or if anyone in your house needs or recently had a vaccine. alert your doctor of new or worsening problems, including headaches, seizures, confusion and vision problems. these may be signs of a rare, potentially fatal brain condition. some serious allergic reactions and lung inflammation can occur. talk to your doctor today, and learn how janssen can help you explore cost support options. remission can start with stelara®. thanks to ron, jonathan, the rev, ashley and nick and for all of you for watching. hi, chuck. happy friday. >> happy friday. it is a happy one. thank you. spying and treason. president trump says the russia investigation was illegal. now the attorney general is ramping up his investigating. plus the trump campaign gets some bad news on the 2020 front from fox news and speaking of 2020, we got the only candidate to win statewide in deep red

trump country. if it's friday, it's "meet the press daily." ♪ good evening. i'm chuck todd here in washington. we begin with the president's proxy war against the russia investigation. i'm going to be joined by a top fbi official who helped oversee the russia investigation. in a remarkable series of developments, the president called for people to be imprisoned over what he says is spying on his campaign. moments after he made those comments, fox news started playing clips of attorney general barr. and he went out of his way to make clear he is not buying whatever explanations he's already been given about what happened. >> i've been trying to get answers to questions and i found that a lot of the answers have

been inadequate and i've also found that some of the explanations i've gotten don't hang together. in a sense, i have more questions today than i did when i first started. >> some of what things don't hang together? >> some of the explanations of what occurred, if we're worried about foreign influence for the very same reason, we should be worried about whether government officials abuse their power and put their thumb on the scale. >> based on barr's extensive interview with fox, it looks like he's taking his cues from the president's talking points which include what the president and his allies have dubbed the dirty dossier. >> it's an unusual situation to have opposition research like that, especially one that on its face had a number of clear mistakes and a somewhat -- analysis and to use that to conduct counter intelligence american the american political

campaign would be a strange development. i'm not sure what roll it played. >> do you smell a rat in this, at this point? >> i don't know if i'd describe it a rat. i would say that the -- you know, the answers i'm getting are not sufficient. >> hard not to notice barr's louded language in the clips that we've been playing. answers have been inadequate. it's a very unusual situation. no other explanation, though. barr uses that suspicion style when asked about the obama administration's actions between the election and the inauguration. >> i think there were some strange developments during that period, that's one of the things we want to look into. >> such as? >> such as the handling of the meeting on january 6th between the intelligence chiefs and the president and the leaking of information subsequent to that meeting. >> what questions do you have about what happened that day? >> again, i'm not going to get

into that. >> but it's on your mind? >> that's one of the things we need to look at. >> as far as we can tell, there are now three doj related investigations into the russia investigation. there's an inspector general probe, there's two u.s. attorneys under barr conducting their own reviews. the president and his allies seem to believe those probes are already done and they're going to uncover criminal conduct. they allege the fbi illegally surveilled the trump campaign, that it weaponized a dossier to spy on the campaign and it attempted a coup. all of that it seems is what the president is alluding to when he yells treason on his twitter feed this morning. my -- you want to talk about the dossier, he reviewed the

intelligence. want to talk about the carter page visa warrants? he signed off on that to. you want to talk about the investigation into the fbi's activity, he's currently a subject of it. i'm joined here on set by james baker. he was the fbi's general counsel. thanks for doing this. >> thank you, chuck. how are you? >> i'm all right. let me start with you responding to the president's tweet this morning. it feels as if he was talking about you and a lot of people at the fbi. he tweeted, my campaign for president was spied on. nothing like this has ever happened in american politics. a really bad situation reason means long jail sentences. it doesn't meet the definitions of treason. and there's been no conclusion on this spy issue. did you feel targeted by this treat?

