of government. >> so you period it hear first, responding to the accusation of optimism. that's why you watch. my thanks to you all. that does it for our hour and our week. thank you so much for watching. i'm nicolle wallace. "mtp daily" starts right now. happy friday. if it is -- if the week ever ends. i was just discussing that. it is a day of the week. >> it is like a 13 day week. i don't know. >> it is. and probably the humpday for that horrible week anyway. thanks. are we hearing -- what are we appearing, is that impeachment? maybe not. ♪ good evening. i'm chuck todd here in washington. welcome to "mtp daily." buckle, there will be more hearings.

michael cohen is coming back next week and the russian liaison is coming to town the week after that. and the trump organization cfo will be called to testify. ivanka and don jr. could also be called to testify. and that is just the tip of the iceberg of what democrats have planned after cohen's bombshell testimony all this week. there will be hearings. but don't call them impeachment hearings. after michael cohen revealed hard evidence, nancy pelosi still views impeachment with a leery eye. she said i'm not going into that. she called it a divisive process and she also said we need more facts first. she said we need to see bob mueller's report. people use a lot of coded language in washington. so i'll help you out here. when democrats say they are, quote, waiting on mueller's report unquote, that is code for we are waiting for republican buy-in on impeachment. the constitution gives pelosi

and democrats enormous power to begin proceeding. how you to they view that power in this moment? do they see it as a weapon that must be used, that the constitution compels them to use in a case like this even if it doesn't work? or do they view it as a weapon that cannot be used unless it is certain to work? right now the evidence would seem to suggest that democrats think it is the latter, not the former. and that has major implications. our preliminary reporter from ax ignatius, and michael steele. you know, alexi, it is interesting that there are going to be a whole bunch of hearings. but the democrats don't want to call them impeachment hearings because even though they are the fact finding event to see if they can find more facts to convince republicans that they should pursue this. >> and i think that there are a couple things on this.

you mentioned all these hearings that we are preparing for that are spanning to my knowledge six different committees. it is sort of like they are approaching it as 1,000 different cuts against president trump rather than taking him down or trying to in one fell swoop which would be moving forward on impeachment. the other thing though is when i talk to democrats on the hill and their aides and members, they have never really been too hot on impeachment. and i asked can you point me to a time when impeachment seemed like the hot thing to do on the hill. after firing doecomey? maybe but not really. and i think what they are keenly aware of, even if it moves forward in the house, the senate won't move forward on it at all. there is no republican buy-into my knowledge and that is certainly not going to change. jerry that hadlaerry nadler has touch it unless there is republican backing. and one thing immediately clear from cohen's testimony is that republicans are standing by trump and they won't move forward on impeachment regardless. >> you've been down this road in

an opposite direction. >> the way i think about it is an unsuccessful attempt to remove a president is very unpopular. a successful attempt pays political dividends. so if you are nancy pelosi, you never say impeachment but you continue to hold hearings that exposes bad actions and one of two things happens. either you shame republicans at some point or some number of them into supporting your efforts to remove the president from office, or if you are going after his family and his money, the president ultimately resigns. either way, you achieve your effort -- you achieve your goal. and that is the only way that you can achieve that goal. >> david ignatius, it was interesting, one of the reasons that i and others thought that bill clinton didn't get impeached is because -- why the voters weren't there on it even if they felt like he committed a crime, the voters knew that bill clinton was a philanderer in 1992. that was a deal they made.

they decided okay, that comes with the package. with donald trump, you have russia over here, the voters didn't make a deal to do russia. but on his business dealings, they made that deal. they knew -- that wasn't a secret. that may be why democrats realize that no matter how sleazy it looks, voters made the deal. >> remember bill clinton was impeached, he wasn't convicted. but i think you're right, when people went to the polls, they knew the basics about donald trump. they knew this was a person who had been on the edge in his business career, whose horl mo were questionable to put it mildly. that is the package people voted for. what i think we saw this week is that even if you thought she knew everything about donald trump, there are still surprises. and those revelations, those new facts create momentum. i felt that the whole process

