speed thanks. that does it for the hour. hi, chuck. four seconds. not so late. >> that's not bad. i'll take it. >> it's been worse. >> ahhh. mr. packer in the news. >> there's a meme of saying pecker -- i tried to get through the whole show without saying his name. >> i know. i know. it's like you do wonder who wrote the character names because you couldn't have made -- carl hyacin. >> who wrote the play. today it's pecker news. it's crazy. >> thank you, nicole. now i'm going to hurry up and get you off the air if you're in trouble. if it's wednesday it's a tabloid publisher actually making real

news. good evening. i'm chuck todd here in washington. welcome to mtd daily. moves by federal prosecutors in new york that directly refute the legal defense of individual one which raises questions about whether they're building a case with individual one in mind. today the president's long-time lawyer and fixer michael cohen was sentenced to three years in prison, mainly over a pair of campaign felonies that president trump directed him to commit. perhaps the most important development today was that prosecutors disclosed information that cuts at the heart of the president's attempted defense involving those crimes. president argues that the hush money payments he made through michael cohen to silence allegations of extramarital affairs weren't illegal because they were private transactions. nothing to do with the election, timing could incidental.

the publisher of the national enkwierer admitted that they were made in connection and conjunction with the trump campaign for the principle purpose of influencing the election. so now you have two key figures directly involved with those payments, cohen and the national enquirer saying they were about the election whereas the president says they weren't. the legal case is major news. so is the political nature of the president's allies and the republican party. in the last 36 hours many top republicans has shrugged their shoulders. some have argued he didn't do it and cohen is a liar. some have argued, well, they all do it. some have argued, it's not really a crime if he did it. some have said, they simply don't care. for more i'm joined by chuck rosenberg, former u.s. attorney and currently an msnbc contributor. carol lee, national political

reporter, howard fineman and michael steele, former rnc chairman and current msnbc political analyst. mr. rosenberg, i want to start with whether the president has been accused of committing a crime by the federal government. because i feel like that's a bit unclear. members of the united states congress aren't necessarily ready to believe the president's been -- been found to have committed a crime. how would you describe it? >> he's certainly not been accused, chuck, at least not formally. he's absolutely been implicated, both by mr. cohen who was sentenced today and by that non-prosecution agreement with ami, david pecker's company, right? in both the ami case and with respect to cohen, they said that the president of the united states directed that illegal payments be made to women to obtain their silence so accused?

no. implicated? absolutely. >> if they say national enquirer, they knew they were doing it in conjunction with the election. the president keeps insisting he may not have been or at least some of his defenders, that he may not have been familiar that that was a crime. is that actually a fair defense? >> well, let me take it a step further. the hardest thing that the government has to prove in any case like this is intent, that the president intentionally broke this campaign finance law. so if the president really, truly thought, chuck, that he was only doing it to buy the silence of the women and that it would have no ininfluence, if t campaign was the furthest from his mind, then it's a plausible defense. remember, cohen released a tape where he seems to be speaking with the president about election stuff, polls and the like, and the payments were made just before the general election.

and, by the way, in addition, they used fairly convoluted, you know, complicated series of mechanisms to hide the payments. to a prosecutor -- >> didn't they commit tax fraud? didn't they commit tax fraud in how they hit snamts if it's expenses, how is that not tax fraud? >> it could well be. it could be tax fraud because mr. cohen or someone else didn't report it in the right way. the company expensed it, they shouldn't have. it could well be a series of crimes, chuck. whether it's tax fraud, campaign finance law violations the government would need to prove intent. >> how do you prove intent if the person himself isn't admitting it though? >> well, lots of times people don't admit it, right? that's why we go to trial. we go to trial because people haven't admitted their crimes and as with mr. manafort who didn't admit his crimes, he was fairly resoundingly convicted in the court of law. so that's why you get as much corroboration as you can. a few days ago it was just mr.

