manafort, and ja roam courem je telling the truth and the special counsel in their zeal to get the president may be going too far." rudy joins the president in laying the rhetorical groundwork for a pardon for manafort. trump tweeted this the day of manafort was convicted of eight charges in mueller's probe. "i feel very badly for paul manafort and his wonderful family. justice took a 12-year-old tax case among other things, applied tremendous pressure on him, and unlike michael cohen, he refused to break. make up stories in order to get a deal. such respect for a brave man." convicted felon. and the president's former lawyer in the russia probe, john dowd, reportedly raised the prospect of a pardon for manafort with his legal team, this is based on reporting from earlier this year in "the new york times" which adds that the discussions may be of interest to mueller. "during interviews with mueller's investigators, current and former administration officials have recounted

conversations that they had with the president about potential pardons for former aides under investigation by the special counsel. that's according to two people briefed on the interviews." the breakdown of manafort's cooperation agreement and questions on what about behind manafort's decision to repeatedly lie to investigators, c some of the most unhinged attacks from the president on the special counsel including this tirade this morning. "the fake news media builds bob mueller up as a saint. he's the exact opposite. he's doing tremendous damage to our criminal justice system where he's only looking at one side and not the other. heroes will come of this and it won't be mueller and his terrible gang of angry democrats." we'll see. all of these developments leave more questions than answers, but together, they may very well become an inflection point in mueller's investigation. what if donald trump's team has signaled to manafort that a pardon could be in the works?

could that be the smoking gun in the obstruction of justice investigation? there's a debate in doj circles about whether the president's clear intent to an instruct the mueller investigation constitutes obstruction if the probe continues. but here, the president pardons or expresses his willingness to pardon manafort for his crimes, including lying to mueller's investigators, might that seal the president's fate when it comes to obstruction of justice? here to help us navigate the day's developments, some of our most favorite reporters and friends, with us from the "washington post," national security and law enforcement reporter, devli in barrett. matt miller, former chief spokesman for the justice department. frank fegluzzi. and tim o'brien, "bloomberg opinion" executive ed tore. let me start with you, matt miller. you've been tweeting up a storm, yourself. you could go toe to toe in a twitter bark and forth with the president. >> thanks, i think. >> it's a compliment. take me through your analysis of

the mueller developments from last night and this morning. >> you know, if it you look at not just what happened last night and this morning, but really all the events that have happened the last few weeks we know are scheduled for the next fe weeks with, you know, paul manafort's plea agreement now breaking down and sentencing coming forward, mike flynn being, heading for sentencing on december 18th. we appear to be at the end of the road for jerome corsi and roger stone and of course the president has turned in his answers to the questions that he would answer. you know, just right before the thanksgiving. we seem to be at the final road for the -- the enof the road if for the mueller investigation. increasingly it feels to me like a race. can mueller finish what he's doing, either with guilty pleas or indictments or some kind of public report, maybe all the above, before the president somehow interferes with that investigation, either through intervention by the acting attorney general he's put in place a the justice department or by reaching out through a pardon or without a pardon, a promise of a pardon that leaves someone like paul manafort to not answer all the questions in

his cooperation truthfully. it leads to someone like jerome corsi backing out from his, you know, the plea agreement that's been in the works. one of the interesting things i think over the last few days, so both paul manafort and jerome corsi's attorneys have been communicating with rudy giuliani. giuliani said that about paul manafort. jerome corsi said it today in an sbrir. it doesn't feel like a coincidence that both plea agreements break down as they're talking to the president's attorneys and he's out kind of publicly fulminating about this investigation. >> let me stay with you, matt miller, and just press you on this point. we know that rudy giuliani's predecessor, john dowd, dangled pardons or the idea of pardons in front of mike flynn and paul manafort. that was reported in the "the new york times." we know that robert mueller asked questions about the offer of pardons. what do you make of what will be put in motion if we were to learn that a pardon had been promised to paul manafort before

he sort of lied his way out of his cooperation agreement? >> i think it would be a clear case of obstruction of justice. look, the president has untraveled power under the constitution to grant pardons. but if he does it for a corrupt purpose, it can without -- i think, you know, there are some constitutional scholars that would disagree with this. i think most would say it is a crime and i think it's a relevant precedent that bill clinton when he granted pardons to mark rich at the last days of his term was investigated as part of a criminal investigation by the southern district of new york, whether that, you know, he basically accepted a bribe in the form of campaign contributions. you could apply some of the same analysis here, and conclude that the president's obstructing justice. i think that would be relevant if the justice department ever wanted to charge him criminally after he left office and of course it would be relevant in any sort of impeachment inquiry that could begin while he's still in office. >> frank, pick this up for me. i spoke to a former federal prosecutor today who made the same point matt miller made, if there was any communication, if there was any implied or stated

