"the last word." "deadline: white house" starts right now. hi, everyone, it's 4:00 in new york. 1:00 p.m. here in san francisco. in a wide-ranging interview in "the new york times," donald trump soipds like a man who believes he's in the clear when it comes to the multiple investigations bearing down on him in his inner circle. the president telling "the times" the deputy attorney general rod rosenstein told his attorneys that when it comes to the mueller probe, quote, i'm not a subject, i'm not a target. but sounding a lot less certain about his legal status in the case of the southern district of new york, where he's been implicated as directing the hush money scheme. here's that exchange with the times.

>> and two doj insiders telling me today that the president's account about his status in the mueller probe would represent a departure from the normal flow of information about the special counsel investigation. one senior justice department official tells me that any information about the president's legal status would have been delivered to the president's legal team from the special counsel's office directly, not from the deputy attorney general. this official adds that the president's scenario most closely resembles the dramatized scene from the showtime series "billions" than anything that would have been conveyed by rosenstein. a former senior justice official

puts a finer point on the president's comments adding, quote, of course donald trump is a subject in the mueller investigation. mueller knows it and donald trump's lawyers know it too. there no way robert mueller would have pursued responses to questions, the source adds, for as many months as he did if the president were not a subject. he adds also in the cases out of the southern district of new york, donald trump is implicated in a crime. it may very well be a target of that probe and ultimately a criminal defendant. and with regard to conversations with rosenstein, the longtime political adviser roger stone appeared in court today. "the times" also asked stone about his interests with wikileaks and donald trump said he's innocent of wrongdoing. >> have you ever talked with mueller about wikileaks? >> no, i didn't. >> have you ever told him or other people to get in touch with him? >> never did. >> that's where we start today

with some of our favorite reporters and friends, "the new york times's" reporter matt apuzo is back, joyce vance is here and nbc news national political reporter heidi preside preside president billia and at the white house today, ken dill lanian. ken, let's start with you. i understand all of the flamboyant press conferences may be coming to an end. >> they may be coming to an end, nicolle. the judge made it clear she wants her parties to do they're talking in the court, not outside as roger stone had been doing. he said it was okay to talk about immigration or tom brady but not about the facts of this case. she said she's entertaining a gag order and she asks both sides to submit briefs. i guess the main news that came out of this today, nicolle, was that the mueller team talked about a trial date of october in the fall. she said she would prefer one in august but she would entertain

october. some are not objecting to that, going along with waiving the right to a speedy trial because of the massive amounts of evidence rob the mueller is essentially dumping on them. he said he sees terabytes of information, i believe, over the course of a year or more in subpoenas to telecom providers and to -- you know, banks and financial institutions. now he's turning that over to stone's team with hard drives, and they have to go through it all. he also sees some material in the search of stone's house and office. that they are still going through. they're doing a filter on that to make sure none of it is privileged. they also turned that over to stone's lawyers as well. it will take some time before this case goes to trial, th nicolle. >> ken, i would love your comments on reports by maggie peterson and baker being assured by rosenstein he was not the target of a subject or probe.

i'm told there was not a likely scenario that rosenstein would have not passed along that information. >> yeah, every conversation i have with knowledgeable people is consistent with that, nicolle. this is open to interpretation but i actually read it a little differently. i thought the president was correcting himself. he didn't mean to say he wasn't a subject, he meant to say target. and the idea he's not a target, a target has a very specific meaning. the fbi doesn't tend to use it. it's a prosecutor term and it generally means somebody who's gotten a target letter saying they're about to be indicted by the grand jury. we know the president cannot be indicted under current justice leadership doctrine so it's hard to believe he could be a target. it's obvious he's a subject, the special counsel has asked him a series of questions. that's the clearest evidence that he's a subject. and so i think you're absolutely right it does not make sense rod rosenstein would be communicating anything. that's now how this works.

