deadline white house with john heilemann in for nicolle wallace starts right now. >> it's 4:00 in new york city. i'm john heilemann in for nicolle wallace. acting attorney general matthew whitaker, the man now responsible for overseeing the mueller probe finds himself today in a position not unfamiliar to many high-ranking trump administration officials. walking around with a bright red target on his back. questions are now mounting around conversations whitaker may have had with the white house in the run-up to his promotion from jeff sessions' chief of staff to acting ag and whether whitaker promised anything to trump about how he'd handle the mueller investigation. top democrats say those lines of inquiry are at the top of their investigative agenda when they take control of the house of representatives in january. >> we are going to find out whether he made commitments to the president about the probe, whether he is serving as a bag channel to the president or his lawyers about the probe. whether he's doing anything to interfere with the probe. mr. whitaker needs to understand

that he'll be called to answer in any role that he plays will be exposed to the public. we don't want there to be any ambiguity about that. >> if whit sker still the acting attorney general when you become chair of the judiciary committee -- >> we will make sure that matt whitaker, immediately, one of the first orders of business will be to invite him, to subpoena him to appear before the committee. >> some questions whitaker is likely to face on capitol hill, whether trump acquired a loyalty pledge in exchange for whitaker's appointment, a demand trump has made of at least three other top officials. that's a pattern being scrutinized as potential evidence of obstruction of justice. house democrats will also likely ask whether whitaker had an insistence from trump that he guarantee that whitaker wouldn't recuse himself from overseeing the mueller probe. another reasonable concern given that sessions' recusal was what turned trump viciously and permanently against him. >> i am disappointed in the

attorney general. he should not have recused himself almost immediately after he took office. and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me prior to taking office. and i would have quite simply picked somebody else. >> those comments and many others like them are also a focal point of the obstruction piece of mueller's probe. now on top of all of this, the statement from one of trump's allies is raising eyebrows among critics and could raise more questions among investigators. >> i think he's really there to land the mueller investigation to get it done. i think what the president is attempting to do here is to have somebody who has already been involved to get the mueller investigation to its completion and then to turn the page for a new justice department afterwards. >> joining us now at this table, we have a couple people i'll get to, but on our monitors, "new york times" reporter adam goldman, barbara mcquade and jeremy bash, former chief of staff at the cia and pentagon.

mike barnicle and daniel goldman, former u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york. barb mcquaid, we heard chris christie say something that could be interpreted as a benign statement that had no ill intent or as problem at nick terms of what he thinks whitaker is in this job to do. how do you read that statement from christie on both sides. >> the benign way you can say that from a sort of an optics perspective, a pr perspective, matt whitaker is there to be there to the end of the mueller investigation and then a new attorney general could come in and turn the page, start with a clean slate and begin a new program agenda. a more sinister view of what he has to say is matt whitaker is there to do president trump's dirty work. make sure this investigation is ended, that it does not implicate president trump and that he's there because he's got an agreement with president trump to handle it the way that president trump wants it done. >> jeremy bash, i ask you, of those two potential interpretations, not just of what chris christie said but

what matt whitaker is there to do, assessing all the evidence and taking everything into account, what's your read on the purpose of the promotion of this gentleman to this job. >> he'll not recuse himself because as you heard in the tape that you played, the president clearly asked him, will he recuse himself. that's a question he wished he asked jeff sessions. and so, obviously, whitaker will not recuse himself. and i think his main duty is to, as chris christie said, land the probe, which is another way of saying, to obstruct it. to stop it. to rein it in. to make sure it does not implicate donald trump. >> adam goldman, give me a sense of what you know about how this appointment came to be. >> well, we reported it was don mcgahn, when he was white house counsel who was interested -- who became interested in mr. whitaker, even before when mr. whitaker was running a conservative foundation called fact. don mcgahn met him at the time

and liked him. and later, in july of 2017, don mcgahn brings whitaker to the white house and has a chat with him and thinks he can be a type of attack dog directed at mueller. for whatever reason, the white house goes a different way and hours a ty cobb but he keeps his eye on whitaker and then installs him as jeff sessions' chief of staff in october of 2017. >> one of the things that mcgann and others in the white house would have seen, if they were keeping their eye on whitaker is all the television appearances when he worked for cnn, some of which were critical, some very critical of the mueller probe and some which even suggested ways the mueller probe may be brought to an end. i want to read some reporting from bloomberg today and then we'll show a piece of the sound from cnn. acting attorney general whitaker

