she named him ben after the lost prince. the name sake he never got to meet. that's all for now. thank you for joining us. welcome to "kasie dc." i'm kasie hunt. we're live every sunday from washington from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. eastern. tonight, terror strikes again at the american consciousness. 11 people slain in a mass shooting at the tree of life synagogue in pittsburgh. plus, 14 bombs shipped around the country to past presidents, members of congress, cnn, and liberal activists. we'll have the latest on the investigations, but also talk about how we got to this moment in our country. >> i'm joined tonight by former white house communications director anthony scaramucci, and

david hogg, one of the students who went to marjory stoneman douglas high school. this week will be defined in the pages of history by a wave of attempted political assassinations and the deadliest anti-semitic attack in this nation's history. both suspects are alive, in custody, and facing dozens of charges. in pittsburgh, 11 people who went to synagogue to worship are dead. they range in age from 54 to 97. six others were wounded, including four police officers who engaged the suspect, suspected gunman, robert bowers. in the depths of mourning today, thousands of children went to sunday school. many with increased security waiting for them at the doors of their temples. police say robert bowers took an ar-15 style assault rifle and three handguns inside the synagogue. the fbi investigating the shooting as a hate crime. nbc's miguel almaguer is live for us in pittsburgh tracking all the new developments in the case. at this point, what do we know and what are we still waiting to find out?

>> well, investigators have been pretty forthcoming about the motive. they clearly call this a hate crime. what they don't know is what led up to the shooting. was it something the gunman had planned for several weeks, several months, or something he suddenly snapped at and began to carry out this massacre. investigators say it could take them a week to process the crime scene behind me. they call it horrific and complex. 11 people were gunned down in a matter of minutes. many of them came here to celebrate life and lost their own. riddles with gunfire, tonight pittsburgh's tree of life synagogue is home to heartbreak and carnage, believed to be the deadliest attack on jews in u.s. history. >> we're pinned down by gunfire. >> the first shots rang out around 9:45 saturday morning. police say robert bowers used thee handguns like the ones he posted about on social media and an ar-15 like this one. this man was inside, too shaken to speak on camera.

>> as i come into the chapel where services are going on, that's when i turn and i see a gentleman laying down, face down on the floor. and blood was coming out of his head. and i am still hearing it. >> bowers gunned down his victims in three rooms, methodically moving floor to floor before he was met by gunfire by police while leaving the building. >> had bowers made it out of that facility, there was a strong possibility that additional violence would have occurred. >> bowers fled back inside the synagogue, where he was shot multiple times. court documents say he told police they're committing genocide to my people. i just want to kill jews. 11 people were murdered. the oldest victim, 97 years old. rabbi chuck diamond consoled survivors. >> heard gunshots, smelled gun powder. >> on bowers' social media, a history of anti-semitic hate speech and this post before the shooting. i'm going in. >> the fact that this attack took place in a worship service makes it even more heinous.

>> tonight it's unclear why the suspect chose this synagogue. a day of worship becoming a massacre. >> the suspect remains in the hospital. we believe tomorrow he will be in court via video conference, though that remains unclear. again, he faces 29 criminal counts, 11 counts of murder, including several other hate crimes. we know that this investigation could take several weeks to complete. investigators just at the beginning. another thing they mentioned to us is they're looking for surveillance video. any video that would have shown the suspect in his days prior to and leading up to the shooting. that's also another major point of interest as investigators scrub through his social media accounts as well. >> thanks very much. >> on its face, this seems like an unthinkable moment in the history of this nation. but karen tumulty wriedz in "the washington post," to anyone who has been paying attention, the slaughter that took place at the tree of life synagogue seemed not only imaginable but also inevitable.

over and over again, as i have sat here in this chair talking with all of you over the past year, i keep finding myself wanting to say what's going on doesn't represent the country that i have loved my whole life. i wanted to say it again yesterday after bullets flew at the house of worship, and i wanted to say it days before that as these unexploded pipe bombs were delivered to our leaders. i wanted to say i know america is better than this. so where and who are we? i want to welcome in my panel to help us make sense of all this. with me on set, republican strategist and political analyst rick tyler. susan page, and from west newton, massachusetts, investigations editor for the new england center for investigative reporting, paul singer. paul lived in squirrel hill and went to the tree of life, as did his mother for many years. so with that, paul, i do want to start with you. as i'm sure you have been corresponding with your neighbors, reflecting yourself on how this has personally touched you. ia also have been in the center of our public life as a reporter for many decades. do you recognize what's

