tomorrow at 1:00 p. mm. and a at:00 p.m. deadline white house starts right now. >> hi, everyone. it's 4:00 in new york. as donald trump rolls out a plethora of shiny distractions, there is now even more evidence that in 15 days, voters will once again go to the polls with donald trump under the cloud of an investigation into his campaign's ties to russia. a new report in "the washington post" confirms that special counsel robert mueller is focused on trump associate roger stone. as he continues his investigation into whether donald trump's 2016 campaign and its associates conspired with russians to influence the 2016 election. "the washington post" reports, quote, in recent weeks, a grand jury in washington has listened to more than a dozen hours of testimony and fbi technicians have pored over gigabytes of

electronic messages as part of the special counsel's quest to solve one burning mystery. did longtime trump adviser roger stone or any other associate of the president have advanced knowledge of wikileaks plans to release hacked democratic e-mails in 2016. the post also explains what's going on behind the scenes in the mueller probe in what seems like a quiet period but may turn out to be anything but. while outwardly quiet for the last month, robert mueller's investigators have been aggressively pursuing leads behind the scenes about whether stone was in communication with wikileaks whose disclosures of e-mails believed to have been hacked by russian operatives disrupted the 2016 campaign. and on the potential significance of the stone and wikileaks piece of the collusion puzzle, the post writes this. the question of whether trump associates were in contact with wikileaks is at the heart of mueller's inquiry. today in a statement to nbc

news, roger stone vigorously denied accusations that he coordinated with russia. i never received anything including allegedly hacked e-mails from guccifer 2.0, the russians, wikileaks, assange or anyone else. and never passed anything on to donald trump, the trump campaign or anyone else. there is no witness who can honestly testify otherwise and no evidence to the contrary. here to take us through "the washington post" new reporting on the mueller investigation, some of our favorite reporters and friends, including one with a byline on that story. carol is a national investigative reporter with "the washington post" who joins us on set along with nick confisore plus white house bureau chief at "the washington post" phil rucker and matt miller, a former chief spokesman for the justice department. carol, let me let you respond to stone's denial. >> so stone has -- roger stone, longtime trump ally has said a lot of things over the last year

and a half. sometimes it's hard to follow that bouncing ball. but i will actualio suppoly sup in one respect. we don't know for sure whether or not roger stone coordinated with anyone. all we know is the echo of a grand jury. we can see through all of the questions that mueller's team has asked and all the material they've subpoenaed and all the gigabytes of text they've looked through between roger and various friends. we know that he is trying to figure out, was roger lying or was he telling the truth about having a special back channel to wikileaks? because some of the things he said during the campaign were quite boastful about knowing something was coming. something really damaging was coming. >> just remind everyone because it's been a while. your reporting is so significant because as you write, this is a quiet period in terms of what is publicly facing, about the mueller probe. but last week abc news reported that paul manafort now a cooperating witness was peppered with questions about roger

stone. you report on what seems like a much deeper dive into the actual communications that he was sending. take us through what your reporting that the fbi is actually looking at. >> so what they're primarily looking at are a comparison of roger's public and also private comments to people about what he knew at the time about wikileaks' future plans to disclose key pieces of information. did he know in the summer, in the spring as we reported awhile ago, that there was something damaging coming from hillary clinton? there was, as you know, nothing public in june of 2016, the height of when the campaign got really sticky. there was nothing publicly known about a treasure trove of e-mails that julian assange was holding. we later learned those were hacked by the russian intelligence officers. so did roger have special information and did he share it with the campaign? what we know is he spoke to a lot of people and said a lot of

different things. first he said to randy, a sometimes side kick and actually a democratic activist, that he had a secret back channel. and that's what randy has told the grand jury recently. we also know he said he had another journalist who was helping him and that that is the basis for some of the things he said. a conspiracy theorist. what is true, what else does mueller know? we don't know the answers. >> we have some of those public statements from roger stone. let's watch. >> out of control special counsel robert mueller is now poking through every aspect of my personal, social, family, business and political life grilling my longtime associates in an attempt to fabricate some offense in order to destroy me personally and financially. i'm ready to fight. i will never roll on our president. >> a lack of -- i could be

standing in a rain storm and he can tell me it's raining and i wouldn't believe him. there's a lack of credibility there. i wonder if you've got any reporting on how mueller is investigating the stone piece because i imagine and you've reported that he's also investigating or scrutinizing donald trump's public statements. and we know donald trump stood up in front of god and country and the press corps, of course, and made statements he might have known something was coming. >> some of the most famous things said by roger were, as you remember, soon to be podesta's time in the barrel. that was about, i'm going to guess, four to five days before the release of the actual podesta e-mails. hillary clinton's campaign chairman. and that was sort of a stunning thing. how did he know that? we have a source who told us months ago that in the spring of 2016, he sat down at dinner with roger, and roger said julian has this amazing trove of e-mails.

