to help turn your ambitions into action. what would you like the power to do? my thanks to jason, jen, the rev and ron klain and to all of you for watching. that does it for our hour. i'm nicolle wallace. "mtp daily" with chuck todd starts now. if it's friday, i declassified everything. president trump gives the attorney general sweeping powers to review the russia investigation. you're going to want to hear him explain why. plus high drama over robert mueller's testimony because he apparently does not want to give any public testimony, at least televised testimony.

and how the justice department is using julian assange's crimes as a proxy war against what we in the news business call good reporting. welcome to friday, it is "meet the press daily." good evening, i'm chuck todd here in washington. we begin tonight with president trump giving his attorney general specific authority, bill barr, specific sweeping new powers to investigate the president's perceived political enemies at the fbi. then telling barr what crimes to find and where to look. all of this in plain sight. last night the president gave attorney general barr full and complete authority to declassify intelligence gathered as part of the russia investigation. and if you are wondering why the president gave barr that authority, today he told us. >> i declassified everything. everything they want. i put it under the office of the attorney general. he's going to be in charge of it. everything that they need is declassified. we'll be able to see how the

hoax or witch hunt started and why it started. it was an attempted coup or an attempted takedown of the president of the united states. it's the greatest hoax probably in the history of our country, and somebody has to get to the bottom of it. >> yesterday the president named the fbi officials he insists committed the crime of treason. and today he seemingly signalled to the attorney general how he needs to prove it and where he is supposed to find this so-called evidence. >> you have to get down to what happened. because what happened is a tremendous blight on our country. what happened, the investigation, they tried to do a takedown and you can't do that. i hope he looks at the uk and i hope he looks at australia and i hope he looks at ukraine. i hope he looks at everything, because there was a hoax that was perpetrated on our country. >> so this is the president

inserting himself into a law enforcement here. he is judge and jury already on this one. here's how to make sense of what the president is doing. he's simply building a smoke screen. it's to distract from potential bombshells from mueller's future testimony and likely from all those subpoena fights with democrats that eventually will produce something. the president giving his attorney general the sweeping powers, boy the way, to revisit the russia investigation is the same president who just two days ago told democrats he would block everything because they were, yes, revisiting the russia investigation. yeah, i know, hypocrisy in washington knows no endi. on this news of the president opening up about what he wants bill barr to find, we couldn't think of two people to talk to about it. jim baker, who was the general counsel of the fbi during the origins of the russia investigation and the investigation into whether the president obstructed justice. barr's justice department is now investigating some of mr. baker's actions. and then there's peter baker, no relation, one of the most well sourced reporters covering the white house. the chief white house

correspondent at "the new york times" and he's writing a book with his wife on another james baker. we just thought we'd throw in a third baker. maybe at some point we'll get a baker's dozen. thank you very much. jim baker, i want to start with you. i want to start with something you alerted us to at the very end of the president's executive order. because he is specifically ordering this attorney general to do this, not the attorney general at the department of justice because at the end of this executive order he said the authority of this memorandum will terminate upon a vacancy in the office of attorney general unless expressly extended by the president. first of all, why is it the attorney general that's declassifying this information and making these decisions? >> well, because the president delegated that authority to the attorney general. the president can do that. some people have raised questions about whether there are statutory restrictions on the president's ability to do that. i don't read them that way. so historically it is the

president who decides what's classified and it's the president who decides who can declassify something. >> now, there's -- we have a head of dni, director of national intelligence -- >> dr. coats, yeah. >> -- who's dan coats here. that position was supposed to be the uber arbiter of intel and how -- making sure we don't have the stove pipe issue an all of that. shouldn't he be involved in this? >> you would think so. he's the head of the intelligence agency. i think this executive order is a bit of a slap in the face to the dni. >> why do you see it as a slap in the face? >> to my mind, it's the dni's job to manage the intelligence community and to find out what happened if the president of the united states has questions about what the intelligence community. the dni should get to the bottom of it. this particular dni played no role whatsoever in the 2016 matter, so he would have no reason to recuse himself. >> so he could be the perfect person and actually has the job title that comes with the authority to do it. >> the job title, the existing

authorities. the reason that you needed this executive order is because all the other executive orders and statutory authorities point the other direction, point toward the dni himself. >> peter baker, explain -- it's hard not to look at this and that the white house made a political decision and the president personally trusts bill barr here. do they have any other explanation of why they created this different path? >> look, they think it's better to be on offense than defense. this is a way of making the narrative about the investigators, not the investigated. instead of talking about what president trump did or didn't do, whether he committed violations or not, whether the house should be looking at high crimes and misdemeanormisdemean wants the country to talk about how this happened and frame the narrative around this idea there was a hoax and a coup d'etat. it's not that he sought out an investigation of his enemies or his perceived enemies, he has, as you said, told them what he expects them to find, which is