>> it was brougprobably intende cover my behavior, but i feel confident there was no treason, there was nothing that was done illegal, immoral or unethical. at least in my experience. and i would not have not conducted such activity. >> in hindsight, now that you've read the mueller report and you've seen all of that, is there anything you would have done differently. >> i would have run screaming from the building. >> you wouldn't -- you would have gotten out of the fbi. >> exactly. after all of this. i say that jokingly, but this whole thing was traumatic. just as i was listening -- as you went through the various things i worked on. the whole thing was terrible starting with the clinton investigation. it was not something we wanted to do. it was something we felt that we had a duty to do. >> it felt as -- you look at it now and the president is claiming the fbi was working on the behalf of obama and clinton.

the clinton campaign believes it was working against her given the way that investigation is. i understand you say you run screaming from the building, but do you in hindsight feel like the fbi mishandled 2016? >> i don't think we -- honestly -- did we make make mistakes, as an enterprise of human beings trying to do their best? maybe. but honestly i'm not sure how, i thought a lot about that, obviously, and i just don't now that we could have come up with a better solution with respect to what we did. we did what we thought the law required us to do. we did what we thought our obligation to the american people required us to do. >> you testified to congress that one of the reasons -- one of the predicates for opening up the investigation you thought after the comey firing that he was somehow following directions or perhaps was doing this at the

behest. is it the raw -- is it the information that came out of the meeting with the russian ambassador that triggered this because it was -- i believe it was the day or so after the comey firing where the president says to the -- says to the russians that they got this out of the way. was it the combination of those two things that made -- that was the predicate for that. >> i don't want to confirm what was done. let me put that to the side. >> we can't -- i thought we know for a fact there was an investigation opened on the president of the united states. >> i don't know what was confirmed or not so i'm just not going to go there. >> okay. >> having said that, look, we were concerned about what was going on here and those events didn't happen in a vacuum. they happened against a backdrop. we were looking at what russia was up to generally and the threat that they posed. we were looking at what they were trying to do with our election and then we were

looking at the events, all the interactions that director comey had with the president leading up to the firing and then the firing, and i felt confident at that point in time that our investigate activities were lawful and appropriate. >> the idea of rod rosenstein wearing a wire, it seems as if it were a more serious idea speculated. did it go to you asking you for the legality of that? >> my opinion was asked of it. and we took it seriously. this was not a fun, light hearted time in the bureau and in the department. we took it very seriously. we discussed it seriously. but i thought it was a terrible idea from the outset and recommended against it. >> all right. the issue of surveillance of the campaign, i don't think anybody -- it doesn't seem as if there were anybody at trump tower that was ever under surveillance, is that a -- is that a blanket statement that --

during the 2016 campaign that can be confirmed or not? >> i can't remember exactly what the government's confirmed about that. just talk about surveillance for a second. if you're talking about electronic surveillance for the purpose of obtaining political intelligence, what the campaign is doing in the campaign, then to my knowledge, that never occurred, i never -- >> is this a meta data thing, meaning it's possible like michael cohen was under surveillance, not in his phone calls, but the numbers going in and out? is that something then that that's something that might have been done? >> i guess that anything is possible, but to my knowledge, i don't believe that kind of activity was going on either. in order to obtain information about the political intentions, strategy of the campaign, what we were focused on all the time, what this whole thing about was russia. what were they up to. >> the steel dossier which is

intelligence from somebody who was at one time a source. when you first got this information, did you know, when this came into the fbi, did you know it had been gathered as part of essentially an opposition research request first by a republican donor and then by the clinton campaign. >> i did. >> you did know that. how did you view the material and was it used as sort of first round of evidence or confirmation, if you will? >> it was more information that had -- that we viewed that i view viewed conceptically and i was concerned about it. steele was and had been a source that we thought was reliable. he's reporting all of this information. it looks alarming. we took it seriously, but we tried to vet it.