has told associates that the justice department will not cut the budget for special counsel robert mueller's investigation into election interferences said a person familiar with the matter. that's comforting. not cutting the budget. that's one of the ways mueller could be knee-capped. however, we have a different matt whitaker in previous job which was the television pundit, rather than -- >> i can see a scenario where jeff sessions is replaced with a recess appointment and that attorney general doesn't fire bob mueller but he reduces the budget so low that his investigation grinds to an -- almost a halt. >> so mike barnicle, i ask you, now he said he could see a scenario. he didn't say he would advise, embrace or enact that scenario but he did float the scenario by which you can essentially starve mueller. there's now reporting that suggests he's not going to embrace that proposal, but do

you think that's the real matt whitaker on television or the one trying to dweget word out through the press that mueller is going to be all right financially. >> the wheel matt whitaker. who knows who the real matt whitaker is. he get shadow outlines of who the real matt whitaker might be. this is an example of the poor or no vetting of appointments. and i do know this, having spoken with three fbi officials over the last four or five days that they regard this appointment as a direct insult to the concept and the reality of the justice department. what the justice department's role is supposed to be in our society. they regard this appointment as an an insult. >> does that comport with what you think? if you were still in the justice department, sitting there right now, and if you were on mueller's team and saw this appointment, what would you be thinking right now that this guy, given his qualifications and given things he's said

previously, what would you be thinking about his likely motivations? >> he's there to undermine, interference, obstruct this investigation. you can look at what donald trump said about jeff sessions. you can look at donald trump's actions and requests for a loyalty pledge to james comey and his firing. the last year and a half has given us a road map into donald trump's mind. and when he places someone like matt whitaker, who has been on record as saying there is no collusion into the position of overseeing this investigation, it's impossible to reach any other conclusion. i don't think, by the way, that the bloomberg article makes that much of a difference because the budget is made september 30th of each year. they already have their money for the next year. the real question would be whether he is, and i think from an ethical perspective, the fact that he has prejudged this investigation means that he must recuse himself. >> and, john, one interesting

point about this, maybe the most interesting point about this appointment is that we are 50-some odd days away from when matt whitaker is going to be summoned under oath to appear before the house judiciary committee and asked exactly these kinds of questions. did you say you would take a loyalty oath. what else were you asked to do? >> certainly that's a huge question. there's another person who might want to know the answers to those questions. bob mueller. if he's looking into an obstruction of justice, which we all think he is. barbara mcquade, is not the case that matt whitaker is someone who if you were bob mueller you'd want to talk matt whitaker to have a talk with whitaker in the same way these congressional committee chairs to be want to have a talk with him. wouldn't mueller want to have that same discussion with him if he was exploring obstruction of justice? >> yeah, i think he would. and this isn't because it's just a fishing expedition, but i think there are enough warning signals here, enough smoke that

would make it a genuine and legitimate question to find out whether they had any conversations about whitaker's marching orders with regard to this investigation. loyalty pledges. and all of those other things because if so, that could be additional evidence of obstruction of justice. imagine a scenario where president trump called matt whitaker in and said i want you to promise me you'll not recuse yourself. and number two, i want you to do everything in your fopower to st that investigation down. >> adam, i want to get to you because you tweeted something out today. a quote from robert litt, which caught your attention and caught ours, too. robert litt, the former general counsel to the dni under barack obama. he wrote this in lawfair. i do not know what advice rod rosenstein and chris wray would give to whitaker but if they advise him to allow the mueller investigation to continue, as i believe they should, and he chooses to limit that

investigation, against their advice, they should resign. so i ask you, you tweeted it out, what interested you about that and where do you think that particular thing is headed in terms of how this situation in this story might unfold? >> i think a lot of people are looking to chris wray, the fbi director, and rod rosenstein, the deputy attorney general to take a stand if this, in fact, were to happen. you know, the director wray is sort of navigating these treacherous waters with great care and caution. and has hinted, in fact, in the past that there were things maybe he would not do. if, in fact, you know, whitaker decides to trigger constitutional crisis and meddle, stymie, hobble, whatever you want to call it the mueller investigation, then a lot of people will look to wray and rod to see what they do. and i think there is a certain expectation that wray and rod will have to draw a line in the sand.