was speeding up as cohen spoke, creating facts the democrats would have to deal with. i think you're right that nancy pelosi and the leadership doesn't want to go down the impeachment road, doesn't want to talk about it now, but there is a momentum. as these investigations continue more and more and more and when the mueller report comes up, the issue will be obstruction, not donald trump's business. >> which is not insignificant. let me add in peter baker here. and it is interesting while republicans are publicly very supportive of the president, these blind quotes earlier this week about why didn't they defend the president, why did they just attack cohen, and there was some blind quotes. other republicans privately agreed that they tired of the attacks on cohen, most however mused that jordan couldn't have done any better in the position in the minority and the fact that rptsz were defending trump. from one senior house leadership aide who requested anonymity,

truthfully it is tough to ignore some of the gross and moral behavior by the president. the reason there was no defense is because there is no defense. so peter baker, privately republicans on capitol hill are uncomfortable. but not publicly. >> that is exactly right. and that is why, you know, i think this discussion is correct that right now there is not a sign that impeachment would succeed in the senate. there would be a conviction after a trial because those republicans have not moved publicly. you would have to move 20 republican senators in order to have possibility of getting a two-thirds vote to convict. the question is whether or not robert mueller comes up with something that changes that dynamic, that shock tshocks the enough to make the elective representatives change. hard to see what that might be because people already know a lot about this president and railroaded fact already factored it into the equation and decided this is

enmiss goie ene enemies going after him. republicans would be perfectly happy to throw him under the bus, but it is not in their interests right now. >> michael steele is shaking his head. go. >> i think that republicans are increasingly uncomfortable with defending the president, they are fine going after the clintons and michael cohen, but a little less comfort defending him. and speaking of gross and immoral behavior by a president, how much better the democratic party would have been immediately and now if bill clinton had resigned. if bill clinton resigns in 1998, al gore wins the 2000 presidential election and you don't have this taint of hypocrisy around democrats. >> and that this gets to the other issue. political versus the konz tugs constitutional. we get the political argument. but what is the unintesbeninten

consequence of creating a new standard of what is okay for a president? >> i think that is the million dollar question and we've had a lot of conversations in donald trump's presidency about what sorts of precedents are being set, whether by mhimself or by congress members. that goes for democrats too and whether or not they move forward on again what is something that lot of people i think think would be the natural next step. and they talk a lot about in culture of corruption. right? they tow the line of holding this president accountccountabl they just hold hearings and they won't move forward. >> which is why the political and constitutional merge. how can you not do it. >> and you think this seems to be the struggle that institutionalists are having. >> the founders said pretty directly that the remedy for misdeeds by a president is political. it would be our political system that would judge this, not the

courts. sos at evidence grows of really gross i want to say concerns, issues, the process that is there, that has to be engaged, is this impeachment one. and if you walk away from it because it is politically difficult, your point is right, that institutionally in terms of the constitution's prescription, you are walking away from the system that was set forth. >> what is interesting here peter baker, i want to play a few clips from members of congress, they're sort of almost daring democrats to go down the impeachment road. take a listen. >> now clinton loyalists, clinton operative lanny davis has persuaded the chairman of the oversight committee to give a convicted felon a forum to tell stories and lie about the president of the united states

so they can all start their impeachment process. >> this is an attempt to injure our president, allege some sort of soft cornerstone for future impeachment proceedings. >> if it was not already obvious, there are might bes he members here with the singular goal in congress to impeach president trump.bes members here with the singular goal in congress to impeach president trump. >> so tts a weiit is a weird me employ because i don't think that the president's base minds talking about it. >> on the campaign trail, he would bring it up at pain rcamp rallies. how can they impeach me for doing a great job. the fact that his enemies are coming after him is a way of rallying the base. they are coming after me because they are the enemies of you as well. it is a way of selling, you know, his message in effect to the people who are his core supporters. the question is whether that ever changes. and i think it is a different

environment than it was 20 years ago with the clinton impeachment. clinton impeachment as you said never fully succeeded because he had strong popularity ratings throughout. 60% and above. the public didn't want to do it. even though many democrats agreed that he had conducted a lot of wrongdoing and perhaps even violated the law. so the difference is that president trump's numbers are not anywhere near as high. the difference is though that they are strong monday republicans. and unless you get a bipartisan buy-in, impeachment doesn't work. >> the mueller report today, donald trump jr., devin nunes did something that i'm wondering if donald trump actually wants to happen, they called for the full release of the mueller report. take a listen. >> i've been saying it for a while. just put it all out there. put it all out there. how about don't redact anything. >> i want everything in a mueller did made public. i want everything e-mail, i want everything that everybody that they they did to be made public.