cohen's word. now it's mr. cohen's word and ami's word and by the way i imagine that there are others out there that knew about these transactions and more importantly, the reason for the transactions. that's how you prove intent. >> one would assume mr. weiselberg, the cfo of the trump organization, if there were some trial of individual one, he would also be put to the stand. >> sure. right. so that's a logical candidate. but, again, it doesn't have to be the guy writing the checks. it could also be the folks in the room when the checks were discussed, and i imagine, therefore, that that pool, that circle of people is broader than david pecker, michael cohen and mr. weiselberg. >> let me get to the paneled here. the political reaction has been some form of shrugging your shoulders here. let me put together sort of various ways that republicans have shrugged their shoulders about this crime. >> i can't imagine basing any kind of prosecution on word of

mr. cohen. >> these guys are all new to this at the time. most of us have made mistakes when it comes to campaign finance issues. >> we've over criminalized campaign finance. >> if this is a campaign finance problem, how are members going to look at themselves with the number of their own campaign finance, which is normally a fine. are they going to leave office? >> i've yet to see any evidence coming from mr. cohen of collusion. >> i don't have any observations to make about that. >> i don't care. all i can say is he's doing a good job as president. >> and there it is. he's just doing a good job as president. >> is mr. orrin hatch making the most honest, i don't care. >> he doesn't care because we've got two supreme court appointments, we've got a tax cut and i'm leaving. so i don't -- i don't care. and that's unfortunate, chuck, because the evidence is mounting. you know, cohen and others are slowly taking cards out of that

stack, you know, that stack of cards that's holding this thing together. slowly taking a card out. and this will fall. and it's going to fall as much on the heads of those very same republicans who put their head in the sand as it does on the president of the united states and that i think is a calculation they're just not willing to make right now. what is this impact once all of this gets revealed? just the past week, look at the information we learned and how that story line has gotten deeper, not lessened. >> in some ways it feels like because of the way all of this stuff has come out that it's drip, drip, drip over time. that that's given some cover to republicans. it's kind of allowed them to look at everything that comes out and say, well, you know, not this time. then a week later, not yet. that's going to change eventually. and we just don't know when and we don't know how definitive it's going to be. but, you know, they've almost been given a little -- they've had this wiggle room because

it's not all coming down, like you said, like a giant hammer. >> when stormy daniels and michael cohen are the lead of trump corruption, do a lot of people roll their eyes? when vladimir putin and trump are the lead of corruption, people sit up and take it more seriously? does cohen and stormy dilute mueller? >> temporarily. i think that's what carol was saying. i think temporarily, yes, although right now the prosecutors have that in their pocket. they have that potential crime in their pocket, but if you're looking at impeachment, don't forget this was during the campaign, not during the presidency itself. there are questions about whether you can prosecute a sitting president, et cetera, et cetera. that also diminishes it a little bit besides the fact it's stormy daniels, et cetera. if i was the president and his defenders, i would worry about the following things. first of all, michael flynn had

19 separate sessions with the mueller team. michael cohen talked to the mueller team for 70 hours. now that wasn't all about stormy daniels and ms. mcdougall, it was about other things presumably. you have to decide whether mueller is an ice flow just on top of the sea or whether he's an iceberg and we haven't heard from weiselberg. you mentioned him. he hasn't been mentioned in months. this is follow the rubles, follow the dollars. the whole theory of the prosecution is that donald trump had so many ties to russian actors, oligarchs to putin. we're viewing some of this upside down. carol, correct me if i'm wrong here, it isn't just the russians trying to get influence with trump, it was trump trying to get influence in moscow. >> yeah. >> he had loans there. he had tenants there. he had a whole web of financial transactions. we still don't know anything about them that mueller hasn't

talked about, and i guarantee you given the people that he hired, that that's eventually what we're going to see. >> chuck rosenberg, one of the things from the sentencing memo last week from the southern district of new york as opposed to the mueller one is that they were not impressed with michael cohen's forthcomingness but to me, and i think we discussed this on air, they seemed to be holding out an advertisement that said, you know you can still talk to us. why do you think he chose not to do that? like could he have bought more time here before he got sentenced? >> in manhattan prosecutors, chuck, seemed underwhelmed. on the other hand, mueller's team, other than sort of a balky start with cohen, thought he was cooperati cooperative. >> right. >> i don't know. this is a bit of a curiosity to me. i can't tell you i quite understand what happened. most folks like mr. cohen who have valuable information to share tend to share it. i mean --

