straight division crowd. dodgers will face the braves. yankees host a's in a one game playoff. there's debate in the papers today about who the yankees should start. "new york post" says severino, "new york times" says happ. >> i would go with happ. i would preface by saying we've never need baseball more than we need it right now. joe maddon, the iconic manager of the yanks had the all time quote. sunday night when they tied and had to play a playoff game yesterday. it's i wanting baseball is such a perfect game in some ways that

it takes 162 to not decide anything. >> it comes down to one afternoon. who do you start tomorrow night for the yankees. >> mr. happ. one game season now. worry about who goes to fenway. >> fenway, you throw everybody. >> i'm a sever iino guy. if he doesn't do well -- >> i stopped watching baseball this season. i love baseball. i stopped. >> gene robinson, have we seen the last of bryce harper in the nationals uniform? >> you're trying to depress me. i think kind of maybe. everybody is talking as if we might have seen the last of bryce harper in a nationals uniform. that would be such a shame. he's such a star and a great player. a character. and a draw for the team.

but look they've had bryce harper, they had great pitching for years now and they can win a playoff series, much less win a pennant or a world series. frankly they should have. >> gene robinson always good to see you. richard haas we'll see you tomorrow night. coming up did brett kavanaugh tell senators the truth about when he learned of allegations from his second excuser in the neerk. we'll compare some new reporting from nbc news to the tape of his testimony. plus in tennessee last night, mississippi tonight the president takes a campaign swing through the south. we'll take a look at new polling from that region including a red state that's looking a little purple these days. "morning joe" is coming right back. g right back from the very beginning ... it was always our singular focus. to do whatever it takes, use every possible resource.

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go ahead. sure. she is shocked i picked her. like in a state of shock. that's okay. go ahead. go ahead. >> president trump's exchange with abc's reporter in the rose garden. several times in that news conference the president tried to dictate which questions reporters would be allowed to ask. welcome back to "morning joe". i'm willie geist alongside

capitol hill correspondent host of kasie d.c., hunt. michael barnacle and katty kay. republican communication strategist rick tyler. joining us the professor of history at tulane university walter isaacson whose biography of leonardo da vinci is out in paper back and jeffrey goldberg. joe and mika will be back tomorrow. walter, i want to start with you and get your view where we are in this kavanaugh nomination. the president announcing yesterday he expanded it, the fbi can talk to whom ever it wants to talk to as long as that investigation is complete by friday. do you view kavanaugh as more or less less likely to be nominated than he was a week ago? >> more likely to be confirmed. i do think you needed a little bit of a break in this fever.

this was getting, the whole country. you won't find out whether or not in an fbi investigation exactly what happened. we'll take a breather. they will investigate. there's a lot of breaks recently in the past couple of weeks, even as usmca, the new trade agreement. you know, the problem for me trump's bullying hard on nasty tactics, which we just saw another clip of it, sometimes work. and this gets you conflicted because i think this trade deal is a good thing. i think that it's going to succeed probably in the kavanaugh case. and so the fact it can work so well is a little disconcerting to me. >> you're saying in the case of trade where he pushed justin trudeau around. >> he bullied him. >> got the result he wanted and result you and others who wanted

free trade wanted as well. >> it was pretty good agreement. did better things. he bullied trudeau around and it worked. he pushed kavanaugh, i assume, to do that, i found grotesque testimony where he blamed it on people who wanted to get back for the clintons and everything else. and that seems to have worked. so it's always a bit good to see the country having things that work but also bad when it's incivility and bullying. >> shouldn't we ask whether in both of those instances there's a potential down side that then comes back to bite from us that tactic? now bullying, you may have got the trade deal. it's a little bit better than nafta but basically the same. in the protest justin trudeau has been bullied by the president of the united states. he won't forget that. mat will be part of the american-canadian relationship going forward. it will have an impact on the relationship in the way it does if you have a massive blowout

with somebody who is meant to be a friend. in the case of kafka, maybe you can bully somebody through and get kavanaugh to adopt that tone during the committee hearing but there are senators who are concerned about that tone, who didn't particularly like the way he spoke to amy klobuchar, the way he spoke to dianne feinstein. even on the republican side there was some queasiness about adopting that tone. we shouldn't ignore the fact, there are costs to some of this behavior. >> absolutely. i mean i'm one of those, i guess you would call cry babies like you who think hey it shouldn't have done this way. yeah, it can come back. but we're saying for two years this will come back to haunt and it hasn't yet. i'm just saying, i feel a little disconcerted that his tactics which i find a bit repelling, have kind of worked in the past

couple of weeks and in some ways some of the fever has broken. >> so jeffrey goldberg, where are we right now in this kavanaugh story? we're at the point now where people are debating the definition of blacking out when you drink. we're going back to 1975 a police report whether or whether or not judge kavanaugh threw ice at somebody at a bar heaven forbid. what do you see? >> i'm waiting for squee to show up. all answers will be delivered. i'm with walter. i think the momentum is behind this nomination. barring a new revelation, some dispositive piece of information about what happened that night or that day. i find it hard to believe that the three wavering republicans will do anything but vote to confirm. and, you know, it's funny, i woke up this morning thinking along the lines of walter's thinking. even more so.

i thought wait, trump could win re-election. i thought to myself, you know, we're talking about -- no, i haven't had that thought in a couple of months because it's been so chaotic. but, you know, he got the best of the canadian prime minister. obviously there are people in my universe in the foreign policy universe would like him to get the best of north koreans not canada. but you go to your low-hanging fruit. you go for your easy marks. but, you know, there is a brute effectiveness to this method of governance. i think you're exactly right. you know, the performance by kavanaugh in that hearing room was directed at making sure that donald trump stayed behind him. donald trump wanted to see a fighter and he got a fighter. this is not -- we'll see what happens. i think it's heading towards confirmation at this moment.

>> i agree. >> let's kind of keep this discussion going because it's very interesting and jeffrey the point you raised about you think that donald trump could get re-elected, i would put on the table that if the election were held today donald trump would be re-elected. but let me ask this question. what is happening to this country when we have a president of the united states who last night goes to tennessee or mississippi but he's going to a couple of other states this week, a president of the united states who in the midst of all this clamorous events going on in this country, takes to the country like an arsonist. to burn down another political party. to vilify people individually. and as a country now where it's no longer democrats versus republicans, it's now coastals versus the inner country. it's obviously liberals versus conservatives.

but now we've taken another step. it's now women versus men. and all of it is fed by the president of the united states and on the front page of the "new york times" yesterday there's a story "migrant children moved under cover of darkness to a texas tent city." >> we're not even talking about this. >> is this who we are? is this who we are becoming as a country? does this fuel donald trump's re-election? >> yeah. i think that's the big question. and i think the next election will probably turn, if we get another candidate, if the democrats nominate another candidate. i would hope it would be on this question, which is are we a better country than this? are we more civil than this? because the notion of a president winning by dividing the country is problematic and i think you got most of this nation saying let's take a breather now, let's come back together, let's calm things down. i want to turn to jeffrey.