happening here and how have you reflected on it in the past 24 hours? >> well, it's not my squirrel hill. you know, i grew up in a neighborhood -- i grew up two blocks from that place, and we didn't lock our front door until the mid-1970s. you know, this is a neighborhood that the kids walk the streets, they take the bus downtown. it's safe. this was my mother's synagogue. you know, when it comes this close to home and the people you love are going about their daily basis, they're going to pray, and they're coming under a hail of bullets, it changes how you think about when someone starts pointing fingers and arguing that you are horrible humans. and then i went on some social media site today and saw the denials.

oh, this is all fake. it's being staged by the jews. all a false flag. and i think, when in america did we lose touch, not only with each other, but with reality, with any sense that there are things that are true and that we believe? >> david writes about some of what you were talking about, precisely because everyone knows everyone around here, he said, the one immutable squirrel hill truth that is at once irritating and comforting, the news that raced down the street was about a rare stranger in this peaceful place. dread. and susan page, to what paul was just speaking about, and this idea that this is a community where people felt safe, and you know, for many jewish people in america, this was supposed to be a country where you came to feel safe. and there's so much contributing now to our overall discourse in public life that is just unrecognizable. how do you make sense of it?

>> and of course, some of the victims of this terrible shooting are old enough that they remember the holocaust. and it's as though -- i think for a lot of americans, that seems like quite ancient history, and now it seems much more present. these are threads that have been in american history for some time, but the most radicalized elements of our society increasingly seem to feel emboldened. emboldened by new technology, by social media, by the increasing coarseness of our political debate. and that is having real consequences. i do not think it's a surprise as we get in the final week or so of this midterm election that we are seeing the pipe bombs to democratic leaders, the shooting at a synagogue. even the shooting in louisville of a man who tried -- >> we didn't mention that. >> tried to get into a black church. couldn't get into the black church, went next door to a grocery store and shot two random african-americans he found. >> rick tyler, how much of this lies at the feet of what the

president has allowed to be okay? how much does the leadership in our government matter to events like this? >> well, first, let me say i have been thinking about it. it's -- i mean, the event is unspeakable. we're just all out of words to describe it, and we're talking about it again. and it's the same debate again. i think susan's point is really important. because both the so-called -- the pipe -- i don't want to say so-called, a pipe bomber, even though none of them exploezed. the alleged pipe bomber who saw he was doing somebody a service by threatening people or attempting to kill them. and then this person who goes into a peaceful jewish synagogue during worship and kills people. if you look back at their -- i believe this is true, if you look back at both their social media, they didn't start out talking about hating jews. they talked about normal things that normal americans talked about. and over the course of time,

they became radicalized. and that's really in a sense a new phenomenon that you can sort of self-radicalize yourself by exposing yourself to people who are going to put out vitriol. and we're also in this of post-truth phase. you get these conspiracy theories that this is a false flag, which is disgusting. i think where the president's responsibility is, he's supposed to represent and always has, the presidency historically, has represented moral leadership. now, all presidents haven't been moral or behaved correctly, but we expect presidents in these times to provide the moral leadership, to set us back on track. to ask us who we are and to reflect on it, as lincoln said, the better angels of our nature. so that we don't become a society that's anarchist. nobody wants to live in a

society where you have to have an armed guard in front of your temple or in front of your church on sunday or in front of your mosque. nobody wants to live in that kind of society. and so i really think we need to figure out how do we radicalize people toward tolerance of other people? how do we radicalize people toward listening to other people? respecting other people, and their points of views. that's the american value. that takes courage. >> paul singer, can i get you to chime in here? as we're sort of talking through this, and the point you raised about how people are denying reality does really stick out to me, and it's one of the things i have struggled with as a journalist, as we all kind of cover what has gone on and how you navigate being somebody who is fair to the people, to the viewers and readers, and giving -- we always used to say, give both sides a fair shake. that's come under considerable criticism. it really is difficult to kind of pull this apart, and this president is also using the media and attacking the media in