and it will be a big moment. and it will be an enormous moment for wray and an enormous moment for rod. >> so, dan, you come back to this question of recusal. a lot of democrats' attitude is, first of all, what kind of promises or conversations trump and whitaker might have had about the question of recusal because of the sessions' precedent. also the way recusal would happen. whitaker would go to the office of professional responsibility and ethics in the doj and say, here are the things i said. here are the other potential conflicts i might have. i'd like some recommendations and advice on what i should do. does he -- he doesn't have to do that. it's not like compulsory that he go. if he does not seek that opinion or seeks that opinion and the opinion says you should recuse and then he doesn't recuse, what happens? >> well, i don't know that it's ever happened before. i've caucused some of my former colleagues, and no one is aware of a situation except a couple that people could remember of a scenario where the ethics office

made a recommendation and people just rejected it. it is in theory possible but then you get into the scenario where you have rod rosenstein, you have other people who speak up or get out and go public with this. but you mention this. mike you mentioned this, too. we'll find out if 50 days when he's called up to the house judiciary committee or the house intelligence committee, why is that not happening now? why do republicans just -- we just assume that they do not care -- >> you know the answer to this question. you said republicans a second ago. that's the answer, right? >> to me, this really is beyond politics. this is someone who is trying to say i'm going to be the judge in my own case, which is donald trump, and i'm above the law. and at some point that is a nonpartisan issue. >> would whitaker have to ask the opr, the office of professional responsibility for a ruling, or could they rule without him asking? >> they could do their own inquiry into it, but that -- for

sure that would require them to speak to him because they need to understand exactly what his conversations have been and what his potential conflicts are. >> let me get to one -- let me get to one last quick thing here which relates to, we've all been talking about what's going to happen when we get to january and the new congressional democrats take control and have the gafvel in all these. we had gerry nadler talking to jake tapper saying the following about campaign finance violations being perhaps impeachable. i'd like to hear that sound and take it to jeremy bash. >> if the president is found to have been involved in campaign finance violations that are potentially criminal, is that an impeachable offense? >> that might very well be an impeachable offense, and the question would be, a, can you prove -- well, it may be an impeachable offense if it goes to the question of the president procuring his office through

corrupt means. and that could be impeachable. >> jeremy, people are talking about subpoena cannons, like a cannon with a boom, not canons of ethics. starting to investigation everything in sight. now you have jerry nadler raising not just the specter of impeachment but impeachment over something that we think donald trump troeprobably did relating campaign finance. what's your read on how prudent for democrats to proceed along a path they already seem to be kind of chomping at the bit to run down as if they're in a sprinting contest. >> it's imprudent now because the first thing the democrats have to do because i worked in the house when it turned democratic in 2006 is lay out your positive agend aincluding all the kitchen table issues and minimum wage increase and health care and all the things voters asked you to look after when

they elected you. as these investigations unfold and as bob mueller issued his report, if he's not squashed by whitaker and the white house and is able to issue a report, then there may be an opportunity to hold hearings in which ultimately some decisions are made about whether high crimes and misdemeanors should lead to some result. i don't think we're there yet but one day we will be there. >> mike, do you sense like overreach is going to be -- is like already starting to kind of sniff overreach in the air on the part of democrats? you think they'll be restrained and play this smart? >> it depends on nancy pelosi. i don't think she'll allow the house to overreach. she'll go for success in terms of, let's try to get something accomplished. >> adam goldman, barbara mcquade, jeremy dash and dan goldman, thank you for being here. barnacle, you're stuck here until the end of time. when we come back -- donald trump back on the world stage this weekend taking flack for his embrace of nationalism during the campaign. but unlike previous trips

abroad, this time trump managed to draw outrage while saying very little. with the recount under way, trump and his republican allies are already slamming the process accusing democrats are fraud and demanding an end to the counting of votes. but it begs the question. with the current tally still leading in the gop's favor, why are republicans so unnerved. and the big blue wave last week is getting bigger and bluer by the moment but it's also becoming clear that the crest of the wave is bright pink as more women picked up wins in key races over the weekend. we'll look at all of that next. ♪ ♪ no matter when you retire, your income doesn't have to. see how lincoln can help ensure you still have income every month of your retirement,

