thanks for watching "deadline: white house" with john hileman in for nicole wallace starts right now. >> it is 4:00 here in new york city. i'm john heileman i'm in for nicole wallace. total and complete exoneration? meet the scores upon skads upon teams masses of former prosecutors who are today saying president donald j. trump would have and should have been charged with obstruction of justice if not for the office he holds. more than 300 of those attorneys served under republican and democratic administrations alike. they write, quote. each of us believes that the conduct of president trump described in special counsel robert mueller's report would in the case of any other person not covered by the office of legal counsel's policy against indicting a sitting priority result in multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice. to look at these facts and say

that a prosecutor could not probably sustain a conviction for obstruction of justice runs counter to logic and our experience. since that is what the prosecutorial community took away from robert mueller's finding, no wonder the democrats wantd to be hear from robert mueller himself. and no wonder that president trump wants robert mueller to remain silent. president trump tweeting over the weekend, quote, bob mueller should not testify. no redoes for the dems. for those of you with short memories, his position marks a complete 180 from the previous trump party line. >> mr. president, should mueller testify? >> i don't know. that's up to our attorney general, who i think has done a fantastic job. >> what about bob mueller, should he be allowed to testify before this -- >> i already said publicly i have no objection. >> trump's new position is the latest development between the standoff with his administration

and the democrats. the standoff that caused the democrats to schedule a vote for wednesday for charges against william barr. here to help me discuss this, former federal prosecutor glen kushner. jenna edwards, and former assistant u.s. attorney and federal prosecutor, mimi rocah. it's awesome to see you here today. mimi, i want to start with you, because i believe among those 370-ish former federal prosecutors, you are one of them, right? you are on the list? tell me about how the letter came together. what its purpose it was and what effect it's had so far? >> in the hours since it's been public, that number has grown.

the original signatories were people on previous email lists and you can only list so many people by email. once it's out there i think more people will sign. for a simple reason. most objective prosecutors looking at this, if they really step back and take politics out of it would say what this letter says, which is this is a prosecutable case. it doesn't mean you're going to win at a trial, but that's not the test. it means i think this should be prosecuted because it's important. i think the evidence is strong, and i sure think that i could win in front of a jury. and that's how we decide about prosecuting cases. and when you look at the evidence laid out in that report, none of us are trying to speak for bob mueller, of course. >> right. >> we're giving our assessment as former line prosecutors, line assistants, there's criminal division chiefs. people who oversaw hundreds of these types of cases and

prominent high ranking former department of justice officials, including people as far back as the eisenhower administration, republicans and democrats. you need to take politics out of it. america and congress need to decide what to do with it, but those are the facts. >> counselor cukersher, do you agree? or do you think stating it in this way, with this number of prosecutors, whether that is unusual and will it have an impact? >> will it have an impact, i don't know. i'm going to slightly disagree with mimi. i think if we were the two prosecutors on the case we would win it and probably win it in our sleep. the evidence of obstruction of justice as laid out by bob mueller is pretty overwhelming. i tried obstruction of justice cases and conspiracy cases in

the courts of washington d.c. with far less evidence and we won convictions. i do think that but for the olc memo saying president is king, can't indict him no matter what he does, i think charges would have been brought, i think they should have been brought. i'm hoping john, one of the many things that comes out of this long national nightmare we're all in the midst of are the reforms that sort of knock the president down to human status, such that if he's committing crimes, particularly crimes with national security implications, particularly crimes to cover up his wrong doing, the wrong doing of his associates and family, that there is a vehicle to hold him accountable. and then the other thing is, i think we need to retool the power of congress to not only issue subpoenas but to have a reasonable vehicle to enforce those subpoenas. so i think we have a lot of reforms that hopefully we're going to pay some attention to moving forward.