>> would you have still approved the carter page fisa warrant was the steele dossier? >> so, based on my recollection of the facts at the time that are mostly redacted now in the fisa application, my answer is i think the answer is yes, that i think there was sufficient probable cause in the application even without that information. >> but that information was part of the application? >> yes. >> is carter page the only place that the steele dossier was used for a fisa application? >> i don't think i should comment on that. i don't know what else the government has confirmed. i don't want to confirm or deny anything about potential fisa applications. >> my reading of the mueller report makes it seem that the steele dossier is not that important -- not sort of front and center for mueller and his investigators. how important did the fbi view the steele information?

>> it was important but it's not what started the investigation. it's one of the things i want to reassure the american people about. it was the george papadopoulos information. it was the george papadopoulos. we spent resources on it, but it was not the center piece of everything. >> you bring up george papadopoulos and that being the start and you had a few fbi informants, i believe you had somebody working for the fbi and also an informant in stephon. but this gentleman ended up in the white house for a white house meeting as an fbi informant. at some point, did you think, what have we -- that was alarming to me to read that an fbi informant was still sort of actively helping your investigation but also pretending to be a trump ally.

do you see why -- under that circumstance perhaps why the president is so paranoid? >> i understand why people are concerned about the power of the fbi and some of the investigate techniques that we use. without confirming or denying the specifics. what were we trying to do? again, i'm saying it again, we were focused on what the russians were up to, what they were doing. we weren't trying to gather information about politics or protected first amendment activities. we don't do that kind of thing. we were trying to find out what the threat was from this particular foreign power. >> do you think we know all the information on what russia did or do you think the fact that there were ten instances of potential obstruction that mueller found that perhaps prevented the fbi and mueller from finding out everything? >> i don't think the obstruction helped, that's for sure. >> you say that obstruction as fact. you believe there's enough

evidence here? you're a formal federal prosecutor. >> i've refrained from making that conclusion. what i have said is that if this is not illegal, it certainly reveals a pattern of corruption that should be unacceptable in america. we should not accept that kind of behavior from your leaders. >> i want to ask about bill barr here at the end. i think you've -- you know him quite well. i think you've worked with him. >> i worked with him before, yes. >> which bill barr do you know? the bill barr in that interview that's using a lot of innuendo, it's a lot of innuendo and he doesn't back it up -- i've got more questions, okay. you can say that about anything. or is he the bill barr that appointed a u.s. attorney of bipartisan credentials to do a review where it doesn't look like he put a thumb on the scale in the review.

which bill barr should the public believe? >> i think it's the same bill barr. i've known him as an excellent lawyer -- >> is he being a partisan here? >> what we all need to do is calm down and just listen to the actual words that the attorney general is saying and i think once we do, it's much less alarming and i'm somebody who's in the crosshairs of this stuff. the attorney general of the united states needs to be confident that the intelligence community, especially the fbi, is acting in a lawful and appropriate way with respect to its use of intelligence authorities. that is just -- that should be something we all agree on. and so if he's not confident in that yet, then he needs to be -- he needs to obtain the information that will make him confident to make sure he has the right policies and procedures in place to deal with this kind of of a situation. >> given everything that's happened, are we in a better place to stop russian interference or in a worse place to stop russian interference? >> we're alerted the country as

to what the russians are up to and i think people are focused on that and people are worried about what's going on. but they've got us chasing each other and fighting with each other and i think that's bad. and i think that's why i've been urging people not to go down the road of hate with respect to president trump or his followers and to work together as americans in a better way. >> do you believe the president is upholding the constitution? >> i'll hold off on that judgment for the moment. >> all right. jim baker, thanks for coming on. appreciate it. >> thank you. up ahead, our experts are going to weigh in on our conversation. also how should the democrats respond to the white house's latest moves on the investigation. plus could democrats find their next nominee in a deep red state. the governor of montana sure hopes so. he'll be joining me live coming up. up with a terrain management system for... this. a bash plate for... that. an electronic locking rear differential for...

