you worthless slompy fool. watch the big core crack and glow. i talked to mike christian, raj and pete the same. they gave some last advice. give the director a serpent deflector, a mud rat detector, a cushion convectsor, a picture of necter. and whatever you do, take care of your shoes. see you in 2019. "deadline white house" begins right now. hi, everyone. it's 4:00 in washington, d.c. there had to be a silver lining to the president's penchant for lying about things big and small and we found it. job security for the fact checkers. keeping track of donald trump's false and misleading statements is around the clock endeavor. donald trump is ending the year having told more than 6,000 lies as the nation's commander in chief.

let that sink in. his lies range from the absurd, like fibs about his crowd size, to lies so egregious and so dangerous, they could be criminal. court filings from federal prosecutors reveal that trump's public lies on contacts with russians and hush money payments to women are of significant interest to special counsel robert mueller and to federal investigators in new york. yet reports suggest the cloud of investigations swirling around this white house and the growing list of trump allies caught lying by mueller has hardly served as a deterrent to trump. in fact, reports show his lies have become more brazen in office. and he's picked up the pace. lying three times more per day in 2018 than he did just last year. it's a rate so fast and furious that we're officially starting to worry about the fact-checkers. when do they sleep? how can they possibly catch every false or misleading statement that escapes the president's lips?

daniel dale from "the toronto star" is revealing the secret. he writes, i've made it my mission to fact-check every word donald trump utters as president. that means trying to watch every speech, read every transcript, decipher every tweet. i've accidentally established a reputation for using twitter to point out that he's lying within seconds of him telling a lie. people sometimes ask in response, how can i blast out these corrections so quickly? but i have no special talent. we disagree here. my secret is that trump tells the same lies over and over. daniel dale joins us now along with matt miller, former chief spokesman for the justice department, former democratic congresswoman donna edwards and "l.a. times" white house reporter eli stokols. first off, we should talk about how this came to be. i completely sprung this on you when you were on our show and we're so glad it worked out because i think if there's a theme for 2018, it's not just that the president lies about everything big and small. it's that his lies may be his undoing. >> yeah, i think we have a sense of fatalism about his dishonesty, like he's this master manipulator putting one

over on the entire country and there's nothing can anyone do about it. what we've seen this year is they do matter. and there are consequences. and so it doesn't work for him in selling legislation. it doesn't work for him in convincing republican legislators to do what he wants to convince voters to vote for his party. and it certainly doesn't convince the special counsel or federal prosecutors. >> i thought about this at the end of the year when they passed criminal justice reform. and you didn't see any impact in his numbers. it's what you said. the people that support him are conditioned to the lies but that hasn't served him. he didn't think there were enough of those people for him to have won on election night, and it's hindered his ability to add a single new supporter. >> i agree. we have this anthropological fixation on his base. who are these people? why do they continue to think the way they do? i think what's more important is there's a larger segment of the rest of the country. we think about his lying and should not only think about the base that either buys what he's saying or doesn't care and think about how these statements are affecting the rest of the population.

>> so your -- let's talk about what you do because it's more than kind of the most important mission that all of the people who cover trump have. and that's to sort of catch the lies in realtime. but you're sort of doing it for the public. you're doing it on twitter, for free and you do it almost instantly. why do you do it? >> i think his lying is the central story of his presidency. and my frustration since 2015 is that it's too often not treated as such. it's treated as a side show. let the weekend fact-checker guy write a side bar piece. this should be a daily part of our coverage in every story about every speech. we need to point out just how dishonest he's being. it wasn't being done in 2016. i thought someone should do it. >> you started doing it yourself. i couldn't agree with you more. the other thing is people were afraid to call them lies. we called them lies from the beginning because that's what they are. what do you think we can do better? the idea of doing it every day is part of it. the other part of it is calling them lies. what else can we do about covering this president?