>> betsy, i want to ask you this question. glen talked about reforms that might knock the president down to human scale. by many metrics, president trump is all too human but he may not think of himself that way. i ask you on the basis of what you know in your reporting, what do you think the president makes of it, 370, now north of 400 prosecutors coming out of with this statement? >> the president is likely to view something like this as deep state colluding to go after him and take away even more of his time serving in office. and realistically speaking, as a factual note, people in the legal community tend to be more on the left of the spectrum than the right. that being said, this is from both sides. the idea this is a political hit job isn't borne out by the list of signatories. congressional subpoenas, part of the reasons that letters like

this and this conversation don't raise blood pressure in the white house as they might otherwise is what we've seen over the last two or three presidential administrations is the weakening of congress when it comes to enforcing its subpoenas and actually making people in the executive branch cough up the information and documents that that branch wants to get. it's really hard for congress to make the justice department and the executive branch play ball. that's a nonpartisan issue that's been the case for multiple administrations now. a and that's why letters like this don't cause problems at the white house. john, i'm asking you this, i'm way older than you i can remember administrations i covered in the course of my life that would have had a a nipgs, in the clinton, bush years, if something like this happened, they would be flipping out. my sense is betsy is right --

does the president even know about this? would he know this letter exists or is this something what are you talking about. >> only if it's been on fox news in the last couple hours. and people i talked to suggest that the white house has not caused a stir. your depiction is correct. this is more sort of the deep state, they say. in your view, these are people who have been out to get the president since day one, this isn't going to change their thinking or tactics one way or another. there's no suggestion they will cooperate with the democratic probes. their plan is to stonewall, just say no about everything. >> we're going to deal with this letter and then move on to bigger topics. but house democrats are they helped by this matter? can they cite it? if you're a democrat in the house are you thank you former federal prosecutors or are you focussed on is this a thing we care about in cable news but

nobody cares about on capitol hill? >> i think it's important. and for members of congress, republicans and democrats, they will take note of this letter. i'm a mediocre lawyer and i think i could prosecute this case because the facts are so clear. i think that members will pay attention to it, but to betsy's point. the challenge here for democrats is that they have to start reclaiming their power as an institution. it is true it's been eroded over the last three decades, but now is the time for democrats to reclaim the institution. today's news are the house democrats have scheduled this contempt vote on wednesday. it's the case that the justice department is asking for a chance to negotiate with committee staff on wednesday, they're kind of trying to buy some time on this. mimi, what do you think unfolds between the 48 hours between now and wednesday? are we going to have a contempt vote? to go to the question of ultimate impact, does that

ultimately matter much? what does bill barr do if he gets slapped with a contempt citation? >> no one thing at this point is going to make the difference. not the letter, not the contempt citation. but it's all incrow mental. it's pushing back in different ways and that's what you have to do. it's not just the weakening of congress, it's the weakening of, as we said so many times on this show and others, the rule of law. and part of what the letter is to go back to it for one second is to say, there's still people out there who, for years, wouldn't have looked at politics and would have looked at the facts and those people still exist and it's going to happen again. i think if nothing else, that gives some people who feel that the rule of law has been so eroded some hope. i do not think they should continue to negotiate with bill barr. i think this whole, okay, we'll talk on wednesday. i feel like when i was a prosecutor having plea

negotiations with a defendant and they're stringing along, dragging along, and at some point you say enough. you've negotiated in good faith and it's time to take on the next step. because the next step is the court and that's going to take a while. >> we're going to quote you glen from chairman nadler's report beginning the contempt proceedings which raises an issue of some importance since it's the first time anybody in the house has put this in official language. among congress east' responsibilities is determining, quote, whether to approve articles of impeachment with respect to the president or any other administration official. this is a -- is part of the argument for why congress said it should get the full and unredacted mueller report. talk to me about whether that's an important rubicon that's been cross. this invocation of impeachment in an official house statement, and whether impeachment is on the table in your judgment or

kind of the liberal fantasy. >> no, i think impeachment is on the table and it is the turkey. it's the main course at this point. and we all know that the article 3 of the articles of impeachment for richard nixon was that he was not complying with lawfully issued congressional subpoenas. and, you know, president trump has one upped that. he has announced that he will comply with exactly zero subpoenas issued by congress. now he hasn't said i will look at each one, evaluate whether there might be a viable privilege that i can assert. no, he just said flatout, i ain't doing it. i'm not complying with any. so i don't care about your constitutional oversight responsibilities. so i do think once this thing moves into the courts, whether it's through civil enforcement of subpoenas, criminal contempt, i do think the judiciary needs to know that congress is

seriously condemn natemplating of of its oversight responsibilities, drafting articles of impeachment. i think it ups the ante, it will catch the judiciary's attention and sir couple spec is great but this timidity we've been experiencing is going to kill any chance of holding this criminal president accountable. i think witnesses should be lined up outside of congress' door and they should be called to testify one after another after another. and if they don't testify because the president has muzzled them in some way. i think congress should go for all three enforcement mechanisms, its contempt power, civil enforcement and criminal contempt. >> i ask you now to take us inside the kind of deliberations that would go on among house democrats over something as small on one level but something as significant as nadler invoking impeachment in this

