if it's tuesday, it's the president's decision to side with the north korean dictator over our allies an unpatriotic act. now biden is firing back. we're going to hear from him ahead. one of the few republicans to speak out against the president is holding a town hall this hour. we're expecting fireworks there and we'll bring them to you live. if it's tuesday, it's "meet the press daily". justic justin amash fired off a series of tweets criticizing bill barr, accusing the attorney general of misrepresenting key aspects of the report and using his position to sell the president's false narrative to the american people. we're going to find out in just

a few minutes if he's going to bring that same rage to the stage when he holds a town hall in grand rapids, michigan. we're going to be watching that live when that happens. republican outrage because of this administration when it comes to things they would do if obama did them, are hard to find these days, even in the midst of lots of situational outrageous behavior, if you will, there was near complete silence after the president tweeted this weekend, the following quote. north korea fired off some small weapons which disturbed some of my people and others but not me. i have confidence that chairman kim will keep his promise to me and i also smiled when he called swampman joe biden a low iq individual and worse. perhaps that's sending me a signal. there was near complete silence from republicans after the president repeated that he was not bothered by the missiles while standing next to the

japanese prime minister, a u.s. ally, and prime minister abe who's country could be in range of those weapons who was outraged by these tests and there was near complete silence from republicans while the president cheered a dictator's attack on his 2020 opponent, a former vice president of the united states. >> does it give you pause at all to be appearing to side with a brutal dictatored in of with a fellow american, joe biden. >> kim jong-un made a statement that joe biden is a low iq individual, he probably is based on his record. >> for his part, biden waited until president trump returned to the united states saying the president's comments are beneath the dignity of the office and to side with a murderous dictator speaks for itself.

by the way, the trump campaign has just issued a response to that, quoting former obama defense secretary robert gates saying joe biden has been wrong about a series of policy errors. that was their response there. there's no one i would rather discuss this with than an msnbc contributor who left the republican party and a long time conservative commentator and critic of donald trump. gentlemen, i want you both to take on two different aspects of this. charlie, i'm going to ask you about the media landscape, george, i want to ask you about conservative circles. let me start with the following. i want to play for you what a former presidential candidate, when he was running for president, scott walker, what he said while -- he was a presidential candidate and he was in the uk. take a listen to this. >> i think particularly when it comes to foreign policy, i just think maybe it is a bit old-fashioned, but there was

some sense in the past saying when you were in another country, no matter what my opinions might be of the president of the united states, i don't think it's wise to undermine the president of your own country. >> he was considered one of the leading three or four candidates for president, george. he said that. we could say he said that because he thought it was right or because there would be a penalty if he did somehow criticize a sitting american president overseas. that was only four years ago. >> look, if they didn't have situational ethics, they wouldn't have any ethics at all. they have a certain versatility of condition. they said we're for free trade and trump said, no, you're not anymore. they said we support our intelligence communities, and he said we're on the side of putin, so they fell silent. we're afraid of north korea, they said, well, trump says, no, we're in love, kim and i, and so they fell silent.

there is a historical analogy that's really fun to this kind of behavior. the republicans in congress in the last three years resemble the american communist parties in the late 1930s. they were all for america supporting anti-fascists, resisting the nazis until august 23rd, 1939 when stalin and hitler reached their pack. they said, no, actually, we want noninvolvement in your quarrels. that was their position until 1941 when hitler invaded the soviet union and said we must all join the fight against fascism. same mentality, republicans, communists. >> what would you do if you were john bolton right now? >> depends on how much he needs the job. >> everything he's worked for, whatever you think of john bolton, there a lot of people

who have strong opinions about john bolton, whatever you think of him, one thing i thought he was is, he's pretty sure of his own views. what is he doing? >> well, he may think i can stay inside and still work to change them. the real question was what was trump thinking. bolton hasn't changed. and trump hasn't changed. he just disagrees with bolton on almost everything. >> i've got a different montage to play for you. it is a montage of media criticism from the conservative echo chamber when a president of the united states appeared with the president of cuba. >> while the world burns, president obama takes in a baseball game with a brutal dictator. president obama is under fire for being out of touch with his own country. >> attended a baseball game. >> sitting at a baseball game. what he did yesterday embarrassed me as an american.