>> we collectively in the media need to stop amplifying the lies. that means not simply putting them in your headline without any context or tweeting them out. even the associated press has been doing this and having to retract and delete tweets. i think also reporters do a very good job in many ways, but they can do a better job coming armed to their one-on-one interactions with trump with these facts. as you said quoting me, he says the same false claims, he tells the same lies over and over. there's no excuse for any of us not to come armed with the facts and correct him with them right away. >> any of his lies that surprise you? >> not really. i'm sort of blown away over and over again by how trivial, needless many of them are. every politician lies when they are caught in some controversy or scandal. he's often lying about nothing. so in those moments it's like, what are you doing? but i'm not surprised anymore. >> so i remember watching ronnie jackson, the now, i think everyone that is associated with

him ends up unemployed. he went out and said his weight was 239. it just didn't add up. i remember thinking, that's the one thing that could have humanized him. if he put out his real weight and said i'm embarrassed by that, he would have seemed more human than having a military doctor go out and lie about his weight. >> yes, his brain doesn't work that way. and we all know, you know, he's constantly looking to make himself look better. and there's no sense of even false humility. he just doesn't believe in it. >> he just lies about things big and small. let's put up -- this is the lie that began it all. a lie about russia. surprises no one. let's watch. >> one of the reasons i'm here today is to tell you the whole russian thing, that's a ruse. that's a ruse. i had nothing to do with it. i have nothing to do with russia. i told you. i have no deals there. i have no anything. i have nothing to do with russia. to the best of my knowledge, no person that i deal with does. >> matt miller, giant lie. >> yeah, absolutely. i think one of the things that's been interesting watching the

russia investigation evolve, so lying has been core to donald trump's political strategy. the same way core to his business strategy beforehand. he calls it -- he straight-out lies. he got away with it in business and in politics in a way no one before him was really able to do. >> did he? he settled a bunch of civil -- >> in business, yeah. but i mean, he lied about stuff. he had to settle cases but those are a cost of doing business. it didn't change him. in the legal world, lying sends you to jail. what we've seen as his associates have followed his behavior and lied to investigators, lied to members of congress, lied to grand juries, lied to federal investigators, you find them pleading guilty and facing potentially jail time or becoming a convicted felon for the rest of your life. it's a very different thing. that hasn't caught up with the president yet, but we saw an interesting thing a few weeks ago when michael cohen pled guilty and bob mueller in his sentencing memos talked about how michael cohen didn't just lie to congress, but he caused

his lie to be released to the public, and he was lying to the public and influencing other witnesses. and it sounded a lot like the behavior we've seen from the president throughout the russia investigation. lying to the public in a way that could come back to haunt him down the road. >> you also saw it in the michael flynn sentencing. you saw robert mueller putting together the fact that flynn had been so helpful in the investigation but that for someone who served in the u.s. military, to have served as an intelligence official, to serve as a national security adviser, lying was something they were going to take very seriously. >> right. and the judge in that sentencing that was then delayed made a point of looking at mike flynn and saying, did you know what you were doing when making these false statements that you were lying and that it was wrong? he made him get out there and say very publicly, yes, i did. the white house had been pushing this whole narrative that mike flynn had somehow been duped or tricked or ambushed into making these false statements. it's just sort of ludicrous, but that's still what they are putting out there trying to

portray the targets of this probe and the president himself as victims of something nefarious when, really, what -- the president has made it very easy with a lot of these public statements, the tweets, the reactionary things he does that he can't really control. all those things out there he's allowing the things he said during the campaign trail. he's giving prosecutors and investigators so much to work with. so many indications of the way he thinks and how he thinks and you can see for years as matt pointed out when he was a marketer, a real estate mogul, when he was selling a tv show. the truth didn't really matter. people were almost endeared to trump because he was such a character. so boastful. so over the top. and lying about how tall trump tower is or talking about -- boasting about how beautiful your women are, whatever the case was, it was part of a persona. now it's part of a criminal investigation. and the context is totally different, and you just see a president whose behavior is so deeply engrained over his entire life that he cannot change. he lies, as dan pointed out,

about things big and about things completely insignificant and you wonder what is this compulsion? we have seen people say that above all the job is to get the president talking and keep him talking. nobody ever contradicts him. his staff doesn't contradict him. his staff knows he's lying and they don't sit there and say, actually, sir, because he'll fly off the handle. he'll end the interview, end the meeting in the white house and kick the staffers out. because he's so temperamental this way and has lived in this alternate universe, alternate reality for so long, it's very difficult for people to actually confront him and to correct him and to say, sir, that's wrong. sir, that's a lie. just doesn't happen. >> and i worry about this, but i also worry about what message he sends as a person who really is the chief executive of the federal government. he's against flippers. he thinks people that cooperate with federal investigations, that tell the truth about crimes under investigation are bad