james quarles in mueller's office has been coordinating with trump's lawyers. >> joyce, let me ask you to jump in. let me take a half step back and say for the record how weird it is we're covering a white house where the debate is what the definition of a target is and no one is suggesting the president would be a target except for the fact as a sitting president, we believe mueller is functioning under the belief and adherence to the doj guidelines you can't indict a sitting president. that said, talk about this comment he made to "the new york times" trying to suggest he's been assured by the deputy attorney general he's neither a subject nor target when all the evidence in front of us is to the contrary. >> i think ken is absolutely right about this. it's clear that to the extent that the president is not a target, it's only because he's protected by his status as a sitting president. no other possible rational for that. as far as being a subject of this investigation, he has been

a subject at least from the time of southern district of new york identified him as individual one, the person who was involved in violating campaign finance law. so the president seems to be a little off-kilter here, whether it's ken's explanation that he meant to say he wasn't a target but he was the subject or something else, just from a lawyer perspective, that makes no sense. because prosecutors don't talk to defendants. prosecutors talk to defendants or targets or subjects' lawyers. that's how our ethical rules are written. it's very tough to envision a scenario where rod rosenstein would have violated those rules and had the conversation directly with trump. >> this is your great colleagues, maggie and peter baker and the publisher, i believe, as well, inside the oval office. talk a little bit for our viewers about how this interview came to be and your thoughts to some of the many, many

interesting insights they got out of the president with that interview. >> so the white house reached out to "the new york times" publisher andy sulzberger and invited him for an off-the-record conversation as "the times" does. mr. sulzberger pushed back and said i would love to meet but let's do this, i would like to bring two of our white house reporters, want to do this in an on-the-record way and to the president's credit, white house's credit, they said sure. for "the new york times" as an institution for our publisher, it was obviously very important that he, once again, bring up this issue of when you say fake news, that emboldens totalitarianism regimes and dictators around the world to really crack down on free press and in many countries endangers the lives of reporters. that's what our publisher was really pushing. you saw that in both meetings they've had. and then obviously, maggie and

peter i think did a really good job covering a lot of territory and the president was in a very talkative mood. it went on for a long time and covered a lot of ground. to your point, nicolle, it's a little bit crazy that we're talking about the semantics between subject and target. >> right. >> the whole reason we're here, the whole reason there's a special counsel, is because it's the president of the united states and his activities are part of the federal investigation. call it a subject, call it a target, call it, you know, a chocolate sundae, it doesn't make a difference. the president's activities are being investigated, full stop, the end. >> full stop, the end. the president has to field questions where, as you said, it's clintonian in every rashd parsing the definition of the subject is. really his entire legal team has desended into this well, it's not that he didn't obstruct justice, it's that he can't obstruct justice. you have a little bit of

perspective on this. where do you think about where things stand right now in the context of the kinds of things he said to your colleagues yesterday? i have been assured i'm not a subject or a target. i didn't direct wikileaks. he's sort of been reduced down to denying things a lot. public facing evidence suggests may not end up being true. >> i mean, the fact that we are talking about a mueller report, and we don't know what that report would be, is an indication in the public contest, at least, we're not building towards an indictment. prosecutors don't issue report when's they're going to indict people. if we're talking about a target and prospect of someone getting indicted, whether it's the president or anybody else, that's where prosecutors tend to do their talking. the fact we're talking about a report means that as ken said, the president probably is not a target under doj guidelines. doj policy. but, you know, subject means that his activities are relevant to and included in a federal investigation. that's clearly what's going on.

the president we know going back to his meetings with the fbi director at the time james comey, he wants to get out from under this cloud and that's been sort of the theme the last two years. he wants to get out from under this cloud of the federal investigation and acting attorney generals to believe that, that is soon to come. we will know what the end game is pretty soon. >> your colleagues are also out on reportings with some of the infamiliar lus blocked calls from donald trump jr.'s phone on the day or during the trump tower meeting. tell us about that. >> the latest information is that -- well, this all comes back to the setting up of the infamous trump tower meeting and donald trump jr. had two calls that were blocked numbers and democrats on the hill and many people were speculating, well, maybe this is the secret conversation which don jr. tells his dad i'm meeting with the russians, i'm going to get dirt on hillary clinton and the information that has been collected by the hill suggests

that's not the case. there were two family friends. does that put the matter to rest as far as the hill goes? probably not. but at least for this one for right now it doesn't look like those phone calls are going to be the evidence that donald trump, president trump knew about the trump tower meeting. >> heidi president bella, jump in on being rod rosenstein, a frequent target of donald trump's ire on twitter. he said some of the nastiest things about rod rosenstein, called him deeply conflicted, attacked him i think after sessions and fbi leadership that's mostly been ousted, rosenstein is certainly a top five of the president's twitter attacks. now he's leaning on rosenstein as the person who assured him he's not a subject or target of the mueller probe. >> this does feel like a retread, ma that nicolle, of several months ago when he was also trying to pressure james comey to say he's not the subject of the fbi investigation.