assurance that paul manafort would be pardoned. i'm not sure you couldn't surmise that from the president's tweet that we met, he questions the case, the tax case. justice took a 12-year-old tax case. he questions the underlying case. applied tremendous pressure on him and unlike cohen, he refused to break. such respect for a brave man. he never said anything that nice about the commander who captured bin laden, but that's for another show. but don't we have public-facing evidence of both the president's intent and of the signals he was clearly sending manafort as well as the history of his former attorney in the russia probe, john dowd, offering manafort and flynn pardons? >> yeah, we clearly have public-facing evidence, but i'm even more interested in what mueller has regarding the obstruction issue because, look, you know that obstruction is all about intent. and short of opening the president's head, climbing in and looking around, as to what his intent was, we're left with

the evidence provided by others. so who's come to mueller, who has sat down and said, look, the president talked with me about what this was all about. we needed to keep manafort silent. his intent was this. you have enough people saying that, you got your obstruction case, you've got evidence of sbe intent. i think that's what's there. i have to tell you, nicolle, i think there's more going on here to manafort's of a pardon. you've heard people say what can happen on the state level. you know that manaforth pled guilty to everything, a masterful move by mueller. you know a state prosecutor in virginia, elsewhere, could come and grab that guilty plea that the feds got and use it to indict at a state grand jury level. so manafort is not going to skate on these charges. he's going to face state charges. so there's something more going on than just the promise of a pardon. >> devlin, can you pick this up, what's going on with paul manafort? he is potentially the link on the collusion side of the

investigation. if there was any contact or knowledge on manafort's part, as to what the russians were conspireing to do to meddle in our elections. he could be that missing link into the trump campaign to prove the conspiracy. but what's going on with manafort? how does a defendant, someone this important to the president of the united states, plead guilty before his second trial then blow up his own cooperation agreement by lying repeatedly? >> well, there's a couple scenarios and frankly we're all sort of waiting to see mueller's next court filing to explain this a little better. but i can tell you, this comes up pretty frequently in fraud cases, frankly, that a lot of times if someone has built a career on lying, sometimes it is actually difficult for a person like that to just tell a straight version of a story. and just act -- tell a version that is convincing to prosecutors and stays consistent from one telling to the next. i do think it's interesting that the prosecutoe erors are saying

emphatically that he's lied repeatedly on multiple subjects. this kind of thing doesn't fall apart in a day. it takes days of confrontations before the prosecutors say, you know what, we're done with you, you're basically useless as a witness and we're going to move on without you. and we're going to -- we're waiting to see what the next filing says about those lies and how -- how they relate to the question of collusion. but i do think one of the possibilities here is that after years and years of, frankly, lying and fraud, that manafort isn't really a very good person at telling the truth. >> and so this person with years and years of lying, that wasn't a good person at telling the truth, did become donald trump's campaign chairman at the most important moment of his candida candidacy. the most when if he wanted to become the nominee, he had to seize the nomination really from some challenges at the convention. so, so, i hear what you're saying about all the flaws that he has as a truth teller, but he's central to the trump story. can you talk to us a little bit,

just pull this thread out for us, about how it is that he's talking to rudy giuliani, how is he talking to the president's legal team all the time? are his -- if his interests are still aligned with the president's, what does that say? >> right it. it's very unusual once a person has flipped to the government's side that that person's lawyer keeps in contact with other people, with the lawyers for other folks who are under investigation. so the whole dynamic is strange. we, frankly, have to take giuliani at his word sometimes that those conversations are happening, and i -- it's my understanding that giuliani has said a few times that, well, we don't talk about everything, but we talk about some things. he's been very unclear as to what exactly that means. again, i don't know that giuliani is necessarily the best narrator of some of the legal conversations going on in this case, but i do think it's bizarre that you have essentially some semblance of a joint defense agreement still after manafort's plea, and i do

think it's an open question, what does that actually mean for mueller's investigation? does that have a real-world consequence for mueller's investigation? and could this breakdown in the plea be one of those consequences? >> and so i do -- i appreciate that devlin gives rudy this sort of curve that he may not be the best narrator, but he is, again, the person the president chose to represent him in this matter. where nothing short of his presidency is on the line. so we're going to, for the purposes of this conversation, take rudy at his word and he said this. "all during the investigation, we have an open communication with them. defense lawyers talk to each other all the time. where as long as clients authorize it, therefore, we have a better idea of what's going to happen. that's very common." so if you take that analysis that defense lawyers talk to each other all the time, he is essentially acting as trump's criminal defense lawyer, manafort's lawyer is acting as manafort's criminal defense lawyer, if all of that contact simply has to bear out a

