accountabili accountability. that does it for me. thank you for watching, i will be back and see you here tomorrow at 5:00 p.m. eastern for another new live edition of politics nation. up next, deadline white house with mick nicole wallace. hi, everyone, it is 4:00 in new york, 1:00 p.m. in san francisco. dru donald trump sounds like a man who sounds like she in the clear when it comes to the investigationing bearing down on him and his inner circle. his form eer deputy attorney general said i'm not a subject, i'm not a target, but sounding less certain about his legal status out of the southern districts of new york where he

has been accused of directing a scheme. >> has rod rosenstein given you any sense over the course of the last year whether you have any exposure, either in -- there's any concerns or whether -- >> he told the target rs that i'm not a target. >> the s.d.n.y. investigation, there is mueller and cohen. >> that i don't know about it. >> ron never said anything to you about whether or not you are a target at all for what they're looking for on cohen. >> no, i didn't, we didn't discuss it. >> two insiders telling me today that the president's account his status in the mueller probe is a departure from the flow of information about the specific investigation. one senior department official says any information would have been delivered to the

president's legal team, not from the deputy attorney general. this official adds that the president's scenario more closely resembles a scene from "billions" than anything conveyed by rosenstein. they also added "of course donald trump is a subject in the mueller investigation. mueller knows it and donald trump's lawyers know it, too. there is no way robert mueller would have pursued answers to questions for as many months as he did if the president was not a subject." he adds also that donald trump is implicated in a crime and may be a target of that probe and ultimately a criminal defendant. doubts about it come as roger stone appeared in court today. the times also asked trump about stone and his communications with wikileaks. trump insisting that he is

innocent of any wrong doing. >> did you talk to him about wikileaks? >> no. no i didn't. >> did you tell him or other people to get in touch with them? >> never did. >> that is where we start today with some of our faye rite reporters and friends. former u.s. attorney joyce vance is here, and in washington where roger stone appeared today, ken dilanian. tell us what happened today. i understand all of the flamboyant press appearances that are entaning but they may be coming to an end. >> that's right the judge made it pretty clear she wants the parties to do their talking in the court, not outside. she said it was okay to talk about immigration or tom brady,

but not the facts of the case. she asked both sides so submit briefs. the main news is that they talked about a trail date in october. the judge said she preferred august. they have gone along with waiving his right to a speedy trial because of a massive amount of evidence being dumped on him. they said there is terabytes of evidence. now he is turning that over to stone's team with harddrives and they have to go through it all. he also sees material in a serge. that they're still going through. they also turned that over to stone's lawyers as well.

>> ken, we have heard them talking about being reassured that he was not a subject or a target in the mueller probe. i'm told by two insiders that there is not a likely scenario where he would have passed along that conversation. >> yeah, this is open to interpretation, but i read it difficultly. i thought the president was correcting himself. he didn't mean to say they told him he wasn't a subject, he meant to say target. and the idea that he is not a target, a target has a very specific meeting, the fbi doesn't tend to use it. it is usually someone that got a target letter. we know the president can't be indicted so it is hard to imagine that he could be a target, but it doesn't mean she not a subject, he is, they have

asked him a series of question that's is clear evidence that she a subject, and also i think you're right that it doesn't make sense that rod rosenstein would be communicating anything. they have a person in the office that has been coordinating with trump's lawyers. >> joyce, let me ask you to jump in and take a half step back and say for the record how weird it is that we're covering a white house where the debate is what the definition of a towardwhat target is. that said, talk about this comment that he made to the "new york times" trying to suggest that he has been assured by the deputy attorney general that he is not a suggebject or a target. >> i think you're right about

this. it is clear that to the extent is that he is only protected as his status as a sitting president. no other possible rationale for that. for being a subject of the investigation, he has been a subject from the time that the southern district of new york identified him as individual one. so the president seems to be a little off kilter here. if it is ken's explanation that he misspoke, but just a lawyer perspective it makes to sense. prosecutors don't talk to defenders. they talk to defendants, targets, or subjects or lawyers. that's how our rules are written. . he violated those rules and they have the conversation directly with trump. >> matt, these are your great

colleagues, and the publisher, i believe as well, in the oval office. talk about how that came to be and your thoughts about some of the many, many interesting insights they got out of the president in that interview. >> so the white house reached out to the "new york times" publisher. it was an off the record conversation. he said i would love to meet, do this as an interview. i want to do this in an on the record way, and to the president's credit and the white house's credit they said sure. for the publisher, it was important that he, once again, brought up the issue of when you say fake news, that emboldens

regimes and it could endanger the lives of reporters. you saw that in both meetings they had, and maggie and epeter i think it covered a lot of ground. to your point it is a little crazy that we're talking about the semantics between subject and target. the whole reason that we're here, right? that there is a special council is because it is the president of the united states and his activities are part of an investigation. the president's activities and his campaign's activities are being investigated. >> and the president having to field questions, doing just what

you said, parsing with the definition of a subject. really his entire legal team has descended into this. it's not that he didn't obstruct justice, it's that he can't obstruct justice. you a little perspective on this. what do you think about where things stand in the context of where his colleagues stand. he sort of has been reduced down to denying things that a lot of the public facing evidence. it is an end indication that we're not billing towards an indictment, they don't issue reports when they're going to indictment people. so if we're talking about a target, or the prospect of someone getting indicted, that is where prosecutors tend to do