way. we know it's a controversial topic with democrats. there are some hell bent on impeachment, and others that don't want to touch it. in mentioning impeachment the way jerry nadler has, has that been deliberating to death by democrats? are they talking about what the significance of it could be? what the politics could be? has this gotten argued to do or is it the chairman doing what he's going to do, and us going it's a big deal, the first time impeachment has been discussed. >> i'm sure this has been a conversation that's been caucus wide and smaller groups over the last several weeks. if you read the letter, because it was directed both at the attorney general and at the president, it's not entirely clear that the impeachment argument was necessarily directed at the president. but i think it was important to invoke it and frankly there are members of the caucus,

increasing numbers of them, who are concerned that this president may just get away with it. and, you know, it -- again it's not about this president. it's about the next president. and i think those conversations have been going on for weeks now. >> i ask you now, the main event -- putting aside impeachment. i think for a lot of people the main event is bob mueller, is he going to testify? when's he going to testify? whasz he going to say when he testifies? is it difference if he's not an employee of the justice department? what are we waiting if for? what are we going to get? >> part of it is who mueller's boss is when the hearing is set. peter carr, who is back at doj records said mueller will be leaving doj in the coming days, not a super precise term to be using, which means he's not going to be there forever. if barr remains mueller's boss

and the president remains barr's boss and the president issues a directive saying mueller can't appear that would kick off potential litigation to force the house judiciary to put him in. however if mueller finishes his work and is a private citizen, that changes. moore is a boy scout, so it's not likely that he's going to change against the norms of the doj. >> glen, i know i'm going to lose you so i want to get one nor to you. we're all focussed on the obstruction of justice for the obvious reasons. it's still to me, as i read the report, when i first read it i thought, man, even though mueller says he cannot come to the point where he's got enough on the trump campaign to seal up

an argument about a criminal conspiracy with russia, there's just a lot of really dodgy behavior described. things that fit the loose definition of collusion and certainly cooperation. there's a lot of aligned interests between russia and the trump campaign all on display in the course of this report. so i ask you this, obviously if mueller comes forward to testify we're going to want to hear from him and his views on obstruction, but do you think mueller could be a powerful witness when he comes forward in detailing what he found and how he and his team thought about the questions of cooperation, coordination, whatever you want to call it, between russia and its state actors and related oligarchs and the trump campaign and its satellite operations? in. >> that's a great point, john. absolutely. it reminded me when i was reading the mueller report, often me as prosecutors, we will investigate a crime and we will

find evidence that the guy we're investigating did a whole lot of cruddy stuff, but we might find one little deficiency in one element of the charge. so even though we catalog a parade of horribles with respect to what the guy did, we can't quite bring the charge. you put your finger on it. this is what the american people need to see. if bob mueller lid out all the evidence of, yeah, i'm going to say it, collusion between the russians and the trump campaign, i think people would be taken aback. whereas we pinhead lawyers might say, okay, we couldn't prove beyond a reasonable doubt the element of a formal agreement necessary to bring a conspiracy charge but otherwise this was camp collusion, these guys were colluding early and often. if the american people got to see that i think they might be impressed that the president's

been up to no good. >> the president says complete total exoneration, no obstruction, no collusion. bob mueller is the one that rendered the report that he cites to make that claim. >> yeah. >> just logically speaking you should want the guy who authored the report who gave you exoneration to testify now the president doesn't want the guy who supposedly exonerated him to go before congress. how does that make sense? >> in terms of the president's about face about not wanting mueller to testify, we're going to talk about michael cohen in a few minutes. flash back to when cohen appeared before congress and what a media spectacle it was. it overshadowed a summit in vietnam with kim jong-un. for the last two years, bob mueller has been lion neized bye media, and we're told he's terrified about what the coverage is going to be like. it's going to dominate the news

for days and days. no criminal charges, yes, but embarrassing details, material that americans are going to see and hear for the first time bob mueller's voice about what the president did. >> the stopped clock is right twice a day. glen and betsy, you guys are awesome. thank you for spending time with us. day one of a three-year prison sentence now under way, and michael cohen has an ominous message to the public on his way in. the president calls him sleepy joe. now biden has a nickname of his own for donald trump. and the president embraces an unconstitutional way to extend his time in office. all of that when we come back. . all of that when we come back. nooooo... quick, the quicker picker upper!