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when donald trump gleefully declared i'm a nationalanist houston three weeks ago, it wasn't just the frenzied red maga-wearing hat crowd. the world was listening. and this week it answered back. emmanuel macron never mentioned trump by name but listen to what he says. the intended target could not be clearer. >> translator: as the very opposite of a selfishness of a nation which only looks after its own interests because patriot simp the exact opposite of nationalism. nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism. our interests first. who cares about the others. we erase what a nation holds de dearest, what gives it life, what gives it grace and what is essential, its moral values. >> it wasn't just macron's speech that highlighted the new state of play. politico notes, even the optics of that armistice day event showed trump on the outskirts.

european leaders took buses to the event as church bells rang while the president and first lady entered once the european leaders had already taken their places on risers. the only person who arrived after trump was president vladimir putin of russia who made his own grand entrance. on that note, look at the photo snapped as putin arrived. the faces of macron and angela merkel stoic and concentrated. then trump, absolutely beaming as if delighted at the arrival of his old friend vlad or a new puppy in his house. perhaps most notable, the president skips an event at a cemetery for fallen american soldiers because it was a little damp outside. it was too dangerous to travel there on marine one and they didn't want to stop traffic in paris. here's how the atlantic summed it up. the vanishing act was classic trump. dominating the news cycle, insulting and upstaging his hosts hosts to say nothing of u.s. soldiers and veterans.

there was much chatter about how conservative media would have responded if a democratic president had skipped a war commemoration because of a little rain. joining us from the associated press, white house reporter darlene superville. she covered the president's trip in paris. and here on the set joining gramps barnacle is nick christophe, "new york times" columnist and foreign affairs globe-trotting stud. i ask you, just for your overall take on the weekend, what we saw unfold and in particular, so fascinating to me just as a student of humanity and politics, macron, once one of a few people he had chemistry with going after him in such a direct way with this nationalism speech. >> president macron more than anybody had pioneered the approach of being very nice and gentle to president trump. on the theory that is what is going to win you policy concessions. and it was striking and after that, many other people, including president moon from south korea adopted that approach. and today, however, this

weekend, president macron did not follow his own guidelines. and he was, i thought, really quite reproachful of president trump and very eloquent. and his line about patriotism being the opposite of nationalism followed in a great tradition. it was president de gaulle who said patriotism is where you love your own people best. nationalism is where what comes first is your hate red red of o. and i think that reflects in europe and to some degree around the world a sense that president trump can't be fully managed and that he is attempting to undermine institutions and norms that the u.s. helped build. and i think everybody is trying to figure out how they deal with that reality. >> i wonder, mike if you think it's obvious you travel around the world a fair amount, too, in some private jet, swigging

champagne out of slippers and stuff. in europe there's obviously been two years of figuring out, first horrified that trump got elected. then figuring out, how do we manage this and deal with it? now that trump has suffered an electoral repudiation in the midterms, going forward, does that stiffen europe's spine? do they feel more forceful and aggressive about trump or do they look at him and think that he's even more volatile and dangerous and have to handle him more with kid gloves? how do they deal with the changing political circumstances in the u.s. as it relates to trump's role abroad? >> i think they think and look at -- excuse me -- everything that you just mentioned. but i think their principal view is toward the calendar thinking, two more years. we have to outlast him. we have to outlast him for two more years. and there was such an enormous sense of sadness, at least within me and i suspect among other people. nick and i were talking about this off camera. i've had the privilege as nick has had a privilege of covering events overseas, including three

anniversaries of d-day. such a sense of sadness watching what occurred this weekend on the boulevard that it occurred, the champs-elysees, when you consider the fact that 70, 75 years ago, the german army owned the champs-elysees. and this man of no history understands nothing about history, has no sense of history, to do what he did in the way he did it was many things, but to me, it was sad. >> darlene, i want to read a little bit of a story from an estimatable reporter who works for the ap who covered this trip. and i will get you to talk about it more. this relates to donald trump's mind-set while over there. trump was terse during some of his private conversations with world leaders, according to people with direct knowledge of his visit. one of the people described the president as, quote, grumpy. they spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss private conversations. the story, give us a sense of what the president's mood was like beyond what you have in the piece here. what his mood was like and how

