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

campaign chairman paul manafort. "the guardian" is reporting according to unnamed sources manafort held a number of talks with wikileak's julian assange, including in the weeks of 2016, just months before they published the trove of campaign e-mails hacked by the russians. through a spokesman this afternoon, wikileaks is vehemently denying the report saying in part, this report is totally false and deliberately libelist. i have never met julian asanction or anyone connected to him. i have never been contacted by anyone from wikileaks either directly or indirectly. i have never reached out to assange or wikileaks on any matter. wikileaks and assange are also denying the story, and for its part, the white house say they remain confident that the president wasn't involved in any wrongdoing. but let's just step back for a moment. because if "the guardian" sources are right, it would mean

the trump campaign chief cultivated a longstanding relationship with the guy who's being used as a front for russian intelligence all as candidate trump himself was publicly calling on russia to find clinton's e-mails. again, that is if this reporting is accurate. on top of all of that comes the other major development involving paul manafort, robert mueller is accusing him of repeatedly lying to investigators and breaching his plea agreement. and big surprise, paul manafort is denying that accusation as well. we don't know what the special counsel is accusing him of lying about yet but we will, when mueller's team gets closer to manafort's sentencing. this story is a big deal. perhaps an even bigger deal in lieu of the report "the guardian" and that report shows you how manafort's testimony could be central to investigators figuring out the trump campaign's russia connection. but now investigators are all

but telling us manafort's testimony is no good because he's a serial liar. meanwhile, nbc news has obtained a draft court document sent to one of roger stone's associates, which includes an e-mail asserting stone sought documents from wikileaks in 2016 and then he was told by an sort that wikileaks would be releasing information damaging to the clinton campaign, which as you all know, it did. i'm joined by barbara mcquade, who is an msnbc contributor and former u.s. attorney. she is here with tonight's panel, jonathan, nbc news political analyst and ap white house reporter. a former clinton campaign adviser and susan del percio, msnbc political analyst and republican strategist. barbara, i do want to get this straight from you, there are a lot of different prongs to the news out today. there's the manafort lying,

there's the potential meeting that manafort may or may not have had with julian assange. again, all according to reporting from "the guardian" and unnamed sources talking to them. and then there is the other news. barbara, when you're making sense of it and you're talking about pardons potentially coming from the white house, how do you make sense of it, where do you go? >> i think there's some -- several layers going on here. number one, the one we know to be true is that manafort has lied and is now not cooperating any longer. and what's odd about that is the first thing a prosecutor ever says to someone who is cooperating is, the worst thing you can do is lie because if you lie, it make it's worse on yourself. not only will you get all of the time you otherwise faced, but now you can also be charged with making false statements. so for a sophisticated guy like paul manafort to make a suggestion against his interest suggests to me there's something

even greater than prison he fears. is it collusion are russia? is it he met with julian assange? i think robert mueller, even apart from paul manafort, is closing in on the truth about what happened with wikileaks. this document that nbc news has obtained is very interesting. and illuminating that suggests there was at least advanced knowledge about the wikileaks dump, if not coordination. >> how much stock do you put in, barbara, manafort's denial and wikileak's denials, their vehement denials? >> not much. i think they have proven themselves to be liars in the past, particularly paul manafort. it's certainly in his interest if he won't cooperate and is willing to go to prison rather than tell the truth, i don't think it takes much more to lie about his meeting with julian assange. that's an objective fact though that i think can be proved or disproved. i think it's an easier fact to prove other than what's in someone's mind, that's harder to

prove. we will know at some point whether paul manafort did or did not visit with julian assange at the embassy in london. >> you make a good point about that. as anyone who's been to london knows, that entire city is under surveillance and i imagine one of the places that you would have surveillance, a camera, is the front door to the ecuadorian embassy that i imagine british intelligence would be watching and maybe american intelligence would be watching. that is the sort of thing you could state definitively, he was there or not there. >> that's right. with a person of interest like assange in that building, you can rest assured there are a lot of eyes on it and this will be something that eventually will come out, whether he was there or not. >> there's a reason assange steps outside of that building because he knows or believes he will be arrested immediately. >> correct. and certainly manafort and wikileak do not deserve the benefit of the doubt. p having said that, there's no other corroboration of the story either. the white house said they don't believe this happened. i spoke to rudy giuliani, the