>> do you think the president wants that? >> what i hear reading between the lines is the republicans increasingly think that mueller does not have a conspiracy on collusion between the trump campaign and russia. and so put it all out because it will say in the end that he was not able to make that case. >> and how many years have they had practicing how to spin this thing before you've even seen a report. >> there will be stuff that feeds into the counter narrative, the idea that the deep state -- there will be law enforcement and intelligence agency actions that can be spun to favor that counter narrative that this was a deep state conspiracy, clinton supporters, to destroy the presidency of donald trump. >> peter baker, should we take donald trump jr. e's line to me that there are all these rumors, is he or not going to be indicted, i get he is feeling confident. >> it does suggest that. but i do think that michael is

right, a lot of this is about turning the finger against the investigators. again like bill clinton did. ken starr was the issue not bill clinton that he wanted americans to focus on. just as today donald trump and donald trump jr. want to focus on the conduct of the fbi and robert mueller rather than the president. as you pointed out, we didn't hear a lot of defense of the president and the things that he was accused of on wednesday. >> talk about base pressure though. john boehner and then paul ryan did what they could to keep the benghazi conspiracy theorists from like hijacking all these committees. and then they tried do it piece meal and it still didn't satisfy the base and finally they threw up their hands and tried this -- so do you think as much as boehner didn't want it, you had to appease -- will pelosi be in that position? >> yes. first new information came to light that led to the committee.

and that select committee almost accidentally discovered hillary clinton's home e-mail server which led to a whole other set of issues. but yes, i do think that nancy pelosi because the energy in the democratic party is the white hot hatred of their base against president trump. i think because of the issues we were talking about earlier, if you get up and give a speech and say donald trump is the worst president in american history and someone says why don't you impeach him, what do you reply. >> wildest of wild cards. and that is the fact that nixon and clinton had impeachment issues in their second terms. there was no other avenue. this is first term and there is another avenue. and at some point democrats will say why don't re let twe let th voters decide. >> heading in 2020, they could say let the voters impeachment by replacing him with a democratic president. not guaranteed to work, but the other thing is what if he desires he didn't want to run for re-election. i have a hard time personally seeing that right now.

that is a low chance. >> that is my favorite bad theory. people say he will walk away and i'm like really? maybe he does. >> very low chance. >> i think it is pretty close. peter baker, thank you sir. alexi, michael, you guys stick around. up next, what should keep the president up at night? the prosecutors in mueller's office or prosecutors in new york city. legal perils are piling up. and two more insiders were apparently writing down what they saw was troubling behavior inside the west wing. who will get those notes and memos. my moderate to severe crohn's disease. then i realized something was missing... me. my symptoms were keeping me from being there. so, i talked to my doctor and learned humira is for people who still have symptoms of crohn's disease after trying other medications. and the majority of people on humira saw significant symptom relief and many achieved remission

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i found a companyeans to who believes in me.rt. they look out for me. and they help me grow my career. at comcast it's my job to constantly monitor our network, prevent problems, and to help provide the most reliable service possible. my name is tanya, i work at the network operations center for comcast. we're working to make things simple, easy and awesome. welcome back. michael cohen's testimony this week gave congressional investigators plernts of le s po chase on. everything ranging from possible conspiracy and insurance fraud to back fraud and tax evasion. bloomberg's timothy o'brien told

axios the trump organization has never had a proctology exam like it is about to get and as uncomfortable as that may sound, here is another probing question. which is the scarier scenario for the president and his orbit. that congress will chase these leads or that the folks at the southern district of new york already have. joining me now is former federal prosecutor and nbc news legal analyst glenn kirshner. you've seen cohen, what should the president fear more? >> you know, i don't know that we can really parcel out the danger to the president. i do think that the southern district of new york is probably evaluating whether they may be dealing with a potential rye compa rico case, contact tear corrupt