that was read by the other world leaders from europe who were there watching him take this tour. >> well, i think the president's mood in paris, some of that -- some of his mood flowed from the outcome of the midterm elections on tuesday, just a few days before he left to go to paris. he had a very testy news conference with reporters at the white house the day before he left. and i think some of that carried over into -- into the meeting, the weekend in paris. and then, of course, before he landed in paris, he sent off a tweet that pretty much insulted his host, the french president emmanuel macron just as air force one was landing at the airport outside of paris. and then this morning, after he got back, there was another tweet talking about resurrecting this familiar argument he's made many times about nato and europe taking advantage of the united states and european countries should pay more money for their military defense.

so all of that just -- the president, whenever he seems to get together with other world leaders, it never seems to go very well. i'm not entirely sure why there's always some contention that goes on either before or after the get-togethers. >> one of the things darlene reported in this story i was just reading from is that the president we heard the president would go to -- on this trip would have a meeting with vladimir putin. then that meeting did not materialize in the event and she reported, that a kremlin official said later that u.s. and russian officials decided to drop plans for the paris meeting after french officials objected to the notion of trump and putin meeting on their soil. i wonder what you think the europeans make of both the way the president treats them with these tweets that darlene was referring to and what they make of the way he treats putin in terms of how -- all the things that come into that assessment. >> you know, i think it's not even just europe. it's our allies more broadly. australia and canada, i think,

feel this as well and japan that president trump has tended to elbow some of our closest allies with whom we share enormous values, who sacrifice people for our wars. and, meanwhile, has declared that his great love for kim jong-un has built up this friendship with, you know, with putin. has talked about how great duterts is in the philippines. people who are absolutely anning at -- an athema to everything we stand for. there is baffle at that but as mike suggested earlier just a deep sadness and coupled with an anxiety that -- i mean, there's a sense abroad that trump is checked in the domestics fear because of congress and that's even more true post midterms. internationally, our system is that a president is not really checked. i mean, if there are real risks

of whatever it may be, a war in vis-a-vis iran or some craziness with north korea, who knows. but i think there is some anxiety that he can do enormous damage. a trade war that may spin the global economy down and that makes people, you know, built on that sadness is a tremendous anxiety that might take us in the next two years. >> does that anxiety get -- can you describe it as they are fearful? is that too far? >> no, i think that's legitimate. i think that there was a lot of fear vis-a-vis north korea early on when he was talking about, you know, raining destruction on it. that has abated somewhat. i think there is now some real -- i think fear is legitimate about what might happen vis-a-vis iran, probably by accident with ships in the area. some anxiety about the south china sea. and a lot about the trade war. so many economies are vulnerable

and there's a sense that president trump is pressing china in ways that nobody really knows where this ischristophe, thank you. lawsuits, allegations of fraud without proof and an all-out war of words between both sides. the newest recount circus in florida has it all. a look at where things stand coming up next. ♪ the greatest wish of all... is one that brings us together. the lincoln wish list event is here. sign and drive off in a new lincoln with $0 down, $0 due at signing, and a complimentary first month's payment. only at your lincoln dealer.

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pandemonium in the pan handle and all over the rest of florida. lawsuits, protests and election officials sleeping in their offices. recounts are under way in the two close races we've been focused on for governor and senate. some counties are running equipment 24 hours a day in order to process the more than 8 million votes cast sdlatatewidel by thursday's deadline. ron desantis is ahead of andrew gillum by 33,000 votes.

and the senate contest is tighter. bill nelson trailing rick scott by just under 13,000 votes. this afternoon, a judge denied a request from scott's team to issue a mandatory injunction against the broward county supervisor of elections. scott is insisting, without any evidence whatsoever, that fraud is going on. >> bill nelson is clearly a sore loser. he can't stand the fact that he's not going to be elected for, what, the first time in decades. and he won't -- he's just here to steal this election. that's what he's done. >> president trump, the president of the united states who has just about as much evidence as rick scott does of fraud, which is to say none tweeted florida election should be called in favor of rick scott and ron desantis in that large num befrs new ballots showed up out of nowhere and many were missing or forged. an honest count is no longer possible. must go with election night! joining us from the sunshine state, david jolly, now no