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there's much more attorney general barr had to say including using the word spying to describe the fbi surveillance of the trump campaign. and the president continues to stonewall investigations, they're pinning their hopes of getting him to testify on the hill. and we got some new news, steve mnuchin is listening subpoena. >> david maraniss is joining us, his book was just released, also with us is senior desires at move on.org and bill kristol. welcome all. bill, let's start with you. what did you glean from mr. baker. i feel like he was saying, look, we dealt with what we had in the

moment, but at the same time, i think while he doesn't want to say he would do things differently, he gets how this looks to some. >> i also think he wanted to defend the integrity of the fbi. i thought it was an example of a more old-fashioned approach, not speculating things where it would be inappropriate, and a world way from donald trump obviously and half a world away from bill barr as he's behaving as attorney. and i know bill barr and i am -- jim baker wouldn't say this. but i'm disappointed that he doesn't say this is under review. it's going to be handled appropriately and with great care. i'm not speculating about how things might look on a first impression. it's inappropriate for the attorney general of the united states to do that, i think. >> when i -- when you saw bill barr and the person he appointed to review, it was sort of like, that is the proper way to do it. but it felt like he's got to do

talking points to please the president. >> we all watch it and we watch bill barr at the last hearing, we're scratching our heads and wondering what is going on because he is -- it's almost like an audience of one. he wants to please the president. but all of them are like that. all of the president's men seem to go down this rabbit hole of wanting to please him. and i should be -- go to the ig, it's under investigation. but i want to go back to baker for a second. there were some things that the fbi did in 2016 with comey leading the fbi that was troublesome, the way he handled the hillary clinton investigation, having a performance 11 days before the election, doing what he did the summer leading into the general election. there are some big things that happened then and are happening now that has -- that really shakes the confidence of the

american public. >> i want to put up another quote. barr did this interview with "the wall street journal" earlier. government power was used to spy on american citizens. i can't imagine any world where we wouldn't take a look and make sure that was done properly. it feels like it dove tails with your book. >> yeah, but the world is upside down. >> i was just going to say, do you see this and feel like you're in a fun house mirror? >> yes. exactly. the fbi is now being attacked by conservative republicans or whatever, when it was the bulwark of the investigation during the mccarthy era. it's upside down. but there's one huge difference between then and now. many differences but one really big one. joseph mccarthy was a senator. the house un-american activities were congressmen, now we have a

president and all of his minions doing the same thing and you don't have a republican party putting him in check. joseph mccar tthy was a republican. >> david and i were talking about this before the show and his book sounds terrific, but the big difference is -- i was tweeting this morning after the president's really appalling accusation against the fbi director -- >> that's not a correct definition. treason is during the time of a war. >> it's shocking that the president of the united states would say this. it's as if joe mccarthy has been president and the damage he could have done. not a senator who damaged peo e people's lives. i very much agree -- think of what barr said, what you just quoted, government power being used to spy on american citizens. that's concerning. it is concerning, but you know

what, it was done according to laws that were set up after government power was used to spy on american citizens according to all kinds of procedures with judges signing on warrants. but saying the government is spying on american citizens is as if bill barr doesn't know how the fisa process works. there's no proof that it was abused. you have to have an awful lot of people -- anyway, i think it's really inappropriate for barr to say it that way. >> move on has been a skeptic of fisa warrants. >> we have been a skeptic and we should be. we should be questioning things that we find suspect. but there's something that you said about conservatives and what senators are doing, congressional members are doing on the hill which is so, yes, there's things that i mentioned

that the fbi should be critiqued about, for me it was what comey did in 2016, what donald trump is doing to undermine the doj and the fbi, but what republicans are doing is, they're using it to muddle the waters. they're using it to distract the american people when they go after the fbi, when they say they're going to investigate the fbi. and that's where we get into a really dangerous world, a dangerous place because there are real things happening. we have a foreign government that interfered in our election, that committed a cyber attack in our election and we're not doing anything about that. >> it's been striking to me, david, and i got to think -- because i've been doing my own trump research, the language, i go back to the language that's being used, the innuendo that mccarthy and cohn perfected.