pretty amazing. i can't remember ronald reagan on george h.w. bush investigating lawrence walsh or bill clinton after his acquittal in the senate saying let's investigate ken starr and see how he did his thing. so this is a pretty amazing moment. whether they'll find something on tour there, we don't know. as you just put it, dan coats is a trump appointee. he's been in charge of the intelligence community the last couple of years. chris wray, a trump appointee, has been in charge of the fbi the last couple of years. neither one of them have said we think things were rotten before us and there's some sort of coup d'etat we need to investigate. >> i remember when president obama speculated that he thought hillary clinton's emails -- there wasn't major national security secrets on there and there was an uproar among many republicans on capitol hill about the president of the united states prejudging an investigation. the president both launched and prejudged an investigation right there. jim baker, should we trust barr

on this? >> well, so the attorney general has delegated, as i understand it, i think the executive order gives us a bit more clarity about what perhaps john durham is doing. as i understand it, the attorney general is delegating this particular responsibility to john durham to investigate so he's a professional prosecutor and he will investigate this thoroughly under the supervision of the attorney general. and so i don't know what else to tell you about that. >> what more could be revealed? we've already had selective declassification based on some devin nunes theories of the case and we went through this a couple years ago and every one of their sort of conspiratorial claims seem to be undermined by the actual release of these documents. do you expect the same? >> i was there. there was no conspiracy. there was no effort to engage in treason, a coup d'etat, any term you want to do. >> did peter strzok do anything illegal? >> not to my knowledge. not to my knowledge. >> if he's guilty of anything, it's bad judgment?

a fireable offense, perhaps. but did he break the law? >> i have not been made aware of any evidence that pete violated the law, pete or lisa or anybody else violated the law in that regard with respect to the investigation. i didn't see anything that i thought was politically motivated in terms of actions or omissions on their part. >> let's say the attorney general puts you in charge of an after action report. what would be the legitimate documents you would want to see to make sure you knew this was done on the up and up? >> okay. so, it depends what you're asking me to do. are you asking me to look at the efforts of the department of justice and the fbi? that is the jurisdiction of the inspector general. he doesn't have -- of the department of justice, he doesn't have jurisdiction to do anything else. the effort that is underneath this executive order, i think, is more geared toward the rest of the intelligence community. so you start pulling records and asking witnesses. i mean you can only learn so much from the documents. you have to start talking to people. >> and what -- obviously the

intelligence community is nervous about we'll hear the phrase sources and methods, sources and methods. give me an example, and it's a hypothetical of sorts, i don't want a specific example in this case. >> i won't give that. >> explain a hypothetical that could be exposed that would suddenly endanger some of our methods. >> hypothetically if you had agents who worked for the united states intelligence community in russia or elsewhere, hypothetically, and they sent reports to the united states, well, then people start to reveal those reports. if you don't -- if you're not careful about what you reveal, you could give the russians enough information to go find those sources. >> arguably the fbi lost an informant in stefan halper. his name is out there. that's the kind of damage that can get done. the exposure of people who have other jobs who have been helpful to investigations in the past. >> it's damage to prior sources, it's damage to current sources,

and it's damage to potential future sources, because who wants to become a source of the united states if we can't keep a secret. >> peter baker, is this -- the president is somebody that loves -- he thinks everything is a deal in some form or another, right? so he went to nancy pelosi and said, you know i'm not legislatu legislating until you stop investigating. does he think if he starts this investigation in justice that he can say, okay, i'll stop that if you stop yours. is this the type of strategic thinking that the president has put into this? >> that's a great question. is he capable of it? i guess, a lot of things we've seen the last two and a half years indicate that he plays outside the box, he colors outside the lines. a normal administration wouldn't play it that way, it would be seen as inappropriate to trade an investigation for another. but, you know, i think we learned in this administration not to rule anything out. i think he thinks that this is something that's going to benefit him. even if it doesn't turn up the

proof that he's looking for, it keeps the focus on the people that went after him. it means that they were illegitima illegitimate. it means anything they accuse him of even now, people like comey an clapper and brennan, they're all just partisans in the way trump portrays them. and that muddies the water so at the very least if you're supportive of president trump, you have another narrative to hang onto. and it locks in the electorate to where they are right now and how they view this episode. >> i do want to remind people, this is not the first time we went through this fisa conspiracy theory here. early in 2018, and i'll remind people all of the promises that many of the president's supporters in the house made about the declassification of these memos and what actually happened. take a listen. all of america tonight that i am shocked to read exactly what has taken place. i would think that it would never happen in a country that

loves freedom and democracy like this country. >> what i read today in that classified briefing room is as bad as i thought it was. >> you are describing the very elements of a palace coup. and after jim and mark meadows and many others of us reviewed the intelligence information today, it is abundantly clear that the entire mueller investigation is a lie built on a foundation of corruption. >> jim baker, you remember this moment back in january of 2018 when they did this. and when it finally went out there and people reviewed it, about the only people that thought there was something crazy there were the three people that i just quoted. there was no there, there. >> there's no there, there because there wasn't. any effort, as i said, to engage in any unlawful activity, any type of political activity, coup, treason, whatever you want to say, it wasn't there. there was oversight at many levels pie the justice department, by the fisa court to make sure that didn't happen.