longer a member of the republican party. three exclamation points on that. and general election great genius mathematical svengali, also network correspondent at this network and maxine. david jolly, i ask you, not a republican any longer, but a man who still knows a lot about florida. what the hell is going on down there in your state right now? >> yeah, to your point in the opener there, what republicans are doing right now is they continue to conflate frustrations of timeliness, questions of competence with the supervisor of elections with outright allegations of fraud without any proof. and for rick scott in particular, somebody who for the last year tried to distance himself from donald trump, ever since tuesday has been behaving like donald trump. making these outlandish allegations of fraud. john, what it does for the country is it feeds into this narrative that there's one party that continues to try to suppress the vote. one that tries to turn it out.

we see what's happening in florida. we saw brian kemp on hot mike say he's concerned he'll lose the race if everybody exercises their right to vote. the arizona gop has sued to invalidate mail-in ballots. this is a continued pattern of republicans and, frankly, it doesn't play well. >> yeah, well, it's also said that to the extent there's a big focus on florida, the furthest national narrative that your state is a little hinky. i want to play some sound from the judge denying this injunction and telling the legal teams to tone down their rhetoric. this man sounds rather sensible. >> i am urging, because of the highly public nature of this case to ramp down the rhetoric. we need to be careful what we say. these words mean things these days as everybody in the room knows. so i'm urging everybody to wait until these counts are over, and there's going to be plenty of

time to litigate whatever anybody wants to litigate. >> so kornacki, this judge is now, he's a neutral legal arbiter. he basically is chiming in with the notion that there's no evidence of fraud. everyone just shut up and let's get this over with. is that in this highly charged political environment is that going to matter either politically or to the actual conduct of the recount? >> to the conduct of the recount, i don't think so. that's going on. there are a couple outstanding issues here. they're running the ballots through the machines. what count is going to come back from that? is that going to hugh closely to what we got already reported at? it's one of the issues. the other is you still have that ten-day window that florida law allows for for military ballots and overseas ballots. so we'll see how that affects the count. the military ballots probably benefit the republicans but democrats have been saying the americans abroad component is more democratic so maybe that from their standpoint could even the margin. and the third big outstanding issue here and the one that i

think focus may come to in the next few days is what happened with what they call the undervote in broward county. about 26,000 viewer votes were cast in the race for senate than in the race for governor. you don't see a discrepancy like this in any other county in florida. it's clear something is up there. the question is, and i think it's critical, the nelson campaign contends it's a machine error. and if that's true, then there are tens of thousands of ballots in a heavily democratic county that have been marked off in the senate race and if they are added to the count could change that result. the other possibility here is, and i think there's something to be said for this as well that this is a ballot design issue where that senate race was buried in the lower left-hand column. voters, a small percentage of them will miss it. if that's the case then those undervotes are under votes. it's been asked all day and people say, hey, man. 30-some odd thousand votes in the governors race. 13,000-ish separating the two in the senate race. those are big numbers. and in the history of recounts

we haven't seen a lot of numbers of that size. just raw vote total overturned. it sounds like you're saying, yeah, that's true. but given that possible nature of some of the error here, these recounts are worthwhile and these issues need to be investigated. >> and that's why the broward warning, that broward issue is so important here because that's true, yes. in general, the recounts report going to -- 35,000 usually isn't going to come down to zero in a recount. if you have an issue where one side is claiming a machine error here, in fact, affecting 25,000, 30,000 ballots potentially, something like that, i don't know. a manual recount will answer the question. a manual recount will be triggered automatically if this margin is less than a quarter of a percent. it sure looks look it will be less than a quarter of a percent. there's a lot to be said for the theory. this is the design of the ballot and that's that. the only way to answer a manual recount and it looks like we'll have a manual recount. >> i'm going to read from phil bump at "the washington post" on donald trump's brilliant idea to just revert back to the election night count. bump says trump's call to stop counting and somehow revert to