>> right. >> -- his best deal really was the one he would have gotten from the government had he substantially cooperated all around. it seems like it was in fits and starts. hard to know what actually happened, but it looks to me and this might be a bit unfair, but it looks to me like he let a fairly good opportunity to slip through his fingers to get more consideration from the government. >> do you think it's possible that he would have to implicate some family members or friends that he didn't want to implicate and at the end of the day that's why he chose not to cooperate as much with fdny as he did with mueller? >> the rule is you have to tell everything that you know about everyone in response to anyone's question. maybe he hedged a bit. even the special counsel's office noted that the first time out of the box with cohen he wasn't as forthcoming as he was in the subsequent six meetings. it is an oddity to me. i don't quite understand it. that said, both the southern district of new york and the

mueller team both agree they should get some consideration. it is a bit unusual. >> michael cohen, why do you think i've seen where so many republicans have tried to create distance between the president and michael cohen? why do you think that they don't say, why did you hire the guy? >> they do. previous privately they -- i heard john kennedy said, he's a sleazeoid. what does that mean about the president? >> they're trying to play to a couple of audiences at the same time. one of which of course includes trump. the other is as you know and everybody at this table knows the underlying energy behind all of this for those members is the base back home who are still solidly behind this president to this point. now as more shows began to drop, will they come out and change that tune where they become a little bit more critical?

there will become a pressure point when things get ramped up in the house next year and a lot more investigations are reopened and more explanations are required and left on the sidelines for protection purposes are now going to expose their stories. how do those members then react? they're going to be sandwiched between the president and his base and the american people who are going to have a very decidedly different opinion from where this is going. >> 450rhoward, i think there ar democrats who regret how far out on the limb they went for bill clinton but they did it because they felt it was the need for political survival. they didn't realize that for ten years i would argue, maybe 15 some of them. what do you think is going through some of the minds of some of the republicans? >> i think right now they're sticking with them. everyone that i talked to and their mixed minds about nancy pelosi, house democrats and how

much damage they're going to do, i think they under estimate how much damage nancy pelosi and the democrats are going to do. i think donald trump -- this is a little off topic but on topic. donald trump has trouble dealing with somebody like nancy pelosi. she's a strong, focused politician who happens to be a woman and donald trump, lord knows, has trouble dealing with strong women he doesn't control. she effectively will have the subpoena power with her. but i think what republicans are thinking is if it's nancy pelosi, not robert mueller. >> to me one of the big take aways from today is when you look at all of the meem, how long -- how much time people close to the president are spending with investigators and then you look at the new york attorney general saying we're going to look at the family business. then you have, you know, congressional investigations, then you have other investigations into the president's businesses. russia and payments, stormy daniels are kind of just one piece of what looks like it's going to be just a much larger

and longer and drawn out series of investigations that are dogging him. >> everybody with the last name of trump is going to have hundreds of thousands of dollars of legal fees at a minimum. >> chuck rosenberg, real quick. michael cohen is going to be starting prison time in march. let's say a house committee wants to subpoena him while he's serving, how would that work? >> well, the u.s. marshals are responsible for transporting prisoners. if he has to be in front of a house committee, it would be courtesy of u.s. marshals. they could hook up a video feed. part of that is where he goes and what capabilities they have. >> why do i have a feeling one of the more interesting moments in the spring of '19 is going to be a couple of u.s. marshals escorting mr. michael cohen. carol, howard, michael stick around. chuck rosenberg, as always, sir, thank you. shall appreciated. >> my pleasure. we'll have more of this in

the hour, but next closing time. what yesterday's oval office confrontation tells us today about what divided government is going to look like between speaker pelosi and president trump. heater failed, she was pregnant, in-laws were coming, a little bit of water, it really- it rocked our world. i had no idea the amount of damage that water could do. we called usaa. and they greeted me as they always do. sergeant baker, how are you? they were on it. it was unbelievable. having insurance is something everyone needs, but having usaa- now that's a privilege. we're the baker's and we're usaa members for life. usaa. get your insurance quote today.