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i hope that when i rejoin my family and friends that the country will be in a place without xenophobia, injustice, and lies at the helm of our country. there still remains much to be told. and i look forward to the day that i can share the truth. >> that's the president's former fixer, michael cohen speaking in front of his new york city apartment this morning before making his way to otisville new york where a few hours ago he started a three year stint in federal prisons. for lying to congress, and campaign finance violations, the last of which michael cohen told

prosecutors he acted in coordination with and at the direction of individual number one when making hush money payments to two individuals. joining the table, two of my favorite people donny deutsch, host of saturday night politics, the only thing better than saturd"saturday night live.live" it's here on nbc. and vanity pair reporter, emily jane fox. donny you were on tv this morning saying you talked to michael cohen over the weekend. i believe it's true you spoke to him since then, when he was walking in the front door of prison. >> 11:42 i look down at my phone it's michael cohen. what are you doing? i want to tell you i love you and thanks. i was very involved with him the last couple years -- >> i told you i loved you on many occasions without having to go to prison. >> i said where exactly are you right now?

he said the guy who drove me up has a gun but he has to take his gun -- >> surreal. >> yesterday i went to his home, there were a few people there. the jewish religion, there's a shiva, where people sit together. he gets 12 points a month when he's up there, 2 points is when your family comes for several hours. there's this whole thing, it's about 45% orthodox jews up there that he's going to be with. it's just so sad. but the one thing i will say, and he said this, this is a day to remember this. no matter how you slice it, most of his jail term is at the direction of the president, and going back to your previous segment and the president is in the white house and he's going to jail. michael cohen broke a law, he

deserves to go to jail. the guy who told him to break the law, he deserves -- someone has to relook at the guide line. >> you also said this morning that there was a calm about him that's unlike -- he was calmer in some ways -- i don't know if at peace is the right word but calmer in a way -- >> in the last two days, i've seen him in everything from a manic state to crying to -- as anybody would be going through when the world is coming against you. because he's such a fighter and up until three days ago we're going to do this, the attorney is going to do this, nadler is going to do this and this, and up until he realized he was going away, and i don't want to say peace. i said this to him, i believe the day or two days into it, he's going to be more relaxed. and the next three years will be less stressful than his last two years. >> donny is a long-time friend

of michael cohens. you're the reporter who probably spent more time talking to michael cohen than any reporter on the planet. just do the other side of the coin, your most recent contacts with him, and your observations of reporting people around him. there are people going to prison trying to keep a brave face but in the end they are fragile. other people are built of stern stuff. what's the michael cohen psychological profile as he heads in for three years? >> i sense something similar to donny. but there's still fight in him. my most recent conversations with him, which are fairly recent, there's still a desire to fight certain things. so the michael cohen that i've come to know over the past 20 months is the same michael cohen today but i think he's a little bit defeated and a little bit sad. i think he feels terrible for what his family is about to go

there. he's understanding of what he's about to face and i think he's humbled by that. one of the things that's important to keep in mind here he is keenly aware of the fact other than paul manafort he has the longest prison sentence of anyone who has been sentenced so far, who has cooperated with the federal government and he spent 70 hours with the robert mueller team, met with him eight times, met with the southern district, the attorney general in new york city, spent three days on capitol hill testifying to congress. and i think what i have sensed in him is a little bit of injustice. i did all of this and for what. >> sure, at the end we just played the sound. he's plbasically saying there's more to tell. 70 hours with the sdny, what else is there for him to tell that he hasn't told anybody already, and as soon as you answer this question, if you actually know what he's talking about, i want to ask you, mimi, what the legal significance of

what donny is about to say is? >> some of it might be statute of limitations, is something i've been talking about, a complete fraud organization, insurance fraud, bank fraud, tax fraud -- >> he's not shared that already. >> he can't talk about it. up until two days ago, jerry nadler and company were all over him, we need this, we need this, we need this. he said i'm going to jail i can't use my computer. and one of the things he said to me, when i saw him last, he hugged me and said hopefully i'm going to be back sooner than you think. so emily's point of a fight -- >> i hope he's not planning a breakout. >> i don't think that's the case. can i add, he tried to meet with sdny and had his attorneys meet with sdny in recent months to share this new information that he had and they didn't bite. >> here's the quote from the