election night totals is bizarre and also means disenfranchising thousands of votes. it would mean throwing into the garbing an the 67,000 votes that previously noted in the story. it would also mean voters overseas who have until november 16th would see their votes ignored. i ask you just, i'm not going to be totally surprised if you think that trump's notion is stupid, immoral and, obviously, maligned in its intention but, please, fill me in on your various disagreements with the president. >> it's like he's like, stop count, as long as the republican is ahead. you have to stop because if there's democratic votes out there, we don't want to know about those. we'll just pretend they don't exist. if democrats wanted to take this issue and run with it, they should talk about the fact that a lot of the mail-in votes coming in are from the military. i think you're disenfranchising people fighting to protect our freedoms. that's the bottom line here and americans abroad are absolutely

citizens who should have their voices heard in an election. and so, yes, we should make sure that the mail-in ballots and the absentee ballots that need to be count individual time to be counted. of course we'll not go back to just the election day number because we've never done that in any other election. >> dave jolly, i want to say, ali spoke to a rick scott spokesman who said senator-elect scott, apparently the race is over in the scott campaign. he's going to be traveling to washington, d.c., to particinate new member orientation activities, including the photo and voting in the leadership elections. i'm curious whether you think, if you were -- imagine you are in the scott campaign. would you be doing the same thing in this situation or does that -- is that a bad, presumptuous look? >> it's the move of someone who wants to position themselves as a winner. we had a house race where the republican and democrat ten years ago went to the new orientation and were both in the freshman class photo before this got decided. look, to kornacki's point, the

race is tight but in broward, if it is an undervote machine error, you could see a net plus 11 to nelson and all of a sudden, this tightens up. but it does look like rick scott has led the whole way. the question for me is, why do donald trump and rick scott and marco rubio continue to raise questions about the integrity of the process when they're winning. the reality is rick scott could win this and we could all doubt how he ended up winning it. i think they're misplaying this from the beginning. >> you're going to stick around for this next block. kornacki, thank you for bringing us the enormous benefits of your wisdom, insight, brilliance and charm in this block. the blue wave driven by women. more key races counted for democrats moving into the "w" column over the weekend. we'll talk about that on the other side. green book is the feel good movie of the year.

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2018 it turns out is the new year of the woman. at least 102 women will be sworn into the u.s. house of representatives. a significant jump from the previous record of 85 which means the blue wave the democrats saw in the house had quite a pink hue. of the 33 house seats that were flipped by democrats, 22 of them were with female candidates. and of the three houses called after tuesday night, all of them, that's all three, that's a trifecta, all were for women. joining the table, my friend liz, senior correspondent for vox. very much a woman here to talk about women's issues which she knows a lot about. david jolly who is not a woman but we'll keep him around because he may have something to say in any case. you finish this election, the first election of the me too era and women ran the table. >> absolutely. >> what does that tell us? >> trump is a misogynist in the streets and in the sheets. whether it's going after, you

know, stormy daniels and calling her a horseface to going after three black female reporters in 48 hours and attacking them is very clear that sexism is all, you know, he's about. and it's very -- he's very consistent. so that has made sexism very salient for all of us and it's led to two numbers i like. 74% of voters, according to a cbs poll, said they wanted to see more female candidates. whether they were republican or democrat. >> and we saw numbers like that in the exit poll that said they really wanted to see more women in congress. >> 37%, the number of new house members that are women of color. that is the representation of women of color in our society. in our population. that is a huge signal to democrats, obviously, to invest in women of color because they're not just the backbone of their party. they are the future of their party. >> i want to talk about how different it was. i was covering politics in the first year of the woman and it's been interesting to me some of the analysis people have had about how differently women went about running, not just in

larger numbers but a different approach. "the new york times" on wednesday had this piece called women lead parade of victories. this cycle, the first since the defeat of the first female major party presidential candidate. many women ran without being asked. ignoring the advice to talk about your resume and not talk about your family life. instead they features their children in ads and personal testimonies about sexual harassment and abuse. we talked about the fact that i thought the way stacey abrams turned her debt struggles and her problems with the irs into a thing that was about connect with all these other people that made her seem very relatable was an incredible way of turning a deficit -- or a liability into an asset. what did you see that was different about how women ran that was either different, powerful or unexpected? >> right, i mean, there was one candidate in particular, even the women who lost changed the landscape. so gretchen shirley ran in new york.