president's attorney, within the last hour and he said just as strong as manafort this never happened. they call this not just fake news but malicious fake news. it's not something manafort had these meetings but moreover made clear the president had nothing to do with it. >> but there are a lot of koi coincidences that pile up. barbara, i know you will say the same thing but chuck always says he doesn't believe in coincidences. you have to put in context what was happening in 2016 and that was the chatter about clinton campaign e-mails. suddenly there were charlotte campaign e-mails and all of a sudden donald trump was standing on a stage in july of 2016, russia, if you have the e-mails, please find them. and roger stone talks about podesta's time and october surprises and this e-mail from jerome corsi laying it out step by step and he says oh, it would have been obvious to anybody. these are a lot of coincidences. >> and that's why we take those denials with a lot of salt, not

a grain, maybe a truck ton of salt. because there are too many independent facts and good reporting, not just "the guardian's" reporting, which as jonathan said has yet to be corroborated by other folks, but i think there's plenty of evidence to show clearly someone inside of trump world knew something was coming down the pike because there were a lot of tweets that alluded to knowledge of podesta e-mails coming in the future. you have donald trump directly asking, saying into the camera, russia, if you are listening. that will never not be something that is significant to me and it was at the time, even though we had no idea there were e-mails coming off. >> to say something off the top of his head, he's the kind of person who just throws things out there. >> i don't believe that but i also look at the filing robert mueller did earlier this year where he said in a footnote, no, it was not a coincidence because at that direction russia then did something to try to hack private e-mails after the fact. >> or he went in a different

direction. this is from that filing. on the same day donald trump said that, that evening russia started doing it. >> he didn't necessarily -- >> the president was at the direction of donald trump. >> he said russia are you listening, i hear that as a direction. >> be rot muellbert mueller wilo the bottom of that. >> i agree with you. and it's important to use common sense also. we sometimes default and give him too much of the benefit of the doubt when he doesn't necessarily deserve that or he hasn't earned that because he lies about everything else. >> i do think you're right about that. but when you're talking about something as egregious as including with a foreign government or conspireing against america, you got to get down to proving it without a shadow of doubt. beyond a shadow of doubt. >> i'm not saying you don't have to prove it. what i'm saying is we should not take the pile of evidence and default to giving him the benefit of the doubt and ignore that. >> which is why there's an investigation going on.

susan, why -- if you put all of these things together, can you make a cogent argument though that it is all just coincidence, is it possible? >> i don't think anyone should make any argument on maybe, if, possibility. we know if there are surveillance tapes, which we talked about at the embassy, do united states intelligence have it? either mueller has spoken to them or maybe there will be an investigation from congress come january to see if they can get the tapes. but we know robert mueller kept his head down and is going forward with his investigation. every time something comes out we go oh, my, and robert mueller's six months ahead of that. so all i know is that i leave my faith in that be rot mueller is going to do the best job he can and will present the facts in a very thoughtful way that can be presented to the public so they have faith in him. that's the most important thing, as he presents it, he will present facts, not ifs, not

maybes. and that's something we can trust. it won't be coming from the president or democrats or it won't be coming from republicans, it will simply be coming from the special investigator. >> paul manafort not cooperating any longer with the team. how much of a blow is it to mueller's team and does it delay this investigation? >> i think it is a blow and probably does delay the investigation to some extent. but that doesn't mean the debriefings with him were completely useless. it sounds like mueller reached the point where he thinks he has no credibility as a witness because he lied but there may be information that he provided to mueller and his team that is a value, that can be corroborated and they can use in the prosecution of other people. so it's hard to know without knowing what the specific lies were, how damaging it was. we do know robert mueller knew he was lying, as least he says so in his pleading, so there must be some evidence out there that refutes what he's saying. so i think a very good point to remember is that robert mueller has far more information that is publicly known. he has access to records,

witness testimony and also surveillance recordings from the intelligence community. and so all of those things are things people like paul manafort and even michael flynn, i think, forgot about when they lied to the fbi. so no doubt those are the kinds of thins robert mueller has access to. so i think it's a blow. i don't know how significant it is. i think this focus on stone and corsi and others is a really important part of the investigation. and robert mueller will get to it. >> but in looking at why manafort would lie, presumably maybe he thought he could get one past them initially. presumably though his lawyers have told him that you can't get one past the mueller team any longer. so why would he continue to lie, what would be the benefit for him? >> i see no benefit to him personally in this case unless he's hoping for a pardon. his deal gets worse by lying because he no longer gets that motion for reduced sentence and he can even be charged for the