it's a line with roy cohn. it is amazing to see a lot of people adopting this type of innuendo language. >> roy cohn was 27 years old when he was a chief of staff for joseph mccarthy in 1954, and the whole process was go on the offensive, turn language around on its end to use things against other people and just sort of manipulate the language and the situations to their own advantage, but always be on the offensive and create an atmosphere of fear. >> bill barr, i've got more questions. i'm holding in -- i got more questions. >> i got five names in my hand. >> there are names. >> exactly. that's the way it worked then. >> what do democrats do now? they're trying -- you got the decision -- i look at this and i've said this before, it feels like subpoena spaghetti and at

some point, i think all house democrats are going, let's focus on the first things first, get mueller in public and worry about everything else. by doing it all at once, it's allowed the president to say presidential harassment. >> he can say that. i think if mueller testifies, that's a big moment. >> i agree. should they be focusing only on this, this tax return business. i'm not saying they shouldn't go after it and get it, but prioritize. >> maybe. yes, in terms of really -- the different committees can do different things. they need to make clear that we need to hear from robert mueller and we need to follow-up by hearing from others to confirm or refute what is in the mueller report. >> what do your members do if they don't open impeachment hearings? >> i think there's going to be some upset people out there. we have to remember why the democrats got the house, it was the health care issue, but it was being a check and balance on this administration. congressional has to do their duty and do that as well. >> the one thing you don't want

them to do was move on. >> that was easy. you have to come back. joe biden may not be the only candidate making the trump team nervous. how he fairs against other front runners. the number of the day is 41. what's going on? it's the 3pm slump. should have had a p3. oh yeah. should have had a p3.

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welcome back. tonight in 20/20 vision, joe biden is not just crushing the field of 2020 democrats, he's also crushing president trump. a new fox news polls ask voters who they would choose if the election were held today. 49% picked joe biden while 38% chose donald trump. and it's not just biden. in the same poll bernie sanders has a lead. elizabeth warren has a two-point lead. in fact that 41% is the best trump does among other democrats. he ties kamala harris at 41%. the president's campaign manager is trying to downplay the numbers. >> does that worry you? >> no, no. we look at the electoral college, the president is in a much better position. >> but the head-to-head is not

the only red flag. 28% of voters say they will vote for trump while 46% say they will definitely vote for someone else. not surprisingly in the same poll among democratic primary voters. biden holds a big lead there. and speaking of democratic candidates, beto o'rourke will be on hardball tonight at 7:00 eastern. more on "mtp daily" after this.

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welcome back. depending on how you slice it, there are 20 major democratic candidates for president and that makes it harder and harder for candidates who are relatively unknown to breakthrough. especially with joe biden opening up a fairly large lead. joining me now is one of the

most recent additions to the democratic field with the most unique background in that he was elected in a place where donald trump won by 20 points. welcome to the show. >> it's great to be with you. >> let me ask it this way. you look at the field when you announced. joe biden was already ahead. it looks like he's -- he's -- there is a portion of the electorate that says just find the most well-known democrat that can win and get on with it. you looked around, why did you decide, you know what, this field needs me? >> why did i have to become the 22nd candidate? first of all i didn't get in earlier because i had a job to do. i signed my last bill just this past monday and i had to get

medicaid expansion reauthorized, we got a lot of good things done. but i got into this field because i think we're at a dangerous point in our 243-year experiment called democracy and i have some things to add to not only make sure we win this next election, but bridge some of the divides to make sure the government gets working again for us. >> let's talk about the trump voter in montana. in 2016 you had a gun stance that i get why the trump voter was comfortable voting for you and voting for donald trump. you've changed your gun stance a bit. you now believe in a national background checks that you weren't calling for in '16. do you still think you're able to -- one of the ways that folks like you can win in red states like montana is you take the culture issues off the table, right, if you can get culture off the table, you can have an economic conversation with the trump voter. but i'm curious, are you moving