a way that allows people who are posting these things like you point out to essentially say that no, no, the reality i hear about on my television doesn't actually exist. >> right. and you know, he's not the first person to do this. the first time i was ever afraid as a reporter was at a pat buchanan rally in 2000, during his short campaign there. where he turned to the crowd and said, those are the bad people, and pointed at the three of us who were covering him. it was terrifying. but even in trump rallies and you know this more than i do because you spent more time in the trump rallies, the crowd goes wild, but afterwards, you walk out in the crowd with your pad and pen, and would you like to talk to me, and the people talk to you, oh, which network are you from, what newspaper are you from? i look forward to seeing this. the problem is that there is an element of that crowd that does

not understand the difference between we are angry about what this group is doing or how we're being perceived by this group, and we hate these people. that's the distinction that needs to be made. that's the distinction that we have made in politics for years. that you republicans, democrats, independents, whoever you are, socialists, you're wrong on this topic, but i will defend to my last breath your right to be wrong. that's where we have turned. somewhere instead it's become you hate america, you are bad people. you are not of us. and i cannot only disagree with you, i can hate you, and then somewhere on the fringe edge of that, i can shoot at you. that i don't know how we get back from. >> the man charged with sending more than a dozen package bombs to prominent critics of president trump will face a federal judge in miami tomorrow.

56-year-old cesar sayoc faces up to 50 years in prison. authorities found his fingerprint on one package and dna on two other samples. he's denied all responsibility. thankfully, no one was hurt, but it was a week where americans looked to their elected officials for words of unity and comfort. after past moments of crisis, we have seen widespread calls to cool the rhetoric, like in january of 2011 when former arizona congresswoman gabrielle giffords was shot and six people were killed at an event in tucson. >> an attack on one who serves is an attack on all who serve. such acts of violence have no place in our society. >> forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us. it's important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we're talking with each other in a way that heals.

not in a way that wounds. >> and a similar chorus rang out this year after house majority leading steve scalise was shot and crit clly injured at a practice for the congressional baseball game. >> violence of any kind is unacceptable in our society. and i condemn this action in the strongest possible terms. >> we do not shed our humanity when we enter this chamber. for all the noise and all the fury, we are one family. >> we will use this occasion as one that brings us together and not separates us further. >> now, fast forward to this past week. once again, the threat of violence, and once again, the calls to cool the rhetoric. and paul, i want to go back to you on this as well because one thing that i have found incredibly frustrating over the course of the past months is just how quickly people retreat into their corners and insist that it's one side or the other

that have engaged in x, y, and z acts against people, members of their tribe, when in fact clearly there are people who have different political persuasions who are committing these terrible acts, in part because leaders are squabbling constantly about, you know, quite frankly, a lot of nonsense day in and day out. and they're listing out, there were shootings and this and that and democratic mobs when in fact the president is using and has brought rhetoric around white nationalism back into the debate in a way we have not seen in decades. why are people believing, oh, yes, they're shooting at a member of my tribe so therefore it's worse than when it happens it the other guy? >> you know, i don't know, kasie. the thing that struck me and that worries me most about these shootings is how quickly we leap to some sort of, oh, what is the political spin. what's the fallout? what does this mean for the elections? i mean, the first thing the

president said after this shooting was, well, if only they had guns in the synagogue, they would be safer. that's not -- you know, i go to the new testament. i go to matthew. you know, two or three of you are gathered, there i am among you. are we going to rewrite the scriptures, when two or three of you are gathered, make sure one of your are armed? that's not who we are and hot we want to become. these aren't conversations about blame. these aren't conversations about who literally shot first. these are conversations about do you love the person next to you just because they are the person next to you. and not because they agree with you, not because they voted for the same person or they worship the same god. but will you come to their aid when they fall down? that's the question we want to ask. and that's what we want to teach our children. >> susan page, you have covered many presidents. how does this president approach the role of being the moral

leader of the country? >> well, he has had a different approach than the previous presidents i covered because in the past, you think about there are times of national trauma and what does the president do after the challenger explosion, president reagan gave quite a beautiful address to the nation. after oklahoma city, president clinton who had a very tumultuous presidency up to that point, was not respected by some americans, stepped forward in that role and i think really united the nation and did himself a lot of good as well. but president trump has not responded that way to this shooting and others. i think he does not see -- he speaks occasionally, you saw him speak in the east room reading off a teleprompter, giving more traditional words of solace, but in general, i think his reaction has been to try to protect his political interests, to talk to the people who have supported him, and not to the nation as a whole. that has been a kind of, i think, a characteristic of his presidency. one reason he has political strength because he's really held his core supporters, but it

means from the start he hasn't broadened his standing and he's not used these occasions to broaden his appeal. >> certainly a different way of governing than many other presidents. we have a lot more to come here on "kasie dc." former trump communications director anthony scaramucci is going to stop by. we're going to get him to weigh in on the president's handling of one of the darkest chapters in modern american history. >> later, right, the midterms. back on the trail in the battleground state of new jersey. democrats forced to spend millions of dollars at the last minute to try to save senator bob menendez's seat in a race that's suddenly being called a toss-up. brand-new reporting. place, the xfinity xfi gateway.