lies that he made. it's against his self-interest. you have to ask yourself, what more could he want or what more could he fear to cause him to make this decision? it seems to me either he's trying to protect somebody who's not yet been charged or he's hoping to get a pardon out of it by not talking about certain areas. it sounds like he did admit to his own crimes in certain areas but there are other matters that he has not told the truth about. >> before he decided to cooperate with investigators, trump was praising him and saying he was refusing to be a rat. then he decided to cooperate and trump went silent on it. is this now a signal to the president he's back on his side, or does the president see it as such? >> first of all, you're right, he drew a real distinction where he praised paul manafort and really blasted michael cohen. remember, those proceedings happened the same day. manafort is a good guy, tough guy, and i don't know him anymore. in this case giuliani when i spoke to him said something telling, he said the president is in conversations with myself,

other legal teams and they're not considering any sort of pardon for paul manafort. but he did not rule out that down the rote. other people in the white house we've spoken to said that's something that's been filed away. the idea that a part now would be a political stick of dynamite being dropped into the mueller investigation if he were going to say to manafort, waive all this. but down the road when this investigation wraps up, that might be something he could consider, which could be a carrot dangled, although it's been pointed out. manafort has convictions on tax and financial fraud, there could be state charges there too. >> wouldn't necessarily mean a pardon would work. >> trump could pardon him on federal stuff but state prosecutors could convict him on that. >> presumably paul manafort knows as well and his lawyers, which i'm sure they told him, all of which jonathan just explained. his actions, clearly, he's not acting rationally. just in terms of what barbara said about him behaving in ways that are completely the

antithesis of his own self-realization. he's doing this for a reason but we don't know what the specific reason is. is he trying to hide a conversation with somebody who is significant, whether it be somebody in the family or somebody who was at the trump tower meeting for example? we don't know that yet but we do know he's acting irrationally because of what barbara just said. >> one last question to you, barbara, on lying and manafort, if there are surveillance tapes that could potentially show him walking into the ecuadorian embassy -- again, another big if. we don't know if they exist, presumably they would if he did walk into that embassy, why would he lie about it? what would be the motivation? >> lie about going to the embassy, i think it connects him and potentially the campaign directly to assange. everyone knows it was wikileaks and assange who published those e-mails. if you see him going in and meeting with assange, it does provide a very strong link between the campaign. >> if that evidence exists of the video of him walking in, if

it does, he's got to know if he walked in or not. why lie if it's going to come out sooner or later? >> maybe i doesn't appreciate it will come out sooner or later or maybe he's willing to take his chances. i don't know. in the same way why did mike flynn lie to the fbi about whether the content of the conversation he had with the russian ambassador? he had to know the tapes were out there somewhere. but i guess he was just hoping against hope they wouldn't be found. >> again, i know our viewers know this but i'm going to underscore it again, it is a big if. we don't know if this "guardian" report is true. it's not our sources, it's "the guardian's" sources. we don't know if that surveillance video exists. these are presumptions we're making. >> and it could be just a small part, very small part of a much bigger report. >> we're going to find out sooner or later. barbara mcquade, thank you very much for joining us. ahead, democrats are trying to protect robert mueller with a possible government shutdown looming.

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americans rose up this november and rejected donald trump. more unhinged by that than ever, this president declared war on the rule of law. but you gave democrats the power to hold him in check. a majority vote in the house can impeach him and expose his lawless behavior for all to see. they just need the will. please join over six million americans and together we can give congress the courage to act. then, we can begin building a more just and prosperous future.