jeff, i used to be your partner as you know in this atlantic festival that you're doing. i would love to hear some of the people you're going to have at the festival this year and i know you're coming down to new orleans to visit me in a week or two and have dinner with mitch landrieu and think of which way this country is going. >> president landrieu. >> that's fine, secretary of state goldberg. go ahead. >> ambassador pakistan, maybe. that wouldn't be the worse. so we do have -- we got most of the senate it seems coming. lindsey graham tomorrow will be interesting. i'm talking to hillary clinton today. chris christie who gives the feeling of where the republican party is and what's going on. these issues are actually simulating thoughts about what i want to talk to christie about,

bullying and division and all of these topics that mike is bringing up. authors, tara westover. a bunch of people are coming through. we're focused on a lot on democracy and the future of the constitution. it's going to be an excite be time in the next couple of days here in washington over that. but we do have kamala harris, jeff flake is speaking. so we might -- we're going to have plenty of opportunities here at the atlantic to ask people deciding kavanaugh's fate what they are thinking in real-time. >> mike, what you were talking about this idea of civility and what we need as a country. there's a huge debate among democrats right now, if you're talking about whether trump will win re-election it depends who they nominate go against him. they want somebody in the party that acts like he does. i think you see it, michael avenatti picking up on that or

trying to. there's tlengs with those who say yes we want to return to civility. will that animate enough people to take the president down? >> we don't know. we'll find that out. listen, i'm old, right? so this is not the country i want going forward for my children. >> i'm young. >> this is not the country i want. i want the country that is generous, that is forward looking, that is compassionate, that takes care people, that takes care of our own, the people amongst us. >> that brings us together. >> yeah. i don't want a president of the united states -- i don't want a president who literally takes to the country to twist and divide, who takes the truth and scorns it, who takes individuals and burns them at the stake because they happen to be democrat or happen to pose him. that's not the country i want.

>> that's the kind of supreme court justice you want. to answer your question to me would be the perfect stump speech to win a democratic nomination. whoever gives that stump speech will be -- i hope it's barnacle running. he can win with new hampshire until they find his high school yearbook. you're right, kasie. that type of message will be opposed by a democrat. >> 2016, look how trump ran those debates. you got to have somebody who can stand up and go toe to toe in that debate format. we've seen how he runs debates. how he talks about them and comes on full aggression. someone who stands there preaching civility and trump has in his weaponry he can say look i got the trade deal, i got my supreme court justices through. my style works.

this prechg aching for civility for globalist chumps. >> the president talked about potential 2020 candidates. >> the democrats can no longer be trusted with your power and with their power. you can't let it happen. they have moved so far left that pocahontas is considered a conservative. that's right. elizabeth warren. she said she's considering a run for the presidency. please, please run. how about that group, biden. biden. we call him 1% biden. until obama took him off the trash heap he couldn't do anything. tough guy. he's a tough guy. he's a real genius. i want to challenge him to a fight behind the barn. oh, would i love that.

wouldn't that be good? >> you can get a little bit of a window on who the president may be worried about running against in joe biden when he brings him up. i believe he would love to run against elizabeth warren but not against joe biden. >> joe biden can sort of go toe to toe, not diminish himself to the point that trump does with pocahontas and the rest of it, but he's lunch bucket joe. he can mix it up. he gives very good speeches. he's been at this a long time. i think -- i don't know exactly where the country is going but i think the country wants to settle it out. the pendulum swings both ways. my inclination, the democrats if they put up somebody who wants to be like trump -- the reason marco rubio failed so miserably because we don't expect marco rubio to act like an idiot. we wekt donald trump to act like an idiot. if you had somebody who was

competent -- i'll agree with what you were saying walter about the president is winning in a certain sense. politically he is. i'm not only a political person i'm a policy person. this nafta duh if we can call it that. it's a rebranding. what richard haas said he has joined the globalists and convinced his base he ripped up nafta. that's a remarkable thing. >> i do think too that your point that the american pendulum swings is just totally true since arthur schlesinger wrote it 70 years ago. we always gravitate to what we just didn't have and are yearning for. so that's why i'm hoping we will gravitate back to the mike barnacle view. >> i remember having this conversation with you on the

street in washington, d.c. you probably don't remember it about ten years ago. you told me american politics always swings back to the middle. in the recent days, i think walter told me it will come back to the middle. >> i'll let barnacle say. >> jeffrey, you're in washington, d.c. you work in washington, d.c. the atlantic festival will be held in washington, d.c. you'll be surrounded by people, democrats specifically who never figured out why donald trump won. and i don't think they still have. i mean he won because he's an expert in resentment. he won because in the years 2008-2009 this country was filled up with people who lost nearly everything. they lost their homes. many lost their jobs. many lost their pensions if they still have them or their 401(k)s. these were the same people, many of whom who risked losing their sons and daughters in a 17 year

long war and the democrats, shame on them, never addressed what has happened to them and they still haven't. so your going to raise issues like this with the democrats? >> absolutely. let me note for the record that we do actually have republicans here in washington, d.c. not just on this and white house. we have republicans that are still somewhat of a mixed area. i worry about that, like you do. look, you know, i do want to raise those questions with the democrats. i mean the problem for democrats, the problem for liberal, is kind of tendency on the part of some people, just some people towards a kind of compulsive conde scention for people who vote for trump. you have to deal with people as they are. you have to deal with their hopes and dreams like everything else. that's a problem.

that's the coastal elite problem, if you will. what i would say about this currents conversation, you know the idea that the democrats are going to outtrump trump in 20 is implausible not only for a specific reason. i can think of a single democrat in the field who can do the world federation wrestling thing the way donald trump does. i can think of anyone else on the planet who can do that as effectively as trump. you should not try to out trump trump. that's a recipe for total failure. >> the other thing to say in all this while a lot of people -- mike's right view president trump is practicing politics personal destruction, burning people down, there's a large swath of this country what's happening with judge kavanaugh and thinking the opposite. democrats are pragmatic the politics of personal destruction, burning a good man down. that's their view. >> that's absolutely true.

the threat before the pendulum comes back is the undermining of our institutions, from law enforcement to the media, to the way we nominate supreme court justices, because the whole american idea fits into the idea that people have a belief and a trust in the institutions that make it work. when those get undermined, including our election system, then people not believe it, that's very dangerous. >> i want to pick up our conversation from last hour before deborah ramirez accused judge kavanaugh of exposing himself, the judge and his team were communicating behind-the-scenes with friends to refute that claim. the messages between kerry bercham suggest he was talking with former classmates about ramirez story in advance of the new yorker article that made her allegation public. in one question kavanaugh asked

her to go on record in his defense. that points to a discrepancy between what senators said last week and new reporting from nbc news. >> when did you first hear of miss ramirez's allegations against you? >> in the last -- in the period since then, "the new yorker's" story. >> ranking member or any of her colleagues or any staff ask you about miss ramirez allegation before they were leaked to the press? >> no. >> when was the first time that the ranking member or any of her colleagues or any of their staff asked you about miss ramirez's allegations? >> today. >> i think it's a disgrace. >> so kasie, this is what we were talking about. what exactly judge kavanaugh said in that hearing. it sounds there he heard it from "the new yorker" story but now we're learning in these text messages he and his team were communicating about it before then. >> yes. why is the timing important? again, there's scrutiny around

what kavanaugh said that was honest or perhaps not honest during the course of this hearing. if he's saying on one hand in public -- the way he said it. there's some wiggle room but he use as time element he found out since he became public in the new yorker. these text messages suggest he's aware of what was going on. it's not out of the realm of possibility he could have become aware. the issue is whether he was honest with the committee about this. you know, i think this is one of these things, on one hand it could potentially create a new problem for kavanaugh if it is shown he's lied. on the other hand, if anything, the back and forth over these small things is solidifying everybody in their respective camps. >> rick, what did you hear? >> he was being very careful with his language. trying to think through what he knew and he seemed to check himself which is why the word story got muddled.