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another very bad terror attack in france. we are going to strengthen our borders even more. chuck and nancy must give us the votes to get additional border security. democrats take over the house in a few weeks. have no incentive to give the president anymore money for his wall. the pressure is on nancy pelosi. she's nearing a deal with some of her critics to set term limits on the current leadership. let's start with the issue of government funding. joined by michigan democratic congresswoman debby dingle. >> good to see you. >> let me just start with, are you willing to give the president anymore money for his wall? are you willing to give him the 5 billion instead of the 1.6? >> you know, i'm one of those people that says compromise is never a dirty word, but i'm also not so desperate to go home at the end of the year that we're going to vote for a bad bill and i think what the president did yesterday, i don't think any

leader, republican or democrat, should ever threaten to shut the government down, period, the way that he did, but let alone over the holidays. so i started changing my holiday plans. i'm ordering food to get picked up by uber the day before christmas because i think the way things are right now, we're going to be working. >> what is it -- did the president offer -- because one of the things that i have not been able to figure out is -- and in normal negotiations if you want something more than what is already agreed to you offer something else. has the president offered anything else in exchange for getting democratic votes to give him additional funding for this wall? >> you know, my understanding, i was not in the meeting so i'm learning things just like you and millions of other americans across the country, is that it was a pretty shut down conversation. you know, the fact of the matter is, you know, one of the things, chuck, that gets me very angry, i don't know any democrat that

doesn't care about keeping this country safe. it's the number one priority and it's one of our most important responsibilities as a member of congress. we disagree on how to do that, but there are lots of studies that show that this border wall is not going to keep us safer. i mean, to me it's a symbol of division. let's use biometrics. let's hire more people at the border. let's use drones. there are lots of other ways to use money to keep us safe. >> well, there's only one person that is creating this illusion, but it gets amplified. how would you get the president to stop accusing democrats of not caring about this? >> well, i mean, look, i'm going to see him on saturday. i'm going to say it to him. i just don't think it's productive. i think we all have got to sit down at a table, but you can't force people because you've got the threat of a holiday to do things that don't make sense. negotiations compromise, meet, everybody has to be at the table talking about ideas. i've talked to people on the

appropriations committee and things we are doing are not as of a couple of hours ago zblapg did nancy pelosi lock up that performance? did the remaining holdouts start to feel better about her? >> i think that you are seeing -- she showed why she will be a strong speaker. i think that there have been a lot of conversations. i have always said that she will get these votes one by one because there's nobody better at getting votes than nancy pelosi. i think we are moving towards putting all of this press speculation, will she or won't she behind us and getting on with doing what we need to do to keep this government going, to keeping this country safe and addressing a lot of problems that people care about. >> so, is she going to embrace term limits? what does that mean? is it term limits for leaders p leadership? term limits for chairs? are you going to embrace what the house republicans do when it comes to leadership terms?

>> so there are -- let's divide this into two categories. first of all, nothing is going to be decided for the broader caucus when the freshman are part of us in january and there will be a deadline for vote in the caucus of february 15th. so that will get done. i think there will be a strong discussion about leadership term limits and there will be a separate discussion about term limits for chair men and there are very, very strong feelings on both sides of this issue. but i think that, you know, we have set the parameters for a real conversation inside the caucus, which many people feel that we haven't had, and ultimately there's a time line for a vote and it will happen. i think speaker elect pelosi's discussion with the group that is going on, you're hearing what she is saying to them. she speaks for herself, not for other leaders. >> right. >> i know different leaders have

different feelings, but i think we are moving towards getting this resolved inside a caucus with a very, very blunt discussion, a secret vote and we'll go from there. >> it sounds like it is pretty divisive. last question. we now have michael cohen, the federal government and now another entity saying that the president helped direct a couple of felonies, a couple of federal crimes and, by the way, may have helped commit tax fraud. is that enough to open an impeachment inquiry in your mind? >> i think we've got strong committee chair men that are going to hold over sight hearings. we have an independent prosecutor whose investigation is quite frankly, because he is the independent, one of the most important investigations for who's going to come forward with the facts. i think we have a responsibility as a congress to make sure we are protecting the constitution

and looking at the issues. as a democrat to take up the leadership, we can't be anti-trump. we won in november because the american people want to see us deliver on health care, infrastructure, ethical issues. you've seen the polling. >> yeah. >> so we've got to do both at the same time and we will do both at the same time. we've got bills that are going to come right out january 3rd. we will be watching. thank you for coming on and sharing your views. much appreciated. still in the words of r.e.m., it's the end of the world as we know it. should we feel fine? i'm going to ask andrew sullivan. that's coming up.