people. and he's shown he's very willing to pardon people who commit crimes like lying. >> well, and you know, when you hear that from the president, it has a ripple effect. when you hear that from the chief executive, it has a ripple effect. so then what's the next lie that you can get away with if you are below, you know, in the civil service or some other level of government. and i think, you know, you began by saying people were hesitant to call out his lies and to say that they were lies. and i think it's because many of us grew up knowing that when you call somebody a liar, that's like a really harsh thing to do. and so it's tough to do that. so we called them falsehoods and misstatements. it's been important. the work daniel has done. really important to say these are lies. increasingly, you see reporters fact-checking during these press conferences. i think one of the most harmful lies the president has told is the one that he told about the arms sales to saudi arabia as an

excuse for the khashoggi murder and the impact that had. the president lies about things big and small. sometimes those big things are things that are both criminal, but they are also immoral. >> what do you think the damage is around the world to having a president who is a compulsive liar? >> no one can believe the president of the united states. no one can believe the country. no one believes anyone around him. so you see countries, other governments devising these elaborate back-channel methods to determine what is really going on, what the government plans. you force members of cabinet to run sort of their own policy or communication strategy to try to get facts in truth to people. they need to get facts and truth to. it's corrosive to the electorate and corrosive to his own party and to relationships around the world. >> it's so scary. when we come back, we're going to put daniel dale on the spot and ask him to select donald trump's biggest, baddest lie of 2018. and it's been one of the president's triggers since the

earliest days of his presidency. the dossier. and while the president likes to claim it's phony, it's a fact that none of it -- not one word has been disproven. in fact, a lot of it turned out to be right on the money. we'll take a closer look. has former fbi director jim comey finally had enough? comey increasingly using his voice to defend the rule of law and urge voters to demand the truth. stay with us.

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so you can do more of what you love. my name is tito, and i'm a tech-house manager at comcast. we're working to make things simple, easy and awesome. donald trump lies with the velocity that's hard to keep track of. we've been talking to the one man who manages to pull it off. beyond the frequency of the lies are serious issues and the grave disservice the president does by conditioning the public to expect so little from their public servants. daniel dale and the panel is still here. we've been talking about the behavior of lying. the pattern of lying.

but i want to dig deeper into the consequences of lying. it seems like one of them is that the president is now thought of to be individual number one. we know he's individual number one in this filing out of the southern district of new york and faces serious criminal exposure. >> yeah, his lying has been placed on a different and very difficult context for him. he's been lying without consequence for decades, to the tabloids, to the entertainment press, to congress, to voters. and now -- >> he even called and pretended to be his own publicist. he even lied about who he was. >> i don't want to call him a pathological liar. he's a serial liar. we know that. he's dealing with people who will not be swayed who have the facts he is lying about and so this is a major problem for him. >> and you've picked the biggest lie for us. what is it? >> i considered a few for the absurdity. i considered his lie that americans need voter i.d. or photo i.d. to buy cereal or groceries. i considered his serious pre-midterm lie that democrats have no plan to protect people

with pre-existing conditions which is obamacare. >> the caravan. >> the caravan. middle easterners, which he admitted there's no proof of, but it might be true. about 3,000 this year. three times as many as last year. so it's been bad, but i think the number one lie is his lie about the payment to stormy daniels. he was asked on air force one, do you -- did you know about this payment? he said no. do you know where michael cohen got the money? he said no. fast forward several months and now, well, it's a private transaction. no one cares. this is a big deal because this is the president lying about a crime. michael cohen has pleaded guilty to felonies over this -- these payments that the president has lied about, and now the president himself faces legal jeopardy over it. and so there's so much silliness. lies about crowd sizes. you know, so much we can laugh at. but this is really serious stuff here. >> let's watch it. >> did you know about the $130,000 payment to stormy daniels? >> no.