it didn't sound to me like anyone could say that he learned it by reading it in a steer. it's clear now he knew about it before. i also don't think -- this -- this is not a criminal trial. he has a right to defend his reputation. he has a right to coordinate, to help get his side of the story out. whereas in a criminal trial this would be witness tampering. >> it makes me wonder, though, what exactly what was the white house doing in all of this. why is brett kavanaugh taking it upon himself to reach out to his friends. his team should be doing this. if the white house is backing him up -- >> his team, his people. >> it's worth pointing out democrats are not to give them the benefit of the doubt not always going after these little things in order to pick holes they do, some democrats i've spoken to genuinely felt from the initial hearings that brett

kavanaugh is skimpy with the truth on certain issues like emails leaked when he was in the white house and finding a pattern of behavior in him that he doesn't always represent things as they happened and that gives him some cause for concern about his veracity. >> jeffrey goldberg thank you very much. the atlantic festival kicks off today in washington, d.c. as always 21 to drink, 18 to party at the atlantic festival, is that right >> that's exactly not the theme. >> jeff, congratulations. it seems you're putting together a better show than when you and i were partners. >> no, those were good days too. >> still ahead on "morning joe" our next guest says the american century ended on the day president trump was sworn into office. so what comes next? dr. jeffrey sachs tackles that ahead on "morning joe". joe" i'm ken jacobus, i'm the owner of good start packaging. we distribute environmentally-friendly

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the united states will not be taken advantage of any longer. america is governed by americans. we reject the ideology of globalism, and we embrace the doctrine of patriotism. >> that was, of course, president trump speaking to world leaders at the u.n. last week in a speech touting his america first agenda. our next guest says the american century ended with donald trump's inauguration warning about our turn towards nationalism and away from a world economy and geopolitics. dr. jeffrey sacks joins us. he's out with a new book that offers a different path forward. it's titled "a new foreign policy." also the director of domestic policy studies at stanford university, lon b. chin.

>> what's the new foreign policy? >> this book is not just about president trump, it's about a tradition in america of bravado, unilateralism, overthrowing other country's governments, lots of war. it's been going on for a while. i think it has not served our country very well, nor served the world. we've spent trillions of dollars in the wars in the middle east. we have completely lost touch with reality on crises like climate change which are destroying our own cities and puerto rico and the carolinas. we're not cooperating with the rest of the world. trump has taken this to another level, at least rhetorically, because he bashes the very

ideal. it's always been balanced by the view we should have global cooperation as well, but the tide definitely swung during the last quarter century towards more unilateralism and that's why we have all the wars in the middle east, and now trump has the view explicitly cooperation is a stupid thing. i'm a patriot. i don't have to listen to anybody. that's what he said last week at the u.n. i was sitting there watching that horrible speech, and just not good for us. >> but, isn't there's a distinction between the idea of american exceptionalism which might advance the idea of interventions for the values that america has stood for and isolationism that president trump represents in >> it's grown out of the same concept. you can take america exceptionalism and arrive at

different points. to the professor's point, the strain that goes against this notion of being involved in the world is not anything new. politically this was actually quite powerful throughout the 2000s. just didn't bubble up to the surface until we got to 2016. issue in the 2008 campaign when i was helping governor romney the first time he ran for president we saw anti-free trade, anti-globalist trends and they've become more powerful. they've manifest themselves in a powerful way particularly since president trump got elected. >> to what extent is this a global phenomenon. throughout the world people are becoming more nationalistic as opposed to being more cooperative. >> when the u.s. really was economically dominant, there was one bloc or two blocs that countries align themselves with to a large extent as the u.s. power has diminished, in fact,

even not in the imagination of american policymakers. there's now a lot more uncertainty and a lot more instability and look out for your own. and then when you have a president of the united states saying, i don't care about you, it's america first, it let's loose every force in the world that says rules don't matter. if the country that was really first in asserting the need for some rules, at least, now says we don't even have that concept, of course it let's loose the kinds of things that we're seeing around the world. >> we've been having a conversation about democrats and who might run against president trump and what kind of policies it would take to run successfully. you advised mitt romney and marco rubio. you know how they might fare against president trump. if you look on the republican side if there's a republican running against donald trump at any stage or a democrat, what kind of qualities do you think

it takes? >> on the republican side i think the premise that anybody could compete with president trump at this set point a flawed one just given the dynamics of the party. you're still seeing coalesuld s behind the president. i think the qualities of someone being a street fighter, being able to take it directly to the president is a challenge. i don't think out outtrump trump. you have to come from the perspective look i'm presenting a pathway that's perhaps less combative and more reasonable. him not to sure there's a huge audience for that right. but things are about contrast. you can't have i'm going to do the same thing as this guy but not as well. you have to present contrast. you have to come at it from a different perspective than the president. >> let's be constructive here. as a practical matter what does

the new foreign policy look like? what can to be done in the congress and white house to change the direction we're on? >> the main thing is to understand we have a series of really important global problems that we need to solve. i'll say, again, global warming, for example. it's real, no matter what trump or the oil industry wants to say. we're seeing the hurricanes, the droughts, the floods. for that we need cooperation. if we're instead launching wars, trade wars or other wars, ad hoc wars they want with iran or trade wars with china, the idea of cooperating disappears. and i think it's really important to say trump is not an isolationist. that's not the characterization i would use. i would say he's a unilateralist. he says i don't care about rules. i'll make the deal. i'll make the deal by messing

up. doing this or that. some people like that. it's incredible ly naive. it's all show. no depth. he rebranded nafta with almost no change. it's the greatest thing in the world. worst thing in the world yesterday. this is circus. but if we want serious safety for the country, we have to move beyond circus. and one thing that's interesting, the circus seems to appeal to his base. no doubt about it. but the circus done play in the rest of the world. yesterday pew came out with its research findings. the u.s. view from abroad it's collapsing every where from the beginning of the 21st century to today, favorable views of the u.s. down 33% in canada. 24% in france. 48% in germany. 24% in italy. 33% in the uk. is this really safe?

