media company behind that video. that really does wrap it up for me this hour. thank you for watching. "deadline white house" with my friend nicolle wallace starts right now. >> hi, everyone. it's 4:00 in new york. deputy attorney general rod rosenstein took his fragile piece with the president out for a stress test yesterday in a rare and expansive interview with t"the wall street journal." he defended the mueller probe and offered to stay on the job despite the constant stream of insults about the investigation he oversees and the department of justice in general. for as long as the president pleases. rosenstein telling the journal, quote, people are entitled to be frustrated. i can accept that. but at the end of the day, the public will have confidence that the cases we brought were warranted by the evidence and that it was an appropriate use of resources. those cases include the criminal indictments of the president's former campaign chairman, his former national security adviser and his former deputy campaign chairman.

rosenstein also said, quote, i committed i would ensure the investigation was appropriate and independent and reached the right result whatever it may be. i believe i have been faithful to that. rosenstein's interview coming on the same day that the justice department's top ally in the west wing, white house counsel don mcgahn, departs his post. rosenstein's comments about the mueller investigation also coincide with a new report from abc news that confirms that prosecutors are actively investigating possible collusion between trump's associates and russia. from that abc report, quote, prosecutors from special counsel robert mueller's office have been asking former campaign chairman paul manafort, their newest cooperating witness, about his friend and former business associate roger stone. according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. mueller's interest in stoen stone appears to be focused on whether stone or his associates communicated with julian assange or wikileaks about the release of damaging e-mails allegedly

hacked from hillary clinton's campaign by russian intelligence officers. here to help us wade through the developments, some of our favorite reporters and friends. from "the new york times," mike schmidt and peter baker. frank figliuzzi, former fbi assistant director for counterintelligence and joining us on set, a never before seen combination, steve schmidt, former republican strategist, now an msnbc contributor and co-host of the podcast words matter, and rosie o'donnell, actor and activist. she's known donald trump and been at odds with him for a long, long time which we'll get to over the course of the mourp mike schmidt, what do you make of rod rosenstein stepping out doing this interview with "the wall street journal" at a time when i think most of us understand his relationship with the president he serves to be rather tenuous and fragile? >> yeah, rosenstein still in this tenuous position. the president has chosen to keep him around even after the

disclosure that rosenstein had discussed invoking the 5th amendment just four months into trump's office and wearing a wire. it's not really clear, why is it that the president has kept rosenstein there? we've been told that the president doesn't really believe rosenstein's explanation that he said it sartacastically and youe seen now we're several weeks out from the midterms, a thought that rosenstein would go after the midterm elections with sessions. what is it that rosenstein has done or said to the president to keep his job? why is he still there? >> here's the president articulating those two seemingly conflicting sentiments. that he likes rod but thinks the investigation is a witch hunt. this is the president on "fox & friends." >> you know, the rumor is the day after the midterms you're going to fire him and fire the attorney general. >> well, i actually get along well with rod. >> mr. president, the people in your administration, rod rosenstein, will not show up on

capitol hill to -- because congress -- >> i was surprised at that. actually, i was surprised at that. i would think he would. he mentioned certain things to me that, you know, are very positive about that event, and i would imagine that you'd want to put that down and, frankly, whether you were under oath or not shouldn't matter. but he mentioned things to me that i would think would be fine for him to testify. and so, you know, when congress calls. so i would -- i'm a little surprised that rod wouldn't do it. >> mike, we're going to show the video of the president and rod rosenstein on air force one last week. but they steam have papered over what remain very serious differences of opinion that rosenstein should be more forthcoming with the president's top allies on capitol hill. the house republicans on the intel committee who want to subpoena all sorts of things. and you've got the former general counsel to the fbi confirming to your colleagues that this account that you reported on about rosenstein offering to wear a wire was not at all said in jest. the president sees these things

and i imagine remains irritated. >> yeah, that's the thing we don't know. what is it about roen stoin's relationship with the president that rosenstein's been able to keep him at bay? if rosenstein has told the president something that the president thinks is favorable to him, why is it that he doesn't want to testify about it before -- on capitol hill? from what the president is saying, rosenstein told the president it was sarcastic. at the same time not willing to go up to capitol hill. but going back even further to early in last year, what has rosenstein done to manage this, to protect mueller? it's just one of though te thin don't know and one of these mysteries we may not know until after rosenstein is gone. >> peter baker, the president breaking his seal on the no witch hunt tweets yesterday by tweeting, is it really possible that bruce ohr whose wife nellie was paid by simpson and gps fusion for work done on the fake