it's going to be a really big mess for hillary. it's going to be really bad. nobody else knew that. so it's really intriguing. as for your very good point about, how do you figure out what's true and what's not true? we're working on that. but i would add one more thing. the most significant thing about this moment with roger right now is, it's so similar to the michael cohen moment. >> and the manafort moment. >> where everybody says, i will never roll on my guy. it may be that roger had no special back channel or special knowledge but mueller wants a cooperator, and that may be as simple as it is. >> matt mueller, i see you nodding. i'm going to let you jump in and respond to whatever part of this story you want to respond to. so this was a campaign whose public defense on all these questions of collusion, of conspiracy with the russians has been we were too incompetent to collude with our press office, yet -- yet we are to believe

that donald trump quincoincideny foreshadowed a big event on the day the e-mails came out? it defies any sort of logic or any sort of natural rhythm about the trump candidacy. >> and that roger stone happened to preview something that later became true. i was chuckling at carol saying -- or at the reporting that roger stone says he's never going to flip which is, of course, what everyone says right before they are staring at an indictment and years behind bars and ultimately lots of people when they find themselves in that circumstances, suddenly have a magical conversion and do want to tell their story. and i suspect the story that bob mueller is trying to find out is not just whether roger stone had advance knowledge about the hacked podesta e-mails. obviously, that's a key piece of the puzzle. but i don't think knowledge in and of itself will be a crime. did he have advanced knowledge and, if so, what did he do with that information? did he advise wikileaks? advise assange on when the right time to release that information would be? did he advise them on what the right way to sequence the e-mails would be?

it's always been suspicious both the timing and the content of that first leak. the first batch of e-mails came 29 minutes after the access hollywood tape was released and included the most damning set of information contained in the entire trove. that was the summaries of clinton's speeches to wall street. so i think it is clear for -- it's been clear for some time that roger stone is the next big target for the mueller investigation. he's trying to find out the answers to those questions. >> phil rucker, this also ensnares and involves potentially don junior. and we have some of the most explicit and easy to understand articulations of the campaign's eagerness to be in receipt of assistance from russia, as well as the first inkling into the vastness of what they were offering. they describe the offer to give dirt on hillary clinton as part of russia's and its government's support for mr. trump. this was in response to -- i believe your reporting and "the new york times" reporting on the

meeting in trump tower. don junior says in a statement, this is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of russia and its government support for mr. trump. and when he was offered these dirt or whatever it was, he said, if it's what you say, i love it. so we're not groping in the dark in terms of trying to understand the trump campaign's affinity for their appetite for and their willingness to receive assistance from russians and their associates. so why wouldn't we believe, why shouldn't we believe that what you all are reporting, roger stone's coordination or collusion with assange was something within the realm of what this campaign was up to at the time. >> yeah, well, you're right, nicolle, there's this don junior meeting as well. and it wasn't just don junior who took that meeting in the summer of 2016 at trump tower looking for dirt on hillary clinton from the russians. jared kushner, the president's son-in-law who was acting as a

sort of de facto campaign manager, making a lot of the strategic decisions on the campaign at that time, he was in that meeting, as was paul manafort, then the chairman of the trump campaign. manafort, of course, is now cooperating with prosecutors, with the mueller team after saying for many months that he would not ever do that. and so there's a bigger picture here, too. and i think we should also remember some of the public comments that then candidate donald trump was making. i remember that press conference, and i think it was to our friend katy tur when he said, russia, if you're listening, let's see those hillary clinton e-mails. he said it sort of in jest but it was certainly a statement that got a lot of attention and that julian assange and others in russia very well may have heard about. >> and do we make -- when we take carol and her colleagues body of reporting and you and your colleagues body of