organizations. in the early 2000 ths, i ws, i g rico cases and we were going after big gang activity in the city, gun rubbinning, murder, d running. and one of the challenges is privacying a hi proving a hierarchy, an actual organization. and if ever we had a hiker arrestky in the trump organization, we have it because you have one person who by all 9:s is at the top and nothing happens without his say so. >> and let me ask you. so michael cohen pled guilty to this campaign finance violation. allen weisselberg didn't have to because he had immunity and david pecker did not have to because i guess he had limited protection here. so that leaves the only other participant being the president. is is it possible s sdchlt ny h -- sdny has a sealed in-dilt, are they waiting to get approval the attorney general? that is a missing piece here.

if you're going to indict cohen, how do you not indict the other party involved. >> one of the big questions is can a sitting president be indicted. and i think i'm in the same camp with professior tribe in believing that sitting president can be indicted. there is no constitutional prohibition, there prohibition. there is a policy memo saying we don't think it is a good idea. but i'm positive iltedtted a hypothetical. if a corrupt president were to bribe 34 senators such that even if he was impeached by the house he could never be convicted and removed by the senate because they couldn't reach the rec we si requisite two-thirds, and then the memo saying you can't indict a sitting president says tough luck america, nothing you can do about it. i think in this day and age when we're living with some of what we see coming out of this

administration, that policy memo has to be revisited. so whether the southern district will try to go there or will try to perhaps get the approval of barr the attorney general to indict a president and not unseal that indictment until after he leaves office is anybody's guess. >> i was going to it say, you how often do you -- how often do you seal or delay indictments? >> we do it a lot and we do it -- >> under what circumstances. >> where there is an ongoing gang investigation for example and we are asking the grand jury periodically to return sealed indictments. but we still have one or more bigger fish that we need to investigate before we're prepared to take the whole thing down. under those circumstances, it is not at all unusual to return -- to seal indictments and then unseal them and do a coordinated takedown. that could be going on here. >> let's talk about another

aspect that may happen. right now it looks like the southern district of new york is running rough shot over the trump organization. there is a new boss that the sdny has to deal with and that is bill barr. if sdny said we want to do a sealed indictment, can barr say nope? >> listen, everybody calls the southern district of new york the sovereign district of new york because they beat their chest, they are very strong, they are very aggressive. appropriately so. >> and they are very good. >> the dooed.c. u.s. attorney's was very good too. but they are still under the leadership of bill barbarr. so as independent as they are, they still have to get approval for any sort of high profile decision with respect to a president, an administration official. so they are not free of oversight from bill barr. >> i want to go back to allen weisselberg because he will be coming to congress.

he immunity was limited. what does that mean? is he out of the woods? but if he is still working for trump, it means he hasn't turned on him. what makes his different than michael cohen's? >> he is still deeply in the woods as far as i can tell. we've heard the report williing he has limited immunity for purposes of talking about the campaign finance violation piece. but he will testify before congress. and i'm quite smur that congress is not going to limit its questions to just in a -- fence. so weisselberg will have a decision to make. do i tell them everything or do i invoke the fifth amendment right against slfrelf-incriminan and force the congress and southern district of new york prosecutors to decide between granting him full immunity so he can testify about everything or are there is another way that we can extinguish his right, charge him, try him and then once we

prosecute him, his fifth amendment right to self-incrimination will no longer be in play. >> given how important michael cohen testified that allen weisselberg was, if you were a prosecutor at this point and he seems -- forget michael cohen, if you are truly -- if you believe you are dealing with a rico case, is there anybody that is the keys to the kingdom more than him? >> it is almost cliché that the bookkeeper is the person that the government turns to to help bring town bring down a criminal organization. it all involves a balancing of sort of the public need. and how much do we need to protect the public against a potential criminal. i allen weisselberg may be a financial criminal but i don't think that he is out on fifth avenue shooting people. so if it were me, now, i don't know all the facts, but i would seriously consider giving weisselberg complete immunity, get everything we know about the

criminal shenanigans of the trump organization, and then the only way that he gets in trouble is if he lies. so it gives him every incentive to tell the complete truth. >> is that flip? >> giving somebody immunity is not technically a flip. it is a way to pressure the truth out of him. >> fascinating. good to see you, sir. thanks for coming in. coming up, top white house officials reportedly documented their concerns about specific orders that they were given by the president. if congress wants to follow that paper trail, how concerned should the president be on this score? t look? that life of the party look. walk it off look. one more mile look. reply all look. own your look with fewer lines. there's only one botox® cosmetic. it's the only one fda approved to temporarily make frown lines, crow's feet and forehead lines look better. the effects of botox® cosmetic may spread hours to weeks after injection,