dossier, who is still working for the department of justice? i think maggie gave us a countdown clog. this was the first witch hunt tweet in about a month from the president. obvious this is still something he's losing sleep over. >> of course. he hasn't lost his interest in what he sees as, you know, an fbi and justice department out to get him. at least as he's portraying it to the public. but we've had sort of this break as you say from the witch hunt talk because robert mueller has gone to ground in the campaign season. clearly interested in not getting in the middle of this heated moment. clearly giving up in effect a hiatus november november 6th. the president seemed to be happy to have this off the table for most of the last few weeks talking about brett kavanaugh, talking instead about the economy, talking instead about health care or other issues. it's interesting he came back to it yesterday. it's something that clearly gnaws at him and continues to eat away at him.

you wonder what's going on behind the scenes we may not know about in terms of what's being prepared for after the election in terms of personnel changes or any kind of findings that robert muell may be preparing to submit to rod rosenstein in the postelection period. >> one window into what might be going on came from this abc news report. they report that paul manafort has been getting questions about roger stone's contacts with wikileaks and julian assange. you and i have talked on countless occasions about how this is the conspiracy part of the mueller probe and how it runs on a parallel track to the obstruction of justice investigation. but this abc report seems to confirm that mueller's investigators are still very much pursuing the collusion investigation. >> yeah, all eyes should be on roger stone, nicolle. he is really at the heart of a criminal conspiracy or -- as

it's now called, collusion, which you know i have issues with that word. so any linkage to the russians, any prior knowledge of the president to release the hacked e-mails, to use wikileaks, to contact julian assange, to have the russians pretend to be wikileaks as a conduit to get that out to the public. the social media campaign. that's all revolving around roger stone and that, in my predictive analysis is that will be the next indictment we see or he'll be lumped into a larger number of indictments at the tail end of this investigation. and nicolle, let's not rule out the possibility that even higher level russian officials could be named in a future indictment. let's remember that we got up to the rank of colonel in the gru with regard to social meedia, with regard to hacking. someone above that gave those orders and don't rule out the possibility that mueller is looking at that level of rank. >> and just remind us. we haven't talked about the

collusion side of this. we're not going to use that word. we're going to use conspiracy. remind us what that investigation looks like from the standpoint of the fbi or the mueller investigators. how would you go about trying to knit together and understand whether or not the 13 russians who have already been charged by robert mueller and someone like roger stone and, if he's asking, paul manafort about it, what he would want to know about paul manafort's knowledge. and could it include anybody else? are they looking for an intersection between roger stone, assange, wikileaks and perhaps some officials on the trump campaign? >> yeah, you have laid out an outline of the questions that would be asked of manafort and would go toward meeting statutory elements. so you're look at any prior knowledge driven by the campaign, not necessarily by the russians, a full understanding of, by americans, that they were dealing with russian government and then communication. so here's the challenge if you're mueller. much of what we've already seen indicted on the russian side has got to have its origins in top

secret classified, almost nsa and cia technical and human source information. think about it. they know the names, the dates, the racnks, the time of day tha hacking occurred. and they've dismantled the social media propaganda machine that putin moved forward through his friends. that's not something you read in magazines. so the question is, mueller is armed with all of this sensitive intel from the intelligence agencies. he's got do parallel construction. he doesn't want to expose those in court or in an impeachment proceeding report. he's got to get it from manafort, from flynn or from cohen or from roger stone himself to avoid exposing a top secret technique in court or in reporting. >> what do we understand from the mueller investigation to be of interest when it comes to roger stone? are they interested in roger stone's contact with russians? in his contacts with other trump campaign officials?