>> he went to a baseball game in cuba, doing the wave with communist dictators. >> what is your reaction to that? >> certainly looks terrible. >> all right. charlie, in some ways the montage speaks for itself. it's not much to add. i'm just -- i do think if the president thought there was a penalty to pay from even his own favorite channel, perhaps he would have curtailed his behavior, but they enable him to, they celebrate this now. >> yeah, that was then. it doesn't take much imagination to imagine if barack obama said what trump said about vladimir putin or what he said about kim, their hair would have been on fire, their heads would have exploded. this is the situational ethics that we're seeing. and watching the republican party and the media move from being, well, we're reluctant supporters, we're transactional,

we don't want to make him mad because we might be primaried, to now becoming the inactive, enabling and cheerleaders of all of this. the way they've gone from being about ideas and party to all about, whatever -- whatever the great leader wants them to say. and it really is extraordinary. you want to talk about the canary in the coal mine. where is mitt romney? the fact that he's silent, look at liz cheney throwing out words like treason. justin amash is talking about the rule of law, he's an outcast. liz cheney is in leadership and mitt romney is in witness protection and that tells you where the republican party is right now. >> well, i think, george, is it fair to say, i guess there's just no -- there is no principles to the republican party. this was your argument of why

you left. it's just a cult of penalrsonal? >> exactly. it's an interesting question. would we have this kind of behavior if we had term limits, if they were only here -- >> i go back and forth. i fear term limits because of the lobbyists don't have them. >> i used to. and then i wrote a book recanting my opposition in term limits because i think it -- term limits changes your reason for interesting politics. >> i understand why more and more think about that. what about the media enabler aspect. the fact of the matter is, the president has created this echo chamber or the echo chamber has helped facilitate him. but there doesn't seem to be a good -- if you convince them all to stay in their own silos and

don't even get factual news, it is hard to penetrate the kool-aid. >> that's exactly right. it is an alternative reality silo and he depends on that. he understands that there are -- there are no gate keepers, there are no referees who are going to say this is really, really inappropriate, and make him pay a price for all of that. this is, again, the new reality that donald trump is enjoying. look, you would think that there would be at least a little bit of residual shame on the part of, you know -- on the part of some of the media to change their standards as dramatically as they have. but apparently, they've gone along with all of this. term limits doesn't solve that. this is part of the tribal identity on the right. >> is it worth to have this rigor inside the republican

party or go outside of it and do what charlie's done. the republican party and trump's reality have been merged. >> he's creating a political market. markets generate information. we're going to learn how many republicans -- rank-and-file republicans, how many of them are uneasy about this. >> is he the right vehicle? >> he's got his flaws, but he's the right vehicle in the sense that he really doesn't care and he has an aristocatic -- >> there's a small government thing to him that you like. >> exactly. he knows why he dislikes trump. and he'll laugh at him. the one thing mr. trump cannot stand is laugher and he's going to get some of that from bill. >> what about on the media front, charlie? i know some of the folks working with you on one hand, one of my favorite lines from one of your colleagues is saying, the great

thing about the trump era is you found out who's really a conservative and who's really trying to make a buck. >> yes, we found out how lightly held some of those principles are. the reality is outside of congress, the conservative -- if you want to be a conservative or a quote, unquote conservative right now, if you want to matter, be relevant, you need to get on board with the trump train. but i do think that there are people out there who are keeping their heads down, these are not profiles in courage, but at some point, if their conscious is pricked, but it doesn't feel like we're going to be hearing from them until now and next november. >> the unintended consequence of sending the message as long as you echo the president's talking points about his political opponents, you can suck up to him, you can get what you want. are we not -- where's the alarm

on this? as we know, politics is a copy cat operation. other world leaders are watching. everybody is watching how easily you can transact with this president. >> that's right. but there will come a time when mr. trump will not be here anymore, if it's six years from now or two years for now -- >> you're assuming the term limits hold. >> yes, i think they will wake up and say, what did you do during the war, daddy, did you defect to the other side and some people are going to be embarrassed, assuming they're capable of embarrassment. >> i think it's possible that support for trump will be akin to what support for the iraq war is. thank you, sir. we got a lot of national stuff to talk about. thank you, both. when is the behavior of the president, well,

