doug, michelle, charlie, thank you all for joining us. that does it for us, i'm nicolle wallace. "mpt daily" starts right now. hi, chuck. >> nicolle, thank you very much. if it's tuesday, is mueller about to go public? good evening. i'm chuck todd. welcome to "mpt daily." you're looking at live pictures at the capitol rotunda where george h.w. bush is lying in state at the cathedral and then the 41st american president will be laid to rest in texas. just a moment president trump arrived to see the bush family. we will speak to two of bush's closest friends and advisers

later in the show. both will be doing eulogies, one tomorrow and one thursday in houston. you'll want to stick around for that, trust me. these guests are lively today. we will begin the night with all of the presidents' witnesses in the mueller investigation as well as an effort by the president to perhaps corruptly influence those witnesses. folks, the full except of what these three witnesses, michael flynn, paul manafort and michael cohen know about individual one, as the president calls in mueller's findings, can come into fuller view this week perhaps in about an hour and a half. we are likely moments away with mueller going public with a new sentencing memo that could disclose more information about flynn's admitted lies and ties to russia and the fbi involving the trump's transition team contacting russia. he could expose other bad acts flynn committed as well. mueller is also expected to file another sentencing memo this week, with more information about the president's campaign

chief paul manafort and we're expecting our third sentencing memo for the president's longtime lawyer michael cohen. as we wait to see what mueller might tell us about the three key witnesses, some believe the sentencin sentencing memos, you put them all together, it's the mueller report. he's just writing in realtime. but the president is lashing out in ways that some might say could constitute witness tampering. for example, he already dangled pardons for those in the mueller probe he for dhoez wthose who s loyal. and yesterday he said -- >> there's no circumstance i would testify against the president because i would have to bear false witness against him, i would have to make things up, and i'm not going to do that. >> the president then bashed mueller and applauded stone for showing, quote, guts. moments ago we learned stone will plead the fifth and refuse to turn over any documents as part of a request from the

senate judiciary democrats. by contrast the president attacked michael cohen for cooperating and said cohen should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. it is those comments, they're just the latest that are sparking a debate among legal experts as to whether those comments by the president may end up being obstruction of justice or witness tampering. sal wise enberg is a former federal prosecutor and top lawyer on independent counsel ken starr's team. he joins alexei, politico reporter and marie teresa cammar, msnbc contributor and president and ceo of vote latino. sal, you're the expert here. let me start with this idea of whether or not the president is committing a crime in realtime here, some sort of plain sight in what he's doing both with roger stone and more importantly because i think you think this is the bigger potential problem, what he has said about michael

cohen, by saying it publicly is it witness tampering? >> based on what i've seen so far on any of the comments, as reprehensible as they are, they're not witness tampering and they're not obstruction because there's nothing to indicate that they're being done, quote, corruptly. supreme court had a case that touched upon this. the author anderson case about ten years ago, 15 years ago and 9-0 they said you need something more than just impeding an investigation. it's got to be corrupt. there's got to be some kind of dishonesty involved vis-a-vis the government. so we need to distinguish between conduct that is thuggish, conduct that is the behavior of a political mobster, which is what you're seeing from the president, and conduct that constitutes criminal obstruction of justice. and i don't see it based on what we've seen so far. >> i'm sorry, go ahead. >> i'm curious, when you were with starr, doing the ken starr

investigation, in the starr report, among the things that were said to be grounds for impeachment included the following -- the president lied about his relationship with miss lewinsky to senior aides and those aides then conveyed the president's false story to the grand jury. why did you guys consider that a potential impeachable offense? >> well, to begin with, i didn't say -- i want to make something clear, you can impeach somebody for what you consider to be obstructive conduct or conduct that obstructs justice and it not be a criminal violation. i think that's an important distinction. >> is that what we're looking at here then? i guess that's the kacase you we making 20 years ago, what the president did impeded our investigation, it was obstructing it, it's not technically a crime but it's pretty close? >> the difference with president clinton is there a false story, he was allowing a false story to be told to the grand jury, and