>> then why did michael cohen make this if there was no truth to the allegations? >> you have to ask michael cohen. michael is my attorney. and you'll have to ask michael. >> do you know where he got the money to make that payment? >> no, i don't know. >> so matt miller, that all fell apart. >> it fell apart. and i think daniel is right. it's the most important lie of the year. it was the first in the shifting stories over this stormy daniels payment. first that he didn't do it. he didn't have any relationship with her. we didn't pay her any money and then oh, we did but it was to avoid private embarrassment. >> i did not give money to that woman. >> exactly right. and eventually shifted to, oh, well, maybe it was, but it wasn't a crime. you have this question of whether he knew it was a violation of law. the problem about that lie is that it shows that he knew something was wrong. because if he didn't know it was -- there was something wrong, if he didn't know it was

a crime, why was he lying about it and trying to cover it up. when people lie about their crimes, it shows consciousness of guilt. if we ever get to the point that this is either before the congress or part of an impeachment charge or he's left office and he's on trial in the southern district of new york, you will see that statement played at trial or played in impeachment hearing to show the president lied about this because he knew what he did was wrong, and he was trying to hide it from the american people. >> the audacity of the lies is what gets me. you go back to the campaign where he trotted out some of the women that bill clinton allegedly had relationships with knowing he had directed a hush money scam through michael cohen. >> what's really amazing is that the president starts out with one lie but then creates another lie to cover for the other lie. and then creates another lie. and i think part of -- when he does that, it makes us go back and say, did we actually see what we saw? did we hear what we heard? and then we realize, of course,

the president is, as daniel describes, a serial liar. >> and we -- go ahead. >> she's absolutely right. and i think the other amazing thing he does in the stormy daniels thing, he'll abandon a lie and move on and switch to another lie and act like it never happened. there's no reckoning. there's no, hey, mr. president, how about the fact you lied to the american people about this? >> how about undermining lie two with lie four. >> he expects we never noticed. >> he does that because he says he's conditioned from the campaign trail, from the podium, do not believe your eyes. do not believe your ears. he's told people not to believe the truth. his attorney rudy giuliani told chuck todd, there is no truth. >> that's what putin said in helsinki. i was sitting in the second row. putin was asked a question and said, how do you really know what's true? he says this and truth is really unknowable. and we've heard trump say that. after the khashoggi murder, trump basically said, you know, maybe the crown prince had something to do with it. maybe he didn't. in some cases, trump, when it's inconvenient to him, the truth, he'll tell the country the truth is unknowable.

we talk a lot on your program and others about the consequences for this president. mostly the legal consequences but also the political consequences from his lying. but the consequence that i think we don't talk about enough and the reason why daniel's work is so important is that there's a huge consequence for our country when we live in a place where truth is so politicized and so viewed through these partisan lenses that we can't -- we can't share as a country and see the same truths. and that is really one of the underpinnings of our democracy, one of the things that makes the country work and the things we've seen break down that that president has worked aggressively to break down to desolidify the possibility that there is an objective truth. he tells people, he gaslights the country and says you're not seeing what you think you're seeing. he gets himself in trouble when he has to make things up and he has to shift. the biggest problem that we're not stepping back and realizing is that when you go to rallies and talk to trump supporters and they say what i like about him is his honesty and you say,

well, what do you mean by that? he makes all these false claims. >> yeah, but there's this sheen of authenticity or bluntless that he has because he says things politicians don't usually say. a lot of people believe he's telling it like it is. and when they can recognize things that are not true, they sort of forgive those things. the demonization of the press. the fake news debate. re-appropriating that term and using it to brandish any news that he finds inconvenient as fake. it's really damaging, and that's something the country will take awhile to recover from. >> it's such a good point and you don't find a parent, in a red state or blue state that supports their young children lying. so where do you think this conduct -- how do you think this conduct gets a pass from the trump voters? >> i hear a number of things. some say all politicians lie. hillary lied. obama lied. bush lied us into war, whatever it may be. >> i've heard those, too. >> others have told me something

i find really interesting is that they like when he lies because it makes the elites go crazy. >> oh, my god. >> i've had people say, it's people like you running around with your head cut off trying to fact-check him. he likes that because we hate those people. they make our lives miserable. i know he lies but he put gorsuch on the bench, kavanaugh on the bench. he does conservative things. so my job as a fact-checker as a journalist isn't to tell those people they're wrong. that's nuts. that's irrational political calculation. >> and some liked nixon until the day he waved good-bye. daniel dale, thank you for being here. we're really grateful. still ahead -- the salacious document that started it all. the leak of the dossier in the early days of the trump presidency kicked off the president's most extreme attacks on the media, his war on law enforcement and his ongoing distrust of the intelligence community. but it turns out the document's claims have been right about an eerie number of things. we'll take a closer look with former fbi official chuck rosenberg.