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welcome back. tonight i'm obsessed with the cost of doing nothing, as in the cost of shutting down the federal government in the belief that it might actually save money. it doesn't. let's start with that oval office steel cage death match yesterday when president trump got rope a doped into admitting, yeah, he's all for a shutdown. >> you know what i'll say? yes, if we don't get what we want one way or the other, whether it's through you, through military, through anything you want to call, i will shut down the government. >> okay. fair enough. we disagree. >> i am proud. >> we disagree. >> i am proud to shut down the

government for border security, chuck. >> if you're a fan of the movie "a few good men," frankly who isn't, then you need to go get some help, you know that president trump just admitted he ordered the code red. >> did you order the code red? >> i did the job. >> did you order the code red? >> you're goddamn right i did. >> but the president's code red doesn't even do what it's supposed to do. as politico reported earlier this year, shutdowns are more expensive than keeping the government open. why? because workers get paid retroactively. museums and parks lose fees. you don't get visitors retroactively. the shutting down and restarting of government takes time and, guess what? wastes a lot of money. the office of management and budget estimated that the two shutdowns during the clinton administration cost the government $1.4 billion. both sides, nancy pelosi, chuck schumer here, think it might

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welcome back. the united kingdom, france, germany, italy, the united states. seems like most of the western world is facing destabilizing, shifting and political sentiment. theresa may faced a no confidence vote today. she was able to survive and hold on to her position, because frankly no one wants to deal with brexit. weeks of violent protests in paris leading to some calls of resignation for emmanuel macron. there's the political division and unrest here. as richard h haass. a bad day as far as politics for what we used to call the west.

joining me is andrew sullivan, new york magazine. because he has an accent, we've decided you're an expert on western civilization. i tease. you've spent a lot of time about u.k. politics in general. what is -- brexit was sort of the first shot, right, of this populus war. trump was the second shot. macron, in some ways, the rise of his election was the third shot, and yet it all seems more unstable today than it was before the brexit vote. >> yeah, i think what's really lying behind this, there are many things lying behind it, one is the global capitalism isn't working for most people in the west. that's as simple as that. people have stopped -- their living standards have failed to rise. the wealthy under global near liberal economics has grown incredibly wealthy. at some point something is going to snap. regular middle class people

don't want to live their lives this way and secondly, i think, globalization kind of over reached. i mean, simple statistic. in 2015 more people immigrated to the united kingdom than immigrated in the entire period from 1066 to 1950. 37% of londoners weren't born in england. now that's a huge transformation because of the e.u., because of globalization and it has destroyed their sense of who they are. brexit is this sort of emotional response to say, we're still brittain. we're still different. we don't have to be part of this. the other thing i think is when the material prosperity runs out, and people don't even see it for their children. they think their children are going to be worse off, you realize what we don't have anymore. we don't have a religious culture to really sustain us through hard times. we don't really have those kind

of core beliefs ritualized, strengthened, create some sort of ballast in society. what you see increasingly is those religious impulses are being transformed into politics. you get this fervent brexit which is kind of irrational but at the same time makes some sort of emotional sense. you get the uprising in france. >> it makes sense. you want to say, we're not european, it's british. >> the french want to say they're french. we forget one of the big demands of the gilles jean is leaving the e.u. >> right. >> people forget that. >> you retweeted something this week from j.k. rolling which was fascinating because she made a connection between brexit and the wall. here's what she tweeted, my mentions have taught me that brexit is like trump's wall. for its devoted fans it has symbolic value totally unrelated to its work ability, its try