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you ain't going to be able to go to temple this morning. >> why not? what in the world is the matter with you? >> somebody done bombed the temple. >> what? bombed the temple? >> yes. that's how come we're stuck here so long. >> i don't believe it. >> well, it's what the policeman just said. >> oh, no. oh, my god. was anybody there? were people hurt? >> i don't know. he didn't say. >> who would do such a thing? >> you know as good as me, ms. daisy. always be the same ones. >> that was a scene from the

academy award winning movie "driving miss daisy" which depicts the temple bombing from 1958. this has a shocking history of mass murder in houses of worship. one of our first weekends on the air here at "kasie dc" was the shooting in sutherland springs, texas, where a gunman killed 26 people in a baptist church during sunday services in november 2017. back in 2015, a self-proclaimed white supremacist walked into mourn emanuel church in charleston, south carolina, and killed nine black parishioners. a year before that, a white supremacist killed three people in two jewish centers in kansas. during his 2015 trial, he said he wanted to kill jewish people. all three of his victims were christians. and in 2012, an army veteran with ties to white supremacist groups shot and killed six people in oak creek, wisconsin, at a sikh temple before turning the gun on himself. and as susan mentioned, just this week, police said a gunman

who killed two black people at a grocery store in kentucky had tried to enter a predominantly black church just minutes before he opened fire. susan page, this has been a thread throughout our history, these are just some of the recent examples of violence perpetrated at houses of worship. what is it about this that centers violence in these places? >> in some cases, for people who are anti-semitic, a jewish synagogue would be an obvious place to go to try to wreck havoc. there have often traditionally been unprotective places. they're not like police stations that have a lot of security. now we see all of these targets getting more concerned about security and having locked doors and having metal detectors at places that we used to think that was not necessary. >> and paul singer, there are some synagogues across this country that have these kinds of things already, that have safe houses, that sometimes employ armed guards because they're

worried about this very thing. >> yeah, that's right. we have done stories a lot about not only synagogues but mosques, obviously, have had to step up security. but again, you know, i think sort of what you seen from the news as well is that it doesn't -- even if your mosque is protected, even if your synagogue is protected, the baseball game you're going to with your kids, the little league, frick park is three blocks away, four blocks away, i guess, from the tree of life, or pamela's makes the best pancakes in pittsburgh, right down on murray avenue. 40 people stand there on a saturday morning, they're targets, right. where do we say, we'll protect this place, protect that place, we'll need a gun in every place where more than five people are standing around. >> rick tyler, it's undeniable this president has used language or allowed language into our discourse that is used by white supremacists.

that they have come into the closer to the forefront of our public life than they have in decades. how much responsibility does the president bear for that? >> i don't know that you can have a direct link between what the president says and somebody who decides to take action, but they definitely feed into a tone. as i said, when people are self-radicalizing and becoming radicalized, when the president of the united states re-enforces or repeats the language of the radicalizers, that's a dangerous message. ultimately, you have to hold the people who act out these events, they are ultimately responsible. our question is, how do we get people like that from getting a firearm in the first place. look, i know even in the schools today, my wife's a teacher. my daughter is a teacher. they find ways to include the children so that when they grow up, they don't become isolated. there are ways, they're doing this in grade school now so children as they grow up don't feel isolated and they know they're integrated into a

community, and when people are integrated into a community, they have a stake in the community, they don't usually act out against the community. >> you also need a sense of history. i was at the rally in houston on monday night with president trump, where for the first time, he said i am a nationalist. and he said this is not a word that gets used that much, but i'm using it. we should use it more. this is, if you know anything about history, you know there's a reason nationalist is not a word that you hear used very much. >> or america first. >> enemy of the people, these are all words that have histories. >> evil. just calling other people evil. >> that's right, and i think it's dangerous, i think, for words like that to get back in currency without a sense of the history about what they mean. >> you know this from the hill. our whole -- the structure of our government is based on one word. and the right doesn't like to hear it and the left, it's compromise. the whole robert rules that i know they don't use, but the decorum and the fact we say my friend, you know, all that, because the founding fathers