conversation about a pardon getting manafort not to tell a full story, how is that not an open and shut case of obstruction of justice? >> well, i think the simple answer is that it is obstruction. and i don't think that rudy giuliani is a reliable far rat r narrator here. anybody in the trump camp who believes that rudy giuliani is an ambassador for the president is coming to help them should really think twice because donald trump would be willing to throw anyone short of his most closest family members under the bus to save his own skin. >> do you -- sorry. keep doing. >> i don't think that manafort -- i have a hard time believing that paul manafort doesn't understand that atier t manafort lied so many times throughout this career, perhaps he lost track of it. that's actually what the president is as well and they both sort of share that and i think they have this reptilian understanding of one another. i think what frank said earlier about there's more here he thinks going on than just the

pardon. i think that manafort is protecting other interests. i think he has his eyes on other things than the president and the presidency, and i think he should look at his client list to get a sense of some of who those people are. >> i think i know what you're trying to say. just for the russian oligarchs for dummies, flesh that out for me. >> one of manafort's key and most lucrative client was daraposka, a prominent russian oligarch who made his fortune in the aluminum business in siberia that was very mobbed up and he came out on top in that business through very bitter and dangerous infighting. he is a smart and wiley and tough operator. manafort -- >> a smart, wiley oligarch? >> yes. ma manafort stiffed him. they had a business agreement involving millions of dollars that daraposka said manafort essentially absconded with. i think paul manafort may have worries about his family's

wellbeing and because of the people he's done business with. i think that's a factor here. >> you think he's potentially afraid for his own life and the health and wellbeing of his family -- >> i think he has potential concerns beyond just trump's pardon. >> because the russian oligarch, again, this is the man donald trump put in charge of his campaign. matt miller, take me through, i don't like to gloss over the norm busting that goes on and i think norm busting is the nicest thing we can say about donald trump's smears against robert mueller. a purple heart recipient for his valor in combat in vietnam. someone who throughout his career was drawn into the justice department by democratic and republican presidents. he's the only fbi director in american history for whom the laws were changed so he could serve a second term. i don't really want to repeat the things the president tweeted about him, but they certainly sound like, well, they sound like a stuck pig. >> yeah. and the danger, of course, is we all get so used to this that people just kind of ignore it now. i mean, the president's tweets this morning were, you know, i

mean, just deranged, to be blunt. but he's done this so much that i think at the beginning of the administration, when he would attack the justice department, it was really breaking news. people would talk about the way he crossed the norm and tried to politicize the justice department. he kind of shifted the window so far in his direction, while we all still recognize that for what it is, you kind of brush it off. the danger is, what happens, he's then able to do something like, you know, put matt whitaker in charge of the investigation. bypassing the traditional role, you know, the traditional way that you fill those jobs and putting someone that appears to have no qualification other than his public stated hostility to the administration, and you see for the most part silence from republicans. i think at the beginning of the administration, you wouldn't have seen it be able to get away with something like that, but he is just so kind of repeatedly attacked the justice department, and kind of, you know, worn down the will of a lot of people to fight back against it that he's able to kind of move things in a way that really we never would have been able to see even a previous president do or even

see him do i think earlier on in his term. >> devlin, you and your colleagues have been breaking a lot of the stories that i think it's fair to put in the collusion side of the investigation. that over the thanksgiving holiday, you and your colleagues broke the story about jerome corsi's plea deal conversations. where do you think this story is going next on the collusion front? we know there's pressure on stone, know corsi is still under scrutiny. what do you think is the next development for us to keep an eye out for? >> i think the -- i think mueller and his team have put a lot of work into answering the question, who is roger stone talking to? and was roger stone, in fact, carrying on a conversation, possibly through a cutout, with julian assange about the release of, you know, stolen democrats' e-mails, stolen hillary clinton e-mails? i think that's a central question to the whole special counsel enterprise and i think they've been working a lot on that. i think the challenge, frankly, that you see in the corsi instance and stone and a few other folks, these are all basically conspiracy theorists

and i think trying to get a straight, rational version out of someone who doesn't believe the moon landing happened is always going to present a pretty significant challenge. >> let me just press you one more time on this, devlin, do you think that that is part of the signal that mueller's team is sending when they charged the lying liars for lying? >> i think so, but look, at the end of the day, cases need witnesses. you know, one of the challenges that we're starting to see, i think, with corsi and manafort, basically flaking on their own potential deals, is that, you know, at some point, someone's got to be the person in the grand jury who tells a story and sticks to it. >> devlin barrett, it's never boring. thank you so much for all your great reporting. we're grateful to have you here. >> thanks for having me. when we come back, why connecting the dots between donald trump's campaign and julian assange is the story news organizations are chasing today. and if it's true, what that would mean for the collusion case. also ahead, tear gas, lies and the images seen around the world. we'll fact check the president's