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well, i think it's sad what they did with this fake dossier. it was made up. >> it's almost $6 million that they paid, and it's totally discredited. it's a total phony. i called it fake news. it's disgrateful. it's disgraceful. is it possible they paid $12.4 million for the dossier and how is it -- which is total phony, fake. >> the fake, dirty dossier. >> they were involved with that fraud of the fake dossier. the phony dossier. >> it may be dirty, but it ain't fake. that's the president's line on the infamous dossier. but how much longer will he keep saying that? the dossier on its face is still

considered an unverified document compiled by british intelligence officer christopher steele based on raw intelligence. to date, none of it has been disproven. and whole big parts of it are holding up as special counsel robert mueller's investigation has methodically yielded indictments and plea agreements from which numerous court filings have lined up almost exactly with some of the reporting in the dossier. that includes documents from the indictment against 12 russian intelligence officers and court documents from michael cohen, michael flynn, paul manafort and george papadopoulos. in fact, former senior fbi official and u.s. attorney and friend of the show chuck rosenberg and a colleague recently wrote a piece for lawfare examining which parts of the dossier had been corroborated based on the court filings. plus, they looked at documents released by jerome corsi and documents from democrats on the house intel committee. as chuck and his colleague note, quote, the mueller investigation

has clearly produced public records that confirm pieces of the dossier. and even where the details are not exact, the general thrust of steele's reporting seems credible in light of what we now know about extensive contacts between numerous individuals associated with the trump campaign and russian government officials. chuck joins us now. why did you write this piece? >> we were curious. we were really curious to see how this thing held up over time. we first learned about it about two years ago. and so lots of stuff has happened between then and now. lots of documents have been made public and so we just wanted to hold them both up to a light. >> what did you find? >> it was very interesting. so my colleague sarah grant, by the way, is an amazing young woman. naval academy graduate. >> we should get her in here. >> you should. she's smarter than me. third year student at harvard law school. she helped me do that side by side comparison. here's what we found. the dossier holds up well. none of it has been disproven, as you said.

parts of it are uncorroborated, but as more official documents which out, you can hold them next to the dossier and see that they line up. >> and a source close to christopher steele told me at the time he was at this time in private practice and this is what he did. he was in contact -- explain what intelligence is and how it's different from a law enforcement process. which is what the information is now being run through. >> in some ways it's different and some ways it's similar. so much of the reporting about the dossier missed this really important point. steele was compiling raw intelligence. meaning -- >> which is like tips, leads? >> people tell him stuff, and he writes it down. how is that like law enforcement? well, if an fbi agent goes out to interview, let's say, michael flynn, and flynn lies to the agent, that agent writes it down. the stuff that is in the agent's it's accurate. i hope that makes sense. it's false because -- >> it's what was said or stated in the interview. >> correct.

>> and so what steele was doing quite simply was compiling information. raw intelligence which he reported in a dossier. he didn't attempt to analyze it. he didn't attempt to corroborate it. he was just simply reporting it. >> i also think it's interesting the president spends so much time, the president spends so much energy, so many words spent smearing this document, and that's usually a tell there's something very right and very troubling for him. >> it apparently got under his skin. it must have because now, over time, we see that various pieces are, in fact, true. we were very careful what we used to try to corroborate it. there's been a lot of reporting on it, but we put all the reporting aside. we looked at official court documents and basically admissions. things said by people against their interests. like when jerome corsi had a plea agreement draft handed to him and he made that public. primarily, we're using stuff from the mueller investigation. >> let me put some of it up.

it's amazing how it lines up. this is in the dossier. the russian regime had been behind the recent leak of embarrassing e-mail messages emanating from the democratic national committee to the wikileaks platform. the reason for using wikileaks was plausible deniability and the operation had been conducted with the full knowledge and support of trump and senior members of his campaign team. this seems to be the heart of the mueller probe, right, trying to tie the trump campaign to the dnc hack. so here's what you found from an indictment. the conspirators used a variety of means to hack the e-mail accounts of volunteers and employees of the u.s. presidential campaign of hillary clinton, including the clinton campaign's chairman. conspirs tors also hacked into the computer networks of the democratic national campaign committee and the dnc. they staged and released tens of thousands of stolen e-mails and documents used fictitious online personas including dcleaks and guccifer 2.0. so it's corroborated that the hack, the robbery and the

targets. and we know from all of your appearances that they're still pursuing that link to the trump orbit. >> and as we said, that's one of the most important things in the dossier. also one of the most important things mueller has charged. the indictment you read from was of the 12 russian military intelligence officials. that isn't our language. that's mueller's language. and you can literally hold it up next to the dossier and see that thematic reporting that steele compiled is accurate. now, we don't have that crucial link directly to members of the trump campaign. we have sort of hints of it, and it may be borne out over time, but so far, so good. >> let me read one more chunk because the way they match up is amazing. this is michael cohen. the claim the kremlin's cultivation operation of trump. the kremlin's cultivation operation on trump comprised offering him various lucrative real estate development business deals in russia, especially in relation to the ongoing 2018 world cup soccer tournament.