>> if this was a conspiracy, okay, how many people would have had to participate in it for these fisa applications? i don't mean to be this -- if he's going down this road. this puts rod rosenrosenstein, sessions, where do we end? >> both sides of the aisle. >> both sides of the aisle. the executive branch, the judicial branch. >> judges involved. >> yeah. >> republican appointed judges. i mean it does sort of -- if you go down the logic road, it's beyond disbelief. and yet how do you -- how do you reassure the public that this is -- some of this is just oversold nonsense? >> this is why i've decided to start speaking as a person who was there at the time, who has firsthand knowledge. i know there was no coup or conspiracy or any other attempt to engage in unlawful activity. >> peter baker, is there anybody at justice at all anymore raising a yellow flag? >> that's a great question.

not one i can answer, i'm afraid. but that does lend itself to a larger question. let's just say there was something wrong. maybe not treason or a todcoup d'etat but maybe there were mistakes being made. would anybody trust an investigation led by president trump's attorney general to conclude that? this is a real problem in terms of credibility at this point. you have to imagine that inside the justice department as you suggest there are some people who are uneasy about this because it puts them in the position of questioning their career colleagues, not just political appointees of the last administration. >> my concern, guys, this isn't an accident. the whole goal is to make everybody distrust all investigations. then that levels the playing field in a way that perhaps the president is more comfortable. jim baker and peter baker, thank you both. i appreciate you. two of our bakers dozen. well done. up ahead, battling over the russia probe. taunts and threats with the speaker and a bit of may hem. democrats have been sucked into trump's vortex of chaos.

our experts join me at the table, and that's next. and later, is britain's present america's future? first came brexit, then came trump. now britain's leader is out and they don't know what they're going to do next, so what the heck happens here? more "mtp daily" after this. p d. man 2: proof of less joint pain... woman 3: ...and clearer skin. man 3: proof that i can fight psoriatic arthritis... woman 4: ...with humira. woman 5: humira targets and blocks a specific source of inflammation that contributes to both joint and skin symptoms. it's proven to help relieve pain, stop further irreversible joint damage, and clear skin in many adults. humira is the number one prescribed biologic for psoriatic arthritis. (avo): humira can lower your ability to fight infections. serious and sometimes fatal infections, including tuberculosis, and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened, as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. tell your doctor if you've been to areas where certain fungal infections are common and if you've had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections,

or have flu-like symptoms or sores. don't start humira if you have an infection. woman 6: ask your rheumatologist about humira. woman 7: go to mypsaproof.com to see proof in action. woman 7: go to mypsaproof.com hey, who are you? oh, hey jeff, i'm a car thief... what?! i'm here to steal your car because, well, that's my job. what? what?? what?! (laughing) what?? what?! what?! [crash] what?! haha, it happens.

and if you've got cut-rate car insurance, paying for this could feel like getting robbed twice. so get allstate... and be better protected from mayhem... like me. ♪ the wifi that set just raised the bar again. introducing xfinity xfi advantage. it comes with everything you love about xfi. the best speed, coverage and control. but it doesn't stop there, you also get enhanced network security, safer browsing, and more. plus it helps to optimize your network's performance.

giving you the best coverage from attic to basement. so you can focus on streaming your favorites. not finding a signal. make the best wifi even better,with xfi advantage. simple, easy, awesome. i declassified i guess potentially millions of pages of documents. i don't know what it is. i have no idea. but i want to be transparent. welcome back. that was more of president trump this afternoon on his decision to give the attorney general and this specific attorney general only the authority to declassify intelligence in his review of the russia investigation. just the latest move by the president drawing democrats into his vortex of chaos. let's turn now to our experts for the day, charlie savage, an msnbc contributor, daniellea gibbs and daniel pletka.