unwittingly by the people doing it, and to our investigators by creating a story that he knew was false. that's a little different because you are sending people out to talk to government investigators. if president trump is sending people out to tell lies to government investigators, that is obstruction of justice. >> michael cohen pled guilty to lying to congress. he said he was acting in what he believed was the president's best interests. he did not say the president directed him to lie to congress in fairness, but how close are we walking the line to that being similar to what you're talking about? >> let me tell you this, if the president had in any way conspired with michael cohen to -- for cohen to make his false statement to congress, you would have absolutely seen it in the plea papers and you did not see it in the plea papers. the most cohen would say in his own sentencing memo is i kept the white house legal team apprised of what i was going to say to congress.

that's not far enough in and of itself to implicate the president in a crime. that's what we're talking about here, a crime. >> right. what are you looking for in those sentencing memos we're awaiting in the next hour or so? >> well, mueller has tremendous freedom as to what to say in a sent ensing memo. everyone assumes his final report will be publicized in unredan unredacted form and i think that's a huge assumption. but he can say what he wants to in a sentencing memorandum. so those to me are the documents to look at where nobody can stop him from saying what he wants to say. and if there's something bigger there, we're going to see it in one of these three sentencing memos. i'm not so sure we are going to see it. >> that's where my head is at. i'm sort of convinced this has been a lot of anticipation and mueller may wait a week or whatever. let me bring in the rest of the panel here because we are in this gray area of legal versus

political. what's a political crime? what's a legal crime, and i think sal's pointing out, it's two different things. let me read about sort of what is the tipping point going to be? michaela vogel and ben witten wrote -- the big one will not be an indictment for plea but political moment where the american legal system decides not to tolerate the facts available to it any longer. what does that look like? it looks like impeachment, it looks like enough republicans breaking with the president to seriously jeopardize his chances of renomination and re-election. the legal elements will degrade the walls but only this battery ram can breach them. >> it seems optimistic an acquiescence gop will turn against the president and that is what an ultimate mueller report could convince them to do if it does become public and it does show these facts that would make them turn against the president. i think that is a big part of this, political ramifications we

are seeing against the president slowly but surely and that is felt by him and reflected in the way he's tweeting about it and talking about it. we saw the tweets you pulled up earlier where he's calling for maxim maximum sentencing for michael cohen where he previously said he would never anyplace against him and there's nothing to flip about. i think the ramifications are real and something trump cannot escape. >> i think the republicans have disappointed time and time again, but -- no, i'm not okay with them, but i think they have been -- it's been chipping away. i think the election made a difference. i think the kind of repeated behavior, the fact if anything the guardrails are going down, not up if that's the right metaphor. he's stepping over more and more of them. not we made a mistake and now he's behaving as the president should. article two section three of the constitution, the president shall take care of the laws we face fully executed. he is taking care, every other president in this circumstance said publicly, at least

nommally, you should cooperate with federal investigators, tell the whole truth. george w. bush said that about scooter libby, investigations he didn't unlike and thought were unjust. reagan about iran-contra. >> even if he didn't think it was helping. >> nixon was secretly stopping it from happening and maybe that's why there were impeachment proceedings. but what's most striking the day after the election is the appointment of whitaker as acting attorney general. which really shows willingness to do something way outside, not literally unconstitutional but outside of constitutional norms. >> that rattled some republicans. first time i have ever seen them move. >> the people i talked to, i said pass the mueller protection and have whitaker up for hearing. no need, he's not doing anything. he will replace whitaker soon. there will be a nominee within days, make a week or two. when was that? the day after the election, november 7th. what is it today, december 4th? where is the nominee to be attorney general? we have an acting attorney