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simple. easy. awesome. stay connected while you move with the best wifi experience and two-hour appointment windows. click, call or visit a store today. many news organizations including this one spent at least part of today chasing a new report in the "guardian" that if true would be of significant interest to mueller's investigators in the russian collusion investigation. from that report, "donald trump's former campaign manager paul manafort held secret talks with julian assange. inside the ecuadorian embassy in london and visited around the

time he joined trump's campaign "the guardian" has been told. sources say manafort went to see assange in 2013, '15 and the spring of '16 during a time when he was made a key figure in trump's push for the white house. wikileaks released a stash of democratic e-mails stolen by russian intelligence officers." manafort, assange, and wikileaks all deny that any meetings took place and nbc news has not confirmed "the guard yian's" story. the report follows a line of questioning that's been central to mueller's investigation since the beginning. what did members of the trump campaign know about the russian hack of hillary clinton's e-mails? and when did they know it? joining us at the table, alice jordan, former aide in the george w. bush white house and state department. now an msnbc analyst. matt, frank, and tim are all still here. frank, let me start with you. this seems like the line of questioning that reinforces what devlin just said about where this investigation is pointing toward now. >> yep, nicolle, i've long said

on your show that manafort is the vector by which the campaign caught the russian infection. and if the reporting from "the guardian" is accurate then mueller has this already and mueller is now closing that loop between the russia connection, russian government, the trump campaign, and wikileaks. and if you close that loop, you've got your collusion case developed. the question is, is this what manafort is willing to die in prison for? is he -- is she really holding back on the fact that he was that go-between between the russians and julian assange regarding the release of the hacked e-mails? if that's true, we've got the collusion case. we just need to wait and see, and wait for the filing, the next filing for mueller, to tell us why he knows manafort is lying to him, and have him lay that out for us publicly. >> matt miller, i want to play for you something that jeremy bash said on the show, it's possible you were here this day, too. let's watch it and talk about it on the other side. >> it's possible that russia actually sent an dispatched paul

manafort to the trump campaign, or at least that once paul manafort attached himself to the trump campaign, the russians said, okay, our agent is now on the inside and they tried to manipulate the campaign, not just through propaganda, not just through russia today, but also through agents of influence. i think ultimately when it comes down to it -- >> wait, wait, wait. are you saying it's possible that they're going to want to find out if manafort was a russian plant? is that one of the questions the investigation is going to try to answer? is. >> absolutely. they're going to want to know whether or not there were ties between paul manafort and russia. whether they were financial or otherwise. that caused him to in effect do russia's bidding. whether wittingly or unwittingly in the same situation that mike flynn found himself in, whether he was doing work on behalf of the russian federation inside the trump campaign and the ultimate question, nicolle, is whether or not trump, himselves knew about it. >> so, the other title for that piece is the day jeremy bash blew my mind. but if you could just pick up the thread of whether this -- you would agree that this is a

line of questioning that, of course, we don't hear much about, but what strikes me, and what endures about that sound is that jeremy bash, as a former chief of staff at the cia, and having served years on the intel committees, yuused the same language john brennan used when he testified about the extent and the nature of russian meddling, that either wittingly or unwittingly, people were involved in the russian effort. what -- that sound seems to endure and it seems to be at the center of some of the questions mueller may be trying to answer, matt miller. >> yeah, i think jeremy made a great point that day. you don't have to take his worst-case scenario that manafort was sent by the russians. there's a scenario that's not that quite extreme when manafort got there on his own, once he was there decided to use his position in the trump campaign as a bridge with the russians and with the russian connections he had, russian al gooligarchs members of the russian intelligence service he was communicating with while on the trump campaign. we don't know the substance of all the communications but it's been public he's been

communicating with his former associate who's a member of russian intelligence while he was running the campaign. so i think if this report in "the guardian" is true, i'm a little skeptical of it just because there are so many people inside the u.s. government that will have been monitoring the comings and goings of that embassy. i would be a bit surprised if it hadn't leaked out at this point. this being two years after the fact. if it's true, i think what it does, it reduces the number of dots you have to connect. we've always wondered, you know, is the communication from, you know, julian assange, to roger stone, to the campaign, or is it from assange to cosi to stone to the campaign? this would shrink that number of dots and make it directly from wikileaks to the campaign, itself. and the form of the campaign chairman. >> it also re-ups some of the questions about, i mean, donald trump, he tweeted this week something about hundreds of people who can attest to never talking to russia. something no one on the campaign has ever said, i can attest to that. there was a small circle. so paul manafort wouldn't have had these contacts without the