unpresidentialle and when is it unpatriotic? then later the first republican to accuse president trump of impeachable conduct is minutes away from holding a live town hall and we got our cameras there live as well. we'll be right back. with drivewise. it lets you know when you go too fast... ...and brake too hard. with feedback to help you drive safer. giving you the power to actually lower your cost. unfortunately, it can't do anything about that. now that you know the truth... are you in good hands? mom, what's for din-ner? just water. lots and lots of water. you wouldn't feed your kids just water, so why starve your plants? feed their hunger and get twice the results. new miracle-gro performance organics.

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all: sausages! mmm, mmmm. bon appetite. make time for what matters. pause your wifi with xfinity xfi and see the secret life of pets 2 in theaters. welcome back. when president trump cheers on an aauthoritarian, it's not just unpresidential, it's unpatriotic. it's not unusual for this president. if patriotism is defined for love for his conduct, is it patriotic to side with a foreign leader over the conclusions over the u.s. intelligence community and it is patriotic to accuse justice department officials of crimes as a plisolitical rallyi cry has president trump did just a few days ago.

we're still trying to figure out what war we launched. if this president were a democratic, we would be hear a loud course of republicans outraged about this. let le welcome welcome my guest. carol, i start with that simply because it is sort of a -- stuart stevens tweeted imagine if bill clinton said that he and saddam hussein were on the same page. it wouldn't have been tolerated the democratic party would have ousted him. we are so beyond that. >> you could apply that to almost anything that president trump does and that the republicans say nothing about. when you look at just the global landscape, he is recashing

america's role in the world, how the u.s. is seen on the world stage and at the same time trying to fundamentally change our institutions here at home, whether it's redrawing the boundaries of executive power oregon othor other things. and you see republicans deciding they're going to stick by him, it's about them, their political futures. they've decided to be selective when it suits them. >> i want to put up a tweet, he said wrong for president trump to criticize joe biden in japan. it is interesting to me, i was thinking about this, when donald trump attacked john mccain the first time, the chairman of the republican party put out a statement condemning it. we're a long way from that. >> we are. it's 2019. trump is the president. he's running for re-election. the party wants to rally behind him. i think there's a political

story here which is the biden tweet. but there's a more important story, i think which is a geopolitical one. when trump said that the short-range missile launches didn't bother him, they bothered the japanese and -- >> he was standing right next to abe. >> the one downside of america first which is that trump is right, those short-range missiles won't effect the united states, he wants a deal that will ban the long-range missiles and remove the threat from us. if he doesn't pay attention to the threat to our ally, japan, then the whole regional structure that supports u.s. power and free trade and peace in east asia is threatened. that i think is something that's very worrisome to tokyo and should be worrisome to d.c. as well. >> how about the fact that you've got the mixed messages that are being sent to north

korea and iran. it was used as the reasoning for pulling out of the iran nuclear agreement. >> there's an absence of consistency coming from the trump white house when it comes to multiple issues. and that's perhaps because he doesn't have some deeply held convictions when it comes to foreign policy at all. i think what really is happening with this whole response to biden in this environment is that first and foremost, the president seems to be focused on re-election more than anything else. and doesn't realize that what he is doing could hurt him more than it can help him. he sees biden as his number one threat and he wants to attack him. but he ends up losing people who want to go for trump but who are concerned about how he's prioritizing things. >> it presents an interesting problem for the democrats. so i saw joe biden decided not to comment at all until the president landed in air force one and they were sending a

message. some would argue, he's not going to play by any set of rules and the democrats are going to confine themselves to standing on -- which many are going to cheer, but others are going to say, you know what, you got to fight fire with fire. >> i think there's plenty of time to do that and i think joe biden, if he responds to every single attack that trump lauds at him then it's not necessarily going to be effective. i look at everything through the lens of how is this going to impact the elections? i'm not sure how much this is going to impact trump's base and those 33%, 34% of solid core supporters. but i look at how independents will impact the fact that he lets dictators play him. they know exactly what to do. and he's siding with dictators over our strongest allies that we've had for a long time and there are a lot of voters out there who will be turned off by this. and that's the point you were making which is this is not -- in the short term, it's disaster, but how does it play