however, so far, for reasons unknown, trump had not taken up any of these. now this is from -- this was from cohen's sentencing memos? >> right. connected to cohen's guilty plea and sentencing. >> so the prosecutors in the southern district of new york, i guess, write the moscow project or maybe mueller's prosecutors. mueller's team, right? >> well -- >> the moscow project was discussed multiple times within the trump organization and did not end in january 2016. as late as june 2016, cohen and felix sater discussed efforts to obtain russian governmental approval for the russia project. cohen discussed the status of the progress of the moscow project with trump on more than three occasions cohen claimed to the committee and briefed family members of the trump organization within the company about the project. cohen agreed to travel to russia in connection with the moscow project and took steps in contemplation of trump's possible travel to russia. >> the second thing that you just read, the last thing you read comes right out of court filings that we have credited as

trustworthy and accurate. and so this relationship, this business relationship, the attempts to build a trump tower in moscow were ongoing. cohen played a crucial role in it. he acknowledged it. he admitted it and, oh, by the way, christopher steele reported on it. >> let me ask you something. ken dilanian said about the dossier from the very beginning, ignore the sex. follow the money. there's some salacious stuff in there about sex acts that your former colleague jim comey had to brief the president on and describe when i interviewed him at the 92nd street y as awkward. do you think the salacious stuff in there distracted from all the substantive financial ties between trump org and russia? >> no question. and that's a really important point. the dossier is really sort of 16 mini reports. it's 35 pages. there's dozens and dozens of bullet points. the salacious stuff, which the media focused on, and i guess -- >> we're sorry.

>> i understand it. it was only a very small piece of the 35-page dossier. all the other stuff has to do with business relationships and political interference and russian hacking. the things that mueller is focusing on. we may never know, frankly, about those salacious acts. i frankly could care less, but i do think it was a big distraction. >> in the media's defense, that was what trump was so triggered by. the salacious aspects of the dossier. there's more. when we come back, former fbi director james comey has had enough. now he's calling out republicans urging them to stand up for the rule of law.

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ouget a 4-course mealal starting at $15.99. treat yourself to the perfect gift today, because the aussie 4-course won't last long! outback steakhouse. aussie rules. the president of the united states is lying about the fbi, attacking the fbi and attacking the rule of law in this country. how does that make any sense at all? republicans used to understand

that the actions of a president matters, the words of a president matters and the rule of law matters, and the truth matters. where are those republicans today? at some point, someone has to stand up and in the face of fear of fox news, fear of their base, fear of mean tweets, stand up for the values of this country and not slink away into retirement, but stand up and speak the truth. i find it frustrating to be here answering questions about things that are far less important than the values this country is built upon. >> that was former fbi director james comey taking republicans to task for not doing more to stand up to the president's constant attacks on his own justice department and the rule of law. comey's been much more vocal in recent weeks in his defense of our institutions and norms. it was a theme he discussed at length during our discussion this month at the 92nd street y in new york. >> and i've said this to a lot of republicans. let me ask you all a question. if the next president of the united states is a democrat and wakes up in the morning and

starts tweeting that there ought to be criminal investigations of the current republican leadership of congress and naming names of people who should be in jail, what's your reaction going to be? i said, don't answer that. your head is going to explode. so why is it not exploding now? this is about what our country stands for. >> part of normalizing all the conduct is rushing through it. so let's not rush through what you just said. he accused you of a serious crime, lying to congress, and there are no consequences. does that mean the justice department is fully functional or -- what does that mean? that no one can pick up the phone and say, mr. president, you just accused the former fbi director of a felony. >> well, the people who could hold him accountable for that is us. that's not the department of justice's job. that's our job. not to become numb to it and to stand up and participate and holding him accountable to those norms. i think of the american voting population as a giant bell curve.