general not confirmed by the senate, a political guy, not someone who is qualified to be attorney general of the united states. and no one is doing anything about it. now can that go to january, february, especially if trump continues to attack mueller? i think things are happening that are chipping away at the preliminary wall that's been protecting trump. >> and i do think it was literally the day after the election that all of a sudden republicans woke up and said wait a second, this does not sit well with the american people. when you poll the american people, the number four thing that comes up starting to rise in the cup is the sense of corruption, there's corruption happening, you're degrading our institutions and you're degrading the integrity of the investigation. as we get closer to the presidential, i think that's when the republicans will buckle. but it will be very interesting to see whether or not mitch mcconnell actually continues to side with president trump or finally take a stand. >> what's your sense of how competent mueller is? >> competent? >> axios said yesterday he,

quote, has the goods. he has the competence. do you get that sense? >> he's always competent. i don't know how anybody can say he has the goods. i will say this about mueller, i have not heard him say he wants a protection bill. i don't think mueller cares about the president and what the president thinks about him and what the president may try to do about him. i think he feels he has the inherent integrity to survive any such contest. >> and he's making sure his case is as public as he possibly can so that if he were to be removed, there is actually some sort of trail. and it's funny because i think we keep going back and saying wait a second, what mueller is going to drop today, is it al capone's vault or something more? i think it's something more. he's playing this very, very well. >> and "time" magazine said there's 269 pages of the mueller report written. read the various indictments and start puftitting it together. to borrow an unofficial phrase, there's a slew of speaking indictments out there.

the mueller report is in front of our eyes. is that a fair way of looking at it? >> it's a fair way of looking at it but what do you get when you looked at it? i have not looked at all of them together recently but when you're talking about a collusion narrative that includes a conspiracy between trump himself and the russians or a conspiracy to violate the computer hacking laws, you do not have it. again, the element that includes trump, you do not have it in the various plea agreements and versions of the offense they call them as term of art or statement of the offense, you simply don't have it. what you have is old crimes or lying to the government. i'm not saying that's not important. i'm just saying that the great collusion narrative is not there. it just isn't. >> how would you handle though -- you do have this interesting fact pattern -- i guess that's an interesting way -- i shouldn't necessarily say fact pattern because it's not a fact that they're trafficking in but you have this pattern where everybody around

the president seems to be trying to avoid talking about russia ties. and there are so many of them, and it's so often, and it's so free, at what point is that in of itself evidence? >> well, everything is potentially evidence but i don't know -- what we don't know is how significant it is. in other words, are they -- to take a well-known example, roger stone. i think it's known now that roger stone said is some things publicly and/or to congress and later had to say, you know, i was mistaken about that. i forgot something. so is mueller really leaning on him because of an honest mistake that he made in his initial statement, or does mueller think or know there's something deeper there? we just don't know yet. hopefully we will know when some of these memos many could out. >> well, we thought some of these memos would be out now and you would be analyzing these memos for us. instead you're previewing them

for us. but paul, thank you. i appreciate having you on and lending your expertise to the conversation. lexy, bill, maria, please stick ank. coming up -- the strongest standing yet to saudi arabia for the killing of jamal khashoggi. will any action follow? moving? that's harder now because of psoriatic arthritis. but you're still moved by moments like this. don't let psoriatic arthritis take them away. taltz reduces joint pain and stiffness and helps stop the progression of joint damage. for people with moderate to severe psoriasis, 90% saw significant improvement. taltz even gives you a chance at completely clear skin. don't use if you're allergic to taltz. before starting, you should be checked for tuberculosis. taltz may increase risk of infections and lower your ability to fight them. tell your doctor if you have an infection, symptoms,

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♪ the new capital one savor card. earn 4% cash back on dining and 4% on entertainment. now when you go out, you cash in. what's in your wallet? welcome back. another bipartisan rebuke of the white house today from senators over president trump's handling of saudi arabia. senators emerged from a briefing with cia director gina haspel on