president's closest -- people closest to him knowing about it and if you just take the members of the participants of the trump tower meeting and have to assume some of the things went down, j. paul manafort was around. you sort of have the same universe of individuals who were in the trump tower meeting where they willingly and gleefully went to get dirt on hillary clinton from russians, now under scrutiny for potential contacts with assange. >> well, and also as you pointed out, they were at the rnc convention, too. >> right. changing the plat tomorrow ffop >> you have kislyak, you got k.k., you got paul manafort's right-hand man who's been indicted. you have all these various players who were interacting with the top levels of the republican national committee. >> it's so bizarre. i've been to all the republican conventions and i was usually working on speeches and loading teleprompters. never rubbing shoulders with russians. >> and remember what got changed at the convention. >> right. >> it was u.s. policy toward ukraine. >> ukraine. >> which had been front of mind for vladimir putin.

paul manafort had done work for years prior to the presidential campaign in ukraine on behalf of kremlin-friendly regimes. . he meets with assange in 2013 and 2015. prior to his work on the campaign, presumably in association with the work he was doing in ukraine. then he meets with assange sometime in the spring, early summer of 2016. months later you get the wikileaks drop that roger stone knew was coming. rudy giuliani seemed to know it was coming. the president seemed to know it was coming. so the chronology of this doesn't look good for paul manafort or the sort of trump universe being apart from russia. i think there's some things to consider in how manafort got in there. i don't know that i buy the idea that the russians dropped him in. the story they've had out there is trump's, you know, campaign kind of unofficial adviser tom barrack was the person who introduced manafort to the campaign. when don trump junior met in trump tower with the russian

emissaries that had kompromat, it was through rob goldstone, this music producer. allegedy. mueller knows more than we do. as you mentioned earlier, i think all of these people were in the same place at more or less the same time and certainly manafort, kushner, and donald trump junior were at a trump tower meeting in which kompromat was discussed. >> frank, pick up on all of this. i'm going to give you a two-parter here. mike flynn is someone we don't talk about enough but know he was in contact with ambassador kislyak. at least on that day of the inauguration that's been widely reported. he lied about those contacts and he could also, perhaps, i assume, be providing some context or some information. i want to read you mueller's questions about some of these topics and some of these characters. this is as reported by "the new york times," these are questions that were shared with trump's lawyers. mueller wants to know what knowledge the president had of any outreach by his campaign including by paul manafort to russia about potential assistance to the campaign.

mueller also wants to know what the president knew about communications between roger stone, his associates, julian assange, and wikileaks." >> yeah, so mueller is focused like a laser on just what we've been talking about, putting those three puzzle pieces together. russian government, trump campaign, wikileaks, who knew what when. if you put those together, you got a criminal conspiracy that violates numerous laws. now, i have to assume that the trump team responded in the negative. we know nothing. we don't know anything about this. we even have sarah huckabee sanders, perhaps, changing slightly her semantics today or recently that we were not a part, the president was not a part of any collusion. not necessarily that there was no collusion. so -- >> they always move the goal post. >> it's a difference because -- >> if it was there, we didn't know about it. he was -- >> this is what we're going to see. this is -- >> keep going. >> this is the defense we're going to see is that i had -- i surrounded myself with bad people. right? we've already heard the people

say, i -- manafort didn't work for me for a very long time. so that distancing has already started long ago. that's what we're going to see as a defense. the question is, when manafort, stone, corsi, realize they've got no hope or little hope and mueller's got the answers to the questions, when will they flip? and my experience, as has been talked about in the earlier block, when you're dealing with longtime corrupt people, who are con men still trying to effect that last con, now on the prosecutor team, they have to go to prison and sit there for a while until they realize they've got to cooperate. i think that's what's going to eventually happen here. >> all right. we will be here to talk us through it. matt miller, frank, thank you both so much. after the break, donald trump ratchets up the fear mongering over the crisis at the border. we'll fact check some of his latest claims after the break. introducing fidelity stock and bond index funds with lower expense ratios than comparable vanguard funds. and we're now offering zero expense ratio index funds.