in the long term. >> is there any penalty, though? that's the thing, i think there's probably penalty in the middle but he doesn't have any penalty from the right so he almost encourages him. >> and he's been doing this for some time and i think there's two separate issues here. one is this whole idea of the water's edge and this issue. there's president obama criticized his political opponents while he was overseas. there were other times when that would happen while he was overseas. the difference is, it's that narrow piece of this president siding with a dictator, and someone like kim jong-un over, you know, somebody like a former vice president. we're seen him do this before. and that's where he gets into a space where in the middle, it could really turn people off. >> one of the things that too

many republicans comfort themselves in is trump is a one off. once he goes, it's going to go back to the way it was, norms can be rebuilt. do you buy that? >> joe biden's behavior suggests that norms still hold. norms are something if you want to participate in them, you can. i don't see trump's behavior being mimicked broadly throughout elected officials in the republican party. >> not yet. what do you call liz cheney though? going down the treason road? >> it depends on when the meds they send, when they're running for office in the highest levels, not one sunday show interview. i would say this though about the policy, the policy of maximum pressure is different from the policy of strategic patience which the obama/biden administration put in place and

which led to north korea being the number one national security threat at the time of the transfer of power in 2017. that's what obama told donald trump. since then, we've seen remarkable progress in terms of the sanctions on north korea and some of the signals that kim jong-un has sent, the remains, hostages, and not firing the long-range missiles. but trump needs to focus on the success of his -- >> nothing of that has been happening -- >> he's held two summits with him. the hostages came back and the remains have come back. >> they've reined it in, the -- >> the full nuclearization is the goal. this is the problem, trump places such faith and personal diplomacy and a one on one rapport and he's sending out these signals to kim. >> where is the unintended consequence of having world leaders pick a party?

that's the message that the president is really sending. he sides with netanyahu and this. it feels like he's telling world leaders, pick a party. >> he's telling world leaders that, the norms, which we all know, can be let go of whenever you choose to are no longer in place with him and the respect that you would have world leaders to have for american leaders moving forward, they may not have to have. i do think there will be other republican leaders who take queues from trump. >> i think they're waiting for him to leave. >> it could happen. even if trump loses this election, he's going to continue these attacks and won't be taking on the posture that we expect statesmen to take once they're out of office. >> anyone who thinks trump is disappearing after he loses the election, good luck, america.

>> flatter y gets me very far. that's also what the russians new in 2016 which is one of the reasons why they influenced our elections because they knew that hillary clinton was going to be tough, she was not going to be somebody who they could just, you know, flatter and get what they wanted. they knew that trump would be putty in their hands. and that's what we're seeing come to fruition. >> abe was one of the earliest leaders to try to get on trump's good side, you look at emmanuel macron, how did that work out for him? he hasn't gotten a single win out of that. they continue to do it and that's not clear they're going to get them the results they want. >> i'm going to pause it here. up ahead, we're going to be live, we got biden's first town hall, we hear him verbalize his critique of the president and justin amash's first public

event since he declared the mueller report showing evidence of impeachable offenses against president trump. we'll be right back. (woman) when you take align,

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welcome back. tonight in 20/20 vision and beyond, we've got our eyes on a bunch of town halls, bernie sanders is holding his second town hall of the day in new hampshire.

he took direct aim at president trump and talked up his own electability. >> i believe it is true that our campaign is the strongest campaign to defeat the worst president in the history of the united states. [ cheers and applause ] >> i think we may be in the strongest position because the issues that i have been fighting for for years are issues that will resonate i believe with the american people especially in battleground states where trump should not have won. >> and also at this hour, you're looking live at houston where we are awaiting joe biden's first town hall of the election cycle. interesting decision to do in texas, by the way. we'll go there live in just a moment. it's not just presidential candidates, we're awaiting a town hall congressman justin

amash. it's his first event since becoming the first republican to accuse president trump of impeachable conduct. we'll get a report live from michigan and grand rapids in just a minute. and if you like town halls, then you're at the right place. we got a big one tonight. tune in to senator kamala harris who will be participating in a town hall motter rated by msnbc. . -oave progressive, ] so i just bundled everything with my home insurance. saved me a ton of money. -love you, gary! -you don't have to buzz in. it's not a question, gary. on march 1, 1810 -- [ ding ] -frédéric chopin. -collapsing in 226 -- [ ding ] -the colossus of rhodes. -[ sighs ] louise dustmann -- [ ding ] -brahms' "lullaby," or "wiegenlied."