capitol hill saying it's clear to them the saudi prince mohammad bin salman ordered the killing of journalist jamal khashoggi. >> there's not a smoking gun, there's a smoking saw. you have to be willfully blind not to come to the kons collusion that this was orchestrated and organized by people under the command of mbs. >> i have zero question in my mind that the crown prince mbs ordered the killing, monitored the killing, knew exactly what was happening, planned in advance. if he was in front of a jury, he would be convicted in 30 minutes guilty. >> this comes after the senate voted last week against the white house's wishes to start the process of ending u.s. military support for the saudi military campaign in yemen. let's bring our panel back. lexi, maria. bill, i want to play something else for you that senator murphy was asked to play the two

briefings, gina haspel's briefing. >> my understanding is the cia briefing this morning was very different from the state department and defense department briefing. second madison and secretary pompeo did not want congress to know what the cia knew. >> he's not the only senator saying that. that was a democratic senator but some republican senators believe the same thing. rand paul is very angry on a number of levels on this. >> corker i was struck by lindsey graham, trying hard to be supportive of trump, i think, and for him to be so outspoken today considering the case, personally i would be hawkish and hope there's much stronger action taken by congress and the administration. but getting back to lexi's point earlier, are there chips and cracks in the wall? i think six months ago there would be a certain you know what, let's support the trump administration here.

pompeo, why just let the democrats work for them and call up the cia director? they still control congress. but they're not quite as differential anymore. it makes you wonder if they can challenge the president on this issue, what about other issues? i feel republicans on the hill are very slowly getting a tiny bit of remembering little bit by little bit that they are on equal branch of government. >> is this a saudi problem or trump problem, lexi? the reason i say i think it's a saudi problem on capitol hill, look at the vote in the last days of obama's administration, in fact the obama administration was trying to stop the senate from doing this when they basically were allowing the american -- basically allowing american civilians to sue the government of saudi arabia over 9/11. >> yeah. >> and the saudis saw all of their normal political cover they were used to over the years on capitol hill sort of disappear. >> yes, it's certainly something that existed for a long time. trump is obviously this unique factor that has come in and blown up everything. it's like two different worlds.

the way he digested the cia briefing on what's going on with saudi and this jamal khashoggi case and republican senators, it's two totally different realities. so i sort of think it's hard to say when president trump is president and handling things in the way he is that it's not a trump problem when he came out after he had the cia briefing and said well, maybe he did and maybe he didn't. now his colleagues as you mentioned have been loyal to him are taking a stance for the first time pretty publicly against him on something that seems like it's exacerbated by trump. >> but maria, he's -- he has not trusted the cia what he said about russia so on this he's being consistent. >> the president is pretty much always consistent. we're the ones who seem surprised by what he ends up doing. he tells us who he is. >> fair point. >> if you look at the cabinet members and not just pompeo and madison in this case but the other cabinet members who have been so loyal to trump and you

have constitutions coming in contradicting and republicans finally listening to them, i think it does allow us to see will the republicans be open to congressional hearings at all when it comes to oversight of his cabinet? that should be worrying for the president. >> bill, what do we do about saudi arabia though? i say this because i think about the cia and john brennan's personal portfolio with saudi arabia. he was basically the one guy who was trying to keep saudi arabia from abandoning the obama administration, right? there's always been this, especially in the intel community, no matter what you think of the saudis, we need them more than may want to realize. is that what's happening here? >> i personally don't think we need them as much as we used to. i don't think we ever needed them as much as they think we did. it was a comfortable relationship and you could get nervous what would happen if you didn't work with them but certainly for oil they're not we don't need them. and am i an iran hawk?

i'm concrete about iran. >> is it the reverse? >> then it really comes down to god know what's would happen there if the house lost control. god knows would you have terrorists running the whole arabian peninsula. i'm doubtful. one would have to be cavalier and have to look closely and see what might happen next and help shape things that may happen next. but the idea america in the 21st century is going to stake everything on the house of saud continuing to dominate in this medieval way in kind of an important part of the world and having exported mojave is lax and terrorism a couple decades before, that just strikes me assias implausible. >> they were the ones who were supposed to be stabilizing the region but what they were doing and in yemen -- >> and syria. >> you read my mind and syria, you're recognizing they have been using this as an opportunity to play us more than us trying to use them to stabilize the region. in a very unique clearly