have other people implicated him? just talk about the mueller team's interest in roger stone. >> well, it's clearly the thing that they're putting their most effort behind right now. and they're doing -- their most work on. they're building towards. at least that we know about. obviously, things mueller is working on that we don't know about. what's going on with stone is a very broad investigation looking at everything that he touched. every interaction that he had and what was he telling the campaign? what was he telling others? what did he really know? was he misrepresenting what he knew. was he trying to, you know, pretend he knew more than he really did where his communications directly with wikileaks, where there are cut-outs. what was his real role in it. and those things are hard to piece together because i think there's some thought that stone may have been overtwerking publicly what he really knew. and that's a difficult thing to unravel, but it's obviously something that mueller is putting a lot of muscle and time behind and something that they, obviously, see as central to all

this. and if you recall, this is still something that mueller wants to ask the president about. and the questions that mueller's guys laid out for the president. the president's lawyers want to ask about the president's interactions with stone. what did stone tell the president? what did the president know from stone? >> peter baker, the president trotted out his, i hardly knew him explanation yesterday. i think it was in the context of michael cohen and michael cohen's comments as reported by "vanity fair" about, i think he spent dozens of hours now with federal investigators. manafort is the variable here. manafort is now telling mueller's investigators anything and everything they want to know. any sense that the white house has ticked up any of their anxiety around these questions, around roger stone, around manafort, around cohen? this is the russia piece of the investigation which has always been the deeper trigger for the president. he cites no collusion, no collusion, almost like a nervous tick. >> he does. he says no collusion often

enough and emphatically enough that it's sort of penetrating the larger conversation. a lot of people out there have come to the conclusion that maybe, in fact, mueller doesn't have anything on collusion. that's premature. we don't know what robert mueller really has. we're all reporting from the outside in trying to figure out what he's interested in by talking to people he and his people are talking to. and drawing conclusions from that. but the truth is he's been as tight -- run as tight an operation as anyone has seen in washington in a long, long time. and there's going to come a time in the next few weeks or months he's going to show his hand and in a way that might surprise us all. so we don't know. and that could -- naturally would lead to anxiety in any white house. why did the president tweet on this yesterday? possibly because something has got his -- he's concerned that paul manafort may or may not know something that would be damaging to the president. denied that he does. but he has great and deep contacts with russian figures close to putin.

his own presence as the campaign chairman at that particular time just by itself draws suspicion and questions about what was going on there. so if you are in the white house, of course you'll look at that with a degree of worry because you don't know what you don't know. >> steve schmidt, mike schmidt and his colleague maggie haberman reported yesterday that don mcgahn has left his post as white house counsel. you look at rosenstein. there's some fragile sense of not knowing how long these pictures are going to be hanging on the wall and stuff is going to be on his desk. we talk about mattis as a guardrail. we talk about guardrails around our national security. it's clear from the saudi situation they're not really holding. what do you make of the fact the guard rails around the justice department arguably the most important ones are, at this moment, while there's so much other stuff in the system while we're focused on the kavanaugh fallout, khashoggi and the midterms, they seem to be crumbling. >> i tend not to look at the guardrails as individual, as people. i look at them as institutions. what we've seen is this

president assaulting these institutions from the day he took the oath of office. he attacks the rule of law. he assaults the justice department. he assaults the individuals in the justice department. he assaults the intelligence community. all of it, though, all of it is an assault on objective truth. the idea that there are knowable facts. that things can be true. that, in fact, on the order of the saudi crown prince, a "washington post" columnist was murdered and dismembered, though he's an american resident with american citizen children. but, hey, donald trump says innocent until proven guilty. or guilty until proven innocent or whatever the formulation is on the day. up is down and down is up and right can be left and left can be right and blue can be red and red can be orange. the assault on objective fact, and the great exhaustion that seems to overcome so many

americans is they try to sort out the den that we go from outrage to outrage. the kavanaugh hearings now seem like they were three years ago. >> yes. >> and the fact that we found out that the president is an extraordinary and titanic business fraud, a tax cheat of epic dimensions. that was, what, nine years ago? >> like lost in sort of -- six news cycles ago. >> that's the danger to the institution is an institution is the constant assault on truth because in a democracy, democracies do not sustain on a foundation of lies. they're sustained on a foundation of truth. without truth, there can't be accountability. without accountability, we see something less than a government of the people, by the people, for the people. >> peter baker, let me give you the last word. there's some developments in the white house posture on the disappearance and alleged murder