we have two bakers and two danielles today. all right, daniellea, trump's vortex of chaos. do you accept that democrats stepped into it a little bit? >> no. but i would push back it's not been a vortex of chaos since he started. it's just another week in the trump administration. >> during the government shutdown, speaker pelosi did play the adult in the room and had an ability to stay above it. she got into the name calling a little bit with him. as we all know, he loves it. and that's -- i think he's baiting her and trying to get her back into it. >> yeah, but the difference is i think she can pull back. i think it's okay to occasionally engage with him, but as long as you can step out of the mud, i think that's fine. i think he has a problem of not knowing how to do that, but i have full faith in nancy pelosi that she will not get completely sucked into this. >> danielle, the other -- on one hand i understand what the president is doing, trying to -- i think he's trying to drive a

wedge in the democratic party saying basically pick a side. you have to do it, either impeach or don't impeach. but the president decided to own gridlock on his own too. >> it's always worked for him. i don't see why he would give that up. he's on the offensive right now. i think he thinks that the worm has turned on the mueller investigation and now he's going to rip the cover off of whatever was happening on the russia investigation and on the steele dossier. and he's going to go on the attack. this works for him. if it causes gridlock, that's all the better. he's not about accomplishing things, legislative accomplishments, about judicious leadership, he's about his base. and this plays. >> charlie savage, in your beat i want to play a game here. imagine if barack obama told eric holder that the bush administration was guilty of treason and crimes and ordered holder to declassify any government documents he needed to prove it. i know that sounds like an absurd thing, but remember there

were people calling for obama's justice department, go investigate cheney, go do these things, keep this alive. and there was political pressure to do it and they didn't because it creates -- >> there was something that actually did happen during the obama years, which was the senate investigated the cia torture program under bush. and there was a huge fight at the end of that about whether they were going to declassify that document where the cia kind of jammed up for a long time the ability to see what was in that thing. and we still only got the executive summary, not the real report. if obama had said to eric holder forget leon panetta or john brennan, or whoever was in charge at that time, you can declassify whatever 50uwhat you meant, the deep state would have lost its mind. >> how unusual is this that he did this? >> i have not found an analog where a cabinet official who has his own domain has been given this amount of leverage.

it's extremely unusual. one of the twists of it that i think is worth pointing out, this is barr sucking up the vortex, speaking of vortexes, of all the sort of right-wing conspiracy theories and suspicions of what happened in the beginning of the russia investigation. so you have people on the hill who were investigating or saying they were going to investigate, they're standing down now. there is cheering from the sidelines. i suspect that sort of the fox news evening hannity crowd is also going to give barr some running room here. we don't know what his intentions are. remember, he was delegated a huge amount of power by trump before to decide what to exert executive privilege over in the mueller report and didn't exert it at all so huge amounts of stuff became public. so what is barr's strategy here i think remains mysterious. >> this is part of the challenge, though. there is a presumption of sin, of guilt by many about what barr is going to do and that he is going to abuse this power. and in fact we don't have a lot

of reason to believe that he is going to abuse this power. i also finding it ironic -- >> wait, wait. the president of the united states -- >> but we don't know -- the president of the united states ordered a lot of people to do a lot of crazy stuff. >> no doubt. >> and they didn't do it, right? because they are people of integrity. i don't think we can presume that bar r is going to use this power to do evil, bad things, reveal sources and methods. it could happen and the authority is enormously broad but we don't know that's going to happen. >> i'm just going to assume it's going to happen. he is clearly already carried the president's water on a lot of things. when you look at his summary of the mueller report versus what was in the redacted report. >> but they released the mueller report at the end of the day. >> right. after he put out this thing that was -- >> you always have a redacted version actually. >> i'm curious about the mueller -- about jerry nadler announcing, and it's pretty clear that they're going to agree to mueller's terms.

i'll give you a public opening statement, let's do the q & a off camera and then go ahead and release a transcript. charlie, on one hand this seems to be a very reasonable ask on mueller's part. nadler even saying they know why mueller wants to do it that way. he doesn't want to be seen as a partisan, even though the president will make him look like one no matter what. >> i think people should dampen their expectations about what mueller's testimony is even going to mean. if i had to place a bet on it, i'll bet an awful lot of questions are going to be i'll stand by what's in the report. i'll let the report speak for itself. mueller, his whole career in achieving this above the partisan fray image that served him so well as fbi director so long really hates to be used as a tool in these partisan tussles. trump has tried to drag him into that rhetorically on twitter, but mueller has shown no sign he's going to play the game. >> daniellea, this is a bit of a box for house democrats.