reporting on all the conwith russia. i worked on three presidential campaigns. i was never in reepts ceipt of of the russian government's support for george bush or john mccain. i never responded to any foreign government, even an ally offering me support. i would never write if it's what you say, i love it. we have all of these proof points of coordination. mueller has charged 13 russians with election meddling. doesn't he simply have to connect one more dot to one person on the trump campaign and we have a conspiracy? >> look, there is certainly a huge amount of evidence of cooperation and discussions. almost like too much evidence. it's not like it's in question anymore. i think the stone issue is critical, though. there are still only a handful of real touch points between the campaign and russian interests. and this one is -- >> that we know of. >> exactly. this is important because it was followed through on. we saw the propaganda campaign. it's important because he said

beforehand -- that's a highly specific thing to guess at. it's not just like clinton will have her time. her campaign chairman will have his time in a barrel. that's a weird thing to guess. >> trust me, it will podes podesta's time in the barrel. this was too precise and the timing too precise to have been a coincidence. what is roger stone spinning about? >> again, it's fascinating he was able to predict that i see exactly what you're seeing, nick. he has an explanation for that, and that is that this conspiracy theorist jerome corsey predicted and shared his research with roger and said, look, it looks to me like there must be other e-mails that involve podesta, and they haven't been released yet. but the timing is stunning. but you made such a good point about the follow-through, right? if everything is in plain sight about how many times russians made a touch or run or a go for a trump campaign aide, you know,

george papadopoulos, michael flynn -- i'm trying to think of the lovely other person. >> well, sessions was in contact with russians. carter page. >> i mean people -- all of them have basically had a russian come at them and offer them something. tried to make some sort of friendly relationship. it's a classic, classic intel operation of trying to find where's the soft underbelly. here's a place where there was a real result. >> classic undertaking from the russian standpoint. nothing normal in terms of american presidential politics. >> that moment when the president -- candidate trump says, russia, if you're listening. we now know that that very evening was the first time russian intelligence officers began digging into hillary clinton's server. >> on top of that, just one more thing. some aspects with the russian campaign overall were not that sharp or sophisticated. some of their ads on facebook were kind of cheesy and half

baked. but, man, this was, they found the timing and the topics that would most hurt clinton. the speeches to goldman sachs and others. the timing was the "access hollywood" tape for some of the e-mails. they hit the nail on the head. >> you've written about cambridge analytica. who was advising them in your estimation? or what questions? >> the question is like, a stone-type figure is the kind of person whose expertise and knowledge would come in handy if you're trying to figure out, i have all these e-mails, how should i put them out. that's what i'm saying. >> matt miller, i want to widen the lens and just want you to talk about how for the second time in two years voters, democratic voters and republican voters, will go to the poll at a time, on a day, on an hour when donald trump and his associates are under investigation for possible collusion with the russians. >> the difference is this time we know about it. voters didn't really know before the last election because the

justice department pretty much did what they're supposed to do and didn't make it public in the middle of an investigation. we're much further down the field where people know about it. what's on the ballot, it may be the future of an independent justice department. if you look at how the president has tried to interact with the justice department over the almost two years he's been in office, you know, he has repeatedly tried to intimidate it. he's fired an fbi director. he's asked for other officials to be removed. the deputy fbi director. peter strzok, of course and seeing them later removed by his appointees at the justice department. he's not only not succeeded in removing mueller because people told him it was politically explosive and refused to carry out his orders. if he feels emboldened after this election or if democrats lose seats in the senate you have to think he's going to look at the results and think, i can be even more aggressive than i was before. i don't have to listen to the advisers that toldny back off

and i can try to end this investigation. without a democratic house to force bob mueller's evidence out into the public sphere, we could see this entire thing swept under the rug and never know how it ends. >> it's a terrifying thought for people who want to see the truth emerge. phil rucker, that is donald trump's not just his dream but perhaps his game plan if republicans hold onto the senate and the house. and he's got a small victory. rod rosenstein, the deputy attorney general is hassing up to capitol hill on wednesday to be peppered with questions. i believe it's a closed session, but it will be transcribed and things transcribed by the house republicans have a funny way of ending up in fox news primetime. talk about how donald trump thinks his war on his own justice department is going. don mcgahn, a close ally of the professionals in the justice department is gone. does the president think he's winning? >> i -- he thinks it's going quite swimmingly, nicolle. and two weeks after the