well, yeah, if you stand at a rally, make jokes, are obnoxious and snide, it may feel good for somebody to get their, to have some fun. but from a safety point of view for the united states, we're losing the basis of peaceful cooperation. and it could get worse because there are a lot of people in our establishment who like war, we're enmeshed in wars in the middle east and they talk about a hot war with iran. >> what about china right now? richard haas was sitting in that chair and saying this is a low ebb between chinn and u.p.s.. confrontations in the south china sea. sanctions and trade war. >> china was always the most difficult question when it comes to trade. it has had a state-run economy where fundamentally the notion of in the at the eletellectual

is fundamental. this is not the way to advance the u.s.-china relationship. there are implications about our relationship with other countries to work constructively with countries we have significant fundamental disagreeme disagreements. >> the book is "a new foreign policy beyond american exceptionalism." it's out today. thanks for being here. >> you have the coveted scarborough, race to the top of the list. >> there you go. >> coming fun it weren't for the battle over the supreme court there's a good chance we would be talking about rod rosenstein right now. that steer has been bury this week but an issue our next guest

knows all about. "the washington post" reporter greg miller has a new book on the russia probe. he joins us next on "morning joe". joe" hi, kids! i'm carl and i'm a broker. do you offer $4.95 online equity trades? great question. see, for a full service brokerage like ours, that's tough to do. schwab does it. next question. do you offer a satisfaction guarantee? a what now? a satisfaction guarantee. like schwab does. man: (scoffing) what are you teaching these kids? ask your broker if they offer award-winning full service and low costs, backed by a satisfaction guarantee. if you don't like their answer, ask again at schwab.

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the "wall street journal" is reporting this morning that president trump quote personally directed an effort in february

to stop stormy daniels from publicly describing an alleged sexual encounter with him. wo according to people familiar with the events. this reportedly took place after trump and cohen learned that daniels was considering going public about her alleged relationship with trump. the president purportedly said quote, told cohen to coordinate the legal response with erik trump one of president's sons and another outside lawyer that represented trump in other matters. the "journal"'s report noted erik trump directed a staff attorney to sign off on the arbitration paper work, according to their sources. no claim of erik trump's direct involvement in effort to silence dams has been reported. the "journal" reports the

president's ties to his company continued into this year and contradicts public statements at the time made by the trump organization and white house and mr. cohen. the trump administration refused to comment. joining us now pulitzer prize winning author greg miller. he's out with a new book on the russian interference in the 2016 election. it's entitled "the ed "the appr" >> i liked it as a title. he's a president who needed, who had very little training for the job and we saw abundant evidence of that in many ways. but also has, there's also this aspect of subser virch ence.

i wanted to explore his relationship to putin, his admiration to putin, why does he behave this way towards the russian president. it's a play on words a bit. he seems at times to be an apprentice to putin. >> why does he have such an effect on putin. >> in his dna, his view of what a leader is supposed to act like, looks like putin. he admires other strong men around the world. and he sort of envies the kind of arrangement that putin has. he's somebody that doesn't have to deal with headlines like we're seeing today about stormy daniels. he doesn't have to deal with investigations like robert mueller is leading. but also i think in the end putin has something that is over trump that putin knows exactly what russia did in the election in 2016, and sort of fiction that i think trump clings to most is the idea that he was

elected free and clear, that there was no russia interfere e interference. >> that's the very first question you get every time, what does putin have potentially over donald trump? because a conspiracy theory is not just that there's some understanding that there was meddling in the u.s. election but maybe something going back historically. something tangible specific that vladimir putin may have that he can use to, you know, hang over donald trump's head. did you come to any conclusion on that? >> yeah. i go through all of those ideas and there's these theories, the steel dossier, talked about compromising pictures of trump with prostitutes. but more we see from trump it seems those sorts of allegations don't hurt him. he has survived many, many of those kinds of allegations and hard to see pictures of him in a hotel room as definitive. it comes back to the election, what russia did and it's

increasingly evident that russian interference -- it's hard to argue now with all we know about how many people in the united states were exposed to russian propaganda that it didn't help to flip the outcome. >> why do you suppose trump didn't take the position that russia interfered in the election and embrace the investigation so he didn't -- it seems he embedded himself, causing the investigation on him. he made it about him. it really wasn't about him. it was about russian interference. he may have been a beneficiary of that. to what degree do you think avenues beneficiary? >> i think that it started out it wasn't about him but it clearly became about him as russia saw that he was prevailing in the polls and turned a lot of their efforts toward trying to propel him to the white house. it did become about him. it may not have started out that way. we now know a lot more than at the time. facebook acknowledged 100 million americans on facebook were exposed to russian propaganda related to the

election. a lot of it tearing down hillary clinton. a lot of it boosting donald trump. and given in an election where it came down to fewer to 80,000 votes it's hard to imagine that that wasn't decisive. it wasn't the only factor. hillary clinton had a lot of problems as candidate. james comey had a lot to do with those problems in the middle of the election. there were clearly other factors. to try to argue at this point that, you know, the enormous russian effort had no bearing on the outcome it's hard to make that claim. >> i think most people would agree with that. the question everyone has did they have help from trump campaign? were they working hand in glove with the campaign. did you fine evidence of the trump campaign working on behalf of the russian? >> i still believe it's unlikely we'll see just a hidden secret memo that memorializes an

agreement between president trump and vladimir putin. what we have and cia officials say over and over you had so much collusion and cooperation in the open, it's staring us right in the face. mueller has documented much of this. this is donald trump in the middle of the election saying russia if you're listening. russia was listening it. it mobilizes an effort that night to go after those emails. starts spear fishing on hillary clinton's emails. >> we only scratched the surface of this new book. it's a must read and out today. "the washington post" greg miller. great to see you. >> last week brett kavanaugh told congress sometimes he had too many beers as a younger man. speaking yesterday at the white house president trump took that a few steps further. >> i was surprised at how vocal he was about the fact that he likes beer and he's had a little

bit of difficulty. i mean he talked about things that happened when he drank. i mean, this is not a man that said alcohol was absent, that he was perfect with respect to alcohol. i can tell you i watched that hearing. and i watched a man saying that he did have difficulty as a young man with drink. >> judge kavanaugh said in that hearing quote sometimes i had too many beers. we'll talk about where his nomination stands today ahead on "morning joe". today ahead on "morning joe".