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you look at what's happening

on our border and see people coming up by the thousands and frankly, if we didn't show them strength and a strong border and nobody's shown a stronger border, if we didn't do that, you would have hundreds of thousands of people pouring into our country. we are doing a job and we will continue to do a job. we're doing what's right. >> that strength at the border we saw on sunday where hundreds of men, women and small children trying to cross near san diego retreated from tear gas might end up being just chapter one in a longer saga. the "washington post" reports, "homeland security officials defended the use of force and their decision to close the country's busiest port of entry. saying they expect additional confrontations and shutdowns." joining us at the table, we're excited about this, nbc's jacob soboroff, done extensive incredible reporting on the border and trump administration's handling of immigration policies. mara, always excited when mara

is here, member of "the new york times" editorial board, and a.b. stoddard with "real clear politics." first, it's hard to get you here because you're often there. did you feel like this escalation was, perhaps, imminent with the president's language? >> well -- >> and confusion? >> it certainly didn't have to be, and this was yet another crisis at the border of donald trump's own making. it didn't have to happen. >> right. >> and the reason that this happened just like 2,600 kids were separated from their parents down there, 5,000, if you go by the "60 minutes" number or other reporters working on this for a long time. what happened down there over the weekend was the result of basically a throttling the amount of people who could come in to seek asylum on any given day. it's called metering. they let only 100 people in at a time. i was shown numbers by the department of homeland security that there were 2,000 people on the ground there before the so-called caravan even showed up. so there is -- let's make no mistake, there is no war zone on the border. the citiesy ies along the south

border are the safest cities in the country. >> that's right. >> knthough some cities on the other side of the border are dangerous. donald trump made it a boiling point and allowing it to get to that place. it certainly doesn't have to be that way. historically, it's never been that way. >> yeah, i mean, and i want to get into it. we have a hard time covering his immigration rhetoric because it is so detached from the truth that even repeating his assertions feel like participating in his propaganda. his smears against, you know, really the caravan should be called a slow-moving humanitarian crisis. >> correct. >> that is what it is. but i want to -- i want to take apart some of his most recent claims and have you just sort of illuminate the holes or the gaps. >> yeah, sure. >> between what he says and reality. so let's start with something i've never heard before in any capacity or walk of my life, grabbers. let's watch. >> why is a parent running up into an area where they know the tear gas is forming and it's going to be formed and they're running up with a child? and in some cases, you know,

they're not the parents. these are people, they call them grabbers. >> who calls them grabbers? >> phobnobody. not a single person. people in the department of homeland security, i was told by one person that they laughed when they heard this because it's sort of an outrageous kind of way to put this. what he's referring to are what are known as fraudulent family units, basically people that come to this country and pretend to be with a younger person and say i'm the person's father, i'm the person's mother, and the reality of the situation is, dhs sent out numbers last night, publicly available, around 525 fraudulent family units between april and september. >> usually they're relatives. usually what they do is misrepresent the association. they say they're a parent, they're often an aunt. >> listen to this, 525 out of 280,000 people. that's -- i'm horrible at math. that is less than 1%, i believe, of all people apprehended along the southern border. so donald trump making a big deal about so-called grabbers. >> yeah. >> he's talking about less than 1% of everybody that comes through the southern border. >> i don't know -- >> the only time i've heard the

phrase, grabber, in recent memory is referring to donald trump, himself. >> right. on the "access hollywood" tape. he likes that word. let me show you kellyanne conway with a number that seems suspicious to me. this is her on the number of criminals. >> most of these people surging, trying to surge across the wall, are male and they've confirmed that dhs, there are about 600 confirmed criminals as part of that caravan. so this idea that everybody there is peacefully seeking asylum is just false. and you ought to cover it. >> let's cover it. >> again, ridiculous. we don't know who's in that group of 600 criminals. those are all deportees, referring to people deported from the united states according to dhs. i called and asked who are those 600? they won't give us data breakdowns on what those 600 people did. are they traffic violations? did they run a red light and get deported out of the country and they're being classified as violent criminals? people that we have to be scared of, really bad people, thugs, whatever the president says. are did they actually commit, you know, more serious crimes? if they did, how many of them in

that group are serious criminals, are you tracking them, what's being done to stop those people from getting into the united states? it's simple and straightforward. it's called law enforcement. it's done every day inside the united states. they know who these folks are. why aren't you being more transparent in the 600 group with the breakdown of what they did? >> and here's the deal. i mean, a.b., i think his message about the gang violence is central to his political brand. this only threatens to weaken it, to dilute it. whenever you as a politician are articulating a message that doesn't match the images, i don't know anyone that will forget the image of the woman with her, you know, i think a full family was wearing three different pieces of a frozen pajama set. those do not look like hardened criminals. >> that's right. but what the president's supporters will do is go back to the tape of people throwing rocks and highlight the fact that they're not thankful and they're not humble and they're not seeking asylum, they're coming here to throw rocks at our border agents who the president, of course,