election, he very well may be making some personnel changes at the justice department. attorney general jeff sessions is widely believed to be on his way out, regard fless of how th election go. matt's point is right. if republicans keep the house and keep and perhaps expand their majority in the senate, trump is going to very much feel emboldened to do what he want fos do with the justice department which is frankly have an attorney general and a deputy attorney general who are more personally loyal to him who he will view more as his protectors. in addition to implementing his immigration agenda and the other elements of his agenda at the doj. and that could be a very big concern for some in washington. but there may not be the resistance in congress that we would see today. >> i guess anyone thinking about taking that job should keep phil rucker's word in mind. he's looking for a protector at the justice department. thank you all for spending the

top of the show with us. when we come back -- love and loetathing in the time of trump. we'll show you the political marriage made in heaven. and with the wall that donald trump promised during the 2016 election on hold for now, donald trump rails against democrats, immigrants n s and am seekers to rally his base. and jared kushner says the u.s. kills people, too. kushner today speaking out about all the deception in the middle east saying there's plenty of deception here in the states as well. i'll say. all those stories coming up. managing my type 2 diabetes wasn't my top priority. until i held her. i found my tresiba® reason. now i'm doing more to lower my a1c. once daily tresiba® controls blood sugar for 24 hours for powerful a1c reduction. tresiba® is a long-acting insulin used to control high blood sugar in adults with diabetes.

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lyin' ted. hold that bible high. puts it down and then he lies. >> donald is a bully. the man is utterly immoral. >> i think he's crazy. >> this man is a pathological liar. a narcissist at a level i don't think this country has ever seen. >> he is choking like a dog because he's losing so badly. we have to put him away tomorrow. >> donald, you're a sniveling coward. >> his father was with lee harvey oswald prior to oswald being, you know, shot. i mean, the whole thing is ridiculous. what is this, right prior to his being shot and nobody even brings it up. >> in politics there's a word for a fight like that. two tarantulas in a bowl. what a difference a year makes.

after their very public feud during the election. who would have guessed donald trump and ted cruz are now apparently best buds. >> he's not lyin' ted anymore. he's beautiful ted. we fought it out. the outcome was, obvious, and we have worked together very closely. i like him a lot. >> okay. trump is holding a rally in houston tonight to benefit cruz who is locked in a tight battle with democrat beto o'rourke. some news on that front. early voting started today in texas. look at this. from jeremy wallace, long, long lines. some people even camped out last night. the chronicle says nearly 2,000 people were outside one polling place in houston this morning hours before early voting even began. that could be good news for o'rourke who was greeted by rock star sized crowds at his stops at voting locations today. houston chronicle taking the rare step of endorsing a

democrat in this statewide race. joining us, brett stevens and karine jean-pierre? do i say that right? >> it's perfect. >> senior adviser to moveon.org and mike who will be the first to notice and call me out on my bad french. veteran columnist who also joins the table. let me start with you. i feel like if it were so sure that ted cruz had this in the bag, air force one wouldn't be landing in texas today. >> if six months ago, if i was sitting at this table and i was telling you, hey, the last two weeks before this midterm, donald trump is going to go to ruby red texas and do a campaign for ted cruz, you would have laughed me off of the set. so i think that what donald trump is doing nearly is all defense. it's not offense. he's going to all of these red states. dean heller is under water. going to arizona trying to save that seat. and so it's not -- i can't

imagine that's good for republicans. and now we're hearing high turnout in early voting. we saw high registration as well in texas. high early voting in georgia, tennessee. that's good for democrats, not republicans. the reason why republicans do so well in midterms is because we don't come out democrats don't come out. >> mike, it feels like the -- if the republicans have prevailed at anything it's winning this poll game. i didn't find a single pollster who thought there was a chance in hell that republicans would hold the house. ergo, democrats are likely looking at whether they win by one seat or 101 seats likely taking control of a chamber that could launch investigations into every corner of the trump administration. why aren't they happier? >> yeah, well, you know, what's odd to me and what's been odd all along, nicolle, is they actually thought the whole kavanaugh thing and getting

behind this aging frat boy was a winning thing for them. and they do. they keep moving the goal post. and you hear trump says, hey, you're voting for me on november 6th but behind the scenes he's saying, don't pin this on me if we lose -- >> not behind the scenes in an interview he said that. he didn't hide that. he said that in an interview. >> yeah, i sometimes forget when the curtain gets pulled back and when it gets pulled back. i'm just watching the cruz stuff. the cruz stuff is the republican party in full bloom. think about all the words that were spoken on this network and all networks about nfl players taking a knee. think of all the time that was wasted on the internet and guess what ted cruz is doing tonight? he is genuflecting in front of the president of the united states because they both think there's political hay to be made by him doing that. >> and, nick, take all the political spin on both sides out