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we've been talking about a lot of books this morning. let's talk about the paper back i vision of davinci. >> i said, man, if you can't hold that book, i've got to come

out with the paperback. >> it really suffered in sales. it was only number one for about six months. if you look at all your books, all your great biographies, you've always had a lot to work with in terms of source material. what was it like going back into the life of davinci? >> it was tote hi amazing to get more than 7200 pages of notebooks this guy did day after day. a sketch of the last supper, then also the mathematical problem and dissecting the neck to figure out the muscles of the neck all on one set of notebook pages. it was more thrilling -- because when i did steve jobs, i had lots of confidences wiversation. but when we tried to find his

e-mails from the '90s, it didn't work. you realize paper is a great technology. the battery life is good, the operating system is good. to watch what this guy was thinking day after day and seeing the connection of his art to his engineering to his science, that was the thrilling part. >> it makes you wonder, davinci, the genius contained in one individual. is our culture so accelerated today that we miss geniuses, that there are geniuses among us but because the pace of everything is so quick that we don't pause to absorb what a specific genius is doing right in our midst? >> part of the problem is we've become very specialized. a genius like steve jobs even who puts together and understands that beauty matters. likewise, leonardo does the copper bowl and the dome of the

florence cathedral and understands that engineering and art are intertwined. sometimes we get so specialized we say i don't do science, i do engineering or i do engineering but i don't love music. if you look at all the people i've looked at, einstein, all that goes back to leonardo and especially my favorite drawing ever which is vetruvian man because it's a work of art, it's a work of anatomy, it's a work of mathematics and spirituality. i think that's what we miss today, is people can take a broad view. >> the last supper and the tongue of a woodpecker. that's a true genius. >> and was curious about them. how you make the perspective

work from the forehead of jesus and the lines and make it more theatrical. >> this conversation so different than when we talk about a very stable -- >> a self-proclaimed stable genius. coming up, the white house agrees to expand the investigation into supreme court nominee brett kavanagh. but no matter what it reveals, mitch mcconnell says the vote will happen this week. plus, new reporting suggests the administration's grip on government data may be putting americans at risk. "morning joe" is back in a moment. back in a moment

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tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms of an infection. or if you have received a vaccine, or plan to. if you have inflammatory bowel disease tell your doctor if symptoms develop or worsen. serious allergic reactions may occur. mitzi: with less joint pain, watch me. for less joint pain and clearer skin, ask your rheumatologist about cosentyx. i'm just saying, i'm not a drinker. i can honestly say i never had a beer in my life, okay? it's one of my only good traits. i don't drink. never had a glass of alcohol. i've never had alcohol. for whatever reason. can you imagine if i had, what a mess i'd be? i'd be the world's worst. >> that's the president of the united states yesterday in the rose garden. welcome to "morning joe" on this tuesday, october 2nd. i'm willie geist alongside kasie

hunt. we're not doing the lightning bolt apparently. better late than never. also with us this morning mike barnicle. rick tyler. the president of the council on foreign relations richard hawes. al hallie jackson. and eugene robinson. joe and mika will be back tomorrow. i want to ask you about president trump's usm cross-examination ca to replace nafta. >> it's not quite as radically different as he claims but it's progress. it's a more modern agreement.

it deals with digital commerce, protects intellectual property. we avoided a trade war over car imports. >> how different is it from nafta? is it just a rebranding of nafta? >> it's more than that. it's modernized. 25 years ago there wasn't even digital commerce then. a lot of the good ideas came from the trans pacific partnership. what one hopes is this now is a precedent. the president could now go and expand the american trade agreements. he's now set a precedent. i hope this works for him. >> the president acknowledging that tpp laid the foundation for what they announced yesterday. let's start with the latest in the fbi investigation into supreme court nominee brett kavanagh. president trump now says he has no problem letting the agency

expand its investigation into sexual misconduct allegations against kavanaugh, that after the white house came under fire for reportedly limiting its scope. >> what i said is, let the senate decide. whatever they want to do is okay with me. and also the fbi. i think the fbi should do what they have to do to get to the answer. >> we're told the white house has given the green light to investigators to interview anyone they think necessary, as long as the review is wrapped up by the end of this week, that according to two people briefed on the matter. sources familiar with the investigation tell the "washington post" the fbi will not look into kavanaugh's drinking in his younger years or examine the statements he made about drinking during his testimony to see if those answers were accurate or misleading. the fbi has questioned the four witnesses the white house originally directed the fbi to talk to including mark judge and patrick smith, kavanaugh's high school classmates, leland

kaiser, a friend of christine blasey ford. and depubra ramirez. how does the white house feel this is going? it seems from the outside like they, first of all, granted an fbi investigation at the end of last week and now have agreed to expand it. it feels like they're trying to cover all their bases here and concede some of the points made against them. >> they kind of have to. it's not like the president has a ton of choice here, especially because of the corner he put himself in starting over the weekend. when he says, yes, i want the fbi to be free rein. did that trickle down to the fbi? we've learned that it did. they're not giving the fbi total carte blanche here. it still has to be wrapped up by the end of the week, but the white house is saying, yes, you could go ahead and talk to whoever you want to, interview

whoever you want to, follow up on the leads that you need to follow up on. there have been some developments here with these four people that have been interviewed. but when it comes to these accusations, you heard the president address this a bit. dr. christine blasey ford is one thing. she came, she spoke at that hearing last week. republicans believe that swetnick's allegations are not credible and they believe that is kind of a partisan reflection of not just democrats but the media as well. the president is very confident. he doesn't just say it publicly. this is reflected in conversations i've had with my sources. he does think that kavanaugh is going to make it through. mitch mcconnell talked about plowing right through. now he's got to finesse the

timing here. >> how firm is this deadline? is it set in cement? during the source of any investigation -- i mean you ask about judge kavanagh's with others and they say i don't really know, but here are two or three people that do know, that keeps the ball of string doing. but how firm is the deadline? >> here's the thing. senator jeff flake is the one who triggered all of this last week on capitol hill. he specifically said he wanted this wrapped up by friday. there is not a lot of appetite among republicans to extend this and drag it out. i do think there will be serious political pressure to have this finished by the end of this week. even james comey has said, hey,

seven days of professional investigators are better than no days. when you talk about the firmness of the deadline, i don't think there's an appetite in the white house to extend it beyond friday. >> in anticipation of what this fbi inquiry may or may not find, you've had some democrats, senator hirono calling it a sham already, saying it's not a real investigation. how are republicans feeling about this way this is played out? obviously mitch mcconnell didn't want this to go another week, but is it providing him cover to have a clean vote next week? >> i don't think there's a sense that the time limit on this is a problem for the republicans who matter. all the fbi, james comey among them, they all say the fbi can figure this out in a week if that's the time they got. however it's clear behind the scenes the fbi has felt kind of ham strung in what they were able to do.

and the fbi is being set up as the fall guy if something were to come out later on. jeff flake was in new hampshire. during an appearance there, he talked about how he was on the phone and pushed for them to actually reopen the scope of this investigation. but the deadline is real. this was mitch mcconnell on the floor yesterday. >> so soon i expect we'll hear that the conclusions of the expert prosecutor who questioned both witnesses at last week's hearing aren't reliable or that the fbi's investigation was not infinite or endless enough for their liking. maybe we'll hear the real issue is not these uncorroborated allegations of misconduct after all, but rather the fact that judge kavanagh -- now, listen to this -- drank beer in high school and in college. their goal postshifting

but their goal hasn't moved an inch. the goal has been the same all along. and so let me make it very clear. the time for endless delay and obstruction has come to a close. judge kavanagh's nomination is out of committee. we're considering it here on the floor. and mr. president, we'll be voting this week. >> so just one point, this is still not outside the range of a usual time period for a supreme court confirmation. but what you saw there from senator mcconnell was a continuation of the strategy that this is inevitable. the reality is all that matters is whether or not susan collins, lisa murkowski, jeff flake and perhaps joe manchin believe this investigation is legitimate. >> it will strike many as rich hearing mitch mcconnell on the floor yesterday talking about endless delay and obstruction.