associated press story -- >> they weren't ready. >> let me read the story. this is from the associated press. prosecutors refusing the final meeting with michael cohen, since mid march prosecutors have rebuffed michael cohen to get more information about alleged wrong doing about trump and people in his orbit. you have cohen basically saying i have more to tell. you have a report from his lawyer saying the prosecutors are saying we're done with you, basically at least from that report, so what do you make of the potential? is there more legal yardage to be gotten out of this dude at some point or no? >> maybe. here's what i know. i want to be careful here because i think this is one of those situations where we simply don't know everything that is going on from the prosecutors' side. we actually in this case have a much better window into what's going on on michael cohen's

side. i don't doubt that he's expressing sincere frustration to them and saying everything that he sincerely believes. but there are -- there's an analysis that goes on on the prosecutorial side, in the southern district as we said many times on tv there's a firm policy about cooperators. it's all or nothing. sounds to me just from reports that i read along the way during this whole process that he was not all in for some period of time. maybe he is now trying to say, no, i'm really in and ready to tell you everything. because it may have been the old stuff, the stuff about the organization that he was sort of -- yeah, i'll tell you everything you want to know about stormy daniels or russia, but not talking about the past stuff. and that's not uncommon. it doesn't always make a lot of sense what people will and won't talk about. but if they won't go all in, this is one thing we should be grateful for, which is the southern district applies that policy uniformly, it doesn't matter you can get the president

or not. it matters they apply it uniformly. >> mimi, thank you for being here today, i know you have to go. and emily, grateful you were here, somebody has to balance donny, he's still in the tank with michael cohen and hard to comprehe comprehend. after the break, bernie sanders deja vu and the fight for african-american voters. we'll be right back. oters. we'll be right back. ♪

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look, joe is a good friend of mine. i'm not here to attack joe. joe voted for the war in iraq. i led the effort against it. joe voted for nafta and trade relations, trade agreements with china. i led the effort against that. joe voted for the deregulation of wall street, i voted against that. i think if you look at joe's record and you look at my record, i don't think there's much question about who's more progressive. >> so that was bernie sanders

going with the brute is an honorable man strategy the way i talk about donny. two men speaking about each other. while democrats are at this point endeavoring to keep their inter-party conflict civil focussing on donald trump rather than each other, it's unclear how long that civility will last as biden's position as the clear front runner makes him a target not just for bernie sanders but for all democrats seeking a spot on the ballot. joining us here we have karine jean-pierre, always good to have her here. we're going to talk about democratic politics. i want to start with bernie on biden thing. it's the clearest point of conflict that we have.

there's been a little bit of elizabeth warren attacking biden but biden has made it clear, he's not just the presumptive front runner, he's the front runner. tell me how that plays out as the progressive wing of the party as bernies and others say this guy may be joe biden but he's out of step with the democratic party in 2019. >> i think we have to run a race with the democrat party to see how's out of step with the party. bernie sanders, unlike 2016 is not the only progressive candidate in this race. and i think we're going to see as the election plays out that there are going to be a lot of people competing for that space. biden should expect hi's going to be the front runner. he shouldn't expect he'd get in a race and not face competition. that's what winning an election is about. >> there are a lot of democrats who say there's going to be

fighting in the party we know but it's too soon for this. sanders is doing it in a civil way, he's not attacking biden personally. but do he or elizabeth warren or anybody else run some kind of political risk if even before the first debate they start to make conflict and contrast the point of their message with biden. >> you're right. it's a difficult situation because i think voters don't want to see it too. the base doesn't want to see a nasty base as well. the debate is coming up in about a month, we're going to have to see distinctions there, although there are so many people on stage it'll be difficult. bernie is doing it the right way. you can't be in a campaign and not try to target the person leading the primary. you have to be able to say this person may be this way or i'm this way or else biden is going to go and take it away.