we know they want him out there because of the report that has his name on it. whaels t what's the case to put mueller on camera other than you're looking for a sounding bite. >> i think the american people deserve to hear -- >> they can read it. >> of course they can read it. but there's something compelling to hear it in his own words and not just a written transcript. but i think, you know, at least we would have -- we will have that. but i think it is really sad that mueller felt like he had to go to these extremes because he already saw what the president was trying to do and house republicans would try to turn it into a political circus. >> i don't blame what mueller did or asked for. >> no. everybody is seeking to manipulate this toward their own ends. and i actually think he should speak. >> you want him on camera. >> absolutely. i think at the end of the day, all of these characterizations of what thisme meant, what this meant, let's end that and get

something definitive from mueller. he's very temperate and going to be temperate. yes, there are things people didn't like. republicans didn't like and plenty democrats didn't like in that report. let's have an open discussion. >> by the way, the president just throws out the words treason and coup all the time. we all have become numb to it. i feel like that's problematic that we've become this numb. i know it is. and it's like -- it seems like we've all thrown up our hands. well, that's just how he speaks. he doesn't even know the definition of treason. >> right. plenty of people accused him of treason from the left side when we're not at war with russia -- >> can people could read the definition of treason? >> the word needs to be retired. it's part of the chaos of the era, you're right. >> it does make us look -- >> it's a worsening of the dialogue that we talk about. >> and it looks like a banana republic. i'm sorry, it makes us look like one of the countries we used to make fun of. charlie, daniela and dani, stick

around. why i'm obsessed with the julian assange indictment and what i'm reading between the lines in it. plus new signs in the climate change challenge. the dangers are real and so is the danger facing democrats. i'm talking with the 2020 candidate that's running specifically on this issue and get him to react, what australians just did. stralians d ♪ ♪

metastatic breast cancer is relentless, but i'm relentless too. mbc doesn't take a day off, and neither will i. and i treat my mbc with everyday verzenio- the only one of its kind that can be taken every day. in fact, verzenio is a cdk4 & 6 inhibitor for postmenopausal women with hr+, her2- metastatic breast cancer, approved, with hormonal therapy, as an everyday treatment for a relentless disease. verzenio + an ai is proven to help women have significantly more time without disease progression, and more than half of women saw their tumors shrink vs an ai. diarrhea is common, may be severe, and may cause dehydration or infection. before taking verzenio, tell your doctor if you have fever, chills, or other signs of infection. verzenio may cause low white blood cell counts, which may cause serious infection that can lead to death. serious liver problems can occur. symptoms may include tiredness, loss of appetite, stomach pain,

and bleeding or bruising more easily than normal. blood clots that can lead to death have also occurred. talk to your doctor right away if you notice pain or swelling in your arms or legs, shortness of breath, chest pain or rapid breathing or heart rate. tell your doctor if you are pregnant, breastfeeding, or plan to become pregnant. common side effects include nausea, infections, low red and white blood cells and platelets, decreased appetite, headache, abdominal pain, tiredness, vomiting, and hair thinning or loss. i'm relentless. and my doctor and i choose to treat my metastatic breast cancer with verzenio. be relentless. ask your doctor about everyday verzenio. you eat right... mostly. you make time... when you can. but sometimes life gets in the way, and that stubborn fat just won't go away.

coolsculpting takes you further. a non-surgical treatment that targets, freezes, and eliminates treated fat cells, for good. discuss coolsculpting with your doctor. some common side-effects include temporary numbness, discomfort, and swelling. don't imagine results, see them. coolsculpting, take yourself further.

welcome back. tonight in 2020 vision, we may see abortion laws on the ballot in more ways than one next year. missouri's republican governor, mike parson, signed a bill that bans most abortions after eight weeks. something the missouri legislature recently passed. that is set to go into effect in august, but it may soon be met with an electoral challenge. a conservative mega donor, david humphries, is planning on funding a ballot initiative in 2020 that could undo the law. he was a donor to the governor and urged the governor to veto this bill and obviously he didn't. in missouri ballot initiatives to change state law are not hard to get on the ballot if they have real money behind them. and the voters don't always go the same way as the legislature. we saw this in previous ones in right to work and some things like that. folks, if abortion is literally on the ballot in missouri next november, you never know what it could do. it certainly doesn't help necessarily the incumbent republican governor who's also

on the ballot. sometimes they end up on their primary ballot and not their november, so we'll see there. while the actual abortion laws won't be on in other states like alabama and georgia, the backlash could have an impact on the senate races. that could help democrats in their quest to take the senate. if somehow the democrats put the senate in play, it will be because of the abortion issue. moments ago, more breaking news. a federal judge in mississippi blocked that state's new so-called heartbeat abortion law, which would have banned abortions as soon as a heartbeat is heard. this fight isn't going away. courts, ballot boxes, campaigns. more "meet the press daily" right after this. "meet the pre ght after this ok everyone!

our mission is to provide complete, balanced nutrition for strength and energy! whoo-hoo! great-tasting ensure. with nine grams of protein and twenty-six vitamins and minerals. ensure, for strength and energy. billions of problems. morning breath? garlic breath? stinky breath? there's a therabreath for you. therabreath fresh breath oral rinse instantly fights all types of bad breath and works for 24 hours. so you can... breathe easy. there's therabreath at walmart.