jaf maul khashoggi. can you just sort of fill our viewers in? we've got bob corker wanting to know more about the intel. what was collected by the intelligence community about the saudi plan to detain khashoggi. they want to understand what this white house knew and when they knew it. and some new sort of space, sort of appearing between what the intelligence community says they understood and what the president has been saying about rogue killers. >> that's exactly right. you heard the president just say on his way out of town that it does look like jamal khashoggi is dead at this point. that doesn't seem like much of a surprise to everybody else but something the president has shied away from saying until now. but you saw some change today. he -- and steve mnuchin, the treasury secretary, decided they should not travel to this investment conference in saudi arabia, one that a lot of business organizations have decided to stay away from as a result of this case. that does indicate a change on their part. you see the intelligence agencies telling the president

that these people are connected to this killing by the turks, people who are close to the crown prince, not -- the idea they're rogue actors seems rather far fetched given their proximity to the person in power in riyadh. he's put the president in the box. keeping a way from blowing up the relationship the united states has had with saudi arabia for many, many years and the one he has cultivated so strongly since taking office and yet the facts are not suiting, you know, an explanation that would allow him to do that. how do you continue to say, these are our friends and these are our allies if you accept the facts the turks have gathered and passed along to american intelligence and american intelligence themselves are coming to the conclusion have some validity to them. >> is the fbi on the ground in turkey participating in this investigation as far as you know? >> to my chagrin, every indication is that they are not, so we're talking about a u.s. permanent resident. we're talking about children who

are americans and american journalist and they have not been called in, even to do simple liaison with the saudis. that's what we're hearing so far. so i can't take seriously any comments that the white house is giving out that we're looking deeply at this and taking this gravely seriously. i don't see that happening. >> go ahead, eugene. >> unbelievable. just unbelievable that the president really cares so little about this horrific murder. and, you know, he has gone all in on saudi arabia. the difficult relationship for any president to manage because of the saudis and the way they act. but he's gone in further. he's put all the chips, thanks to jared kushner with his advice on the saudis and what is he going to do now? >> yeah. it's horrific. it really is. to think they were just going to interrogate him but happened to show up with bonesaws and they cut the man's body apart while he was alive and mike pompeo is

sitting next to that man? the saudi prince? i don't understand what world we're living in. this is not the america that we grew up loving. this is not the country that all the rest of the world looked to as a leader of freedom and democracy. we've become a joke and an embarrassment. and this country is going down the tubes under this man, and i don't understand for the life of me why he can't be stopped. >> we're going to pick that up on the other side of a break. thank you for starting us off. when we come back, crossing the political divide to sound the alarm about donald trump. a few of my favorite people weigh in on how to turn opposition to trump into electoral success three weeks from now. also -- inside trump's strategy to target a former alleged sexual partner. donald trump reportedly tried horseface out on aides and close friends before launching that attack on stormy daniels. and weaponizing immigration. how donald trump plans to stoke fears over immigration to rally his base as the midterm elections near. it's a long, long way from hope and change, folks. stay with us.

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so there was a time not so very long ago when people like me and steve schmidt would have disagreed with rosie o'donnell on just about everything. but donald trump's denigration of women and loose personal and business ethics can make for some unusual alliances. as our politics realign and the questions become starker and darker, democrats wonder whether it's safe to build bridges to some of the very same republicans they loved to hate just years ago. it also raises an important political question. how do democrats build a bigger tent and turn it out to vote for their candidates three weeks

from today. steve, rosie and eugene are still here. how do they do that? >> i always thought, why didn't they counterprogram his nazi-esque rallies. why didn't the democratic commission get together and go when he's there we're going to get springsteen and speakers. why is he allowed to go do this reality show? and everyone just follows it. nobody says -- nobody -- >> you've worked in television forever. why didn't they do that? >> because the mainstream media didn't frame the rallies as they were. no one said he paid for people to be there that they were only this many people. he had to move inside the gym because the outside venue was too big. no one said the facts like -- even when the rallies are happening now. i wish the news media would frame it for the people. here's another hate-filled rally full of lies by a president who wasn't really elected. >> fox doesn't even take the rallies anymore. i don't disagree on the problem as it was at the time. but that's not the problem now. how do democrats win now? >> yeah, that is a scary thing