he'd like to vote by this weekend maybe even for confirmation or early next week. they don't seem to think this investigation will change their minds one way or another. >> whose minds? >> mitch mcconnell and republicans, how they vote on kavanaugh. >> that's been the problem all along, is we don't know who to believe. is the fbi investigation going to change things? why don't we wait for the fbi investigation and see what's in it? my suspicion is they're not going to find very much. i do think it's fitting that it is a limited investigation, because after all judge kavanagh had been reviewed by the fbi background check five previous times. this didn't come up. i've never heard where, okay, this is what he said during the confirmation. let's go back and check all those things. that's new territory.

specifically did judge kavanagh drink to excess and to the point where he blacked out and did he lie about it. and if he did, we'll think of a new way to get him off the court. i think that's unfair. >> we do have to just let the fbi play this one out. every single incident that we're hearing of reporting around the fringes of the fbi investigation, whether it's brett kavanagh throwing ice when he was in a bar when he was at yale or text messages that he may or may not have sent before hearing about debra ramirez's story are being seized on by've side as proof positive, you see he's a bad guy or you see he was innocent. the democrats would say well it's possible that he perjured himself or that he drank to excess and blacked out. every single bit of reporting is

just becoming more of the partisan fight. it is not getting us any closer to finding out the truth or closer to what jeff flake may have intended when he ordered this investigation. >> i hear the democrats keep saying this is a job interview and not a criminal trial. that is certainly true, but yet they seem to be holding the fbi to a standard of criminality. by god, there's a crime, we have to find a crime. i don't think you can have it both ways. i don't think judge kavanagh if he was trying to talk to people to save his reputation, i think that's different than trying to interfere with a witness in a criminal trial. still ahead on "morning joe," we'll show you how president trump is reacting to all of this. what he said during a raucous rally in tennessee about the democrats' opposition to his nominee. three weather stories today. first, we have an extremely warm october we're starting off with. we have severe thunderstorms and

flooding in arizona that's likely occurring now and through the day. we're watching a few strong storms already in central new york. later this afternoon we'll spark additional new storms. 15 million people in a slight risk of severe weather from cleveland through pennsylvania, southern new york and new jersey. here's the timing on the storm as we go throughout the morning. i paused it at 5:00 p.m. for that evening commute. strongest storms through albany, new york, through the catskills. these could be severe with damaging winds up into areas of southern new england. pittsburgh, scattered storms for you. then the storms by 10:00 p.m. should be almost over the top of new york city. t the other story, what was hurricane then tropical storm rosa continuing to soak areas of arizona. it's pouring this morning in

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brett kavanagh's nomination. last night president trump took on democrats at a rally in tennessee. >> the democrats only now how to obstruct, demolish and destroy. as we've seen in recent weeks, democrats are willing to do anything and to hurt anyone to get their way, like they're doing with judge kavanagh. they've been trying to destroy him since the very first second he was announced, because they know that judge kavanagh will follow the constitution as written. and he's a good man, great student, great intellect. never had a problem. all of a sudden, oh, let's go

back to high school. and then they want to take a lot long we are the fbi. no, the fbi they should take -- by the way, if they took ten years, they'd want more time. but they want to take a lot longer. but diane feinstein, she had this letter for months and she didn't reveal it until everything was finished. then she says, oh we want more time. let's see how it all works out, but i tell you what, they're trying to destroy a very fine person. and we can't let it happen. >> you put that together yesterday with president trump in the rose garden saying certainly if they find something, i'm going to take that into consideration. in other words f t, if the fbi s out with something so damning about brett kavanagh, i will reconsider my nomination of kavanaugh. if you look at these rallies and moments in the rose garden yesterday, it's a far cry from

two weeks ago when the white house sort of had him on message. >> rally trump is always kind of different from other trump. earlier in the day, especially with the rose garden remarks, president trump was kind of playing good cop to mitch mcconnell's bad cop. he was saying, the fbi should do what it needs to do. meanwhile, mcconnell was saying we're going to vote this week and ram this through. look, there's somebody whose interests need to be protected here and that's dr. christine blasey ford. she came in good faith and testified in a way that members almost universally said they find credible and believable. so if it was credible and believable, they ought to start believing her. and i think ultimately that's kind of what those senators are

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debra ramirez accused judge kavanagh of exposing himself to her at a party in college. the judge and his team were communicating behind the scenes with friends to refute the claim according to text messages obtained by nbc news. >> so the question now as the white house says it is going to allow a no holds barred investigation is are the people who think that they have credible information going to be heard? yesterday we spoke with a woman who is a mutual friend of both debra ramirez and brett kavanagh who says she has very relevant information and has been unable to get any response from the fbi

to receive that information. specifically she said she is in the possession of a series of text messages with another mutual friend who was in their tight knit circle of friend at yale and those text messages show a few things. first of all, she said they show that brett kavanagh very much was aware that this story about debbie ramirez was coming, that she was concerned he may have known well in advance and anticipated this story and that he was trying to control the narrative around it. there are specific text messages from her friend frrsaying that brett specifically was asking her to do things, including to track down a photo of the two of them at a previous wedding that they had attended and that brett was pushing the other friend to come forward and to refute debbie ramirez's story. now, it's important to say that judiciary committee last night in response this this i believe

did release some transcripts showing that brett kavanagh was insisting that it was actually debbie ramirez who was pushing for people to come forward in advance. but still something that my source, who is their mutual friend, thinks needs to be looked into. second of all -- and this is possibly the most important -- is that -- remember the context of this. these are two women, two friends who have no intention of making this information public, and yet the one is texting to the other that at that wedding, which was ten years after the alleged incident, that debbie ramirez was, quote, acting very odd, that she clung to her friend and she was trying to avoid brett kavanagh, that there was something weird going on there. and the classmate said now with these allegations coming out, it all makes sense to me. another thing we found out last night that was very odd is that

apparently at the time around september 22nd when brett kavanagh was desperately seeking this photo, three days later he was asked specifically in the hearing whether he attended this wedding and he said he had no recollection. so something there that definitely needs to be looked into by the fbi. at this point, we're not sure if it will be. >> do these text messages show that brett kavanagh definitively knew that the new yorker story was coming before it came out? because he said it explicitly in the hearing that he had no idea this was coming until he actually read it in the magazine. >> exactly. that is the discrepancy. orrin hatch asked him when did you find out about these allegations. he said in the new yorker story. according to the texts that we obtained prior to the publication of the story, brett specifically was mentioned as someone who was approaching his

classmate personally and asking her to come forward to refute the story. other references in the text messages in advance of the story referred to brett's guy, brett's team asking for information that all predated the publication of the story. >> just to follow up, it was specifically in reference to the story that brett kavanagh was asking for this kind of action to be taken, right? the texts would say that he knew the report was coming? >> no. he didn't say there's this new yorker story, hey, i need you to come out. he was seeking information. he was seeking the photo. and in the second case, yes, he was asking his classmate to specifically refute what debbie ramirez was about to say. >> are you surprised at all that a nominee or candidate would know the story was out there and

would work to soften the ground beforehand? >> yes, you're going to know about a story before it's published because reporters call around to people that you know. >> so why tell orrin hatch that you didn't know? >> right. if there were a criminal case, this would be illegal. it would be witness tampering. it's not a criminal case. he's trying to get a hold of the story so his side is in the story before it gets out. coming up, we know about the chaos inside the white house, but what about other federal agencies under president trump? agencies under president trump

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on staffing, how would you return a government to make it more effective? what would be your criteria in choosing the senior administrators?