incorrectly, falsely described as being very badly hurt. he has -- this is not the first time that he's said that everyone coming over is ms-13 and everyone's carting dangerous drugs and everyone's coming to infest your neighborhood and make us all unsafe. he will say whatever it takes, and he will brand them as grabbers and make up new descriptions and talk about what he knows about the science of tear gas. whatever it takes to get from here to there, the consequences be damned. what was interesting about watching the video, and the coverage, the different coverage of it, is that our military wasn't there and clearly wasn't necessary and there was no wall there. and that clearly wasn't necessary. so it's hard for him to make the argument that this didn't work to keep the rock throwers away. if he's trying to make the argument that these people are not here to seek asylum and that they're violent. so how do you make the argument, and threaten to shut the government down, over the need for a wall and then deployment of 5,000 active duty troops when

this was an incident that was handled without that? >> i think this is sort of structural, to trump's support, i think the idea that democrats ran on health care, he ran on a fake story about a humanitarian crisis in central america. and mexico. and got his butt kicked. erodes the power of the -- he sort of scooped up everyone he can get with the fear mongering of any one other. >> it's desperate, but i actually have to say turning to the democrats and their responsibility here, i'm disappointed and concerned that we haven't seen a united front, a united message, from the democrats, about this issue. not just about trump's behavior, and his language around what really is a humanitarian crisis, but also, you know, trump as long as he, you know, is able to get away and be unchallenged in language he uses dehumanizing this group of people, as long as no one's actually providing an alternate narrative, that's a narrative that stands.

so i think the democrats really need to think about how to address this crisis at the border and it is a crisis. it's a crisis created by the trump administration. but what is -- what is actually the democratic line on this? what is the alternative vision? and we want it to be one that's, of course, more inclusive. a lot of us. but what is that? i mean, i think you have to have some answer. >> uh-huh. >> otherwise it's, you know, trump controls the narrative. if that's what it's really about, it's not about facts. it's about the narrative. >> you know the answer to that, just to pick up my point? >> look, to your point, this is a -- we're here because of 30 years of a cumulative failed border policy that started under bill clinton. >> let me give president obama, president bush, late senator mccain, late senator kennedy, credit for trying. there was a bipartisan group of presidents and senior lawmakers who tried. >> i think what we learned over the course of, between the clinton era where this prevention through deterrence policy was put into place and today deterrence is offtitentima bipartisan solution to the

immigration problem. figure out ways to make people not come but it never works. >> ronald reagan passed amnesty -- >> that's right. go ahead. i was going to say, people try to come, they come in more dangerous ways, don't stop coming. people end up dying. have consequences like we're seeing if tijuana right now. >> i want to show you one more thing, nothing more sacred to the president than his wall. >> so the wall is started very, very substantially. in fact, you saw the other day the wall stopped everybody and it was only the section that's now under construction. they breached it, but only momentarily. it didn't take long. momentarily. that was called a very -- a momentary breach. >> they breached the section of the new wall that hasn't been built yet. what's he talking about? >> let's just say it super clearly, there is no new wall. i've been to those prototypes on multiple occasions. i promise you, i mean, there is not one stretch of wall along the 2,000 miles of southern border that looks anything like any of those eight different

prototypes. congress did not approve the funding for druponald trump's border wall. there's not a single version that was approved and put into place. what he's saying is just completely factually inaccurate. just not true. simply untrue. >> before you go, i want to thank you for the work you do bringing the story to all us. the work you've been doing is really important stuff. much more important than what we do here. thank you. thanks for being here. >> thanks. when come balk, how does mississippi senate candidate espy fit in? a candidate who said she'd like a front-row seat at a public hanging. we'll show you how mike espy answered that question after the break.

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legendary maxine waters. >> that was trump last night dismissing the democratic challenger in today's runoff election for senate in mississippi, mike espy, who responded to the president telling him exactly how he fits in. >> he said who is mike espy? well, mike espy was a member of congress for mississippi four times. i was elected in 1986. i was the first black congressman since the civil war. mike espy was secretary of agriculture. first in mississippi to ever hold that post. my grandfather founded something they call afroamerican sons and daughters. and in the 1930s, he was the wealthiest businessman in mississippi. so when people think of mike espy, who is mike espy, they think of thomas jefferson sr. my grandfather whose legacy i

inherited so that's who i am. >> espy is running against cindy hyde-smith, the incumbent mired in racial controversies over the last few weeks and trump held two rallies for last night. our friend, elise jordan, is mio penned a column about the race and specifically hyde-smith. she writes, "i worry mississippi is about to send a senator to washington lacking the critical character traits of common sense, judgment and the humility positive apologize. i know many mississippians worry about sending a democratic senator to washington but i worry more that cindy hyde-smith, who gave only a belated and kersey apology for comments about voter suppression and of all things, public hangings, will be a constant reminder of the darkest days of our history. is that a risk mississippi can afford to take?" tim is lack but let's start with you. >> i don't think i can express strongly enough how devastating cindy hyde-smith's public