coming up, 19 days left. we have to get out the vote. if a tsunami happens and the people show up there like in tiananmen square all those years ago, those inspirational photos of the woman in front of the tank, that's where we're going, america, unless we turn up at the polls. >> democrats win district by district, state by state. they have to do that. and candidates have to be appropriate for the district. they have to speak to those voters. and however they can. and political disagreements i might have once had with steve or with you about policies, you know, they are all held in a bay at a time of national emergency. you are my sister, my brother. >> i feel the same way. >> 60% of the country disapproves of donald trump and democrats are wringing their hands like, oh, i don't know. i think the house is okay. not the senate. why not? why aren't democrats more bullish about their chances? >> we don't have a real leader.

joe biden is not the leader? who is the real leader? >> just worry about your district. worry about your state. you know, talk to -- talk to people. talk to voters. that's what you do. >> steve, you made ads. what should the democratic message be for the next 19 days? >> there's one question on the ballot. does the country want to put a check on donald trump? do we want to put a check on trumpism? do we want to repudiate it or validate it? because should the republicans maintain majority control in the house, should they maintain majority control in the senate, this president will not only be unchecked, he'll be emboldened. and at the core what he's doing is stoking a cold, civil war in this country between the american people. >> without a doubt. >> the first president in the history of the country who makes no pretense about being the leader of the american people. he is the leader of a faction.

>> i want to take a pen and write, dear dnc. >> he's the leader of a faction, and he is dividing us. and those divisions will take years and years and years to heal. we are one people. we are one people. we are the american people. and when you see a president of the united states doing what he is doing to this country, not to mention the unraveling of the u.s.-led liberal global order that emerged from the horror and the catastrophe and out of the death camps and the ruin of a war that killed 80 million people. his fidelity to democracy is nil. his fidelity to small "l" liberalism is not there, and you see it with his complicity, and it is complicity in the murder of a "washington post" columnist by a middle eastern thug. >> tell me why all that is true.

i think we all agree coming from different sides of the political spectrum. why are democrats today so anxious about the -- >> because anxious is what democrats do. and it's very -- and it's frustrating. >> buck up. >> buck up, right. don't stop wringing your hands. >> take what steve said and find the 30-second version. we'll figure it out for an ad for ourselves. >> bobby kennedy is a great example of what the democrats should be doing now. if you look at his race, his unfinished campaign in 1968, he wasn't trying to make an ideological place on a map, right, where between nixon and eugene mccarthy. he was making an argument for better. trying to lift up our politics. who are the leaders out there that are arguing for better that are are saying to the american

people that, hey, we can be better. we can go to a better place. this is what the future looks like. our job and all of us connected through the generations on the backs of the generations of american patriots who sacrificed, beggers the imagination. we have an obligation. we have an obligation to be trustees of a great inheritance to strengthen the country for future generations. where is the bigness of the moment. >> who are those names? >> kamala harris. cory booker. i don't think joe biden at all. i think he is part of the old dynamic and the old paradigm. and i think it's progressive new leaders like stacey abrams, governor in georgia. these are the people that are making you feel like we could maybe topple him. he feels, now, indestructive. since kavanaugh, the depression level for women especially has been so immense. we couldn't believe that he did that. that he got him through to the supreme court.

it was shocking to me that he didn't even have him on the list until he wrote this, by the way, presidents should not be held accountable for their criminal actions. then he put them on the list and got him all the way through in spite of everything that happened. that was the terrifying moment of trump for me. >> beto o'rourke. he has that sort of -- >> bigness. >> driving dreams. >> but it's also tim ryan who is the congressman from youngstown, ohio. >> figured out how to run. >> also seth moellton. dan mcgreedy in the north carolina 11th district. it's the scores of women combat veterans that are running as democrats. it's the whole spectrum of people who, whether they may be very liberal and far more liberal than my taste or more conservative than rosie's taste but are faithful to the idea of the country that we are a people

created equal by our creator. life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. it is about the most perfect idea ever put to paper by the mind of man. we've not only -- we've not always lived by it, but the defense of it is essential. and we see it sundering every hour of every day. >> that's because trump doesn't even get what you said. that's the problem. he's like sitting there watching fox right now and he doesn't understand even the basic concepts or the theories you presented just then. he's too stupid. >> do you regret -- i know i do. do you regret some of our more partisan chapters in our political life. i think we played a role. we all played a role in some of the most partisan debate. you can think about it and then we're going to confess after the break. also donald trump's penchant for attacking women who actually stand up to him. one person here knows about that all too well. i was just finishing a ride. i felt this awful pain in my chest.