>> track record, great competence, love of what they're doing, how they're getting along with people, references. i mean, no different than when you're running a people, how you hire top people. we have to get the best people. we need to get the best and the finest. and if we don't, we'll be in trouble for a long period of time. >> that's then-candidate trump just over two years ago. president trump has long touted his hiring prowess since the beginning of his campaign. but a new book instead paints a detailed picture of a mismanaged federal government filled with trump appointees who are woef woefulwoeful ly unprepared for their jobs. can we talk about the ultimate money ball game tomorrow night? >> it makes me feel a little stupid because it seems like --

i thought they needed the intellectual advantage to win. i have actually no exmplanation for how they did this. >> all they have to do is win one game. "the fifth risk" you laid it out in a piece you wrote a couple of months ago, looking at some of these cabinet positions, ones that we don't focus on a lot. what's happening and how? >> the basic idea was this federal government has this portfolio of risks. the basic role of the government is to keep us safe. at all times it's managing all kinds of risks that we don't pay any attention to. the trump administration didn't bother to actually go through a transition. the obama administration had a thousand people waiting to brief

but nobody showed up to the briefings. they start by basically not taking over the government except in a very haphazard way. that's the beginning of a big management problem. it's odd. you buy a company but you don't bother to figure what's in it or how it works or you don't staff it. >> was that arrogance or incompetence, not going to the briefings, or some combination of the two? >> well, he said to chris christie right before he fired him in the transition team he had built, that after the victory party we could take two hours. we're so smart, we could take two hours and learn about the whole thing. so it's arrogance. but i think underneath it all is an insecurity. i think he probably thinks he can't get his mind around it and

he's just decided not to. i think what he does is he takes his portfolio of risks that the government is managing and makes them all more likely to be a problem. >> speaking of risks, can i ask you about the department of energy specifically since they manage a lot of our nuclear material and policy. what is the status of that? >> good question. the department of energy now run by rick perry who said he wanted to eliminate it when he was a presidential candidate actually manages the nuclear stockpile. and the bombs are assembled in the texas panhandle where he was governor. it's kind of amazing he didn't know that. >> no, it's not. >> he just forgot. >> they never got the briefings. they never bothered to show up to learn, for example, why the iran deal, the nuclear deal made a lot of sense. to understand that deal that

he's walked away from, you really should be talking to physicists inside the department of energy. they can tell you whether or not the iranians can build a nuclear weapon or not, whether this deal actually works. they were at the center of the negotiation of that deal. they just got basically ignored. so what's happening? six months ago a vial of weapons grade plutonium vanished from the back of a car in san antonio. no one's paying attention to this. can we trust this place is being managed properly by a person who didn't know what it did before he took over and didn't seem to care? i don't think so. >> the department of energy raises -- there is some real scary stuff in this book. one of them has to do with the department of energy. this is a quote talking about

what the department of energy does and what the proposed new applicants to work under the trump administration would do. this is a quote. they were just looking for dirt basically, said one of the people who briefed the team on national security issues. quote, what is the obama administration not letting you do to keep the country safe? >> they came in a spirit of hostility. the news cycle is all trump all the time. it completely neglects this 2 million person operation he's supposed to be running. we've had decades of kind of rust accumulating on this thing. the federal work force is -- i mean, here's a stat that will blow your mind. there are five times more people in the civilian federal work force over the age of 60 than under the age of 30.

you can map that same story onto like the technology, old infrastructure that's being held together by crazy glue. it's already a bit of a problem because of the attitude that society has taken towards it. you've got this guy who's basically rolled in with a sledge hammer. the question is what happens next? i think what happens next is children get separated from their parents at the border and the depth of health and human services can't figure out which parents belong to which child. or on tax day the irs computers shut down. you're seeing this very slow moving and therefore very hard to attend to crisis. >> what happens if it's not arrogance or incompetence, it's idealogical? they want to destroy the established state anyway. so why would you bother learning

what it is? it's a way of negating what happened before deliberately. >> true, some of it. so i think that if you're going to destroy the government, what are you going to replace it with? there's a section in the book about government data. it is true. one, it's unbelievable valuable. it's a gold mine waiting to be harvested. there's all kind of stuff in it. and it had been under the obama administration made more and more accessible, the weather data. but if you look at the pattern of suppression of data, it isn't really idealogical. it's commercial. it's fossil fuels people not wanting climate data out there. it's ranchers not wanting animal abuse data. it's private weather companies not wanting weather data. a hlot of it is pure financial

interest. >> tell us briefly the story of david freedberg. >> oh my god, you read the book. that doesn't happen. he is a silicon valley guy, worked at google. he started a company that sells weather insurance. he started to accumulate weave data. the company morphed eventually into a billion dollar corporation called the climate corporation. it was using that data from the department of agriculture, interior and commerce to tell farmers how to plant their fields more efficiently. they knew more about every piece of farmland in america than the actual farmers did. effectively they money balled the farming industry. the efficiencies that come with that, it's a billion dollar country but it's $100 billion

net gain. the other side of this, i mean, we wouldn't even know there's an opioid crisis if they had not opened up prescription drug data. we wouldn't know it. the things we would not know about ourselves if this information is not make publicly accessible -- the trump administration, wherever there's a commercial interest in withholding the data, the data is threatened. >> you mentioned chris christie and the transition. you have some amazing anecdotes in this book about the calls to foreign leaders in this sort of chaos of the movement into the white house. how did the bengals figure in into all this? >> someone who was in the room when trump -- the odd thing was there's kind of an order in which the new president is meant to receive congratulatory phone calls from foreign leaders. i think it starts with great

britain and moves down. the president of egypt apparently just dialled right into trump tower and got put through to trump and trump said something like love the bangles. >> "walk like an egyptian" love that song. >> that comes from someone who was in the room. trump obviously likes chaos. the very odd thing about this whole story is that almost unbeknownst to him during his campaign a really good transition team was built. hundreds of people were working, vetting people who might take the top jobs, being ready to go in the cday after te electiohe o get the briefings. the minute he figured out he was going to be president, he got rid of all the preparation and just said, let it fly.

the effects of that, you see a little bit on the short-term but they're very long-term effects. it's such a short-term approach to managing the world. there are all these long-term slow boiling problems that the government deals with. >> going on gut certainly has its costs. the new book is "the fifth risk." it's out today. coming up on "morning joe" -- >> i think the press has treated me unbelievably unfairly. in fact, when i won, i said the good thing is now the press finally gets it. now they'll finally treat me fairly. they got worse. they're worse now than ever. they're loco. but that's okay. i put up with it. go ahead. i use that word because of the fact that we made a deal with mexico. >> trade policy aside, president trump hammers mexico virtually every day, often about security along the southern border. up next, we'll talk to somebody