and ultimately comey was pressured to hint to the public that wasn't the case and so the question is now whether rod rosenstein will similarly feel that pressure. he's really walked such a fine line here in protecting this investigation while also mull phiing this president. but if the president continues to make these comments and in fact if they are a misrepresentation of what hand and they make rod rosenstein look like he is employing protocol, the department of justice, maybe he will be pressured to come out and say something. in terms of the interview as well, i wanted to weigh in it appears the president was trying to take a couple specific things off the table in that interview. the first one was he would have been that mystery person who told roger stone to correspond with wikileaks. but i want to remind you we had a similar instance on air force

one, the president deknowed to the whole nation he was the one who directed the payments to cohen. i don't think we can take that off the table. the second thing is about rudy giuliani and rudy giuliani being wrong about the trump moscow tower. again, we are splitting hairs here, whether it was october, whether it was november. that he waited this long also to say that about rudy giuliani and to kind of just dismiss rudy giuliani. again, don't know we can take those comments off the table. >> no, but it's a great point. we're going to talk about that in depth in the next segment. all they do when it comes to the fact pattern, and i have to assume prosecutors are sort of building facts based on testimony and data. i don't really know what ter adata is but it sounds like a whole lot of stuff. all we hear out of giuliani or trump, heidi, is sort of fog. and so you're right, we did get out of this interview, again, great questions, great questioners and great fact checking in today's paper but from the president statements that really have no relation to

the things he said before about any of these topics. >> challenging his own officials to make a tough decision whether to go public and negate what he said, if in fact it's falgs. false. >> after the break, donald trump adds to the sea of conflicting accounts about just how long of a 2016 campaign he was pursuing a deal to build trump tower moscow. the president acknowledging those talks went on longer than originally stated. also ahead on the very same day that the president uses the term fake news to explain big policy differences with his intel chief, he tells the publisher of "the new york times" that he's, quote, entitled to a great story from that paper because he came from queens and became president of the united states. yes, you heard us correctly. and trump's pund id weighs in on his future opponent saying kamala harris has had the best launch and biggest crowds. let's see, aleve is proven better on pain

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it was a well-known project. it was during the early part of '16 and i guess even before that. it lasted a very short period of time. i didn't do the project. there would have been nothing wrong if i do it, but i didn't do it. it's my business. so he's lying very simply to get a reduced sentence, okay? >> donald trump called michael cohen a liar after cohen told prosecutors he was actively pursuing a business deal with russia on donald trump's behalf until june of 2016. but now in this brand-new interview with "the new york times," trump seemed to be corroborating most of cohen's version of that story. from "the times" -- asked when

in 2016 the last conversation he had about the project was he said, quote, i would sap it was early to middle of the year. now, i don't know that cohen didn't go a little bit longer than that. i don't think it would be much longer. he added, i was running for president. i was doing really well. the last thing i cared about was building a building. matt, joyce, ken and heidi are all back. joyce, this seems to be that sort of heartbeat of the mueller probe, was there a financial tie? was russia aware of things that we weren't aware of back here in terms of donald trump's pursuit of a real estate project there? and the president seemed in this interview to come a whole lot closer to corroborating michael cohen's timeline than his own original position, which the talks stopped in january of 2016. >> yeah, this is what you have to do as a defend or as a subject of an investigation, if

in facts emerge that are inconsistent with your story, you have to involve your story to line up with facts that you can't run away from. now there's a consistent set of facts. michael cohen has come forward and testified under oath or pleaded guilty under oath, is about to testify again. those facts are at odds with what the president said all along. it's interesting he's moving closer to cohen instead of holding his ground. what i think will be fascinating to see is what the president told bob mueller when he answered his written questions, which mueller obtained about this notion that cohen had lied to congress before that indictment dropped. and there may be an awful lot of water between what the president said then and what he's going to end up saying now. >> joyce, a lot of people believe rudy giuliani's much-talked about appearance on the sunday shows, i believe it was about a week ago, where he came out and said those conversations might have gone on until election day were based on