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long before his presidency, years before he even announced, donald trump cut his teeth as a public bully on twitter, largely by repeatedly harassing rosie. he honed his craft in seven years and 70 tweets later he's taken that brand of antagonism and misogyny worldwide. we called the woman he allegedly cheated on the first lady with horseface. and new reporting suggests that wasn't a spur of the moment decision. the daily beast reports, quote, privately the president not only thought that it was strategically stastrategica strategically smart to go after stormy daniels in such a visceral way. he workshopped the insult prior to tweeting it. well before he monged her physical appearance he trial ballooned the horseface dig among white house aides, close friends and acquaintances. one even recalled him saying in pa passing, that bleeping horseface. i read these things and i'm

shocked but i'm guessing you aren't. >> he'll do anything and everything to get what he wants and women are of no value to him in his life or world. the only one who is, is his daughter. that's it. the rest of the women in the world are useless as the immigrants that he says are coming from, you know, honduras to take us in caravans. watch out for the caravan. there are people walking away from certain death in third world countries, right? the man doesn't care at all. what he did to stormy daniels was horrific. what he did to me was horrific. i expected that. the national organization of women or something would come out and say you can't do this. you aren't just allowed to pick a woman, lie andimpunity. but he is. he is and he gets laughs for it. and it's like a bad stand-up comic. >> i want to ask you because this question goes around questions of race. we talked about this after charlottesville that now the kkk, you've talked about this. the kkk members don't wear sheets over their face. the trump effect is that people

are out of the closet with their misogyny. out of the closest with their racism. do you see that as potentially the most corrosive impact? >> yes, it's really true. i was in the street the other day and someone saw me and saw me with my haircut and said you look like a dike. and my whole career as a gay woman -- >> no one would ever come up to you and say something to your face but the culture now is that this is what's happening. >> he has degraded the culture more impactfully, more quickly than any person in the history of this country. >> i agree. >> bar none. >> and you think about sitting in the oval office, office that winston churchill and franklin roosevelt would meet in, planning the fall of nazism and victory for world war ii or barack obama meditating before the raid on bin laden or ronald reagan or john kennedy during

the missile crisis and you think about these people sitting around plotting how to insult stormy daniels? it may be the greatest single reputation to the theory of evolution in the history of the world. just incredible. >> it's amazing the power -- >> just incredible. >> this is a terrible, awesome in the original meaning of the word demonstration of the power of the president to give people that sort of permission. to sort of shred the veneer of -- >> decency. >> politeness. >> and respect that we had. and that we need in order to get along. >> and the president must have for the culture to look up to, for the constituents. for children. to dream of. >> civilization is what it's called. >> and now this buffoon. >> this is essential for democrats to understand, i think. there is a difference between toughness, which they surely need, and meanness. toughness and meanness are not

the same thing. they need a tough as nails candidate who will stand for what's right and what's good and what's decent. they don't need somebody to add to the cruelty and to the vileness and there's a reason for it. they want to run a dishonesty campaign against donald trump? they lose because no one beats donald trump at being dishonest. >> so true. >> they want to run a vileness campaign against donald trump, they lose again because it's not possibly more vile than this guy. >> there's a faux debate going on that eric holder said when you go low, you kick them. michelle obama said when they go low, we go high. it's that democrats think they have to resolve it. why can't you have both candidates in the democratic party. fighters and stateswomen. this is where democrats go wrong. they're trying to play by the old rules. when we ran campaigns, you had to -- you lived and died by the fact-checker. if the political fact-checker put a hex on your ad, we were