she lost to peter king narrowly. and one of the things she did was actually petition the fec to allow babysitting fees to be, you know, something that candidates can use their campaign candidates can use their campaign funds to reimburse. before 2018 it was not possible for parents to have these fees reimbursed. and that is massive. that is a huge deal because we have a lot of fathers who are running, a lot of fathers in congress. we have some mothers, but not a lot of mothers of small children. that's why you end up with so many women that only can run later in life. it takes them longer to get there and then they're out of politics. this has changed the landscape for all women really. >> i want to put up some graphics here because in addition to the record setting number of women who ran and the record setting number of women who run, there's also individual women who have done something

else before. the youngest woman elected to congress. that was an expected victory but still one that means a lot to a lot of women. we have the first two muslim women. those two women are brand new. weave the first two native-american women elected to congress. and then we have an interesting trend we saw all over the place, women who are veterans who won, there are four of them. so you, all this interest, this seems to me not just the numbers are expanding and that's going to change how we talk about politics buts as a beacon for the next wave of women seeing these firsts and seeing the numbers it seems to me this is not going to be a trend that's going to decelerate but accelerate as we head into a presidential election year with

donald trump still on the ballot for 2020. >> this is also a year in which women saw other women stepping forward, stepping out telling their truth. and they also saw other women stepping forward to run for office. they didn't wait to be asked to run. they said if donald trump can be president i certainly can run for school board because i have more experience, because i was in the cia or i worked for hhs, or i was in the military and have that experience to bring to fore if i was elected encongress. so i think women saw each other as each other's backbone to run. representation matters. if you see somebody who looks like you in a position of power like a member of congress you know you can actually go and do that in the future. and i think that unithroughout my entire life all i saw were old white men in my congress. but now i see congress people who look like me, who are actually younger than me, which

is amazing. just to the point alexandria this weekend was on her instagram live because she can't afford to buy an apartment in d.c. yet. so she was making instant mac and cheese and just answering questions about politics, so i think it's an authenticity piece as well. >> this seems like a big problem for the republican party, no? >> sure, look, the political demographics of the country are getting away from republicans and republicans are choosing to ignore the signs and go away. john, here's why it's so exciting we have a historic number of women, you realize you have been granted the public trust and your job is to represent everybody in your community or you don't. you realize you need to put yourself in the shoes of everybody regardless of gender, race, creed, color, economic diversity or you don't. and i think too many members of congress don't. so we need the diversity within

leadership, within congress to make sure we're moving forward as a nation and all are being represented in the decisions coming out of washington. that's why it's so important we see the diversity we see now. >> the first african-american ever elected in massachusetts, your home, superstar or no? >> superstar. but the whole issue we've been talking about here, obviously it's progress, but one of the reasons it's progress and you got to it in talking about the different campaigns, women are more grounded than men, they are more real than men in terms of how they deal with their every day uses of life. and one of the big issues that's going to come up with all the women who have been elected to congress is how do you not vote for nancy pelosi, a woman when there are no other women competing for the speakership. how do you do that? >> i'll tell you one woman that's more grounded, my wife. and when we come back the death toll from the fires

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horrible, massive deadly wildfires continue to burn across the state of california. this week the president's first tweet about the disaster blamed forest management and threatened to take away funding. there is no reason for these

massive deadly and costly forest fires in california except that forest management is so poor. remedy now or no more fed payments. there are a lot of people who were asked is this just politics, and that seems like a cheap unreasonable answer except it's donald trump, so i tend to think that's the right answer. what do you think? >> i mean, i'm so tired of trump's tweets. i know we have to mention them and the behavior. just think about this in addition to the insult to the firefighters, people fighting these lethal leapfrogging fires in southern california, just think of what he's done to the military on the border. >> i look at this and i say to myself, again i'm a californian, these fires have burned up -- if my father were still alive he would have been part of the mandatory evacuation. and again the president at the minimum just say something nice about the firefighters. >> he doesn't have that empathy.

he's not able to do that. >> he eventually got there. he did eventually say something nice about the firefighters, but his first instinct is always to go to something callus or threatening. >> he only does it when the staff correct him. >> wave got to go. my thanks to david jolly and mike barbical, well not really thank you, but you were here. that does it for this hour. i'm john heilemann in for nicole wallace who will be back tomorrow. mtp daily is going to start now. katie, i'm going to ask you the question i asked chuck on friday. which do you prefer? i think you're wrong in this instance, but it was a