money-bartering way that is impacting us globally. >> i say this which regime is doing it more, destabilizing, iran or saudi arabia? is either regime stabilizing the middle east? >> it definitely does not seem like it at all. as we think about how we will approach this relationship moving forward, to your point earlier, we could look to senator mitch mcconnell's statements. he said today we need to look for a complete response that doesn't fracture our relationship with saudi arabia. i thought fracture was an interesting verb because they are clearly worried about remaining this tidy with a bow relationship they think we have when they need to consider the global implications that are happening right in front of us. >> how much is it people like pompeo, mattis, telling us you don't realize how fragile the house of saud might be? >> they may believe it and it may be true.

that's obviously the risk of obviously helping to allow forces to unseat something that's allegedly stabilizing. i think in a lot of history going back to the shaw of iran the attempt to prop up these people is more stabilizing than the opposite. >> history doesn't treat it kindly, does it? you guys are sticking around. issing there rotten in the state of wisconsin? another live look at the capitol rotunda and a look at george h.w. bush's closest advisers will be here live on set. the further into winter we go, the heavier i get. and while your pants struggle to support the heavier you, your roof struggles to support the heavier me. crash! and your cut-rate insurance might not pay for this. so get allstate, you could save money and be better protected from mayhem like me. mayhem is everywhere. so get an allstate agent.

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welcome back. tonight i'm obsessed with the fact something is rotten in the state of wisconsin and michigan and north carolina. all this week we heard warm rec elections of george h.w. bush as a gentle public servant. and along with the praise of mr. bush there's a relief and desire to recover some sense of bipartisan and some sense of shared purpose. enter the public legislature in wisconsin and end to any brief era of good feelings. what happened? toby ebers won the race for governor and josh kaul won the race for attorney general and that was unacceptable to the public legislature in wisconsin. why? because they are -- wait for it -- democrats. so the republican legislature said fine, you won your elections.

now before we leave, we're going to strip some power from you. they have written legislation that would have, among things, stripped power from these offices that this legislature had given to these offices in the first place as well as a will that would reduce early voting that is, of course, primarily used by democratic voters. in michigan they are taking steps to reduce the power of the newly elected democratic governor and attorney general, all in their lameduck session. michigan and wisconsin are following the lead of north carolina who did the same thing in 2016. a look for nostalgia and kinder and gentler kind is an age that will never return. republicans did the same to democrats in the mid-'80s. think of this, if a sign of what is happening in wisconsin and michigan is in store when republicans lose, what's in store for 2020? it was the last song of the night. it felt like my heart was skipping beats.

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live look here at capitol hill as the nation remembers former president george h.w. bush. as we've said, the late president is lying in state at the u.s. capitol rotunda today and mourners have been paying their respects all day and started, of course, last night. joining me now is tom brokaw, our senior correspondent here at nbc news and one of president bush's closest and longest and dearest friend, former secretary of state, a lot of secretary of things this man did, but most important a friend. james baker, we're hoping to have a third of one of the president's dear friends, alan simpson and he's stuck in famous d.c. traffic. if he gets here, he's a big guy and we will let him do what he wants. secretary baker, great to see you in person. >> great coup to have baker versus simpson. we would lose under those circumstances. >> i like the idea of having the two of you on together because whether it's in public service or the press, you hope to cover the big moments sometimes. you hope you get to be there for history. boy, were you there for all --

really ordering the world, covering the fall of it and being there to write it. that's why you do this. >> that was an incredible four years. you know people talk about one-term presidency but i'm absolutely convinced that he's going to go down in history as the very best one-term president we ever had and one of the best presidents of all time. if you look at what happened in those four years, the world changed. the world we had known all of our adult lives changed. the cold war ended, ended with a whimper. >> no west germany or east germany. >> unified germany. the ejection of iraq from kuwait, the international coalition. all of those things, madrid peace conference, ending the wars in central america. a lot of things happened in those four years and it was because of the leadership of george h.w. bush. >> you were there. you saw it all. >> i was at the berlin wall.