too far to the left on guns and some other issues and coal in order to still win the trump voter? >> yeah, chuck. even in that 2016 race, look, i've besign gun-related bills a vetoed some of them. ultimately i think we need to start looking at this as a public health issue not just a political issue. when i was growing up as a kid, the nra was a gun safety and hunting organization. now it's nothing more than a political organization. if we were looking at this as a public health issue, gun owners want to make sure that guns don't end up in unlawful hands or used wrong. even they support universal background checks. i think that there is a lot more that can be done along the way, and over a fourth of the time that i've been asked to lower flags both under this administration and the previous, it had to do with mass

shootings. people want change and we can make change in a way that still bridges many of the divides. >> is there a -- i want to go to abortion here a minute. as you know it's obviously going to end up more front and center, the supreme court given the age of some of the justices, is going to be a big part of this. do you believe in a litmus test for judges? do you have one in montana when you appoint judges and would you have one on roe v. wade. tim ryan came on and said, yes, he's going to have a litmus test on roe v. wade if he's president. >> you know, i have never once waivered in a woman's right to make her own health care decisions in montana. i think that should be made by the woman in consultation with her doctor and her family and her faith. as a lawyer, i have wanted -- i always want to make sure sure that the judge is consistent with the values that i hold.

i do the same on the supreme court. fundamentally, i want a judge that's going to be consistent with my values on that, on campaign finance, in other ways. by and large, we know if you're asking a candidate how you would rule, they're not going to tell you. >> sure. that i get. >> it would be important to me to be -- sure. >> let me ask you this: what limits would you put on abortion? >> these are decisions that should not be made by legislatures. 1973, roe v. wade is still the law of the land. we should be promoting. >> there are limits on abortion in many states as it is. do you believe there -- do you believe -- it sounds like you believe if there are limits it should be the medical community that defines the limits. but i guess how do you get to there?

what does that look like? >> yeah, and it should and what it looks like in montana is that we follow roe v. wade and we've stopped every attempt to say, all right, sonograms, i think i vetoed three different bills this time. there's a lot of discussion going on about putting further restrictions, making it harder. we've said that's not the decision for a legislative body to make. and even today, we've gone 45 years with roe v. wade. what alabama did is an attack not only on alabama, but our entire country. and we should be bottom codifying the opportunities. and i haven't allowed those restrictions. >> i know i'm running short on time and you've got to get back on the trail. you've been asked the senate question a million times and i get it, most governors i've talked to are met -- if they talk to a former governor,

they're like, you're miserable. i get the personal issue there. but, look, if you can't win this democratic nomination, you care about citizens united, you care about roe v. wade, you care about federal judges, democrats are going to come to you and say if you care about those issues, the united states senate and a democratic president and a democratic senate is how you deal with those issues. what would you say to a pitch like that? >> yeah, chuck. to have a democratic senate is so essential. and i have no doubt that we're going to have a number of good candidates in montana and i'm going to do everything i can to make sure that we take back that seat from senator danes in 2020. i have no doubt that we have good candidates and we will and we're going to do it. for me, running for the senate, was never in the cards. this is isn't an either/or thing. that decision was made long before i decided to get into this race. >> governor steve bullock, i'm

tight on time, but i look forward talking to you more as we get to know you throughout the campaign trail. stay safe on the trail, will you? >> we will do. thanks for having me on. when we come back, the rest of the 2020 field including why that number 41 seems so significant in that fox news poll. poll you should be mad at non-seasoned travelers. and they took my toothpaste away. and you should be mad at people who take unnecessary risks. how dare you, he's my emotional support snake. but you're not mad, because you have e*trade, whose tech helps you understand the risk and reward potential on an options trade it's a paste. it's not liquid or a gel. and even explore what-if scenarios. where's gate 87? don't get mad. get e*trade and start trading today.