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welcome back. we got two town halls, we're watching. both expected to be taking on president trump. let's listen in right now to congressman amash who's talking about reading the mueller report. >> i think that's what the founders believed. so even though mueller presents

all of these elements, he lists them in his findings and analysis, he doesn't come to any assessment because he says, well, we can't indict a sitting president and he didn't think it would be right to leave an open indictment like that, to leave open charges like that without being able to go forward with an indictment and not give the president an opportunity to defend himself through the legal process. it would be sitting there during the president's tenure. he really left it to congress to come to a determination on these issues. and what i'll say is that in the constitution, impeachment is a special form of indictment. it is not a criminal indictment. so we're not saying when we proceed with impeachment, if that were to happen, that we are charging the president with

criminal counts. it's not about criminality. even though mueller's report makes clear that there are elements that meet criminal standard, that's not what impeachment is about. it's a finding that someone has violated the public trust. the constitution talks about treason, bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors. and when you go back is look at what the framers of the constitution said and early american scholars and even current american scholars, they're pretty consistent on this, that high crimes and misdemeanors refers not to specific statutory crimes. when the constitution was written, there were basically no federal statutory crimes. the federal government wasn't involved in criminal law. it was primarily state governments and local that would be more involved with

criminality. but -- >> you've been listening to the opening marks of republican congressman justin amash that represents among other parts, grand rapids. he's explaining what impeachment is and what it isn't. i think it's a very useful constitutional educational exercise, probably, for those folks now. i want to check on the vice president joe biden's town hall. leanne, i want to start with you. i know you've got one ear listening to justin amash. how many people are there? do you get the sense that it's fellow republicans or democrats who like what they've heard about trump from amash? >> yeah, chuck, i do want to set the scene here.

of course this is his first town hall since he came out with the statements regarding impeachment and setting the scene, there's a crowd of about 750 people filled up this auditorium. and when he walked in wearing causal clothes, he got a standing ovation. the crowd clapped and rose to their feet. however, i do want to say, talking to some of these voters, some of his constituents before this town hall, there are some democrats who came who said they wanted to support the congressman. they're proud of what he said. and then there are some republicans who want to hear him out. they don't quite understand why he came to this conclusion. of course his constituents know about his independent streak and so they're not necessarily surprised that he came out with this. but he does have some supporters in the crowd but he also has some people who want to understand better where he's coming from, chuck.

>> i appreciate that. and i'm very curious to hear as we go on what the q and a is like. this town hall hasn't started yet. you have an empty podium behind you. is this going to be a real town hall or a speech with a couple of questions, garrett? >> i think it will be realish, chuck. i'm told that the vice president will take questions, but he's going to start by outlining his public education plan. this is something that has just come off embargo a few minutes ago. it will be well received in this room, talking about investing in teachers, schools, the physical infrastructure of our schools as well. this is a town hall that's put on in conjunction with aft. the vice president will be interviewed on stage by the president of the teachers' union. a relatively friendly crowd for

the vice president. >> and it is worth pointing out, there's a reason that kamala harris's proposal was aimed as teachers. teachers' unions are the number one groups that produces delegates to a convention. if you're trying to win a democratic nomination, getting on the side of teachers is pretty much priority one or two. do we expect the vice president to verbalize his response to president trump? >> i don't know how he can avoid it. i've covered enough of these town halls that whatever the subject is supposed to be, there's someone in the audience who wants to ask that question, can you really beat this guy? and i cannot imagine that that doesn't come up here and it doesn't come up in the context f of the president's comments over the weekend. they waited until air force one was wheels down before coming