at the wings and the middle is mostly people who are unengaged. that giant is awakening because of things like this, and we have to continue to awaken the giant. so we're going to have an election in less than two years. we must hold him accountable. and it's not a republican thing or democratic thing. it's an american thing. this is unacceptable behavior for the leader of our country. >> it was a passionate side of jim comey that i hadn't seen up close before. and later in our discussion, i pressed him on what he thinks should happen next. his answer might surprise some. >> i'm going to say something i said when the book came out and people thought was weird. i'm going to say it again. you may still think it's weird. in a way, i hope donald trump is not removed from office by impeachment because it would let the country off the hook. and it would drive into the fabric of our nation a third of the people believing there was a coup, and we need a moment of inflection where we all get off the couch and say that is not who we are.

and in a landslide rid ourselves of this attack on our values. and if we, in a way, short circuited that with -- important, legitimate process of the constitution, i worry that we wouldn't -- we'd be letting ourselves off the hook and wouldn't have the moment of clarity that we need in this country. that said, if the facts are there and the legislative -- two houses of congress think it's appropriate, that's fine. >> so -- but you're saying you think it's more decisive to have him voted out? >> yes. >> so everyone is still here. chuck, matt, eli and donna. that was a side of him that i hadn't seen before. is this the private jim comey whose frustrations with the republicans' inability or unwillingness to speak out against this president and the president's constant attacks against the rule of law and justice department is getting to him? >> you have some evidence it's getting to him. it's getting to many of us. for many of us who spent our entire professional lives in the justice department, in the fbi,

in the dea, this is deeply, deeply disturbing. and when we're in those jobs, when we're in those roles, we don't have the opportunity to speak the way jim just did. and so what i think you're seeing is a very frustrated, very authentic jim comey. i get it. i get it. >> i said to him before, i am gutted by the trump presidency for a lot of the same reasons. we say over and over again, nothing changes. i guess things are starting to change. guardrails are falling as the year ends. the president is in serious legal trouble. >> yes, absolutely. i appreciated the former director's words. i thought they were important. i think he's right. i wish more republicans would stand up and do it. it's important for former public officials to speak out in a way they usually wouldn't. a lot of times in our history, we thought it was inappropriate for former law enforcement officials and former national security officials to speak out in a partisan manner. that's changed. it's probably more appropriate. he said people need to vote democratic. he's a republican and said vote

democratic. i don't know if he agrees with democratic principles, but we have to have belief in the rule of law in this country. a belief in absolute truth. that there has to be some restoration of that. i've had -- i think it's fair to say, a number of disagreements with director comey over the years. i'm glad he's saying what he's saying now. >> i was thinking when jim comey was speaking. i remember taking the oath of office. when you take that, it's similar to the oath taken by the ag and by other cabinet officials and there's a moment where you realize the gravity of swearing to uphold the laws and the constitution of the united states. and i think that what he was saying is that for us as americans and also for our politicians, it's time for us to remember having raised our right hands and sworn to uphold the laws and the constitution and that's what's at stake. >> you also swear you're not at risk for blackmail. a question comey refused to

answer in that interview about whether the president could be. >> there are so many things we're still going to learn about these investigations. the constitution doesn't defend itself, okay? and history will judge whether the legislative branch did its job in this moment. but, you know, what we're seeing is we're seeing the judicial branch move ahead and inform the public. we're seeing the media do its job for the most part. we're seeing some guard rails on the president and we saw in november, you know, the country, the public, the electoral process work to a degree. donald trump -- >> a blue wave. >> donald trump was -- this is a guy who measures everything based on tangible metrics, whether it's tv ratings, the size of his buildings, whether it's approval rating, polls. he'd always be talking about the polls. the election is something tangible. he was obsessed with it leading up to it and we saw him campaign several rallies a day. almost campaigning full time. after that election, it was such a rattling setback to him because for the first time, all

of his efforts to propagandize, to mislead, it didn't work. there's more talk in washington about the president potentially not even running in 2020 if he believes he can't win as a result of these setbacks. chuck, thank you for being here with us. some of the losers in this year's midterms may turn out to be big, big winners after all. stay with us. my experience with usaa has been excellent. they really appreciate the military family and it really shows. with all that usaa offers why go with anybody else? we know their rates are good, we know that they're always going to take care of us. it was an instant savings and i should have changed a long time ago. it was funny because when we would call another insurance company, hey would say "oh we can't beat usaa" we're the webber family. we're the tenney's we're the hayles, and we're usaa members for life. ♪ get your usaa auto insurance quote today.