rudy giuliani's knowledge of just what you're talking about, the president's responses to mueller's question. so now you have the cohen testimony and former prosecutors described mueller's evidence to me as transcripts that would be in binders around a single event, such as talks about trump tower moscow. you have cohen's testimony. you now have the president saying it went on through the middle of the year and you have got rudy giuliani saying, and the answers cover all the way through election day. it seems like we have enough public spacing information to suggest they made the turn you just talked about, they have acknowledged that throughout election day, they were talking about negotiating, working on trump tower moscow. >> i think it's hard to deny that at this point, and the significance, of course, is what you talk about. the fact that russia is aware throughout the campaign that then candidate trump is lying to the american people, which makes him susceptible to blackmail. that's certainly one of the

questions mueller would have to explore. we have no idea what he's concluded in that regard but whether or not there's a crime that occurs here, this would have to be a powerful narrative to send up to the hill and if people on capitol hill are interested in doing their jobs and considering whether this president has engaged in high crimes and misdemeanors, leaving himself vulnerable to blackmail from a foreign power, has got to ripping those bells. >> i have to come back to the reporting that the fbi opened a counterintelligence investigation into the president and your reporting doesn't suggest the conversations about trump tower moscow had anything to do with that. but when knit together with all of the incidents that you guys reported, the president's statements about nato, the president's conduct around firing comey and after asking him to see to it to let flynn go, it certainly is consistent with the kind of narrative that would have given the fbi at the highest levels those concerns. >> yeah, that's right. the thing that is so interesting

today as you read the experts "the times" interview with the president, the president is right. so you can see why the president is saying, why are we talking about this again? the reason they're talking about it is he kept saying we weren't talking to the russians. no, nobody was talking to the russians. and it's just been like two years of no, actually he was talking to the russians and that guy was talking to the russians and we were trying to do a deal with trump tower and that continued longer than we said. yes, they didn't do the deal and it wouldn't have been illegal. why do they keep lying? i feel like that's the theme of the first two years of the trump administration. why did all of these people lie if there was nothing there? and there might not be anything there but, boy, everybody keeps lying. >> let me press you on that,

matt. i put that very question to christie, who's out with a book this week, he said people lie, even if they're bad bem or stupid people. i said stupid people can't get the same lie told by a group of at least half a dozen people about the same thing over and over again to everyone, including federal law enforcement. it's more than just coincidence they've all told the same lie, and they've lied -- they committed crimes in doing so, isn't it? >> about the same thing, right? about the same thing. no, i didn't talk about -- i didn't talk about russia or i didn't talk about -- they're lying about things that maybe wouldn't be illegal but it's this constant question of why do all of these people keep lying? i can hear the frustration right in the president's voice when he says, i didn't do the deal and it would have been legal for me to do it anyways. and then i say, well, why did everybody lie for so long about contacts with the russians if there was nothing there? and so, of course -- of course

people at the fbi had this same question. what is going on here? and, i mean, i don't -- nicolle, i don't know why they all lie. if christie says they're stupid or -- >> stupid or dumb. but they were talking about the national security adviser to the president, who's smart enough to know don't lie to the fbi. why do these people keep lying to the fbi? i don't know. >> notably christie said sessions was not bad, he was stupid, which was sort of remarkable. he lied about contacts with russians as well. ken dilanian, let me bring you back in on the topic of witness tampering. the president also defended everybody at least pretty straightforward attempt at witness tampering when he heckles michael cohen's father and tackles other witnesses in the fdny investigation. the president said to "the times," it's not witness tampering, it's not witness tampering at all. when asked the point, he said i

think people have the right to speak their mind. speak their mind, i heard it for some period of time, but many people have said it. i don't know who many people are but most people say targeting and threatening a witness in an investigation is straight up witness tampering. >> 100%, nicolle. in fact, we have to look no further than the paul manafort case. paul manafort was charged with witness tampering for the act of simply repeating a false story to a witness who was a part of the investigation. he didn't tell the person to lie. he didn't threaten them. and trump has done more than that. and trump is the president of the united states. so every -- every subtle threat that he makes, every insinuation has all that much more power and force. it stands to reason. we don't know but to the extent that there's a mueller report and if it becomes public, i can't imagine this pattern of behavior isn't going to be addressed, this pattern of denouncing the department of justice, of seeking to intimidate witnesses, seeking to