of this. you don't land air force one in a state where a statewide election is in the bag. you just don't. so going to texas, going to deep red texas suggests that donald trump, ever the performer, sees something in beto that all the democrats see. >> i'm not sure about that. the president enjoys a crowd. so i think this tour is partly for the president's needs n p s partly for his party's. i see more and more profiles of o'rourke and his poll numbers dropping and dropping. doesn't seem like he's closing in right now. i will say the president's tour right now is a policy of insurance. he's trying to make sure that there is no chance of a democratic senate as best he can. if the house goes, it's one thing. if the senate goes, he's in real trouble. i see this more as putting it in the bag for republicans and not playing defense. >> nick is absolutely right. and i think democrats should be -- >> let's explain the importance of the senate. even ten months ago when the mueller probe was generating headlines on a daily basis, the

president's outside legal advisers saw avoiding conviction in the senate as the strategy for protecting -- that's why they blew up the whole problem of a presidential interview and didn't fire mueller. it became avoiding kwi ining con the senate. >> they'd need two-thirds of the senate so i don't think that's an issue for them. but it's important for a lot of republican voters the senate will be confirming judges, not just justices to the supreme court but a lot of the lower courts. what we learned in 2016 is that we don't understand -- none of us -- understand the american electorate as well as we should. pollsters certainly didn't understand that. so quite honestly from the point of view of political tactics, this is trump just not committing the kind of malpractice that hillary clinton committed when she wasn't going to wisconsin, michigan, making sure that those states she needed to win were rolled up.

i think he's right. the fact of the matter is for all the enthusiasm for beto, and you know how i feel about his opponent. for all the enthusiasm for beto, the spread has been widening. it looks like republicans did, in fact, get a kavanaugh bump and that it's going to guarantee them control of the chamber. >> so since we're disparaging polls, let me put one up. beto was only about as far behind as donald trump was at this point before the 2016 election. i think we have those. if not, trump was down, i think -- it's about one point. so if pollsters are wrong, they could be almost as wrong again. my point is just to underscore yours which is that polls don't really tell -- >> we just don't know. we're in a new world. >> time will tell. polls are kind of theories. the model seems to be different this time because the electorate is different. so we don't know what may happen in this election. but i will have to say that donald trump going into these red states in particular tonight, texas, it's, yes, it

will gin up his base but it will also gin up the other side as well because we have to remember, more people oppose donald trump than support him. and so i think there might be some advantages on the other side, too, by him trying to do the defense and, you know, bringing it home, i guess, is the way he's seeing it. >> it's a sign of all of our politics being so polarizing. when we come back -- a lie is just a lie until donald trump gets a hold of it. then it can become a dehumanizing political punchline. we'll show you what we're talking about. that's next. wants customizable options chains? ones that make it fast and easy to analyze and take action? how about some of the lowest options fees? are you raising your hand? good then it's time for power e*trade the platform, price and service that gives you the edge you need. alright one quick game of rock, paper, scissors. 1, 2, 3, go. e*trade. the original place to invest online.

and everyone i've ever opioloved away from me.thing everything. i blew my ankle out and i got prescribed pain pills by my doctor. if making my detox public is gonna help somebody i'm all for it. i just wish i would've had a warning. the sun goes down. you run those miles, squeeze the toothpaste from the bottom and floss to set a good example. you fine tune the proposal, change the water jug so no one else has to, get home for dinner and feed the cat. you did a million things for your family today but speaking to pnc to help handle all your investments was a very important million and one. pnc. make today the day.

borders, let people in illegally. they want to give them cars. they want to give them driver's licenses. the democrats want caravans. they like the caravans. a lot of people say, i wonder who started that caravan. i don't think we like sanctuary cities up here. by the way, a lot of people in california don't want them

either. they're rioting now. >> four statements, four lies. that was just a sampling of the president's days-long spree of conspiracy theories and lies centered on illegal border crossings and a care vacavans o migrants making its way north. all part of an apparent push to rally his base before the midterm elections. and the president took it a step further with a new set of baseless accusations. >> you know what you should do, john? go into the middle of the caravan. take your cameras and search. okay? search. no, no, take your -- john, take your camera. go into the middle and search. you're going to find ms-13. you're going to find middle eastern. you're going to find everything. and guess what? we're not allowing them in our country. we want safety. >> so here's the deal. he's in charge of the borders. he's the president. republicans control the white house, the senate and the house. so republicans are in charge of everything that happens when it comes to immigration, right?