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the first poll from iowa for the 2020 democratic contenders is out and topping the massive list of names is former vice president joe biden at 32%. bernie sanders at 19%. and beto o'roarke at 17%. none of them have visited any of the key states yet. it says the des moines register put it, an eternity in campaign days. it's interesting that beto is up so high as a relative new-comer to national democratic politics. >> i think a couple things. one, that poll is largely a reelection of name i.d. and a little bit of energy for beto o'roarke. people around the country have heard of them. he raised a ton of money. he has a financial base, an organizational base beyond texas that will be extremely valuable to him should he choose to run. he's a little bit of the flavor

of the month. there are a lot of months to go. if he's still the flavor of the month in january of 2020, we'll see. the biggest take away from that poll is this field is wide open. >> it's wide open, but you hear a lot of comparisons to president obama when people talk about beto. do you think he has a future? >> i think he does have a future. the question is whether it's in the united states senate. there's an opportunity against cornyn or whether it's going to be on the national stage. what i took from that poll which is really interesting is that those voters were also saying they want experience. they believe that they need an experienced candidate to recover from -- >> to put the country back together? let's face it. >> yeah. that is not entirely consistent with beto at the top of the ticket. >> i think it's telling at this point how much air time beto is getting on this network. how the progressive wing of the party, there are people talking about his voting record and voting with trump.

there's already a target on his back. people who have been looking at this race and sizing up 2020 for a long time now look up and they see this guy getting a lot of attention. he may well calculate that he has a better chance of getting elected president than senate from the state of texas. in the presidential races we do elect f elect phenoms. >> good stories. >> it's interesting joe biden is sitting there at 30 % based on anytime i.d., but from what i understand he was looking at deciding on whether to get into the race much later in 2019 and now because of this activity, i think he's going to have to make a decision soon. and that will be a big factor in this race whether he's in or he's out. >> matt, before donald trump came along, republicans used to nominate the person who was next. that's how we land on the dole, on bush 41, everyone until

trump. democrats seem to do that a little bit in 2016. what is sort of the standard operating procedure for how democrats will pick their nominee? >> mass chaos. and a big fight, and someone will emerge at the end. you often hear people say democrats like to fall in love. democrats fell in love with barack obama. it's sad to say, but democrats never did fall in love with hillary clinton. she was kind of next, but people liked her and supported her, a huge fan of hers, but they didn't fall in love with her the way they did with brauarack oba. people are looking for experience too, but democrats want to be excited about a candidate. that's why you see a lot of people -- beto o'roarke got people in texas excited. texas voters fell in love with him. that's why you see the energy behind him on the national stage. >> you have ever democrat and a lot of republicans dieing to vote for the alternative to donald trump. does that play into any calculation of maybe having the democrats not pick someone so far left? zpli think what's going to

happen -- it's interesting. talk about multicandidate fields. it's going to sort itself out. i think for democrats, that's a really great process to kind of weed through, have a contested primary and then everybody kind of falls in line. but i think there is going to be this push/pull of do we want to go left, or are we in the center? what we saw from this election and what we didn't see in the poll, all the women who have been talked about in this, the year of the woman, we know we need a woman, all of them at the bottom of the ladder. >> all right. we're going to sneak in our last break. we'll be right back. right back. but what i do count on... is staying happy and healthy. so, i add protein, vitamins and minerals to my diet with boost®. new boost® high protein nutritional drink now has 33% more high-quality protein, along with 26 essential vitamins and minerals your body needs. all with guaranteed great taste. the upside- i'm just getting started. boost® high protein be up for life look for savings on boost® in your sunday paper.

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my thanks to our guests who moderate and navigate through these wild times with us day after day. we're nothing without them. that does it for our hour. i'm nicole wallace. up next, mtp daily with chuck todd. >> if it's the holidays, it's a special year-end edition of "mtp daily". good evening. i'm chuck todd. as we close the book on 2018 or at least try to we're gearing up for a spectacle unlike any other in modern history. it's the trump reelection fight. as the end of the year mess in congress has shown us, 2019 is going to be wild. why? because it's also going to be a whole lot about 2020, especially for this