as we said, the russia investigation is hitting a critical stretch with paul manafort back in the spotlight. they're looking to protect special counsel robert mueller's probe with interference, calling it to be included in negotiations to avoid a government shutdown next week if it doesn't pass on its own. retiring arizona senator jeff flake joins in and said he will join all judicial nominees

unless the senate gets a vote but majority leader mitch mcconnell said he would likely block the senators attempt to bring up the bill, calling it a solution in search of a problem. i'm joined now by california democratic congressman eric swalwell, a member of the house judiciary committee and intelligence committees. good to see you. >> thanks for having me back. >> focus a little on the intelligence committee and what you guys plan on doing come january. are you going to reopen the investigation into donald trump and russia? >> we're not going to conduct an investigation that revisits questions that have already been answered but we are going to fill in the gaps, particularly around money laundering. there's a long history of donald trump seeking to invest in russia or russia investing in donald trump. we see that's driving foreign policy decisions by the president. so we will look at those past transactions where republicans were unwilling, and we will also, i think, put to bed all of the questions around the june 9

trump tower meeting where the president's son had knowledge of dirt being offered on hillary clinton and whether or not candidate trump knew about it at the time. but it will be limited and precise and i think answer many questions i think republicans kept us from getting into. >> when you say put to bed, who are you going to be calling? what are you hoping to get answered? remind our viewers. >> yes, if you recall there was a blocked number -- so russians called donald trump jr. they set up a meeting moving heaven and earth to make it happen at trump tower to offer dirt on hillary clinton. donald trump jr. talks to a blocked number and then he calls back to russia. we know from other witnesses that candidate trump had a blocked number that would show up if he was to call someone. so we want to know if donald trump jr. called his father, because that would explain a lot of the statements candidate trump would make throughout the summer of 2016, about new information coming about hillary clinton. if he had knowledge that these hacks that occurred or russia was working for him, that would

explain a lot and also i think make him be held a lot more accountable for what russia did. >> how do you get that information? is it call logs? are you going to subpoena the phone company? >> that's exactly right, katy, you would subpoena the telephone provider. i fear the republicans have obstructed this for so long, they may not be available. as a former prosecutor, i knew there was a limited window of time for most bank records, cell phone records, travel logs, and this delay may jeopardize our ability to get it but we're going to try. >> when you're looking at money laundering, are you only looking at russia or other countries as well? >> in real time as we speak now we see the president's prior transactions with saudi arabia may be also dictating foreign policy. again, this country and leaders there bailed out the president while he was in bankruptcy, buying his yachts, buying his new york hotel properties and now this is the first country he visited when he was president, a u.s. resident working for a u.s. publication was killed on the

soil of a nato ally and the president is, again, undermining our own intelligence community's findings. so, yes, we want to see if that is driving his decision and now a majority in congress being democratic, we can seek to intervene and protect our national security. >> what's the motivation to limit the scope of these investigations, not fully opening the russia investigation back up? >> to not waiste time, to recognize the american people want us to focus on doing what we can to protect health care, infrastructure, get background checks on firearm purchases and putting in place prescription drug reforms to bring down the cost there. things the president said he's actually willing to do. but there was a republican congress for two years that gave the president immunity. you saw presidential immunity for two years where he conducted a number of different abuses and he was never checked on those. so there will now be a balance of power on these abuses of power. >> if donald trump pardons paul

manafort down the line, say after russia investigation is closed, will democrats object? will they draw up articles of impeachment? what do the democrats plan on do, if anything? >> i see that as a red line, i see that as obstruction of justice. certainly if he offered or dangled the expectation of a pardon to paul manafort and that led to the end of the cooperation agreement. now, paul manafort backing out of this agreement and lying has to be looked at in the context of, one, matt whitaker's now the attorney general and he can give donald trump a window of the investigation. two, donald trump just submitted his answers to bob mueller. so the trump team may be worried manafort testimony could contradict those answers. and it's happening at the same time jerome corsi is backing out. i don't think these are coincidences. knowing this gang, they very well might be related. i would say, again, that's a red line if the president were to do that. >> do you think legislation is needed immediately to protect the mueller investigation? if so, are you willing to force a government shutdown over it?

>> i'm willing to hold back my vote to support bipartisan legislation that the republicans will need democratic votes for. katy, what i'm saying is the house and the senate right now controlled by republicans, they have been unable the past two years to pass any budget with their own vote so they had to come to democrats. if they want democratic votes, our position is you need to pass the special counsel protect mueller bill that's already been passed out of the senate judiciary committee with bipartisan support. that should be pretty easy, and i don't understand why they would want to create any more uncertainty around this investigation. >> mcconnell said it's basically d.o.a. in the senate. is it worth pushing it if it's not going to get anywhere in the senate? >> the rule of law is worth pushing and mitch mcconnell is subverting the will in the senate right now. i commend senator grassley for bringing that forward but mitch mcconnell should bring it to a vote because i believe in both houses it was brought to a vote, a majority of the members would

support it. >> you have leadership elections tomorrow. are you kchd in t confident in the leaders that are the front the runner, pelosis, hoyer, et cetera? >> nancy pelosi will be chosen as our speaker nominee and that's because she's the most effective leader we have and from now until january 3rd, she will continue to earn the support of members and i expect we will unify on the 3rd and do the work the american people elected us to do. congressman eric swalman, thank you very much for joining us. >> my pleasure. ahead, election day in mississippi. yes, election day in mississippi. you know what that means, steve kornacki is at the big board. we will get the latest of the senate runoff race we will all be watching tonight. (chime)