their talking. the fact that we're talking about a indictment. they including a federal investigation. that is clearly what is going on. the president knows going back to his meetings with the director, at the time, james comey, it has been the theme of the last year. he wants to get out from under the cloud and the acting attorney general believe that this is soon to come. >> math, your colleagues are also out with reporting on infamous blocked calls from donald trump junior's phone during the tower meeting. >> it all comes back to the setting up of the infamous trump tower meeting, donald trump j

junior had two call that's were blocked call numbers, they think maybe this is the secret conversation that he tells his dad i'm meeting with the russians, i'm getting dirt on hillary clinton, and the information on the hill suggests that was not the case. does that put the matter to rest as far as the hill goes? probably not, but at least for this one right now, it doesn't look like they will be the evidence that president trump knew about the trump tower meeting. >> heidi, jump in on the bizarre existence of being rod rosenstein. he has attacked him. i think after sessions and after the fbi leadership that is mostly ousted, she a the is a t

in the twitter attacks. >> this does feel like a retread of several months ago when he tried to say he was not the subject of the fbi investigation, and ultimately comey was pressured to say that was the case. and the question now is will he feel that pressure. he has walked such a fine line here in protecting this investigation, but if the president continues to make these comments, or if they are a misrepresentation of what happens, and makes it look like she bl he is blowing protocol, he may be pressured to say something. she trying to take a few things

off of the table in that interview. he would have been that mystery person that told roger stone to correspo correspond. but i want to remind everyone that we had a similar instance to this. the president denied that he directed payments to cohen. i don't think that we can take that off of the table. the sect thing is about rudy giuliani and how he was wrong about the trump and moscow tower. we are splitting harts about october or november, but he waited this long also to say that about rudy giuliani and to dismiss him again. don't know if we can take those comments off of the table. >> that is a great point, all they do when it comes to the fact pattern, and i have to assume that prosecutors are building facts based on

testimony and data, but all we hear from giuliani or trump is fog and so you're right, we got out of this interview and again, great questions and questioners, and fact checking but from the president, statements that really have no relation to the things he said before about any of these topics. >> and challenging his own officials about a tough decision of whether or not to go public or negate what was said. >> after the break, donald trump adds to the sea of conflicting accounts about how long into the campaign he was pursuing a deal for trump tower moscow. also ahead, the president uses the term fake news to explain big policy differences, he tells a publisher that he was entitled to a great story from that paper

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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 say 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 people 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 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 apuzzo, 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 displeasure 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 network. msnbc contributor michelle goldberg and here with us is san francisco republican strategist tim miller, and heidi przybyla 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 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 firewall 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.

the most diverse field of presidential candidates made another first today. new jersey senator cory booker announced he's running, giving americans a choice between at least two african-american candidates for the highest office in the land. trump sized up the competition in the interview we've been talking about all hour with "the 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. eventually they will have to make a case why it should be them and not the other candidates. but i also think there's so much desire in the democratic party for unity that anybody who

really came out and started cutting down their rivals would end up paying a price. heidi przybyla, chris christie, and americans know nothing, we should not advise democrats how democrats how to pick. >> chris christie made a point about how biden is the one that republicans the gravest threat to cutting into that part of trump base that really flipped, people who voted for bill clinton, no one is talking about biden these days. >> until the field started to get flood. a lot of the senators, while they're different in terms of women and african-american, they're all casting themselves at provisiongressives, but there guy who's a bit different and i would put him as potentially the biggest threat to joe biden, and

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. if he does not, should he be challenged in a republican primary? >> i think he will be. actually, i think it doesn't matter. >> what do you mean it doesn't matter? >> he's going to lose if he doesn't. if he keeps going on the path he's on now. >> a republican party challenger? >> i want him to build the wall, anchor babies, deport dreamers. >> that's ann coulter talking about what's going to be for donald trump. >> i was with her until the deporting dreamers stuff. i do agree with her on the primary. honestly if someone wanted to primary him on the issue of the fact that he still nhasn't live his promise, an incompetent issue. any of the the other 16 gnomes

would have gotten more money for border security than he has. >> he's a horrible negotiator. >> and he's radicalized the left against him. i think there should be a primary. i just it's underappreciated how big of an upside there is from a practical standpoint you get this massive platform where you can shape what the republican party after trump looks like. you don't know what's going to happen with the economy with mueller, with sdny. if you're the only one in the field -- >> who is it? >> i think that hogan is obviously making some noise. i think he'd be great. >> should schultz run? >> why not take a chance? i think it would make more chance for schultz to run as a republican. he's been making a good case against the left going extreme. you can do that in a republican primary >> we're going to sneak in our last break. we'll be right back. ht back. i'm really into this car,

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thank you to all of you for watching. that does it for our hour. i'll see you monday for deadline white house at 4:00 p.m. >> i've the set the table. i've set the stage for doing what i'm going to do. that's president trump. this is "hardball." ♪ >> good evening. i'm chris matthews in washington. we've got a lot coming up including donald trump's brazen new comments about his plans for a border wall. a shocking scandal in virginia including the governor of the state in a racist photo. and a significant break in democrats' efforts to obtain donald trump's tax returns. we begin with a showdown over the bo