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welcome back. time for the lid. we'll dive into 2020. experts are back. david, corinne, bill. 24 candidates. >> fun. >> there is a story in the boston globe that cited a book talking about the era of netflix and how people get almost paralyzed because they have too much to choose from. there's part of the biden surge that feels like it's -- i don't know if i want to figure out 23 candidates. i know that guy. >> right. >> is there a point where the field is so big it's impossible to break through? >> we might be getting there, for sure. it is looking like it is impossible to break through because as you mentioned biden as done better than most people thought he would. we have a critical moment coming which will be the debates. msnbc will be doing the first one. there will be a moment for lesser known candidates to make

their move, break through. the leading candidates like biden and bernie will have a challenge. they'll have the x on their back. then you have the second tier candidates trying to move up. we'll see what happens. that will be a moment to watch. >> you spend more time outside of washington than in washington. it's very possible we are misreading a lot of things that the exhaustion and i got a taste of it in iowa. there is an exhaustion with what's happening here. people are looking for a safe harbor. does biden provide that safe harbor? >> at this point it appear s so. i would use another analogy going back to bill clinton. you had 32 young man, rhoads scholars getting on the uss united states to go to england, all 32 -- they were all men then. thought they were going to be president of the united states someday. by the time they landed in england, 31 of them knew they weren't going to be.

we are just starting that ship. >> we have 24 of them. >> 24 of them. it could be someone like bill clinton who came out of arkansas, not the ones out of harvard and yale that will emerge. so at this point you're right about the exhaustion. we are still just starting that journey. >> the other thing is i thought donald trump gave interesting analysis of this race last week when he said it looks similar to what happened in his primary meaning he got to the early lead. everybody kept -- all this huge field. they all fought with each other trying to get to him. assuming he might falter on his own. there is an assumption that he would falter on his own. by the time it got to trump he was too well established. >> that could be right. these things are hard to tell. biden was compared to mondale who managed to lose badly to reagan but had a serious

challenge from gary hart. there will be moments where the nomination is in question or he is at risk. even the safest coronation. george w. bush in 2000 or gore in 2000. >> or hillary, right? >> right. or gore in 2008. >> being barack obama's two-term vice president, we do know the governors and senators. maybe this one is new, different. for a normal democratic voter being the vice president to the most successful democratic president in a long time who is still loved by the party, that's a huge asset. >> karine, when he says i'm an obama-biden democrat, what do your members think? that's not such a bad thing. >> initially it's not a bad thing. he gives comfort. when you look at polling people want to go back to normalcy. people are going to want to know what are you going to do for them? how are you going to change their lives? that's not going to last for

long. so that's what biden needs to focus on. >> one other thing -- he's not obama. >> he's not. >> president trump is at 41% against everybody in the field when he's matched up. are we overrating trump's chances at times? >> i think we are sometimes because i think we are overreacting to '16 because we underrated his chances. >> totally. >> he's much weaker than the coverage reflects. >> people are overlearning the lessonins of '16. this is the 2018 election. democrats won the house vote by 10%. the best ones like biden are ahead by 10%. trump is at 41% which suggests the ultimate vote of 44, 45 and losing the presidency comfortably. >> can a progressive break through? >> i think so. elizabeth warren is a perfect example. we didn't think she would do well. she's moving up. she's popping and people will

have ups and downs. we are a long ways away. >> david, karine and bill, thank you. a great friday. don't forget, a great american family. this book is well worth your time. we'll be back monday. if it's sunday it's "meet the press" on your local nbc station. bernie sanders joins me for an exclusive interview and i'll speak to cotom cotton. "the beat" with ari melber starts now. >> we'll fact check the new claims about the mueller probe. and later barbara res on donald trump's fixation on settling scores. how that relates to policy making. and stunning comments as missouri passes one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the nation. we begin with breaking news on this friday night. donald trump's treasury secretary is now defying a