you cannot do that, you have to come in and show the difference between you and the front runner. >> biden has been totally above the fray, not responding to any of the slings and arrows he's gotten, again they've been relatively mild. he's now in south carolina trying to show another side of his capped ndidacy, which is the of his campaign that says i'm not a guy who appeals only to white people. i appeal to some not white people. let's look at a tape with this strategy. >> i won't go through it, you heard it. i heard you playing the tape of my buddy -- my buddy, i shouldn't be so casual. president of the united states barack obama. >> my buddy barack. >> first-name basis. >> first-name basis. he said he doesn't want the president to endorse him, doesn't want barack obama to endorse him. but how do you think that works

there's biden rolling out, i'm the front runner taking on donald trump and now he's in south carolina, a place where bernie sanders' nomination change to hillary clinton fell apart when it met black voters. >> i'm sure that slip wasn't deliberate at all from the fove vice president. biden isn't taking on anyone, including bernie sanders. he's saying i can be the choice of the entire democratic party. and bernie sanders did fall short in certain areas, particularly minority voters. so biden, making appearances like these, name dropping the former president, putting out a video which was basically obama's tribute to him receiving his medal. that does matter even if it's short of an endorsement. and right now bernie sanders' critiques have been civil, above board. i think there is hanging over

the party, there is a faction of bernie sanders supporters, rightly or wrongly, feel like they were cheated out of the nomination the last time around because of the dnc's machinations to support hillary clinton. and if things don't go well for the vermont senator, will they be willing to support a joe biden whose views are different than bernie sanders? >> i want to play one more piece of sound. so far we've only heard about white candidates. joe biden and bernie sanders, and pete buttigieg. here's kamala harris making a point people are going to make a lot of. it's not just a race about white voters. this is a race in the democratic party for anybody that hopes to win. listen to kamala harris. >> there has been a lot of conversation by pundits about the electability and who can speak to the midwest.

but when they say that, they usually put the midwest in a simplistic box and a narrow narrative. and too often their definition of the midwest leaves people out. it leaves out people in this room who helped build cities like detroit. >> so donny, that's a pretty explicit. that's senator harris getting pretty explicit. it's definitely the case that joe biden has deeper ties with the african-american community than bernie sanders does but we have two african-american candidates in the race in senator harris and booker. talk about how this argument is going to unfold. if joe biden's argument is i'm the most electable i can take on donald trump. when you have candidates of color saying things the way kamala harris did, where does it

go in the race? >> i said in the democratic primary, black women in particular are central to winning an election. i think every single candidate has to compete for that vote. nobody should assume it's going to go -- even if it's with joe biden right now it's going to stay that way. i think senator harris' argument is you have black voters out there, living in the midwest, some are my cousins and they will vote for the candidate who represents their views. biden with 43% among african-american, sanders, 20, harris 10, warren 10, and the rest below. it should be a slam dunk issue for donald trump heading into 2020, the economy, stupid, but could this be another case of the president getting in his own way. f the president getting in his own way.

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trump any credit. i'm sure he'll take all the credit he wants. what we should know is a we're looking at a ten year rebound from the wall street crash of 2008. i don't believe trump's massive tax breaks for billionaires are the good economy. talk to the workers who are making $9 an hour or $10 an hour. the truth is that half of the people in this country today, despite the good economy, are living paycheck-to-paycheck and millions of people are working two or three jobs just to put food on the table. >> that was bernie sanders again and we have the same folks around the table. the same array of genius here. donny i want to ask you this as we talk about the democratic nomination fight. that's bernie sanders taking on the hardest challenge any democrat in the fight, and whoever is going to be trump's opponent has to deal with. which is right now the economy

is good, we had great jobs numbers on friday. donald trump gets in his way, causes troubles, talks about tariffs, the markets today were shaky and fluttery but in the end any candidate who's going to take on trump, how do you talk about an economy at a time it's pretty good. >> you say there's the economy, which is an abstract thing and then there's real life. there are three individual americans, three humans that have more well than 50% of the bottom half of this country. look at pennsylvania, michigan, trump is down by 20, 30 votes within so much of the jobs is in urban areas, and the coal did not come back. when you say to voters, the dow is great. rich people are great. tech jobs are great. you're still not getting the minimum wage you need. you're still going to have your health care taken away from you.

it's still an unfair rigged system. three people have more money than half the united states. you turn it on your head.it? that's the way you do it. >> let's think about this a little bit. it's a real to me a real challenge. there is no doubt you can give barack obama a lot of credit. the president probably overclaims. all presidents do. you have a good economy, you claim credit. you deserve some of the credit. this is a challenge. of course, there is a lot of features and factors in this economy that don't feel great to a lot of americans. the president can say we have the lowest unemployment rate since 1960, 1970, right, whatever. it's a challenge to confront that donny is playing the plutokrat issue. you are one of those that have the wealth? 17. >> i think donny is right you have to point to where people's personal economy is. their wages for the last couple

of decades basically flatlined, paying more than ever out of their pockets for healthcare. unable to save for retirement. their children going to debt for college education. these are things that impact people's day-to-day lives, which is why i think it will be important for democrats to distinguish the overall economy from people's personal economy. >> take a look at this abc news/wall street journal poll, you got his approval is at net negative 5. on the feeling stale a negative 10. on the economy, it's plus 10. so there is arguments to be made here, corinne. but you are not just fighting against data and the president's branding and his bragadoccio, you are fighting for a substantial amount of americans a sense the xi feels to them. not for everybody. >> not for everybody. >> for some number of people, the economy feels better, that's what the polling shows.