inflounce t influence the proceeding. i want to go back to what matt was saying about the lies around trump tower. this is one of those things regardless of why they lied, why he lied, it's a huge deal. this was a fraud on the american public. this was donald trump -- we know from the cohen plea documents -- was in communication with michael cohen, knowing michael cohen was talking to the putin government about a project that needed vladimir putin's approval. while the russians were attacking our country, attacking our election. and he lied about it. he said it wasn't happening. would he have been elected president if the voters knew that information? regardless of why it hand, it's a huge deal on its face i think, nicolle. >> ken, i know you're freezing, hate asking you one more question but i'm going to ask you one more question. you make the perfect point. we're having this narrow legal conversation. as someone who spent my career on the political side of this, it is a political scandal of epic proportions. if the voters had known he was trying to do a deal with russia while running for president, while russia was engaged in what

some former intels call a political 9/11, it might have been a very different outcome. >> exactly. and i think we can extrapolate that through the whole investigation. even if robert mueller does not bring a massive conspiracy indictment that proves donald trump sat down with some russians and orchestrated the whole thing, that doesn't mean there isn't an enormous, potentially impeachable scandal here, that these people took meetings with russian folks who are were connected to an intelligence operation to manipulate our election. whether they did it wittingly or unwittingly, they were warned by the fbi and took no action. they took the trump tower meeting. the fbi told them they should call the authorities if russians contacted them. they didn't do that. that is a scandal, nicolle. >> if it wasn't zero minus 400, would i keep you talking but i will let you go. matt apuzo, great to have you back. joyce, ken, thank you all. after the break, donald trump on fake news and what he considers a real loser. that's next.

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>> said the man who's told more

than 8,000 lies. it's hard to argue with that description he offers, although it loses most, if not all of its muster. when you consider who's saying it. that was trump talking about a free press. at one point according to "the times" insisting he didn't like the fact foreign leaders were increasingly using the term fake news to justify suppressing independent scrutiny. hard to argue with the sentiment until you consider what trump said earlier the very same afternoon. >> did you talk to the intelligence today about the diz pleasure they have -- >> i did, and they said they were totally misquoted and it was totally taken out of context. i suggest you call them. i they said it was fake news -- >> we ran what they said. >> excuse me, it didn't surprise me at all but we're here to talk right now about china. >> joining us for this conversation, my friday friend, reverend al sharp ton of "politicsnation" here on msnbc and president of the action naks

network. msnbc contributor michelle goldberg and here with us is san francisco republican strategist tim miller, and heidi przybilla is still here. reverend, let me start with you. how does he say something -- i think he know the answer, but he's the person who told more than 8,000 lies. he's the person that rose to prominence in the republican field by battering, by lying about the media day in and day out and sit there's in polite company with the publisher of "the new york times" saying what you do is a beautiful thing, it's delusional. >> it is delusional but it's typical trump because trump has the whole -- he has a long record, let me put it this way, of trying to say what he thinks people want to hear, dismiss the past and thinks that he can make you gullible in that moment. even if you're the publisher of "the new york times." he is sitting there as a guy who

built his whole campaign, fake news, me against them, and i'm with you guys against them. they ignore you. they marginalize you and then he sits there and says you're doing great. like when he went over to visit "the new york times" and less than 12 hours later castigating them. i think that now this is beginning to run thin because everybody is seeing that this guy will say anything to anyone. and i think people have gotten very, very hip to that as we would say. >> heidi przybyla, it strikes me that a man who gets in more lies than steps most days can sit there with a straight face and say these things about what he thinks is beautiful, maggie haberman putting it to him, what in your view is the free press? what does the free press do? in the same interview he makes it very clear what they do, they write one great story about a guy from queens who becomes president. he wants to see himself as he sees himself reflected on the pages of "the new york times."