>> in some ways you were america's face to watch all of that. >> i got back and i talked to jim, why didn't the president go on television and claim, and he wisely said to me, we didn't want to make it harder for the russians than it was already going to be. we have to work with them. i thought that's why he does what he does. i'm working for the event. he's putting the place back together. he was also there for tiananmen square. i was trying to get into china. i got stopped in tokyo and i thought my friend the secretary of state will allow me to go in on an american plane. so 4:00 in the morning i got ahold of his assistant and he didn't talk to me, he said no way, tell brokaw he's not going on one of our airplanes. the relationship only goes so far, it turns out. >> i was curious, i had somebody ask me, sent me a viewer e-mail ask baker if you get him again pp what did you have to say to thatcher to convince her that germany reunification was a good idea? >> oh, that's an interesting story.

so i had been talking, of course, to the president. >> she was arguing against it. she was not a big fan of germany unification. >> so were the french and soviets. that really tells you what an achievement that the president had there because he overcame the objection of all of those countries. so we concluded, i talked to the president, we concluded we're going to try to get a resolution out of u.n. security council because we had -- people forget george bush for his entire presidency had a congress controlled by democrats. house and senate. >> never had one that was that close. >> no, and they were very much against this idea of our going in and liberating kuwait. so we thought, you know, if we can get a security council resolution authorizing it, it was naked aggression, maybe we could have a case and maybe we could sell it. the first objection was raised by margaret thatcher. said you don't want to go to the

u.n. security council, you will get all wrapped around the axle -- that wasn't the phrase she used, you will get wrapped around and won't get your resolution. my argument was, i think we can. wait until the united states is in the chair. make it at the ministerial level, where i would be in the chair and we wouldn't bring it to a vote if we didn't know we had the votes. so she's coming in the oval for a meeting and the president said, bake, i want you to make the case. >> you had to make the case? >> make the case to the iron lady? >> to margaret. he was solidly behind it and we did it and it was -- it was an extraordinarily important in terms of our getting support from the congress of the united states because we could go to the senator and say, senator, you're not going to support the president on this but the president of ethiopia is supporting it? it was very forceful argument. >> we talked about those day ez and what i don't think the rest of the country or the world or history appreciates is how much he went through, not just with

the prime minister of england but trying to get gorbachev to decide what he wants to do. he was playing both sides of it. they could not keep track of where his head was about how we were going to put this together back together. these are huge places we're moving at that time, enormous consequences. >> i'm curious now as you watch what has happened to russia today, do you think -- do you think -- what could gorbachev have done to help russia? it seems the '90s didn't work for russia as much as we all hoped they would? >> i would argue against that, chuck. for 15 years after -- after the fall of the wall and the implosion of the soviet union, russia and the west had very good relations, first under yeltsin and early part of putin, until about 2005 or '06. so that was from '91 to 2006, that's 15 years of very good relations.

and we did a lot of things there to help give that a chance. i think what really happened, my own view, is he got into domestic political trouble in russia, needed a whipping boy. also, we made mistakes of our own, we the united states, by being too aggressive perhaps in expanding nato, by not letting them come in to participate in the missile defense system they were going to put in czechoslovakia and poland. they said no, that defense is designed against the russian deterrent. we said no, no, this is against iran. they said we want to come in, we will pay our share. we said no. >> and that's something we should have let them do. >> we should have. >> tom, you watched these guys sort of transform the republican party both having to navigate it and try to transform it.

what do you make of george h.w. bush's place in the republican party versus what you saw, say, at the beginning of reagan to where we are today? >> much more appreciated today than he was at that time. he played it so skiflfully. he represented the old republican party, new englander who moved to texas but helped make the republican party a part of texas politics as well. in fact when he went to richard nixon's funeral, he gave nixon credit for coming to texas to try to help build that up so he expanded it. and then he served in all of those roles. people forget he was an ambassador to china, he ran the cia under very difficult circumstances at the time. he was the vice president of the united states. he was the party chair. and he was always doing what was in the best interest of his party, not the best interest of george bush. i will tell a quick story, when i left "nightly news" and jim had already left the secretary of state job, he called me and said now we can be friends. >> i was wondering, when were you allowed to publicly come out as friends? >> it was a great moment.