know that in order to get anything done, people have to get along. they have to treat each other with respect. when we keep polarizing, pushing the country in two opposite directions, things on capitol hill won't get done. so one side wants to get it done, and the other side, you have to start first by getting along. you don't get everything you want, but that's the way the system is designed. >> that starts with our citizens too. and the candidates they vote for and making choices about people who are going to make those kinds of leadership decisions. paul singer, thank you so much for your insights, and our thoughts and prayers with your community back in squirrel hill. when we come back, former white house communications director anthony scaramucci joins me live. we'll talk about the president's shifting tone. one president on teleprompter, another on twitter. we're back after this. >> have a word, it sort of became old fashioned. it's called a nationalist. and i say, really? we're not supposed to use that word. you know what i am? i'm a nationalist. okay.

hi.i just wanted to tell you that chevy won a j.d.power dependability award for its midsize car-the chevy malibu. i forgot. chevy also won a j.d. power dependability award for its light-duty truck the chevy silverado. oh, and since the chevy equinox and traverse also won chevy is the only brand to earn the j.d. power dependability award across cars, trucks and suvs-three years in a row. phew. third time's the charm...

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and send one very clear, strong, unmistakable message that acts or threats of political violence of any kind have no place in the united states of america. [ applause ] >> but by friday, something had changed. with the suspect still at large, the president sent out a tweet using the word bomb in quotation marks. apparently suggesting that the threat was either not real or was being exaggerated to mobilize democrats ahead of the midterms. a few hours later, after the suspect was taken into custody, the president was asked if he had any plans to tone down his rhetoric. >> well, i think i have been toned down, you want to know the truth. i could really tone it up, because as you know, the media has been extremely unfair to me. and to the republican party. >> fast forward to the president's campaign rally last night in the wake of the pittsburgh synagogue shooting. and the topic of tone came up yet again.

>> i could have had a little bit of an excuse. there was no excuses. we have our lives. we have our scheduled, and nobody is going to change it. if you don't mind, i'm going to tone it down just a little bit. is that okay? you're from illinois. i had a feeling you might say that. >> joining me now from los angeles is former white house communications director anthony scaramucci, the author of the new book "trump, the blue collar president." thanks for being back on the program. this has been a somber week, weekend certainly, of news. and my question for you simply is, how much responsibility does your former boss, the president of the united states, bear for creating a climate in which people feel as though this is the type of action that should be taken? >> well, first off, hi, kasie. secondly, i think people who don't like the president will say he's completely responsible,

and people who like the president will say he's not responsible at all. i like the president, but i'll say something a little bit different. i think that the rhetoric and the tone, if it deescalates, it would help the president and dial down some of the anxiety that's in the system. and so i'm not saying that he's culpable. how could anybody really say he's culpable for lunatics and mad people that are doing these sorts of evil acts. >> nobody is saying he's culpable for lunatics and mad people, but he is as a leader in the country using words like nationalist, enemy of the people, america first. he's in many ways normalizing these things that we had rightfully shunted to the very fringes of american society. this kind of anti-semitism, white nationalism, does he not bear responsibility as the leader of the country? >> well, yes. i mean, the answer is yes to that. he's clearly not a nationalist. he's saying that at these rallies because he likes riling

people up on the left, and he likes riling up his detractors. he also knows it's like -- >> why would he say he's a nationalist if he's not? that makes no sense. >> okay, why would he say it? see, you're saying it makes no sense, but it makes sense to me. i talk to the president three hours ago, and he was like, you seem to be the only person who understands what i'm doing. try not to give up my playbook. i'm like, well, it's not that i'm trying to give up your playbook. i wrote a 304-page book about what you did and how you hijacked the base of the democratic party. what's happening is academics, journalists, people that are classically in the elite that the blue-collar people in america feel have more or less done a disservice to them, more or less ignored them, and have watched their wages drop by about 30% over the last 35 years, are enjoying the sparring that the president is engaging in. >> we're not talking about sparring.