>> to me that was actually one of the most telling parts of the interview, nicolle, because "the new york times" is his hometown paper they should essentially cut him a break and give him some positive press, that that reflected, despite his earlier comments, a fundamental misunderstanding of the what the role of the free press is, which is to hold power to account and he sits in the ultimate position of power. that it is to shine a light on cronyism and corruption. you didn't hear any words like that so it kind of took back what he had previously said. to your point about falsehoods, it is also potentially just a projection. like the ultimate projection. because we have fact checkers. it is empirically true that the president does not tell the truth. and that we are catching him at a rate of 50 to 60, whatever they are, untruths in a week or two. and so there's an amount of projection to this. but i also saw in that interview

a continued almost reliance as well on the media, showing that even as he with one hand taunts reporters like maggie and specifically maggie on twitter, that just as easily and just as quickly he's willing to sit down and go into a room and talk nicely to them and play nicely. but in a certain sense it's all kind of just a game for him. i think a lot of reporters who covered his campaign also felt like that too. i remember sitting in a greenroom early on in a campaign. i was covering the hillary clinton campaign and a very prominent d.c. reporter sitting next to me took a call and i was just shocked, nicolle, after covering campaigns, and you can appreciate this, he would call reporters on his cell phone and speak directly to them. that he was that married to the idea of creating his own image. >> and he does it as president. i'm told by a pretty reliable source, he's often the person leaking meetings that take place in the west wing and in the residence and whatnot.

michelle goldberg, i want to ask you about something else he says in "the times." he describes being the president a loser, i lost massive amounts of money doing this job. this is not great money. this is one of the great losers of all time. fortunately, i don't need money. this is one of the greatest losers of all times they will say somebody from some country stayed at a hotel but i lose. the numbers were incredible. this seems to me to blow up the idea he's abandoned the idea of himself as some sort of businessman and sees himself as the head of state. he sees himself at all hours of all days as trump the businessman, trump as head of trump.org who's sort of dabbling in politics as the president of the united states. >> if that was even a little true, it would be extremely easy for him to show that was the case. if he didn't have something shameful and secretive hidden in his tax returns, he would have released them like everybody else does. he would truly separate himself from the business. if he wasn't interested at sort

of profiting every moment off this opportunity he's been given, then he wouldn't turn his hotels and his golf club and his mi mira mar-a-lago into basically adjunct of his brand, his government. i think what's so maddening and driving us crazy for about two years is it's very unusual to have somebody lie to your face to this degree. the corruption is so open, it's so blatant, and he's just going to look you in the eye and tell you that it's not happening. >> yeah, i mean, this is where we are. this is the point at which we arrived where yesterday he basically was asking us to to the believe our eyes and ears, do not believe the live testimony of the heads of the intel agencies, in trying to chalk it up to fake news. it seems maybe he's been confronted with the feelings of all of the things we're talking about, the claims of fake news

and pattern of lies. the ceiling is about 37% where he stands. >> boy, i don't know if he's confronted with that. i think he still believes he can go into the campaign of 2020 and pull the wool over people's eyes. as was said earlier, this is a game for him. he know it's a game. that's what is so insidious about it. the lies he's telling to reporters, when he's off camera he's joking behind the scenes how it's working and fake news thing is working. this is also true to that point about him being the biggest loser. i wanted to chime in on that, how does he know that the trump organization -- this has been a big loser for them? he's supposed to have a firewall right now. i think the firewall is a complete joke. he does not get pressed on that and he gets wrapped around the axle in all of these lies and that's how it ties together. he's lying so much about the supposed firewall between the trump organization and his presidency, he doesn't even know anymore what he said, what this

fair firecall is. when it initially started he supposedly had an ethics watchdog he was going to hire. i think if he knows they're losing money, that actually makes the risk higher for the fact there are conflicts because he wants people to do to his hotels. >> he also lets it slip he knows foreign leaders are staying in his hotels. so someone's telling him, whoever it is, whatever foernl government, there's been reporting at "the times" and post the saudis bought blocks of rooms. >> the d.c. hotel, from what i heard, is doing exceptionally well. so if the trump brand -- >> if you're saying there, you can see why. >> the racism and trump brand are hurting trump's brand elsewhere, he needs to make up for it in places like mar-a-lago and d.c. and the cost of the hotel room is huge. maybe there's not a direct quid pro quo here but if you can just butter him up and say i know

you're losing money so we will buy these huge blocks of room at the trump hotel when you're in a foreign country, that's a huge conflict. remember the stink made over the clinton foundation while she was secretary of state. that was a legitimate conflict of interest but at least that money was going to poor kids. >> haiti, right? >> this money is going in his pockets. >> unbelievable point. when we come back, as another candidate jumps into the democratic presidential primary, donald trump sizes up his competition. woman 1: i had no symptoms of hepatitis c.