>> pardon me? >> not until after tom left. >> we had become very good friends. i was privileged to be in his company. one of the stories i want to tell is about his friend george bush coming to a hunting party we had. al simpson i hope will get here because he was part of that as well. hi been around former president ez before. even the most casual of them expect a deferential treatment, zmekt to call him mr. president or whatever. george bush wasn't doing that. these were his longtime pals. at dinner that night he said, i want your help, everybody. he said i'm getting -- and this is more than ten years ago, i'm getting to an age in my life where i want to reconcile differences i have had with people. i just don't want to die and have these open. i was stunned by someone saying that in his position. baker immediately said, not ross perot. we're not going to point there. >> it's funny on the forgiveness thing, i have heard most people he's forgiven, some people said perot was one. one was he never got over a john connelly beef, did he? >> no, but it was really more i

think the fact that the connellies never accepted the fact that this upstart, preppie new englander would come down there and beat connelly in his home state of texas. he been governor, he had been secretary of the treasury under nixon. he was nixon's candidate for the ideal president of the united states. and they really could never get over that fact. you remember when we started that primary campaign, tom will remember, george bush was an asterisks in the poll. nobody knew who he was. he didn't -- >> you had other people. howard baker was in that field. that was an amazing field. >> howard baker, bob dole, bill crane. >> that's right. >> bill crane. >> our friend from south dakota, larry pressler ran for governor. don't forget that. >> i was in new hampshire with the night of george bush and i was surprised and he was a deer in headlines when railroad

railroad brought him in -- ronald reagan said i brought him here and president bush didn't have a response to that. i paid for this microphone, it was mr. green. and david broder turned to me and said this race is over. i will always remember that. >> did you know that in the minute? >> yes, of course. reagan said, i paid for that microphone, mr. green but the guy's name was breen. we knew it was over at that point, you bet. >> all right. secretary baker, it's always a pleasure to see you. i've got to talk to you twice in the last few days. i feel privileged. >> it's always a pleasure. >> good luck to you on thursday. it's not easy. >> not when you have been a close friend for 60 years. >> that's something else. >> i'm across all sides but it's been a great pleasure for me to get to know jim as well as i have. we differ about a lot of stuff but it's always, you know, it's always sensible and reasonable.

but he has the best kind of i think cadence for public service that i have ever seen. >> i appreciate it how often he trusts your huntsing skills to me after he goes down with you every time. i'm sure he tells you otherwise, just so you know. tom brokaw and jim baker, thank you very much. we're sorry mr. simpson didn't make it. d.c. traffic did him in from national airport. up ahead in 20/20 vision, is joe biden embracing his pension for gas? vered... in jellyfish. in clinical trials, prevagen has been shown to improve short-term memory. prevagen. healthier brain. better life. let's do the thing that you do. let's clear a path. let's put down roots. let's build something. let's do the thing that you do.

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welcome back. today in 20/20 vision, joe biden may not have made a final decision on running for the white house but he's making it clear he's the best person to take on president trump. the former vice president said yesterday he's, quote, the most qualified person in the country to be president. at the same time he also tried to downplay a potential weakness. biden added -- i may be a gaffe machine but my god what a wonderful thing compared to the guy who can't tell the truth. no one doubts what i say, the problem is i sometimes say all that i mean. by the way, i have heard biden say himself no job prepares you for the presidency. he thought he was prepared for the presidency last time and he said not until he was vice president did he realize you can be prepared for the presidency. biden said he plans to make a decision in the next two months. this is the furthest he's gone yet in talking about his white house plan.