welcome back. this would seem to be the ideal political climate for a candidate to run on climate change. 2018 was the fourth hottest year on record. polls show climate change to be the second most important issue to iowa caucus goers. more than eight in ten democrats

believe it's very important for their party's nominee to take aggressive action to address climate change. there's still a political issue here. look at what happened in australia, an island continent whose great barrier reef is literally being killed by rising ocean temperatures. but voters re-elected a conservative prime minister and his coalition and it stunned the left-wing party that campaigned on reducing emissions but with a plan that some voters feared could have cost billions of dollars and tens of thousands of jobs. convincing people climate change is a crisis is not as hard as it used to be. convincing them that they'll have to make sacrifices to address it, that clearly is much harder than many folks believe. with me now is governor jay inslee of washington, who's made climate change the centerpiece of his campaign. good to see you. >> thanks for your interest in this. >> i'm fascinated watching what happened in australia. we've talked about this before with the yellow vest movement in france. you yourself had the referendum

issue go down in washington state. it does seem to be that the biggest challenge that i would say the community has in this is confronting the argument that seems to be so how do you get past that problem? >> well, first, you remove a president who says moronic things like wind turbines cause cancer when we know they cause jobs. i'll tell you what's more expensive, which is the trufr plan to allow the crisis to swallow america whole. to allow the midwest to be swamped with these epic floods. to allow miami beach to be under water. that's what's going to cost us billions of dollars. in the next several decades, it's anticipated we will have economic damages following the trump plan of doing nothing about this that will exceed by twice the last recession. that's what's expensive.

i'll tell you what's expensive is to let your house burn down and we make reasonable investments that i think can create 8 million jobs. now, i don't know what's going on in australia, but here we just got 65,000 to support my candidacy. it's moving fast. i just spent the morning with the sunrise movement. things are looking up. >> i hear you. i think we've -- look, economists came up with the idea of pricing carbon a long time ago and a lot of politicians said, okay, if we can tax car n carbon, that's going to create the incentive structures and all of this. instead the successful political argument that pushes back on these is simply that's going to get passed down to you and that's going to cost you this job here or that job there. look, you make a compelling argument about the costs of these disasters. i think if you could somehow make people look at the fema budget and see the cost of these natural disasters, you could change that concept. but you're still dealing with a

political problem here even as you convince people that we have to deal with this. >> well, i am not proposing a direct carbon tax or price in my proposal. i'm proposing a suite of policies that we know that work, that have worked in many states. and we have 24 states now allied. i worked with jerry brown to start this endeavor. we just passed the first 100% clean grid bill that has environmental justice in it in my state. my state will be the first state getting off of coal entirely in 2025. an i'm the only candidate who's saying we need to get off coal by 2030 in this country. and when we do that, we're going to create millions of jobs. so a jobs message is what i believe works here because it plays to the can do spirit of america. we need to make sure those are well-paid union jobs as well. so i've got a plan to put people to work and give our kids the moral benefit of having a place

to live in the next 100 years. that's a winner and i think it's moving well right now. >> governor, i've heard the claim about these great new jobs that are going to be created with the green economy and i don't think the public feels that or touches it or sees it yet. i have no doubt that possibility is there. but you've got to -- it seems like we haven't crossed that threshold yet. how do you cross that initial threshold that gets -- that gets whether it's corporate america and gets the public more comfortable that, yes, there will be trade-offs and not just a trickle-down penalty to me. >> the way that i'm doing is running for president creating a vision of job creation. what we have going for us is that today clean energy jobs are growing twice as fast as the average job growth in the united states economy. the fastest growing job is solar installer, number two is wind turbine technician. i have a plan to put tens of thousands or hundreds of carpenters and laborers and

machinists and ibew members to work rebuilding our built infrastructure so we don't waste so much energy. this is fundamentally an economic growth message. it connects in the midwest. it's one of the reasons we flipped five midwestern governorships. we elected a democratic governor in nevada because he just signed a bill to have more clean energy in nevada. this is a winning message for democrats because it involves economic growth right in the heartland, including advanced manufacturing. so if we argue this from an economic growth message, it's a winner. i think we've demonstrated that big time. won 40 seats in congress, i won ten in my legislature and i just passed a suite of bills that are going to be the best in the nation to defeat climate change. i've got the best economy in the united states, not despite working on clean energy but because of it. >> you did say something that you took the carbon tax out.