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welcome back. lordy, there are memos. perhaps the most fascinating detail in the story that president trump demand jared kushner be given top secret clearance despite various concerns is this, the white house chief of staff at the time john f. kelly wrote a contemporaneous internal memo

about how he had been ordered to give mr. kushner the top secret clearance."times" and "post" both report that kelly documented the incident because of how troubled he was. and that the "times" reports that don mcgahn, white house counsel at the time, also wrote a memo about this incident. and the existence of those memos has apparently already got congress' attention. today the house oversight committee chairman sent a letter demanding documents related to the committee's ongoing investigation into white house securities clearances. obviously be secured and turned over. kimmi consuming says it would be the last time the request is voluntary. chief counsel of the house intel committee, knows a lot about how the disputes work and also about the security clearances. all right. just like your former boss, way too many titles for you. you and panetta.

let's start with these memos. the fact that he memorialized it, he says he sent an internal memo. who would it likely be september to? and you worked quite closely with john kelly. >> and first of all, i worked two sides along side general kelly when he was in the pentagon. 42 years in the marine corps. first it is important to note his loyalty is to the institutions of government and i can see john writing a memo saying this was the decision by the president of the united states and it has to be carried out. and he did it for two reasons. one to make sure there was clarity. remember, he was brought into put order on the chaos. but also i think for posterity so it would be clear nat president was overriding the recommendation of the security professionals. the memo would probably go internally to the personnel team at the white house responsible for granting these clearances. but it could also have gone to the national security adviser. and it could have gone outside of the white house to the office of the director of national intelligence, maybe to the fbi

and office of personnel management. so if you are on a foia team or watchdog ngo and you want to put together a foia request for this, i'd probably hit all those. >> so odni, fbi, cia, office of personnel management. let's talk about the issue of executive privilege. if these memos are indeed problematic and things that the president doesn't want in there, because frankly he is abiding by the law. you may not like the law, but he has this power. we can have a debate about whether he is an butszing that power, but heed had the power to do this. if he screams executive privilege, how strong is the case? >> there are two bases from withholding the documents, executive privilege and it contain classified information. the second one is really not a basis to withhold it from

congress because of course congress reviews classified privilege. but executive privilege is trickier. there are few instances in which congress has gotten hands on things where the white house digs in on that. >> help me out with the various security levels. jared kushner was getting a mid level security clearance, not the top secret. explain the difference. >> basically the levels are confidential, secret, top secret and the top level is sci. jared kushner had interim top secret clearance for a long time. the president ordered kelly give him a permanent top secret clearance and that's what he enjoys to this day. but what he never got because the cia ultimately adjudicates the sci level, cia said no, we're not giving to him. so even to this day as he goes around the middle east and the kingdom of saudi arabia, he does not have access to intelligence, and he does not have access to the same information that others in our government have. i think that is a huge disadvantage. >> it is interesting you're saying that the top slot, the

president can't order the cia to give him that clearance as well? >> i think that he can, but he according to the reporting did not. and i think that the big mystery here is what was in jared kushner's background investigation that caused the professionals at the fooin and el h. fbi and elsewhere to say no, he should not be entitled to classified information. and once the president was going down that road, why did the cia dig in so hard. and by the way, credit goes to michael pompeo at the time who was director of the cia for holding firm on that decision. that was probably a very sparky conversation. >> speculation is that it is financial. on these security clearance investigations is usually finances the sticking point when somebody runs into a problem? >> it depends. people who have international and global bits i think it is expected that they have a lot of foreign financing, a lot of foreign capital in their cap tables, if they are doing real estate deals, that to me didn't