screwed. we made sure our ads would hold up. if they were on the line, people like steve and i would go to the ad people and say take that image out. it won't hold up. part of the problem is they are playing by the old rules. >> yeah. >> well, they are playing by the old rules but what you said earlier about, 435 house races. there are all these senate races. and there is not -- this is not a presidential year. it's not a year when you have to have one person dominating the party and that specific message and all its particulars is the message of the party. that happens in presidential years. that doesn't happen in midterm years. so, you know, go run in your district. >> no one has had to deal with this before. this is new to the whole entire world. >> or cover it. >> how are we going to recover? when he's finally out, at the end of september when those indictments drop and when justice is finally served, how are we going to heal this

nation? how is it even going to be possible? >> i like your optimism, when justice is served. >> yes. when we come back, donald trump eager to thrust immigration back into the spotlight just before the midterms. it's threatening -- he's now threatening to send troops to the southern border. if you can believe it, that's just the start of the eyebrow-raising things we've heard from republicans just today. ♪ ♪

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i think two words are going to define the 2018 election in the next three weeks. one is kavanaugh and the other is caravan. >> whoa. caravan. donald trump woke up this morning, 19 days before the midterms, ready to serve up some red meat for his republican base by beating the drum on immigration. prompted by video of honduran migrants making their way north, some on their way to the u.s. trump tweeted about the group. including many criminals vowing to cut aid to conduras if the migrants weren't stopped. even suggesting the u.s.

military may close the southern border. according to "the washington post," trump's comment comes as he's been urging fellow republicans to make immigration a central issue in the closing weeks of their midterm election campaigns and blaming democrats for his inability to pass immigration legislation in the gop-controlled congress. rosie, steve and eugene are back. they control -- you can blame the democrats for some things. not passing laws isn't one of them. republicans control everything. >> republicans control everything. and the democrats deserve criticism when they controlled everything for not solving this problem in the first years of the obama administration. but let's understand what this is. this is a deliberate strategy of incitement. in american politics, our leaders used to go out and try to persuade the american people that their side was perhaps a little bit more correct than the other side. there's never been a gentle period of american politics but what we're seeing here is

something new, particularly from our president. he uses lying at mass rallies to scape goat minority populations. he alleges conspiracies. he creates a sense of mass victimization and then positions himself as the avenger on behalf of the victims, defending them from the invading hoard of migrants coming from the south, approaching the border. this is all bs of the first order. when you see newt gingrich up there, one of the most singularly pernicious forces in the history of american politics, a man who more than any other has wrecked the collegiality, the comedy, who began and begatt this era of partisan warfare. when you see his smug smirk talking about caravan and kavanaugh. caravan and kavanaugh. the caravan. these are vulnerable people fleeing some of the most

violence ravaged places on earth. and why do they walk for 2,000 miles? because of the power of an idea. that idea is this place. >> this country. >> america. >> yes. >> a place where people are free. and they are safe. and the idea that when a mother through suffering, through abuse, through risk and sometimes death all around them, when they reach the border and they see a uniform with an american flag and they are no longer safe. or that baby is ripped away and put into an internment camp, this is a moral outrage that harkens to the worse accesses. to the separation of families at the slave auction blocks, to the separation of native american families. it is a moral -- >> as laura bush said the

japanese internment camps. >> this is the failure of the democratic party to address this as a small issue, not as a profound stain on our national honor. as a profoundly un-american policy. and to frame the question for the country in this vile age of trumpism, what is it that we are? who are we as a people? >> as a country, yes. i want to say, i love you. i really do. i would like to move next door to you and have coffee and discuss every single day because what he says and who would believe this two years ago that these former gop head honcho people like you two running campaigns with presidents that i would be so comforted by your words. so -- how does this feel? that's what i want to show on msnbc. >> we both pronounce coffee the same way. are you from long island? >> new jersey dialect. >> there you go. very similar to long island. it gives me such comfort and hope to hear people who i,

before adescribed as not my people giving me a little hope to think to myself, there are people bit of hope that there are still people who feel this way and believe this way. we're going to right this ship. there's no way he's going to prevail. he's evil, he's dark. it's the opposite of what america stands for. one light in the darkness, one candle is all it takes. >> what was it like for you, because we haven't talked about this ever on tv or off, what was it like for you when he won? >> it was horrible. i was away by myself in boston about to shoot a tv show and i said to my therapist, do you think it's wrong for me to go alone, it's election night, what if he wins? and she said, you know, rosie, you've got to stop it, all the negative tapes in your head. you go there and do your job. i went there and i actually got physically sick that night. i thought to myself this cannot be happening. when he got the nomination, i thought i just have to wait