comments have been for the state of mississippi, for our reputation, for the attractiveness of our state, for businesses to come in and send their executives to live and worship among our people. it has been very bad for mississippi morally and economically. and this is not anything new, it's the reason that plenty of businesses stay add wed away fr mississippi and i'm very upset it looks like a senator's going to go to washington who didn't just make a mistake, she doubled down, embraced it and really only apologized when she looked at her notes during a debate. >> let's take her incident -- what she wrote is so important and so brave and no fun to always be sort of the skunk at your former political party's garden party, but how -- i think what a lot of people wonder, not just coastal elites, but people from states other than

mississippi, how can people vote for someone who joked about public hangings? who went to a segregation academy? who i believe it's been reported her daughter did or does as well. and you already see, i don't know that you can say there's a cause and effect but yesterday two nooses were found hanging on two different trees at the state capitol. >> the nooses were put up to protest and highlight cindy hyde-smith and her statement. that was a protest move, i just want to be clear what was behind that. >> no, thank you. >> how can people vote for cindy hyde-smith? i have spoken to a lot of mississippians about their choice today as playing out, and some voters that i hear from are embarrassed by cindy hyde-smith, they don't like how she basically has been in candidate hiding the entire time. her handlers have been keeping her from speaking out about what she actually believes. so we really don't know what she stands for. we know what senator wicker stands for and the governor

stands for when they speak for her, but when she opens her mouth we hear things like public hanging but they worry about judicial appointments and at the end of the day they will hold their noses and vote for her and they know she's embarrassing and they're going to give her a pass for what they call a mistake but that is very shortsighted and, quite frankly, just wrong. >> and donald trump, i think a normal republican president might have skipped a campaign stop for a candidate like that. worried about the moral deficiencies and worry about the party frankly, but this is donald trump. >> this is donald trump's party and he's a candidate and president who happenfulily traf in racism. deep-rooted racism is a defining characteristic of american life. and the gop can decide now whether they want to get on the right side of history and say

whether the party of abraham lincoln is now irretrievably going to be the party of white nationalism, racism and donald trump and they're failing. >> i think they're on the record saying all of those things, no? >> yes, but i think the problem in part is not just that you have a group of trump's base who are rabidly racist, although i think that's a problem, i think you have a larger percent of americans who racism is not just qualifying. i think that's more disturbing, that they know it's wrong but it's not disqualifying. and i think that plays an extreme somewhere like mississippi, which has an extremely painful and long racial history, history of racism, and i think what donald trump said last night is especially painful because it goes to the very heart of what black americans have faced, which is black americans are never american enough. in fact, they're never american at all. so when donald trump said how

does espy fit in with mississippi, let's look at the facts. mike espy's ancestors, like mine who fled mississippi, fled a racial terror in mississippi many generations ago, they built the country. they built that state. of a always been mississippians, they've always been americans. and then donald trump, you know, who does not have that shared american background in the same way -- that's fine, many people don't -- he comes along to say mike espy is not from mississippi. that is actually the -- that goes to the very heart of racism in this country. >> they reported on the bruce ballman how voters have fled the gop, i think this is another cause and effect. what are you picking up from republicans who worry about things like national elections, like suburban voters fleeing? this is not the right reason to

flee because she's morally reprehensible but the political fallout is sometimes what moves folks in washington. >> the calculation is there are not enough ashamed republicans who will stay home and sit this vote out, combined with democrats in mississippi to i get, my guess, be over the finish line and they will just move on from this. the house losses are another story. the headline today about the wipeout in california, this is extremely bad for the republican party and elected republicans in congress know it but with the leader of their party who goes out and says everything was hunky dory and everything is a victory, they can't actually have a public debate about how they lost suburban women and former republicans and so they're staying quiet. >> all right. we're going to sneak in our very last break. don't go anywhere. hey dad. so he took aleve. if he'd taken tylenol, he'd be stopping for more pills right now. only aleve has the strength to stop tough pain for up to 12 hours with just one pill. aleve. all day strong.

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i could talk to these friends all day. my thanks to tim o'brien, a.c. stott ard. hi, i missed you at 2:00! >> i was shooting another show. >> of course you were. >> but i'm here for the 5:00. i'm here now, nicolle. >> good. and if it's tuesday, it's manafort versus mueller mayhem. good evening, i'm katy tur in new york in for chuck todd. welcome to "mpt daily." we begin with two revelations in the russia investigation, both involving the president's former