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welcome back. c queue the music. for the final time in 2018, democrats are going to the polling booth. incumbent cindy hyde-smith finished her campaign last night alongside president trump. the close's message, a vote for cindy hyde-smith is a vote for the agenda. >> this senate seat is for a very, very special woman who is going to do a special job, and she votes for us and she votes for make america great again and she votes for america first. >> democratic nominee mike espy capped his campaign with an appearance at a church in jackson last night. he echoed his closing message this morning, mississippi needs to rise above political and racial division.

>> it's so unfortunate that in the 21st century, that's still our problem. the problem of the color line. so what i'm trying to do in my campaign is reach across that line and reach across that racials could up racial problem if you will and bring everyone together. >> joining me is my colleague from mississippi, von hillard. you made it to the finish line, you're almost there. what are you hearing from voters today? >> good afternoon, katy. two hours until the polls close here in mississippi and the one thing that we've consistently heard from voters across the border as they walk in the polls is frustration with the perpetuation of the idea that mississippi continues to be a place of racial division. now, to note cindy hyde-smith is the one -- the republican candidate is the one who put it right back into the conversation here in the state, bringing up images from generations past and

the conversation though turned to what extent, what number of republicans are ultimately going to turn away from cindy hyde-smith and be willing to vote for the democrat in this race, mike espy? there's a lot of young, particularly white republicans we have talked to over the course of the last week that said they're tired of the stereotype and plan to vote for espy. but the question was the older generations. i want to play for you sutton marks. been married for 69 years now. he arrived at the polling place with his wife today. he voted and november 6 for cindy hyde-smith. calls himself a republican. today he walked in and voted for mike espy. this is part of what he told us -- >> i think she just indicated that she had some extreme views, which i don't share. and we don't need people like that voting or representing mississippi. we need to get into the mainstream of things.

that's pretty much it. >> the other voting block, katy, are those 140,000 chris mcdaniel voters. i talked to one gentleman, a cattleman just outside of starkville, just got off the phone with him. we talked to him back before the november 6th race and he said if his candidate did not go forward, he didn't know how he would vote. just a few minutes ago he told me for the first time in his life, he's not going to the polls to vote for either candidate in this race out of frustration with the two candidates. that said, again, this is a tall task for mike espy and whether he's able to even come close in this race is a big question mark going into tonight, katy. >> let's try to figure out a few more answers to that, vaughn hillyard in mississippi, thank you very much. nbc news international correspondent steve kornacki is at the big board with us. steve, how many -- i'm sorry, sutton marks, the man vaughn

interviewed, how many of them does mike espy need to pull off this race? >> basically mike espy needs there to be more voters like that than we've seen in modern times in mississippi. mississippi politics have been probably the most polarized electorate probably in the kun the. this is a runoff, three candidates squared off on election day. you see two of them were republicans, espy/hyde-smith getting the two most votes there. espy, look at the basically 41% he got on election day in the preliminary. compare that to how democrats normally do in mississippi and you're going to see, look, that's what clinton got in 2016. hillary clinton got 40%. how about barack obama, in 2012, a little bit better, he got 44%. still lost by double digits. 2008, barack obama got 43%, right up where the ceiling basically has been for democrats in mississippi, the low to maybe reaching into the mid-40s. why is that? we say the most racially polarized electorate.