until election day. and then he won. it took a good year to compose myself in public again. i took a year out of the spotlight. >> i'm sure would you have been wanted to be proven wrong but the first thing me did was pass the muslim ban. >> yes. >> what i wrote on twitter was we should impose martial law until we make sure the russians weren't involved in the final tally of the votes. people were like martial law, what's wrong with you? >> he wants to send the military to the border. >> i want to send the military to the white house to get him. >> i don't know if i can top that. >> it is astonishing that we're living through this era, it really is. and you have to try, i think, to be optimistic that after it ends we can put the pieces back together somehow. >> but when i walked into the

make-up room and i talked to you, you were down for the first time since i've known you. why? >> you know, the killing of jamal khashoggi has been very sad for "the washington post" newsroom. i did not know him. a lot of people at the post, especially in my corner of the newsroom did know him, have known him for years. just, you know, his editor is a good friend of mine. just the thought of this horrific torture and murder that it's now clear happened. and to have the president of the united states trying to find a way to ignore it, trying to find a way to just like pretend it didn't happen, as opposed to -- and you can't have any faith that really that he's going to do the right thing. whatever the right thing, is he's not going to do it. >> he's doing that to scare every journalist here, who he

calls enemy of the people. here a guy who has tortured and killed a journalist speaking badly of ksm. he doesn't respond. why? i'm sure that's his wet dream to say what can he possibly do to scare journalists of not printing bad news about him, which is equivalent of the truth about him. >> we've talked about this for many months. we talked about this before. the attacks on journalists have happened largely in a vacuum because nothing has happened. but now something has happened. do they feel that they hurt more? >> yeah, yeah. i mean, it hurts more. so we're here in the united states and we're all sort of -- >> we're free. >> exactly. we're not going into the saudi consulate in istanbul. but i think not only of that but we're all in on with mohammed bin salman. so he's killing thousands of civilians in yemen, he kidnapped the prime minister of lebanon,

he blockaded qatar, another u.s. al ally. he is not a good, reliable u.s. ally. i worry that we're going to pay a huge price for that. >> this country is not, has not and never has been an ally of the united states. it is a leach on the united states. we need them for nothing geo politically. we are an energy-independent country. if you look at north america between mexico and canada, we are the most energy-rich place on earth. this is a despotic regime. in have imported wahhabiism to every corner of the world. it was 15 of the 19 hijackers in 9/11 were saudis. they are engaged in a war crime in yemen. hundreds of thousands have been killed with american weaponry. and in the same way that paul

manafort's criminality was an absolute utter open secret in washington, d.c., who this guy is is also an open secret. and there are few things more shameful than, one, on his first foreign visit goes to saudi arabia, a place where we hail mbs and his progressivism because women can now drive a car alone? we need them for nothing. >> that's true. >> and when we look at this relationship and we look at the degree to which the saudis with their money have corrupted the american system of government and you look at the shamefulness of his coast-to-coast tour with iraq -- i admire the rock. it's time for every p.r. agency in this country that has an office in riyadh to shut it down and come home. it's time for every lobbying firm to fire the saudis.

it's time for every state pension fund to divest, for everything technology company, for every media company that has taken dirty saudi money, send it back. this is a disgrace. this moment in time, what we've seen, is the murder of a u.s. resident with american citizen children, a "washington post" columnist with a complicit president who has called journalists the enemy of the people, the american people should rise up against this. but we should put truth to the lie about who this guy is and what this regime is. >> all right. we have to sneak in our very last break. don't go anywhere. steve's going to talk again after the break.

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"mtp daily" starts right now. nicole, where are you? i got beer, i got happy hour, it's vegas. >> it's 1:00, it's beer time. >> watch out, watch out! it's a 24-hour town and early voting starts tomorrow so why not. thank you, nicolle. >> have a good show. >> you got it. if it's thursday, it's vegas. good day. i'm chuck todd here in las vegas, nevada. i'm coming to you live f