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new york times" saying, quote, i would say the best opening so far would become harris, but he pronounced her name ka-meal-a. he added, quote, a better crowd, better crowd, better enthusiasm. that was referring to her rally last weekend where more than 20,000 people showed up. trump continued, quote, some of the others were very flat. he added, quote, i do think elizabeth warren's been hurt very badly with the pocahontas trap. i may be wrong but i think that was a big part of her credibility and now all of a sudden it's gone. michelle, tim and heidi are still here. rev, take on sort of the twin political headlines. number one, donald trump's playing closer attention to the democratic primary than the country's national security, it would appear. and cory booker jumping in the race today. >> i think the first thing you have to come to terms with is the president sees everything as theater, an opening act. somebody going flat.

i mean, he's not talking as an incumbent president that is dealing with what they represent policy wise, how they oppose him. it's all the act, the crowd. i talked to kamala harris today, that evening, and i told her you probably had more people at your announcement than he had at his inauguration. that would freak him out if i told him that. that's how he thinks. i think cory booker entering the race at the same time shows the diversity in the democratic contenders. and that's a good thing. that's what people like me have fought for all of our lives. when you have the mayor of south bend, who's openly day, you have two blacks, you have three or four women. if you look at the lineup in the democratic party, it looks like america as opposed to donald trump and just looking at him, it's the new america against the old america. and i just hope that they debate on policy, don't act like old party bosses and try to cut each other down, and run on new

american visions, and really contrast with trump in terms of their dignity and their policy. >> michelle, let me show you a little bit of cory booker on "the view" earlier today. we don't have -- >> so you're very good friends with kamala harris and also kirsten gillibrand, right, who also has thrown their hat into the ring. >> yes. >> how is cory booker different from those two people? >> first of all, they are friends, they're sisters. there will be sibling rivalry but at the end of the day, we're family. >> so michelle, i like this as a message. they're sisters. i agree with what the rev said. i've said this, i think there are a lot of people who feel so estranged from the republican party who are watching eagerly to see how the democratic primary turns out. but is it sustainable? is it sustainable for them to stay knitted together as the primary intensifies?

>> i hope so. i think kristen gillibrand returned the favor saying he's my good friend, i wish him good luck, although not good. i don't know how sustainable it is. although not that good, i don't know how sustainable it is. i think there is so much desire in the democratic party for unity that anyone that came out and tartstarted cutting down th rivals would pay a price. >> we should not be advising democrats on who to pick, but joe biden represents the gravest threat to cutting into the trump base. no one is talking about biden these days. >> that has been the con jengs that wisdom until the field started to get flooded. i will say that a lot of the senators while they're different

in terms of their profiles, they're all senators, progressive progressives, from the coast, and for medicare for all, and that is sharred brown he comes from a state in hawaii that trump won by like eight percentage points. he is using a catch phrase that trump is a fake. i think that is why we're not talking so much about biden any more. the field is getting flooded and there are other people that can step into that space. >> i'm going to who can beat dru donald trump on the other side of the break. ld trump on the ote of the break [cell phone rings] where are you? well the squirrels are back in the attic. mom? your dad won't call an exterminator... can i call you back, mom?

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>> if he does not, should he be challenged in a republican primary? >> i think he will be. and i think it doesn't matter. >> what do you mean? >> he is going to lose if he doesn't. >> if he keeps going on the path he's on now. >> want a primary challenger. >> no, i want him to build the wall, anchor babies, deport dreamers. >> that is ann coulter talking about what is going to be for -- >> i was with her until the deporting dreamers stuff, i was like ann is making sense here

for a second. i agree with her on the primary. if someone wanted to primary him on the issue that he has not lived up to his promises on immigration and border security, that's fair. >> on the right? >> or incompetence. i think any of the 2016 nominees could have gotten more money for border security so far. i think there should be a primary, i think there is underappreciated for how important it is to get somebody in, you don't know what will happen where the economy. if you're the on one on the field when things start to collapse? >> who is it? >> hogan makes a lot of sense, i think shultz would be a great

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my thanks to my guests and all of you for watching, that does it for our hour, i'm nicole wallace, "mtp daily" starts now. >> if it is friday, the president may need a reality check. good evening, i'm chuck todd here in washington. just like groundhog day every day these days begins the say way in washington with us asking wrornt the president's words matter. if they do he may have found the solution to his border