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at&t provides edge-to-edge intelligence, covering virtually every part of your retail business. so that if your customer needs shoes, & he's got wide feet. & with edge-to-edge intelligence you've got near real time inventory updates. & he'll find the same shoes in your store that he found online he'll be one happy, very forgetful wide footed customer. at&t provides edge to edge intelligence. it can do so much for your business, the list goes on and on. that's the power of &. & if your customer also forgets socks! & you could send him a coupon for that item. new reporting from "the new york times" shows in recent weeks hundreds of migrant children have been moved from temporary housing in the middle of the night to a barn tent city in the middle of texas. tr

in addition, an unpublished government watchdog report obtained by "the washington post" found at least 860 migrant children were left in border patrol holding cells longer than the 72-hour limit. one minor was confined for 25 days. the latest numbers released by the trump administration show 136 children are still in custody and not eligible for reunification or discharge. three of those children are under the age of 5. joining us now, sister, who has been at the forefront of the crisis helping children and families at the border. thank you so much for being with us this morning, we appreciate it. so much of this conversation that happens in new york and washington is injected with politics and partisanship. you're down on the border doing the real work, helping these migrant families. what do you see with your own eyes? >> it's true, you know, being right at the border at the ground, we see the families, the children. you know, moms with infants and really innocent people that are

part of this criminal whole setup of what's happening to them. they're victims. they're really -- you see their faces. their suffering. and you can't but help them because they're innocent. and when you see them reunited, like after the zero tolerance separation and then they were reunited, we received over 600 families that were in south texas, and just to see them after being reunited and how they cried, the children that had been crying every single day when they were separated, and now reuniting with mom, it's amazing what they go through, you know, and it's so sad to hear this news that so many children will be kept in this detention facility for i don't know how long, you know? >> have you found if you tried to help connect people back together, is the government actually trying to do what the courts are telling them that they have to which is put these kids back together? >> well, you know, my job and

the role of so many people that join me in assisting these families is just to bring back that restoring their dignity because they've been so harmed by so many that we're focused on helping them feel better. that is our focus. we hope that others really can work on finding solutions that really will bring these families together and release them from detention facilities and use other options other than detention because there are other options like management and follow-up that can really help the families find out why they're hear. >> sister, there's a story in "the new york times" yesterday detailing in their reportage about thousands of children being bussed to basically a tent city from other shelters around the country. these are children and they're being taken in the dead of night so they don't try to escape, put on buses and driven to texas

where you were born. when you think about all the children being detained, as well as other children coming from various parts of the united states to texas, what do you think about your country? >> well, i think that we are a country that can stand up for better values and defend people. human life is something we must respect and care for. >> i know the purpose of your work you were doing on the border. you've been working on this issue for years. have you had a chance to see what the long-term effects are from the children separated from their parents, who fall into this sort of situation, who are the victim, as we say? what impact does that experience have on them later in life? >> i was just at a panel of several doctors from all over the united states that are

really addressing the trauma and how this affects children in the long term and really the results are going to be very hard for them and so we have to do our part to make sure we bring healing to the children and really find ways of making sure that this doesn't happen. >> sister norma, the mantra coming out of the white house is they would have us believe the immigration problem is related to crime, related to we hear ms-13 as a refrain, but you work with these people every day. why do they come? who are they? >> you know, i ask that question a lot to their families when i see them here, why did you come? and they say, i had to save my child. because really back home they really don't have any other option. they're forced out. they're not coming just because of pleasure. they're coming because they have no other option. they feel that they stay home, the circumstances there is not going to help the child. >> and you know that the evangelicals who have been largely supportive of trump and therefore his policies, what is

the christian role in response to immigrants? >> the role of any good person is to defend life. at all times we must respect life and protect it and make sure we're safe. that should be our roles, you know, especially christian, yes. >> sister norma, there's been an intentional conflation between people crossing the border illegally and asylum seeker. how many are seeking asylum versus trying to cross the border illegally? >> if you ask them, they're looking for protection, they're looking for safety, because back home they're not safe. so that for me is seeking asylum. someone who fears for their lives back home. and appear asking for protection. so if you ask them all, that's why they're here. whether they qualify or not is a different story but really they should be gifl and option to

follow up and see if they have a credible reason to apply for asylum. >> sister, thank you for great work you do. we're so grateful there are people like you at the center of this. thanks for being here. time now for some final thoughts. cattie, what do you got? >> i was thinking of something said earlier, that trump dominates our agenda. we carry on talking about it. this story of family separations, we were completely preoccupied with that story. today we have this huge big story in "the new york times" saying there are 13,000 children being moved into a tent city and it's getting no attention in the press because of the kavanaugh hearings. this would be a week to let the fbi do their work and carry on with the other stories we might be missing. >> mike. >> you know, willie, i wish i could lose myself in the baseball playoffs, you know. >> you will. >> the cubs playing tonight. the red sox this weekend. but, you know, you have sister

norma talking about what's happening to children in this country. i get depressed because i think slowly the country we all know, we're all a part of, we're all proud of, pieces of it, like, our slipping through our fingers and all we're concerned about is, you know, how many beers did judge kavanaugh have in high school and at yale. there are bigger things to worry about. >> in the course of covering these stories, we've seen the flash points of this, but the women who have come out and shared their experiences of sexual assault and trauma, regardless of how this happens, what goes on with judge kavanaugh, whether he's confirmed or not, is very clear that we as a country have a problem with this. there's a cultural problem that lets people do this, that keeps women quiet and it needs to change. >> rick. >> i've been curious about having a beer with the president but i think i'd rather have one

with sister norma. >> no question about it. profound final thoughts. ask you about the playoffs. what happens to the cubs today? >> i think the cubs are in some difficulty. i think they really are. i don't think they're going to make it through the day. i don't think -- i think joe maddon's going home for the winter. time to put the storm windows up. >> you think so? >> i hope not but i think so. >> let's take your anti-yankee bias out of it. what happens tomorrow night? a's, yankees, new york? >> i think they'll beat the yankees. >> what? i told you to take your bias out of it. >> the a's are a very good baseball team. bob melvin's a great manager. >> so does that mean you want the a's? is that wishful thinking? >> i want the yankees. i want the red sox/yankee series. >> we'll see you at fenway. yanks/red sox. >> want to go, i'll take you. >> literally, i'll see you in

your seats at fenway. that does it for us this morning. stephanie ruhle picks up our coverage right now. hey, ste. >> hey there. good morning, everyone. i'm stephanie ruhle with a lot to cover today. after repeated questions, the white house allow the fbi to widen the scope of its kavanaugh investigation. >> i think the fbi should do what they have to do to get to the end. i think the fbi should interview anybody that they want within reason. >> but while the scope is open ended, the time line is not. promising a vote on kavanaugh by the week's end. >> you can practically hear the sounds of the democrats moving the goal post, the time for endless delay and obstruction has come to a close. we'll be voting this week. >> i doand a done deal,