out with this statement calling the remarks by the president beneath the dignity of the office. it's not the kind of thing that the vice president would rather engage in directly himself, his campaign is fund-raising off of those comments by the president. any day in which joe biden can punch up with president trump as opposed to engaging with the rest of the democrats on his heels is a good day for that campaign. >> and if you respond on twitter, it looks like your campaign is doing stuff. there's a little bit of an advantage there. president trump helping joe biden and his campaign schedule issues. >> the campaign says they're out here making the rounds around the country. they've been moving slowly. that's your prerogative when you're the front-runner unless someone pushes you to do otherwise. bernie sanders has started to pick up his pace, but kamala harris isn't running around and doing a ton of campaign events,

elizabeth warren, pete buttigieg are moving around, but it's not been enough to put pressure on them. if you got a 20-point lead, you can move at any pace you'd like. >> i will let you go. leanne, i think you're at an action-packed town hall yourself. we're going to be keeping our eyes on both of those events throughout the rest of the hour. james comey, he rarely keeps his views to himself anymore. he has a new op-ed in "the washington post" that says that president trump's claims that there was treason at the department of justice are lies. we'll talk about that. ment of js we'll talk about that. alright, i brought in ensure max protein...

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like my bike, and my calves. liberty mutual customizes your car insurance, so you only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ welcome back. the former fbi director james comey has penned another new op-ed for "the washington post," this one responding to president trump's claims regarding the investigation into his campaign ties to russia. no treason, no coup, just lies and dumb lies in that. he writes, go ahead and investigate the investigators if you must. when those investigations are over, they will find the work was done appropriately and focused only on discerning the truth of very serious allegations. there was no corruption, treason, no attempted coup. there were good people trying to figure out what was true under unprecedented circumstances. we'll have much more with our panel right after the break.

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i'm confident that if you read volume two, you will be appalled at much of the conduct. and i was appalled. >> time now for "the lid." that was justin amash, the republican congressman from michigan. carol, eugene, adrian and matthew are back. matthew? is justin amash going to be a caucus of one? >> it sounds like it, at least for the foreseeable future.

i think he's going to draw a primary challenge in the 2020 election. >> may not run, though? >> may not run. so that means he's going to run for president, probably, which a lot of this might be about. so we'll see how he does there. at the moment he's not only isolated among the republican party, he's also isolated among the public at large, which when you combine republicans and independents, continue to have a majority, a large one, against impeachment. >> not only that, he's also articulating an impeachment case that many democrats aren't articulating. >> that's right. fascinating. >> a majority of house democrats that do not yet share his belief. >> i obviously don't have a personal relationship with congressman amash but i have to think there's some sort of underlying motivation that's beyond doing the right thing and speaking out and supporting the constitution over the president of the united states. it's going to be interesting to see if he takes this to the next level. i do think you're right, he would have some sort of primary challenge if he keeps this up,

either way. and he's not being embraced really by democrats at this point. people are excited but he's not exactly being embraced by the full party -- >> because if you embrace him, you're embracing impeachment. >> exactly. >> that is where there is some he is dance here. >> right. >> we did the james comey op-ed. it's sort of in response to the conversation, a bit of conversation i had with sarah sanders earlier this weekend. does he expect criminal charges? does he expect -- he's accused james comey of treason. does he expect jim comey to be arrested? >> again, we're going to let the attorney general make that determination. as he gets to the conclusion of this investigation. >> so the president -- >> but we certainly -- >> is not going to accept -- >> the people that were responsible and that were part of this unprecedented obstruction and corruption at the fbi, those people should certainly be held responsible and be held accountable and the president expects that to take place.

>> carol, if you're wondering, i expected her to say, that's a ridiculous question, you're being silly. no? apparently not. >> no. well, you've seen her a number of times and a bunch of people around the president, this is -- they're very cautious and fearful of getting on a side that they think the president might step in and rebuke them over. who knows what the president has said in private? you know, about what he -- it's easy to envision that he has said something along those lines, or that at least at minimum he doesn't want his own white house brace secretary out there saying that that's not how this should unfold. i think on the other side, you look at james comey's op-ed, it's very clear that democrats are hoping that whatever happens at the end of this investigation will produce what james comey said, which is that, you know, it would show no wrongdoing, everything was done aboveboard, case closed. that sounds a little like wishful thinking, given how we've gotten here and everything that has happened along that way.