here's what i mean, this is the last time they took an exit poll in mississippi. they didn't actually take one in 2016 because the state wasn't competitive but check this out. we see racial polarization around the country but not like this, among white voters, romney, 2012 republican candidate, remember, 89/10, 80-point win basically among white voters for the republican -- black voters, i'm sorry, wrong screen. among black voters, mere opposite 96/4 beating romney. it's almost universally white voters republican, universally black voters democrat. to be a democrat and win in mississippi, you're maxing out the black vote. you've got to make some inroads there among white voters. take a look at this 2012 map and it gives you a sense of the challenge, if it ever loads here, let me try that again. take a look at the 2012 map -- oh, it's not coming up. basically what you need to do if you're a democrat and you want to win mississippi, you need maximized black turnout, especially in the delta and to

the extent there are suburbs in mississippi that have those college educated white voters who nationally have been he's hasn't to go republican, you have to win them over too in record numbers. >> steve, there are also more democratic pickups across the country. >> yes, let's see if it will work. let me try the house -- katy! >> there it is. >> i said the magic word. >> you have to hit it harder. >> this is where the action is in the house. we're still talking about house races here at the tail end of november. tonight as we look for those results in mississippi, we may also get some critical numbers from the final outstanding house race, 21st district of california basically stretching between fresno and bakersfield. look what happened last night, california, that late vote comes in very slowly, t.j. cox the democrat moved ahead by 436 votes over the republican incumbent david val deo. this is california, very suspenseful. we don't know exactly how many votes are left. we think there's something between 1,000 and 5,000 -- that should be -- i'm not doing too

good with this tonight, katy. about 1,000 and 5,000 votes left. we are not sure exactly how many. we are not sure exactly where they're from. california they draw this out. they're not always transparent. but basically the republican incumbent probably the underdog in this final vote count. we're expecting a little bit more tonight. could give us clarity if cox, the democrat, wins this, that's a net gain of 40, 4-0, for the democrats on the house side. >> let's just put up an interesting note our friend dave wasserman of the political report noted, look at this tweet, house republicans will represent 17% fewer seats in january but they'll also represent 37% fewer asian constituents, 28% fewer latino constituents, 22% fewer college grads, 22% fewer clinton voters, 13% fewer trump voters, but -- and this is the bonus fact according to dave, they'll give up just 5% of their land area. >> speaks to it, i think we can show you, here's the house map sort of in its totality

nationally. let's see if i can call it up. here you go, you still see a lot of republican red. what did republicans shed disproportionally in this midterm when it came to house ib distributes? it was the suburbs and metropolitan distributes, small land area, densely populated, tends to be more diverse and have white suburban collegites, the suburbs of dallas and houston and kansas city and detroit and denver, all around the country. but, yes, rural ex-suburban strength equals red on the map. >> here's something we will ask ourselves and i'm sure going forward, what does it mean for 2020 if donald trump runs again? steve kornacki, we will save that for another day. steve, thank you. good luck with the board. >> appreciate it. ahead, he didn't win his senate race, so why not run for president? it looks as if beto o'rourke is thinking about doing just that.

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welcome back. tonight in "2020 vision" beta o'rourke's change apart. >> are you running for president in 2020? >> who gave him the microphone? >> congressman beto o'rourke got that question at a town hall last night, and he didn't say no. >> amy and i made a decision not to rule anything out. >> that is a big departure from

what he said the day before his narrow senate loss to ted cruz. >> i will not be a candidate for president in 2020. >> if o'rourke wants to be president, 2020 may be his best bet. and he's an idealistic outsider who wasn't part of the last round of democratic presidential in-fighting, a lot like the last democrat to win the presidency. >> i stand before you today to announce my candidacy for president of the united states of america. >> except, of course, barack obama won his senate race. we will be back with more "mpt daily" right after this.

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>> we're back. and as one of our producers put it, it is very trumpy, erratic, very and very doubtful of everyone else. >> par for the course. >> yeah. >> yeah, he's doing a series of these oval office interviews. the ap had one a few weeks ago too. he's very unhappy with the federal reserve chairman, jay powell. he suggests that that is the problem with the economy. he has this tremendous quote, they're making a mistake because i have a gut and my gut tells me more sometimes than anybody else's brain can ever tell me, which is pretty good. he also -- >> wait, can we read another quote? talking about global warming. that was about the fed chair, saying that the problem is with the fed chair, not him. then he says about global warming, one of the problems that a lot of people like myself, we have very high levels of intelligence, but we're not