we're talking about a shooting at a synagogue. i understand, if you want to talk about the back and forth. if you want to talk about the rally, let's focus on that. >> i'm talking about the rally, not the shooting. the shooting is an unmitigated tragedy and abchutely horrific. there's no way to lighten up on how bad the shooting is and how horrific anti-semitism is. what you have to remember, that's an attack on humanity, not just an attack on one group of people. >> the point about nationalism and the rally is that was a hitler -- that's a word that has ties to hitler, that rhetoric. >> socialism has ties to hitler, nationalism has ties to hitler. but it's also a more broad thing. you know, the president is basically trying to say that he's putting a group of people that have basically been in a vacuum in our society as it relates to the elites in society, he's putting them on the front burner. and so by saying that and getting the elites upset, it's working.

and you guys don't like that, and that's fine, but i would caution people on the democratic side or the president's adversaries, i would switch up the playbook a little bit and i would focus more on the people that feel that they have been ignored for the last 35 years. so while the democrats can say they haven't been ignored, just look at the polling numbers that took place in 2016. the president effectively did not have a party. he went and knocked out the elites in the republican party, and then he stole the base of the democratic party, and he moved it over to himself. what i explained in the book how he did it, how he was capable of doing it, and what he saw in the 170 campaign stops that he went to in all these rallies that you guys played on your tapes. >> are the tradeoffs worth it, though? let's say -- let's say you're right. let's say he's talking about nationalism because it riles up elites in the base and it makes

his supporters more fervent, more excited to go out and vote in the midterm elections. is that worth what it clearly inspires in some of these people who support him? i mean, the pipe bomber's truck covered with pro-trump, and not just pro-trump stickers but you know, hillary clinton's face with a bull's eye on it. >> okay, so that's a totally different question. so i think that it should be toned down. i actually think that if he switched gears here, he would pick up probably five to seven points in approval. i think that some of the stuff is a headwind on him as opposed to a tailwind. it may galvanize people in the base, it may have helped him become the american president, but he's at a point two years into the administration where he could be transformative and pivot and adapt here and raise the level of rhetoric to a higher standing. i don't think he would lose anybody from his base. remember when he was campaigning, he said he could shoot somebody on fifth avenue and these people would be with him. i know that got a lot of outrage, i'm sure, when he said it, but think about where we are

today. why not dial it back? if you believe that about the comment on fifth avenue, dialing it back a little, you're not going to luz anybody in your base, and you may pick up the independents that actually like your policies and want to see you do well. so that's what i would do. and listen, i'm trying to explain it to you. i'm not really trying to editorialize it. i wrote a 304-page book that describes it. >> we got it. >> i would encourage democrats to read that book because he stole your base. and right in there in the book, i can explain how he did it. and rather than focus on political correctness and microaggressions, why don't you focus on blue-collar people and put policies together that are going to help their families with rising wages and better living standards and you'll do better at the polls. we're running out of time here, but before i let you know,

knhaut did you talk to the president about today? >> we just had a conversation about the bill maher show, a conversation about, like, the definition of lying and a conversation about what it is that he's exactly doing versus the way it's being portrayed in the mainstream media. again, i'm trying to explain it to you. i'm confident that he sees it exactly the way i see it. >> all right. >> you guys can see it differently and get upset every morning and evening, but i'm telling you, that's the move. >> all right, the new book is "trump, the blue collar president." anthony skaur muchy, thank you for being on. >> thanks, kasie. >> when we continue, arizona, tennessee, texas, those were some states democrats were going to spend millions to flip the senate, but suddenly, new jersey, a reliably blue state with a veteran senator, is being moved to a toss-up. we're back after this. today is the day you're going to get motivated... get stronger... get closer. start listening today to the world's largest selection of audiobooks on audible. and now, get more.

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in a sign of trouble for the already uphill battle that democrats face gaining seats in the u.s. senate, this week, the

senate race in the usually very solid blue state of new jersey has been moved to a toss-up between senator bob menendez and his republican challenger bob hugin. ali vitali was on the trail in new jersey to look at the unexpectedly tight race. >> new jersey senate race is looking like it could actually become a toss-up. >> right now, it's an unexpected dog fight. >> new jersey could go red in november. >> senator bob menendez's re-election shouldn't be much of a race at all. >> an election that has never mattered more. >> he won by nearly 20 points back in 2012, and he's got history working in his favor. and yet -- >> bob menendez is going to have trouble, i think, exciting the base in new jersey. i think he's in real trouble. >> is it fair to say this race is closer than it should be? >> if anyone spends $25 million of false negative advertising, as my opponent has, it's always going to be more competitive. >> it's true. republican challenger bob hugin has been spending big on tv ads,