strike me as per ses basis. i think it has to do with candor, if he is not truthful on the forms. and second if there is something from an adversary nation where they have derogatory information or some reason to have some control over the individual, that somehow the government doesn't know about. and i'm speculating, but it will not be a garden variety financial entanglement. and i think that it is a very high bar for the bureaucracy to deny the president's hand picked person. particularly a family member. i mean, it is almost like -- >> how stunning is this that the president hasn't been able to get the cia to back down? >> fairly unusual. i mean, a director of an agency, a president, if there is someone on their team, someone close to them, someone who is iz advisine cia and intelligence community wants the president to have the benefit of the advisers that they choose. if they are so worried that that person cannot be trusted with this information, it will be

something very, very big. >> i don't mean to be sort of -- there is part of me that thinks what does it matter, the president can give him any bit of information that he wants to give him because he can declassify item by item as well. >> absolutely. now look -- >> so if he is a security risk, he is a security risk regardless of whether you give him the clearance or not. >> that's right. and there has to be clarity in the system. you have to know which meetings that he can go into. he is working in the west wing and he can't see the pdb. >> but every day could the president say he is cleared to read the pdb? >> i think constitutionally he can. as a practical matter, it would cause so much confusion in the system. but what is even more concerning is that he is out there negotiating middle east peace. he will walk into a meeting with mbs and he won't be able to hear gina haspel's report about what happened with the saudis. >> well, that is a good point to end it on. jeremy bash, good it sto see yo.

up ahead, talk about friendly fi friend friendly fire. why some on the left are so angry that joe biden said something nice. and why i'm so obsessed about questions that aren't worth asking. ons that aren't worth asking so even when she grows up, she'll never outgrow the memory of our adventure. unlock savings when you add select hotels to your existing trip. only with expedia.

tonight i'm obsessed with asking good questions.

it is the best way to get good answers. not only this journalist, but in polling. case not in point, former ohio governor and potential 2020 candidate john kasich. miss group two paths america released the results of a survey on voter attitudes. question one, do you agree or disagree with this statement. if americans don't figure out how to disagree woit hating each other, there won't be a united states of america for our children or grandchildren. our country will tear itself apart. here is another. agree or disagree, when a natural disaster strikes, everyday americans put as side their differences to help one another. we must capture that spirit to avoid the disastsdadisaster of country tearing itself apart. overwhelming voters agreed because who is not going to agree with them? agree or disagree. good people should do things to help people when bad things happen. okay. agree. bad things that happen make me sad. i don't know. all right. kind of agree.

12r strawberry cheesecake is delicious unless you don't like it in which the case the dessert you prefer is equally delicious. ask an inane question and you will get an inane answer. or statement ometimes no real a all. you stay in the shallow end of the pool, that's all you get. of the pool, that's all you get

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talki yesterday talking about the rough reception mike pence received and trying to make a point about president trump. but in this day and age calling pence decent caused criticism from some on the left. i want to put this up. biden ended up responding to a tweet from former new york gubernatorial candidate and actress cynthia nixon. you've just called america's most anti-lgbt elected leader a decent guy. please consider how this falls on the ears of our community. biden responded, you're right, i was making a point in a foreign policy context that under normal circumstances a vice president wouldn't be given a silent reaction on the world stage. but there is nothing decent about being anti-lgbtq rights. and that includes the vice president. david ignatius, this is a much different washington that we're seeing where basically you got to qualify if you say anything nice about somebody on the other side. >> we, yes, immediately

apologize if you've upset someone with what you said. that said, that was your basic joe biden moment. and if he runs, and we all assume he will, it will be to be the person who is who is willin say, yeah, i have republican friends, i hang out with -- it's the sort of -- >> the other one, blessed me for i have sinned, when he joked about being friends with a republican. did that incident cost him a lot? i don't think so. i don't know that i agree that he will run, partly because of things like this. he is, in this modern democratic party, something of a man out of time. he is a man from near era and all his instincts and record are going to be so contrary to a party where all the energy and enthusiasm is with young people, with women, with communities of color. i just don't see -- he has a great legacy and a great record as vice president and from the