>> nicolle, do you think he hates these pictures of the caravans? he loves these pictures of the caravans. talk about political hay. he wants them to keep marching towards the border right up until election day. and once again, you know, the demonization of people who are mostly coming here to escape the lives that they had and looking for a better one and you go into the middle and you'll find middle eastern. okay. you mean like middle eastern people who murdered a "washington post" columnist in cold blood in an embassy in istanbul that you can apparently walk in and out of like a drive-through at a fast food place? come on. >> there is something, you know, sometimes i wonder how low we've fallen and you look at jeb bush getting drumd out of the republican primary for calling illegal immigration an act of love. people coming here for a better country. i remember george w. bush's struggles with his own party when he championed comprehensive immigration reform along the lines of what ted kennedy and

the late john mccain envisioned. and you think about the fact that some -- if they were to enter our country, only then would they become illegal immigrants. right now they're migrants. they're not illegal immigrants because they're not in this country and some of them are asylum seekers. they are not what they are being described as. what mike described, they are being watched. this image -- we didn't play it because it's being wauctched li a hurricane on other networks. that is not a picture of illegal immigrants. >> this is a picture of desperate people who want to make better lives for themselves in the united states. not so dissimilar from the desperate people who were my ancestors who came to this country -- >> or mine. >> 120 years ago. >> and mine. >> almost anyone in america has someone like that in their background. whether they are walking over a border or coming on a ship doesn't make thact much of a difference. i'd challenge anyone to find a

middle eastern terrorist among them. they are a caravan for their own safety because there are areas of mexico that are dangerous to go through. but you mentioned george w. bush, john mccain. george h.w. bush, ronald reagan. a long tradition of leaders who understood this country was built by immigrants and benefits from immigrants. he's absolutely right. we do have to have borders and we have to have -- >> but he's in charge of the borders. >> and he's in charge of them. but we values a foreign policy that ought to be working with honduras, el salvador, other troubled countries to improve their economies and expand trade and have a regularized flow of immigration because, by the way, we're an empty country with a negative population, or declining demographics, and we could use more immigrants. >> what are -- how do you cover the lies in the volume that he churns them out. there's a great piece in "the

washington post" plum line about sort of the impotent rage over the border. it could lead to something drastic. republicans control every center of power in washington. so how is it that despite their complete lack of power, democrats are managing to stop trump from implementing his terrific immigration plan. the answer is they aren't. the reason trump hasn't signed immigration legislation is he can't get republicans themselves to agree on a set of reforms. trump can't get republicans to agree to fund a border wall, the centerpiece of his presidential campaign. let me play how important the border wall was to his presidential campaign. >> we will build a wall. walls do work. walls do work. we are going to build the wall. and, yes, we will build the wall. number one -- are you ready? are you ready?

we will build a great wall along the southern border. >> your paper did a great report on how he was a fraud in terms of describing himself as self-made. also a fraud as a politician in saying he's going to build a wall. there's no wall. >> the president's strategy here is to create a sense of threat externally when he can't find one internally. when the gop is as powerful as it's ever been around the country and you can fight it with facts. the facts are there's already a wall on the border. there's a fence. if you see b-roll on tv of the fence, there's already a fence there and that's the point. we have our border. it's pretty well policed. our border policy is not a disaster. the nepeople in that caravan of 3,000 miles away. if george soros wants to get them here by election day you need five 747s to do it. >> it's part of dehumanizing

some of the defenseless and -- i mean saudi arabia has a lobby in washington, a powerful and effective one. he also in a leaked memo that your paper reported on this morning, there's a draft policy at the agencies that would really eliminate or redefine out of existence transgender people. >> which is really disturbing because you have transgender people are probably worrying about their future in this country with donald trump now as president. and it is. this is what he does. he dehumanizes because it riles up his base. and he said this was going to be his closing argument for the midterms. even when we were seeing children being separated from their families at the border. he thought that was wonderful. he thought that was great. and we had heard rumors about, yeah, i want to go even deep or immigration. and so after two years being in power, having everything as you just said, republicans having everything, they don't have going to sell. the tax cut is deeply unpopular. they try to take health care away from millions of people and