>> part of my back and forth with her had to do with the fact that, seems like the president's already made up his mind and he has an outcome that he expects from bill barr. any outcome -- i mean, if barr comes up with -- no matter which side of the fence you're on, if barr comes up with charges, a lot of people are going to think they're political charges, not real charges. >> how could they not? i mean, especially based off of the tweets that the president has been sending for a couple of years now about comey. the reality is, this is what i think democrats will point to when they try to argue that bill barr was going to be more of a political operative of the president than an attorney general interested in protecting the best interests of the country at large. i think what sanders also was trying to do was also communicate that not only does she not know what may happen, that perhaps the president's still trying to figure it out himself. she definitely wanted to put perhaps some fear in comey and perhaps those among him who think that, you know, the president could do something that hurts him. >> she could not say that the president would -- that if bill

barr found no wrongdoing that the president would accept that. i mean, that in and of itself -- you know, we're all sort of expecting this, why are we numb to this? >> because it's donald trump. >> i understand that but at what point -- >> since he came down that escalator, we wake up every morning expecting him to be someone else, he's not. as long as our institutions continue to restrain him we're not a banana republic. >> i understand but doing what he's doing it could end up -- what's bill barr doing? is he risking this? >> bill barr is conducting an investigation into the origins of the counterintelligence probe against president trump. i think that's a legitimate use of his authority. >> but there's three other entities that have done this, including one -- why not let -- i mean, i agree with all of those things except that isn't what the president asked for. the president asked for a conviction. >> there's the president, and then there's what his administration does. we have to separate those two things. i think this barr -- whatever barr finds, we don't know what he's going to find, the

president will accept it. perhaps grudgingly. >> adrian, i go back to a challenge that i feel like democrats hive all the time, how to go after him. for instance, this weekend, we've been talking about the president and biden, the president and kim jong-un. you know what else happened? one house republican stood up and stopped a disaster relief bill that apparently everybody was for, including the president. it certainly handed the dccc lay-up for this one seat. but overall democrats seem like, because of the trump outrage at the moment, sometimes can't get to the bread and butter. >> loaded question. i think you have to look at things in separate buckets. first of all, if you're running for president, if you're a candidate in 2020, you've got to go along with your strategy, stay focused on the message, don't let impeachment drive your entire overall message from your campaign. and if you're leader pelosi, if you are in congress, you keep the investigative process going. you also make sure that you are

accomplishing the goals that you have, legislative goals, for the american people. i don't think you can put all of this into one bucket. that's what donald trump wants, he wants to distract. that's what he's doing all the time. we saw it in 2015, '16, we're seeing it now. democrats have to stay the course. again, there are two separate ways to do this. that if you're running for the presidency, that's one course. if you are legislating in congress, that's a different course. >> it does seem like the kind of issue that would be almost an easy thing for democrats to really lean into. and then separate from that, you know, it doesn't bode well for all of the fights that they have to have, keeping the lights on in congress for the rest of the year. >> i was going to say, how is th debt ceiling going to happen? how is getting the spending caps issue -- this looks like a disaster. >> i think democrats have spoken out against the fact that one republican held up this bill but nobody's covering it. >> a broader picture of the republican minority trolling pelosi during her months in the majority. all they needed was to pass this voice vote. they keep sending these guys to

protest. >> it only hurts senate republicans. >> i'm not saying the troll helps. >> oh. >> but it's what we do. >> carol, eugene, atedry yen, matthew, thank you. we'll be back tomorrow with more "meet the press daily." "the beat with ari melber" starts right now. lots of hive action events, man, good stuff. >> we're keeping an eye on all of it, thank you. we have a ton to get to. we are tracking this town hall. this is the first republican lawmaker to call for donald trump's impeachment. you're looking at the questions he gets as he answers, justin amash there in michigan. it will be interesting to see if the questioners ask about some of these topics. donald trump back in the united states after literally, it sounds bad, but it's just the news, literally using a dictator's news to attack a domestic political rival. also new reporting on how donald trump's twitter habit is actually increasing. you may have heard about that. but also some measures the people are responding less to him. we begin with, as ment