senate that i can't see him damaging by a campaign that will be unsuccessful. >> lindsey graham, i should note, also wanted to jump in on this little back and forth between cynthia nixon. he says, if joe biden runs for president, i will have many policy disagreements with him. however, i believe him to be one of the most dect he is a goodman. see, it doesn't hurt to say something nice about a possible opponent. could any dem today say anything nice about president trump or vice president mike pence? >> i don't know, i'm kind of torn on this, right? we had a poll from axios at the end of 2018 that showed 61% of democratic voters described republicans as racist, sexist and bigoted. republicans, meanwhile, described democrats as spiteful, but you get the gist. >> unpatriotic was another one. >> yes. >> you do have the -- the right thinks the left is unpatriotic

and the left thinks, essentially, the right is immoral. >> we see how we're growing farther and farther apart. last weekend i spent four days in iowa and i didn't hear the same type of partisan rhetoric from folks who clearly don't want president trump as president, but they want a path forward that's not so partisan. >> david, it's interesting. there is a larger coalition that's just exhausted. but the problem is that coalition doesn't -- can't -- it's not ready to sacrifice an issue, maybe, that they personally care about to get in bed with -- the center and right are near, i think, but they can't get over their own cultural issues. >> i had an interesting reporting issue last week. i talked with the new house democratic members of the house armed services committee, many of whom are recent veterans from iraq and afghanistan. >> they didn't get elected in a

very blue district. >> that's my point. when we look at the democrats taking the house, the people who took the house are not on the left wing the party, they're the people in swing districts who were moderate enough to convince people who voted republican last time that they wanted to go with the democrat. i'm not sure that isn't as important a fact about this new congress as the very charismatic people like alexandria ocacio-cortez. but take a look at mike sherrill who is a veteran. >> this brings up a story in the "washington post" here. the republicans got an amendment in there having to do with undocumented immigrants, if they're seen as not passing a background check, they get reported to i.c.e. a big chunk of democrats voted

for that. house democrats exploded in incriminations thursday over moderates bucking the party, with liberal rep alexandria ocacio-cortez threatening to put those voting with republicans "on a list" for a primary challenge. this has upset a lot of democrats. >> and they are actively recruiting other aocs, they say, so there is not just one of her in congress, they hope there's many. i know it's a threat imposing on other members. they pride themselves on being a big 10 party. she is not reflective of the entire country, and she should understand that. >> should we introduce her to senator chris coons? >> i have to give praise to the house republicans at this point. this is an effective minority in the house looks like, putting together these motions that divide the majority that create these kind of riffs that put the majority makers you're talking

about in bad positions. that's what an effective majority in the house looks like. >> i heard them say, we have to fix the whip operation, as if that's something that never should have happened. >> nancy pelosi is serious. she wants to keep that caucus together. let's not forget that it was the moderate democrats who were part of the challenge to nancy pelosi's continued speakership. >> but moderate democrats put the democrats in charge of the house. >> they did. i have a feeling they'll flex a few muscles, too. one of them said in the aftermath of this, running on an abolished i.c.e. platform if you're in a swing district isn't going to work. >> all right, guys. i have to end it there. i have a feeling, though, the conversation won't. all up ahead, we have somebody for you to meet. to met they're america's biopharmaceutical researchers.

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and they help me grow my career. at comcast it's my job to constantly monitor our network, prevent problems, and to help provide the most reliable service possible. my name is tanya, i work at the network operations center for comcast. we're working to make things simple, easy and awesome. good things do come in small packages, in this case just a little over eight pounds. we have a new addition to the expanded "meet the press" family. meet vivian helene, daughter of sheri gorman. she was born late wednesday night. mom, dad and big sister laurel are all doing great, and vivian already has the perfect teddy bear to snuggle with while

watching our show, and we do have those. we like to snag fans early around here, it's good for the demo. congratulations to the whole gorman family, and ryan, man, you'll have to go find another bathroom. > we will see you sunday. >> is it good luck to have a baby during a very important house oversight hearing week? >> yes. if it's for diane, absolutely, it's the best luck of all. >> it will be marked overall, that great oversight hearing committee. have a good weekend. we have a lot of news tonight. democrats with subpoena power right now pressing the white house over a new nepotism national security scandal. "new york times" reporting trump overruled intelligence professionals who made a security clearance for jared kushner. we have that in the hour. also powerful house chairs demanding testimony from trump