so much so that democrats have been forced to spend money last-minute in new jersey. this in a year where they're already playing defense across the map. do you think they're feeling scared, nervous? >> no, i don't think they're scared or nervous. they're just desperate. they know the people of new jersey know they deserve better and they're going to get better. and it's a last desperate gasp. >> i don't think chuck schumer makes decisions based upon anything but a cold pragmatic understanding of how he spends his money, and i'm sure any state in which we are competitive, he's going to spend whatever he needs to do. >> the first warning signs for menendez came in this summer's primary when an unknown and underfunded democrat managed to get nearly 40% of the vote. and in the general, hugin has reminded viewers of menendez's brush with charges over and over again. >> he thinks he can get away with corruption and failure. bob menendez thinks you're going to blindly vote for him.

>> his trial ended in a hung jury, and for these diners the issue has been hard to shake. do you have any concerns about the corruption case from earlier this year? >> well, i look at it this way. no one is perfect, but it's more perfect than having another republican. >> i don't know how he's running with these charges against him. >> voters say corruption is a top issue for them in this race, but there's something or someone they may care more about. >> trump. >> a lot of new jersey voters are no fans of the president, and they say they're prepared to let him know how they feel with their vote. >> a vote for menendez is a vote to stop trump? >> absolutely. >> it's probably why hugin said this. >> i'm not a trump republican. i'm an independent republican. >> call me whatever you want. i'm a new jersey guy and i'm going to do what's right for the people of new jersey. >> you did help him get elected in 2016. >> in 2016, i voted for donald trump. >> menendez is keenly aware that trump may be his unlikely saving grace.

>> i have seen all the signs around here, stop trump, vote menendez. are those the stakes? >> yes, trump in many respects is definitely part of this election, and my opponent is joined at the hip with him. >> ali vitali joins me now. great piece. so what was your sense being on the ground in new jersey as to which way the momentum is breaking in this race in the final weeks? is this last minute infusion of cash going to be enough to change the tide? >> so that's really interesting because a lot of this is being fought on the airwaves. hugin has dumped millions of dollars into this race of his own money to remind people that menendez has these corruption charges. but if you talk to voters on the democratic side, this is all about trump. if you talk to republican voters. it's about the local issues. that's the dance they're trying to do between both of the bobs. menendez is telling you this is all about trump, and hugin is trying to tell you this is about everything other than that. he's trying to disentangle himself from being a republican in the age of trump, and the fact that donald trump could be the unlikely savior of bob

menendez cuts both ways because there are moderate republicans in new jersey suburbs in the political fight of their lives. i'm thinking of the new jersey seventh district with leonard who is basically democrat right there and he could lose because of trump. >> rick tyler, what's the sense of the republican strategic consulting realm to a certain extent he's running it himself. do people think he has a legit shot? >> he's a formal candidate. he's smart. he raised a lot of money. he's raising good campaign. it is new jersey. new jersey elected statewide republicans before and has a history of it. christine todd whitman -- help me out with the governor's name. >> chris christie. >> so similar i get them confused. so it's possible but there is no doubt it's about trump. by the way, $6 million in new jersey. new jersey is the worst state to buy a television in. >> because it's new york. >> and philadelphia. two most expensive -- $6 million is like nothing.

>> right. really isn't. susan page, this is, this map was bad for democrats and to have to worry suddenly about new jersey, an expensive state as rick points out when they are worried about florida and rick scott, it's not fun. >> menendez has done that in every public poll. that's one thing to remember. it's close because of the money chuck schumer decided to drop instead of a place like missouri that we knew would be a close race where claire is fighting. we reluctantly have a dismal race with bad choices. >> the editors, i want to say i saw one from a new jersey paper like that. thanks to all of you. appreciate it. when we come back, the importance of neighborhoods and one in particular in america.

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♪ today, pittsburgh is in mourning. the man who police say opened fire inside the synagogue killing 11 people is expected to appear in court. plus, new details about the man charged with mailing pipe bombs to prominent democrats and how authorities were able to track him down. and an indonesian passenger plane carrying 189 crashes into the sea shortly after takeoff. search and rescue crews are sifting through debris looking for any survivors. ♪