>> i will turn no the trump tax cut. people just a month ago, april 15th, people learned that they were going to get hardly any money and pay a lot more. so i think there are issues like that, that democrats can lean into and talk about and really put it out there. because there are things over and over again that donald trump has done that does not help the people who helped elect him. >> donald trump's economy is not your economy n. 2018 mid-terms a nine-point popular delaware it's not a presidential elex but the economy was worrying them. >> my latest story is in politico, which joe biden the front runner says he's going to get in the nickname game with donald trump. he says there are so many nicknames, i'm going to give the laugh of the room. you can just start with clown. you can't do better than that you think? it's weak, right? >> it is weak. leaving the nickname game to the president. probably.

if you want, you can do better than that. on the economy, they know this is their best argument. don't underestimate and they're worried about this, the president's ability to mess that up. to distract him not just with starting a tariff fight with china, but stepping on his message day after day when this is for any president who comes in as an incumbent with inherent elections should be more or less unbeatable. that's not the case for this president. so that can change further. >> that's because he plays to the base every time. he talks about the red base, the caravan and doesn't want to stay on the economy. >> he can use this with mueller. you guys do your stuff. i'm trying to lower the employment. >> he can't ignore it. a master of discipline. forget four more years, donald trump says we owe him even more than that. we'll be right back. e owe him e than that. we'll be right back. lt outlet. man: wow. plug that in for me. various: whoa! holy smokes! and the all-new silverado has more trim levels than any other pickup.

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so you think we have four-year presidential terms and you think we got a united states constitution that governs it all? apparently not, donald trump may be according to him and some of his friends may be owed more time as president, the conservative religious leader and ally jerry falwell, jr., tweeted, after the best week ever for @real donald trump, no obstruction, no collusion. "new york times" admits barack obama did spy on his campaign.

i now support reparations, trump should have two years as time stolen by this corrupt, failed coup. and who do you think retweeted? of course, president trump. then sent a tweet of his own, two years of his presidency was stolen. lamere, i ask you, honest to god it seems psychotic to ask this question. do you think trump in his mind somewhere thinks he is owed two more years around he might somehow be able to get it? nancy pelosi thinks he may not leave? >> i saw that, mr. speaker, i don't think the president is taking steps beyond running for election to extend his term. certainly i know there are people who are concerned if he were to lose in a year-and-a-half or so that there might be some resistance, if not from him, the president, himself, from his supporters, we saw what he did before 2016, suggesting the outcome is rigged, he might not peaceably

go. this is all a part of the branding mechanism. it's not about two more years, it's about the idea of trying to paint not the mueller probe but partisan overreach to try to hurt him rather than get to the truth. >> it's a serious thing, though. i remember the first time i heard anybody say this, bill mahr said it very early in the term, he won't leave. if he loses, he won't leave. now this notion is gaining currency, it's not people like bill mahr and whatever you think of bill mahr. you have nancy pelosi basically saying the same thing, we're not sure if we win this close trump will take part in a peaceful transfer of power? do you think that's something really to worry about? >> i think it is. if you recall in 2016, the president was not clear about whether he would accept the outcome of an election. i don't think we should think that things are any different now. the reason i take him seriously and i don't want to laugh at it is because the president has destroyed every other norm when it comes to the trum of law and

constitution. why wouldn't he take this one? >> yes or no, will he, if he loses, will he leave peacefully or not? >> absolutely not. >> absolutely not. >> holy smokes. you have a darker view of the situation than it came to be. i have a very dark view of things. my thanks to john lameer. johnny deutsche, you are amazing, donny, your show is incredible. it's incredible! changing the very nature of television. >> it's all friends. >> that does it for this hour. mtb daily starts with the amazing steve kornacki. >> thank you for that. it is monday. white house and democrats are both feeling contempt. ♪ good evening, i'm steve kornacki in new york in for