cost or the glaring self-interest of its proposers, whereas nonbelievers see nothing but a deranged and costly vanity project. that's where theresa may can't figure it out. the republicans know they want the wall. she knows her people want exit from the e.u. this doesn't work. >> when you look at who really wants it in britain, the referendum was really close. 52/48 for profound structural change in their relationship to the world. >> that's a lot of up heaval. >> for a tiny -- it means that half the country is going to be outraged and enraged if you do it. theresa may understood that. she knew she could only do brexit if she had a really big majority so she went to the electorate, lost. now she's gone to her own back benches and, you know, she survived, but she really did very badly. >> didn't she only survive because no one else wants to do it? >> partly, although i think

boris johnson might be eager. other people in tory party would. she's not going to survive much longer. she's committed after the march 29th deadline for brexit. my own sense is that the country is so divided, the tory party is divided in two, the labor is divided in two, the country is divided in two. they're all inexor ran bring rolling towards this massive cliff. i think the likelihood of no deal at all is quite high. >> is what's happening in the u.k. a warning to the united states or a reminder, well, it will never be that bad? >> all of this is really a reminder to those in the political elites they have completely misjudged the mood and tenor and life experiences of the majority of people in all these countries. they want nationalism. they want the meaning that their nation gives them. >> they want to belong to

something. >> yes. >> this goes to your point about religion. if you've lost some faith in your actual religion, then you want to believe in something else, believe in your country. >> believe in your country. >> or believe in an ideology or worship a cult figure like trump and theresa may for all of her many faults is just this person ground up in this conflict. she's hanging there. i had plenty to admire her. >> it's a no win. >> she's doing it anyway. she's trying to get it right. she's not going to succeed, i'm afraid, but i admire the british mugle through attitude. >> how do you create this moment where you make britts think we can be british and still a part? at the end of the day you're part of europe whether you like it or not unless you can figure out how to physically move the island. climate change will do that for you. >> there was that great headline fog in the english channel, continent cut off. that is really how the british

see themselves, and rightly so. they're the only country that wasn't occupied and invaded in the last war. they had their independence for 1,000 years and they've suddenly realized they don't have it anymore and they want it back. >> yet there is no -- there's no back, is there? >> well, there is. there is, actually. you could back out of the e.u., which is the biggest free trading zone in the world. you could become immeasurably poorer, but you could have control over your destiny. what's amazing to me is my own family, for example, who are for brexit says, well, so what? we'd rather be poor and free than wealthy and run by brussels. >> by the way, there's a lot of people that think that way right in this country as well. >> because people want meaning in their lives. >> andrew sullivan, thanks for coming on. you're always provocative and a good kind of provocative. >> thank you, chuck. up next, a big 2020 announcement out of texas. who is it?

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president of the united states in 2020. >> hulian castro announced today he is forming a presidential exploratory committee and will make his official decision next month at the same time beto o'rourke will announce his decision when his term ends on january 3rd. >> a lot of people are going to run in this democratic primary, and that's going to be good for the party and the country. >> the former obama housing secretary but will the money, polling and voter energy follow? >> there are people that have more name i.d. but, you know, i was thinking the other day, i don't think at any time in my life that i've started out as a front-runner. >> i actually spoke with hulian castro for an extended conversation about his presidential ambition a few months back and it is a compelling listen in light of today's announcement. check it out on our podcast

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time now for the lid. panelists back. carol lee, howard fineman and michael lee. julio castro is exploring a run for presidency. >> no, he's running. you file or you don't file. julian castro is now eligible to commit campaign finance crimes. i tease. once you have filed with the federal election commission, anything you can and will be, you know, held against you in your campaign finance. >> i know him. i've covered him. i've seen him around town. i've seen him on the campaign trail. it was no surprise that he's going to be doing this. why not? it's a hugely wide open field. he's got a base of his own to begin with and politics is, like lee atwater said is a base game. he didn't realize he was making a pun when he said that but he