welcome back, time now for the lid. panel is back. alexi, bill, maria, theresa. alexi, i want to start with you because i want to start with this report in your afternoon update in axios about the stock market collapse of nearly 800 points appears to be as much about confusion over, i know we're all shocked here, what the president said on sunday was the result of their trump -- of the trump xi meeting turns out to not necessarily be the case. this is according to mike pillsbury, the president's go to guy in china. walk me through the report, it's alarming. >> this is president trump ac's pattern of behavior. he comes out and says this big

plan he has, and then it trickles down and it's not what we think it's going to be. this trickles down to the stock market. with larry kudlow's report the other day and the white house had to issue a correction, it started december 1st, not january 1st. and the president saying what he said about his relationship with xi jingping being great. the stock market is taking a tumble and that's something we highlighted today. >> what's interesting is pillsbury was basically -- it felt like lecturing the white house in public in this report. basically saying, don't announce what the chinese are going to do before the chinese announce it. >> i know mike pillsbury has worked on china a long time, knows the chinese and knows that's not the way to hand it. the markets here, as we were talking about the republican congress, so far it's the trade, it's bluster. >> they didn't buy into it. >> yeah, and nafta is going to

be replaced by nafta-2. i think there's a sense now in the economy, the markets and stock market, well, what if they have unleashed something here they can't quite control. maybe it's -- the bluffing, the talk back and forth that you described is a little bit more dangerous. >> this won't be as easy to put back into the tooth paste tube. >> and announcing before china goes back to the relationship that the president says he has with xi jingping. >> he did the same thing with north korea. >> the president is always playing to the media, what's the headline that will rile my base. but people are saying we need stance now, and the market is demonstrating they don't have the substance. >> on reality tv the market doesn't go down 800 points if you as the star say something ahead of one of the guests. >> i had a blast there watching

tom and bake, you know, talk about those days. we give president trump a hard time when he doesn't meet the moment. alexi, he has been untrump-like this week. and i say that as a, he has struck all of the correct notes that everybody would want him to strike. >> and to the surprise of some of his critics, i would imagine, because we know he loved being front and center and being the center of attention. he really has taken a step back this week -- >> it is only tuesday. so i don't want to jump ahead. >> please don't remind me it's only tuesday. >> it is only tuesday. but unlike mccain week -- now the mccains made it clear they didn't want him there. yes, it's a different situation. >> the bushes said they did want him. >> right. it's a different relationship than with mccain. it looks like president trump has figured out how to take the backseat in this moment and i'm sure that's something the bush

family appreciates. i'm sure it's because of everything else going on in the news, with mueller and his allies flipping against him. >> it's good for all of us, we don't need that extra -- >> because it's only tuesday. pause is nice. take a step back. i think what's interesting, though, is taking a step back what it means to have ceremony in our country. you may have had different feelings towards the president, but this idea that you honor that and you honor public service, the country wants that. i think that is something special. does the president completely align with that? i think he's taking a breather. he wants the press to take a breather from him. >> i am struck that everybody does seem to be making their comments about george h.w. bush through the prism of today. you can see it and feel it. all right. we'll be right back. ♪

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past anything that stands in its way. ...well almost anything. leave no room behind with xfi pods. simple. easy. awesome. click or visit a retail store today. it's another live look at the capitol hirotunda in washington d.c. thousands have poured through to pay their respects to the former president. among them a former rival of george bush. that was dole, the 95-year-old vet got out of his chair to salute the president, easily the most powerful moment of the week for me, i'm sure for many of you.

that's all we have for tonight. we'll be back with more mtp daily. the beat with ari melber starts now. tonight we have a big show, trump adviser roger stone is invoking the fifth amendment, rejecting a senate request for an interview and documents. this comes one day after trump sparked accusations of witness tampering over guess who, his praise for roger stone having guts and criticizing and refusing to testify. all that about russia, it is big and we're going to get into that. meanwhile, the political and legal world are waiting for a pivotal court filing from bob mueller. we could see it this hour, being it's 6:00 p.m. it will reveal some of the cooperation that mueller has gotten from flynn. and also associations between