pre-existing care is really important. he brought up california how people were taking to the streets in california. i was in california. i canvassed in california 45 which is a very red orange county. and it is a district that has never been held by a democrat. they went back 90 years and never had a democrat there. now you have katie porter who is being very competitive. what do they care about? the economy. health care. and they care about oil drilling. >> you're touching on something that's very important and frankly i'm not hearing it enough on the democratic side. if democrats are going to win, not just in november but in 2020, the campaign has to be centered on hope and too much of the democratic message is rage. it's relitigation of what happened in 2016. it's speculation on questions to which we do not yet know the answer in terms of the connection with russia. and that's problematic for the democrats. >> i have to push back on that. i just went to california 45 to canvas and be with our members. i'm going to be going across the

country in really important districts. that's not what they're talking about. nobody mentioned that to me when i was talking to folks. when i was knocking on doors and asking people if they had voted already because you know california is already voting. that's not what they told me. they mentioned health care, the environment and the tax cut. >> you're talking about national democrats. >> oh, yeah. i'm talking about -- >> you're on the ground with the campaigns. you're talking about a national message. >> right now you're not really hearing. i mean, i know it's there. i know there are policy papers and plans and so on but it's not front and center of the democratic message. the unemployment rate is the lowest it's been since 1969. i don't hear enough democrats grappling with that fact. you can make exceptions and point out real weaknesses in the economy. that's a real reality democrats aren't dealing with. >> you're hearing it on the ground? >> yes. jared kushner applies his father-in-law's me tooism to saudi arabia the same way donald trump once compared the u.s. to

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the saudis' conflicting accounts about the death of "washington post" columnist jamal khashoggi have raised only more questions into what really happened in the consulate in istanbul. even trump acknowledged the mixed messages telling "the washington post," quote, obviously there's been deception and there's been lies. their stories are all over the place. however, he still had kind words for crown prince mohammad bin salman. despite mounting evidence mbs ordered the killing. the post continues, trump did not call for the ouster of muhammad and instead praised his leadership calling the prince a strong person. he has very good control. the president's reluctance to take action creates the conundr conundrum.

addressed in another piece in the post, quote, the challenge now facing president trump is that his waffling public response could leave a lasting impression of weakness. some of trump's advisers have warned him that if he lets the saudis get away with such a barbaric extrajudicial killing with impunity, the saudis would not respect him as a strong leader. nor would other authoritarian regimes around the world, including north korea and iran. here was jared kushner today on the growing crisis. >> i'd say that right now as an administration we're more in the fact-finding phase and we're, obviously, getting as many facts as we can from the different places. >> even trump says there was like deception and lies. do you see anything that seems deceptive? >> i see things that are deceptive every day. in the middle east. i see them in washington. so again, i think we have our eyes wide open. i think that, again, the president is focused on what's good for america. what are our strategic interests. where do we share interests with other countries. let's work towards those.

>> when they look back and study where we fell off the rails, it's going to be people like jared kushner and president trump saying, we're just like russia. i see deception everywhere, including here in washington. what was that? >> it's one of the me pauling consequences of hiring your son-in-law to run a large swath of american middle eastern policy. we have had experts on saudi arabia, on both the democratic and republican side for years. and this guy swans in and says, well, who knows. the truth may be out there like some mulder fact-finding mission. the saudis murdered a disdent journalist in their consulate in the most appalling way possible and one reason they were able to do that is they hear an echo in washington of a president who is constantly calling the media the enemy of the people and they say, well, if that's the tone in washington, surely we can get away with this. especially when you have jared kushner being -- broing up with maumd bin salman as if they're

long lost cousins. they're emphatically not that. so now we have a real crisis on our hands because we allowed the relationship to grow too close and allowed the saudis to think they could get away with this behavior. >> you've written aboutbehavior >> you've written about donald trump's language and violence towards journalists and what might have happened. we should have imagined. failure of 9/11 was a failure of our imagination, that mbs as close of an ally on the world stage as donald trump has, should be abundantly clear, other than the leader of israel, i don't know there's anyone closer to the administration than mbs. >> there's a point i want to make here. i have seen a lot especially on the right from pundits saying jamal khashoggi had views we don't like, he was sympathetic to muslim brotherhood, and listen, there are columnists all over the world whose views we are not sympathetic with.