is that fair to say that carbon tax is parorobably not going to the answer? >> i don't think it's the best route right now. i think we have multiple tools that work. if you look at california, about 90% of their benefits come from the kind of things that i'm doing. 100% clean electrical grid, get off coal, incentivize electric cars. we have about 50,000 on our roads. i'll be the first governor to have 50% of our fleet going electric. these things are very powerful and they have been embedded in my proposal which frankly has got rave reviews. the people who know what they're talking about have said i've got the best plan and i think they're right. >> let me ask you one final question that has nothing to do with this. when you came back for your sendi second stint in congress, you won in the infamous 1998 impeachment election, if you will. >> yeah. >> so you're very familiar with the politics of impeachment. if you were in the house today,

what would your advice be to speaker nancy pelosi? >> my advice would be to be ready for what is inevitable, which is impeachment. >> are you supportive of impeachment? >> at the right moment when the evidence allows and when the public understands the depth of the things the president has done. >> that implies you don't believe we're there yet. you seem to imply we're not there yet. >> i think we need to build more public understanding of the multiple depridations of this president. i think that day is drawing near and that decision could be the right one when we find out he won't give up this obstruction of justice. when that moment happens, that would be the right thing to do and i'd be supportive of it. >> governor jay inslee of washington state, much appreciate it. thanks for coming on. up ahead, the brexit theresa may didn't want, her own. why her resignation is probably something we on this side of the atlantic should pay attention

to, because it seems to be what happens in the uk is a six-month preview of what happens here. ♪ . or child. or other child. or their new friend. or your giant nephews and their giant dad. or a horse. or a horse's brother, for that matter. the room for eight, 9,000 lb towing ford expedition. but i can tell you liberty mutual customized my car insurance so i only pay for what i need. oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no...

only pay for what you need. liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ but prevagen helps your brain with an ingredient originally discovered... in jellyfish. in clinical trials, prevagen has been shown to improve short-term memory.

prevagen. healthier brain. better life. i felt i couldn't be at my best wifor my family. c, in only 8 weeks with mavyret, i was cured and left those doubts behind. i faced reminders of my hep c every day. but in only 8 weeks with mavyret, i was cured. even hanging with friends i worried about my hep c. but in only 8 weeks with mavyret, i was cured. mavyret is the only 8-week cure for all common types of hep c. before starting mavyret your doctor will test if you've had hepatitis b which may flare up and cause serious liver problems during and after treatment. tell your doctor if you've had hepatitis b, a liver or kidney transplant, other liver problems, hiv-1, or other medical conditions, and all medicines you take including herbal supplements. don't take mavyret with atazanavir or rifampin, or if you've had certain liver problems. common side effects include headache and tiredness. with hep c behind me, i feel free... ...fearless... ...and there's no looking back,

because i am cured. talk to your doctor about mavyret. (woman) you have the support of a probiotic and the gastroenterologists who developed it. (vo) align helps to soothe your occasional digestive upsets 24/7 with a strain of bacteria you can't get anywhere else. (woman) you could say align puts the "pro" in probiotic. so where you go, the pro goes. (vo) go with align. the pros in digestive health. and try align gummies. with prebiotics and probiotics to help support digestive health. welcome back. tonight i'm obsessed with reading between the lines. i have a serious problem with what i'm seeing. on thursday the federal government indicted wikileaks founder julian assange on 17 counts of violating the espionage act. among them, he's accused of,

quote, disseminating classified materials. hmm, disseminating classified materials. the doj clearly believes that's espionage. but in this case it's not, it's journalism. you know who else thought so? the supreme court in 1971 when it ruled that both "the new york times" and "the washington post" could publish the then classified pentagon papers. and this is where what's between the lines gets really ugly, because this indictment seems to put journalism itself in the crosshairs and it looks like it's been done on purpose. because if we accept that assange is a journalist, then this indictment becomes a full frontal assault on the first amendment and we as journalists have no choice but to defend him on those counts in order to defend ourselves and our institution. but julian assange is a hacker, not a journalist. so why is the department of justice trying to make it seem like he was acting in some sort of journalist iic enterprise? maybe because they believe it's a just cause or maybe because they're trying to use a

controversial figure to smear journalists and journalism as a malignancy or to take wikileaks more seriously for something th 2016 i know what i read when i read between lines. how about you? w about you? hey, that baker lady's on tv again. she's not a baker. she wears that apron to sell insurance. nobody knows why. she's the progressive insurance lady. they cover pets if your owner gets into a car accident. covers us with what? you got me. [ scoffs ] she's an insurance lady. and i suppose this baker sells insurance, too? progressive protects your pets like you do. you can see "the secret life of pets 2" only in theaters. "the you get more thants 2" yourfree shipping.ir, you get everything you need for your home at a great price, the way it works best for you, i'll take that. wait honey, no. when you want it. you get a delivery experience you can always count on.

you get your perfect find at a price to match, on your own schedule. you get fast and free shipping on the things that make your home feel like you. that's what you get when you've got wayfair. so shop now!