did and why not? he's substantive, attractive, articulate, he knows the issues. why not? i think there's no reason for anybody considering this not to get in. >> carol lee, a year ago he was the most interesting texas democrat. now is he decided -- lot of people wanted him to run. one of them, his brother was going to challenge cruz. they both took a pass. this young congressman from the other side of the state decided to run and they now have competition. >> things have changed a lot since he was initially talking about this. he's been talking about this privately, sort of semi publicly for a really long time. when you have beto who is the new it guy who everybody wants to rally around and is putting their own aspirations on him and in some ways people did with barack obama, it's going to be tough. i didn't think people did exploratory committees anymore. i thought you just went in and

decided you're running. >> right. what's interesting is he said they'll have a final decision on january 12th somewhere in san antonio at a big convention center. he's not the first candidate to do that. it is interesting. i think his strategy is i might as well be the tortouise. >> the first test is how much grass do you get to eat along the way. meaning how much money will he raise by the time he has the event in texas. that's what's at stake for all of these players. out of gate is how much can you put on the table in cash raised to begin this effort. that raised money is an indication of not just support but future support meaning they are banking on something longer term. >> how do you think the democratic presidential field

will handle the mueller and michael cohen incremental news of the day each day. you're going to have -- you're going to have washington democrats wanting more investigations. you might have presidential democrats going we want to run against the wounded guy. >> i think anybody who is going to run has to resist the temptation to constantly want to get in the news cycle talking about the mueller investigation. >> you ever met a politician who knows how to do that? >> no. they're all going to be in it all the time. th that isn't going to be the best way to pick the standards bearer for the party. that's going to be the measure. >> it's going to have an impact like something we've never seen. >> they will learn what it's like to be a republican in congress right now. those guys are always -- >> want to talk about health care. >> you see what the president just tweeted.

mueller will get more and more serious. there's that piece of it. then you're going to have they will just answer to everything the president says the same way republicans have. >> i think you will see a lot of them trip up. there's going to be a lot of bodies on the road from that very thing. it won't be anything they have said on policy. it's going to be the trail of mueller will be strewn bodies of democrats. >> their can ddidacy will implo based on something they said accidental. >> either that or trump will just label somebody. you saw him take down republicans in the primary that way too. >> as our politics have been for the last two years, this next phase is going to be all about donald trump too but about donald trump in the context increasingly in the mueller

investigation. >> and it's still advantage trump. sd >> why? >> you can't beat somebody with nobody. right now there's a field of nobodies. >> there was a whole bunch of nobodies that got more votes than the republicans did in 2018. >> they're not running for president. it's not the same as running for congress and the u.s. senate. the dynamics shift but they also -- >> what's going to happen is as the democrats are drawn into commenting on and supporting the mueller probe and doing their investigations on the hill, donald trump is going to say, as he's been saying from the beginning. this is all political. it's going to turn into a political/legal referendum which is where we've been from the beginning. >> down to my level. >> that's what he wants. >> another one of those days. just western civilization. michael cohen. >> i'm still trying to figure

out if tortouise's grass. >> i think they do.

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>> or is it? this week the trump administration announced plans to roll back mayjor parts of th 1972 clean water act. that's likely to draw legal challenges. the change redefines what the epa considers waters of the united states. that removes pollution safeguards. the new rules provide state and land owners the certainty they need to manage their resources and grow economies. if you hit rewind on his public statements, then things suddenly get a bit muddy. >> i want crystal clean water. >> beautiful clean water. >> clean water. >> the cleanest water. the cleanest everything. the best everything. >> it's getting better and better. >> beautiful environment we want. >> la guardia where the runways are too short. you have this filthy water. filthy. they've been trying to expand the runway. nothing in the way except water.

they can't get the environmental impact stamp. they would rather save a tadp e tadpole. it's true. >> again, crystal clear, right. that's all we have for tonight. we'll be back tomorrow. it's the beat with ari melber which starts right now. >> you must love scrabble. that's all i'm going to say. thanks. have a good rest of your night. we begin with breaking news. donald trump's former lawyer going to prison. a judge sentencing michael cohen to three years in prison for several financial crimes and two crimes linked directly to trump. also today another bombshell we didn't see coming. the tabloids company linked to trump admitting to paying off a woman who alleged a relationship with him helping trump win the election. cohen was emotional as