necessarily such believers. you look at our air, our water, and it's right now at a record clean. this sentence doesn't even -- it's not gra matcally correct -- >> he understood this issue better because his uncle was a scientist. that's like saying, i should take out wisdom teeth because my uncle was a dentist. >> my brother's a doctor, so clearly -- >> you could take out my appendix. >> he does express september simple about change, including the government report his own administration put out. he says he's going to the g20 meeting in argentina, he says he may cancel his planned meeting with vladimir putin because he's so upset with russia's aggression with the ukraine. >> he says that will be determinative, maybe i won't have the meeting, maybe i won't even have the meeting, i don't like that aggression, i don't want that aggression at all. he says he's awaiting a full report from his national security team about russia's capture of three ukrainian naval ships. >> i wonder if he'll believe that report. >> he didn't cancel the last

meeting after robert mueller came out with those indictments for the 13 russians. >> two days before. >> i don't think it's a different time in the case. i think things are developing behind the scenes that we don't know. clearly a lot of people are reacting in public. in terms of the interviews with donald trump, whsometimes television can be a distracting medium. it's scarier reading it, because the words he says do not make sense the way he puts them together in sentences. >> read them out loud yourself, they don't make any sense. >> correct. it's funny, i laugh about it every time it happens, then i sit back and i get scared. because it's actually dangerous that the president is this inarticulate, but also when he's talking about climate change, that's not just something that he can believe or not believe it's not faith, religion. climate change you can verify through science, it's something that is a national security threat that we need to tackle.

>> he's like, the reason i don't believe it is i don't like it. there are money interest invested in maintaining the status quo and that's why he doesn't believe it. we have to unpack the reason why he doesn't want to believe what the scientists are saying. >> to the earlier point of him not making sense when you read these interviews, they just are not logical, then we think about the meetings he has alone with world leaders. >> right. >> that is not reason to be very afraid. >> how does a translator translate those sentences? do they make them gra matcally correct in the ortho language? do they say, we're at a record clean? >> or they don't and that's shade thrown in to make him look owner on articulate to other world leaders. >> talking about climate change, i've been hot on this issue, no pun intended, for a little while after that congressional climate report, after the "new yorker" article about exxon and how things change and the fires out west in my home state of california. it's important to point out the science is not disagreed upon. the overwhelming majority of

scientists agree climate change is real. >> there could be a real conversation between conservatives who have a different take on it how to address it, not to question if it exists. >> yeah. >> we have to have that discussion in good faith. you can't have a bad faith premise, as you said -- >> that it doesn't exist. >> and address it through policy. you have to agree upon facts you can verify, through science. >> if we don't agree upon the science -- and again, not all science is agreed upon. that's why you have other scientists who counter -- >> not this. >> not all science is perfectly agreed upon, it is theory. but this is pretty solid. selena maxwell, thank you for being here. ahead, thanks for giving.

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in case you missed it, we're in the midst of a whole bunch of days. on thursday it was thanksgiving day. have you recovered from a tryptophan haze yet? black friday, retail warriors do battle. only the strong-willed prevail. a few days later, cyber monday when only the fastest

mouse-clickers are victorious. and now it is tuesday. we have filled our stomachs and our shopping carts. what else is left for to us fill? perhaps we can fill the stacks of a local public and school libraries with books we've finished reading. perhaps we can fill the shelves of local food pantries to help those who weren't as fortunate this thanksgiving. perhaps we can fill our own calendars by volunteering to help community organizations or other worthy causes. perhaps we can fill the coffers of charities with a donation of any size, whatever our means. today is tuesday, giving tuesday. a global effort to encourage people to give back in some way, any way that they choose. i choose to support the rory peck trust, an organization that helps freelance journalists all around the world. it is one of my absolute favorites. we've also curated many other ideas at givingtuesday.msnbc.com. see inspiring stories of people who are giving back today, and

every day. perhaps today on giving tuesday we can all fill our hearts. we'll be back tomorrow with more "mtb daily." "the beat with ari melber" starts right now. a possible break in bob mueller's collusion investigation. "the guardian" reporting manafort, the former trump campaign chair, met with julian assange in the middle of the 2016 campaign. one of the top democrats investigation, incoming judiciary chairman jerry nadler, joins me. later, we have a deeper report on how mueller busted manafort for lying and whether this is all part of a pardon strategy. also, the man that manafort replaced as the head of the trump campaign, he joins me later to react to what this all means. all that tonight. let's begin with why this story is shaking washington. "ed guardian" citing sources saying manafort and assange held a secret meeting in london, part of a series of meetings they were doing dating back to 2013. theey