that is not any kind of excuse or justification for a foreign allied government to go and murder them in barbaric ways in their consulates. some of the people watching the show who know who they are, writing the stuff, this will come back to haunt the journalism profession no matter where you stand politically. >> this is steve mnuchin, donald trump's treasury secretary in the same chair mike pompeo was in. i used to do pr, this is a stage four disaster. >> it is terrible. it reinforces the image or perception that it is about money, that the relationship is about the family money, trump money, saudi money. that if they have the money and will disburse it, they can have their way anywhere. i can't imagine why. but i also think it is fascinating to me that this has

been a regime repressive for a long time. and it is now under the trump administration when the trump people moved closer to them in some ways that it is coming to a head. it took the spark of a writer for an american newspaper to set it on fire. i think it's partly a trump thing. >> it is very much a flame when i was in the white house after 9/11, but he is right to point out, saudi, u.s. relations have never been cozier. do you see any path forward for the administration other than encouraging king salman to replace and depose mbs? >> by the way, we have to stop calling this guy mbs, like he is some marvel comic, he is an autocratic thug with daddy issues and there's a lot of that going around. here's the general narrative here. nobody has come right out and

said this, not the president, not jared kushner, not anybody else. this is what you're being told. that the death of mr. khashoggi is the cost of doing business, that at the end, he doesn't matter. but what matters is this relationship between the united states and saudi arabia. and i always love hearing that saudi arabia is the linchpin to our middle east strategy. i'm sorry, what middle east strategy? all they figured out in saudi arabia is that flattery is the greatest narcotic to this particular president. >> flattery, orbs, and projection screen to get donald trump's face on the side of a hotel. on that note, we have to sneak in a break. don't go anywhere. we'll be back. benjamin franklin captured lightening in a bottle. over 260 years later, with a little resourcefulness, ingenuity, and grit, we're not only capturing energy from the sun and wind, we're storing it. as the nation's leader in energy storage, we're ensuring americans have the energy they need,

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president trump's former attorney equivocating on whether or not he thinks donald trump could be in trouble on obstruction. >> he calls it a witch hunt. do you think it is a witch hunt? >> i don't think it is a witch hunt. >> i don't think it is a witch hunt. cobb went on to say when asked about whether the president was in trouble over collusion or obstruction, he said i don't really know. honestly i do believe he has intention to get it done as quickly as possible, robert mueller. asked if the probe would find obstruction or collusion, he ducked obstruction, said there's no evidence of collusion. this is something that matt miller on the program at the top of the hour says that's a tell from someone who has seen all of the obstruction evidence. nick, it does seem this confirms from another person on the president's legal team what john dowd reported as saying.

on the question of collusion, there's some plausible deniability from the president's part, that maybe it stopped at stone or donald trump jr., but on obstruction and conduct in office with white house counsel, don mcgahn spending 30 hours at least with robert mueller with all that visibility into the desire to have sessions recused, the desire to fire mueller, although it wasn't successful, that his friends and associates think the president has a lot of exposure on obstruction. >> the evidence is in front of us. we have public evidence of why he fired him and it was with lester holt on evening news. i think there was a lot that happened. once he was in the white house and new to it and angry wanting to assert control over it, yes, a lot going on there. as far as collusion, collusion as we often say on the show, collusion is not a crime. and there's a lot of evidence that we know of that points that direction so far. >> so where do we find ourselves

with the reporting in "the washington post" that we started the show with, that robert mueller is still very active in pursuing a tie to the trump campaign on the conspiracy, he has charged 13 russians already with that conspiracy of a foreign adversary to effect a domestic investigation, and you have the other, the second half of the president, i don't know if it is hirst first legal team, this is 2.0 or 4.0 with rudy, the second member of the dowd, cobb team acknowledging on obstruction the president is -- >> we saw a lot of the obstruction ourselves in the last year, especially starting with the firing of james comey and what he said to lester holt but brings me back to we have no idea what's going on. robert mueller knows everything. he is ahead of all of us. all we're hearing is from the president's side. >> the first line of the book, he talks about leaving science, if you get the politics wrong, nothing matters. look at russia. seems to me that's the russia

question, that's why we follow it, even though it isn't a midterm message on the ground. if you don't understand russia's role in the election, nothing else matters. >> i think that's exactly right. the issue at stake here is you have a major candidate for an office of presidency, now the president, who was at best indifferent to the foreign meddling by an american adversary into a sacred american tradition, and that's the heart of the russia story. >> that's just what we know. my thanks to you. that does it. "mtp daily." sorry i'm late. hey. >> that's okay. thank you very much. if it is monday, dems fighting words. good evening, i am katy tur in