most of us don't know how much data we use... ♪ ...but we all know we're paying too much for it. enter xfinity mobile. america's best lte with the most wifi hotspots. combined for the first time. when you're near an xfinity hotspot, you're connected to wifi, saving on data.

when you're not, you pay for data one gig at a time. use a little, pay a little. use a lot, just switch to unlimited. get $250 back when you buy a new samsung galaxy. call, visit or click today. okay. time for the lid. tell me if this sounds familiar. our nation's leader at odds.

no one will compromise. you could say i'm talking about the united states but the said could be said for our friends in great britain. after failing to negotiate a successful exit from the e.u., teresa may announced heres i go nation. >> i will shortly leave the job that has been the honor of my high of to hold the second female prime minister but certainly not the last. i negotiated the terms of our exit and a new relationship with our closest neighbors. that protects jobs, our security, and our union. i have done everything i can to convince mps to back that deal. sadly, i have not been able to do so. >> but as politics of late has been a politics here, they had brix months before donald trump was elected. what does this tell us about the future of the washington? danny, your international affairs is your wheel house.

it wasn't her idea to do brix. they said we want it now you figure it out. we could debate how she turned out to not be good at the good old-fashioned politics. no doubt about it. but there is something about their grid lock being a foreshadowing of what's coming here. >> it is true everywhere. we've talked about it. i don't feel as sorry for theresa may as you do. she put herself up for this job. this u.s. sandwich. >> exactly. >> i believe it is a british term. they refer to it as a sandwich. >> okay. >> but what we're seeing in the u.k. is like what we're seeing here and a lot of other democracies. which is that you have these tiny little places of rigid

idealogs. our system a little more accommodating, believe it or not. in a parliamentary system, you can sit down and say, i won't do this and you're done. >> you know what's been amazing, to show you the weakness of the labor party all of a sudden. throughout all of this, the conservative party is clearly at odds. they can't aagree on any of this. their split is similar to this republican party, between the chamber of commerce lane and the populist wing. they have the same split there. but the polarization of their labor leader prevented labor. their version of bernie sanders is actually in charge of their left wing. >> i don't know if i necessarily agree with that analogy. it is remarkable to watchful i'm sort of in your camp. i don't really feel sorry for theresa may. she did sign up for this and she handled it so poorly but i think

there is a way out of this. >> when boris johnson announces the second referendum even though he helped secure the victory of the first? oh! i don't put anything past him. >> look, people understand what they're voting for and if they're very clear about it, there does need to be another vote clearly. who knows what will happen? they have to put something back. >> by the way, the e.u. has been a mess since brexit. the entire continent has been, has been sort of unnerved by this. this was arguably more successful russian operation if you believe they were helping with the brexit than anything that happened in this country. >> going back to what you were saying earlier, a lot of our problems in this constitutional system seem to stem from the winner take all system. it means we can only have two parties and it doesn't seem to

work and there is been a reason all the other democracy that's developed after ours had a parliamentary system which was much more flexible. it looked like they avoided the problems we have. and yet here is a parliamentary system that cannot get its act together. the whole thing is a demonstration of the failures of democracy to function in the 21 century. and it has to make authoritarian leaders at least not sit back and laugh. >> not only. that you do get a sense. i feel like people are more and more comfortable with wondering, they want strong leaders because they're afraid of the, you know, you're seeing more comfort in some corners with this. >> there's a broad disappointment with establishment political parties in america and everywhere. but the problem is, there is also this product of, we can call it over democracy tiesation. they have kept the conservatives in power and will for the foreseeable future. he is so dreadful, is because

they opened up the entire primary system to everybody. which means that everybody votes. >> you can make the same analogy for the mideast. social media created this. i take your point. we don't like smoke-filled rooms. wait a minute. there is a reason why we're not a direct democracy in this country either. >> the extremes don't work. there has to be something in the middle. >> compromise. >> exactly. to your original point, is this foretelling something here? if it means donald trump is gone in six months, that's great. >> my theory is that we could be headed, and we won't know this for a while. we could be headed for a series of one-material presidents. we went through it back in the early 19th century. thank you. that's all i have for tonight. we'll be back with more "meet the press daily." if it's sunday, it's "meet the

press." we'll get into the democratic debate over impeachment. hearing both sides of that and the growing feud between the president and speaker pelosi. "the beat" starts right now. good evening. >> good evening. thank you. we have a lot to get on this friday night. we begin with this debate in washington and living rooms across the country. whether or not it would be time on impeach the president of the united states. consider this new reporting from nbc news. at least 38 house democrats now calling for democrats to begin impeachment proceedings. that would be before impeaching president trump but it would be quite the step. signs they are not alone, today former republican congressman joins the only serving house member to say that donald trump in their view commit impeachable offenses. calling to impeach on a now