pierre and jason johnson. and to you for watching. "mtp daily" with my friend chuck todd starts right now. if it's friday, president trump tries to say he did not say what we know he said about taking dirt from a foreign government. as he accuses his former white house counsel of lying under oath. plus brinksmanship in a very volatile part of the world. the trump administration is blaming iran for the attack on two oil tankers, and they say they have the video to prove it. and the stage is set literally twice over. 20 2020 candidates. we'll tell you which candidates will be facing off on each night of the first round of democratic debates. welcome to friday.

it's meet the press daily kwiegs. i'm chuck todd here in washington ready to roll up my sleeves. call it a clarification. call it a backtrack. call it even damage control. president trump is a bit on the defensive after he said he'd take dirt from a foreign power if he was offered it again. it's what he said but today on fox news, he said that's not what he meant. >> they know how much i love this country. nobody's going to present me with anything. number two, if i was, of course i have to look at it, if you don't look at it, you're not going to know if it's bad. how are you going to know it's bad? but of course you give it to the fbi or report it to the attorney general or somebody like that. but of course you do that. >> of course you do that, he said now. but why the need to backtrack? could it be that he's nervous about the potential impeachment fallout or from members of his own party, who spoke out against him yesterday in mild tones, but they did. and it's probably why he's also trying to flip the script on

what former white house counsel don mcgahn told robert mueller under oath. >> i was never going to fire mueller. i never suggested firing mueller. >> that's no what he says. >> i don't care what he says. it doesn't matter. that was to show everyone what a good counsel he was. >> why would he lie under oath to -- >> because he wanted to make himself look like a good lawyer. >> folks, supporting an issue like election security and opposing foreign meddling should be nonpartisan political layups, that is unless president trump believe their voters don't care about it. in which case you're asked about it by a friendly interviewer, change the subject. over to you, mitch mcconnell. >> do you think the president made a mistake in the way he answered that question when he said, maybe i would, maybe i wouldn't, i'd hear him out. would you answer that question that way? >> well, he gets picked at every day over every different aspect of it. but the fundamental point is

they're trying to keep the 2016 election alive and the investigation alive when the american people have heard enough. >> mitch mccouldn't didn't say anything about an election security bill. president trump is in a wash, rinse, repeat cycle, and he has been since he came down that escalator for years ago tomorrow to announce this run for the presidency. say or do something controversial, country reacts in outrage. say or do nothing, country reacts in new outrage and forgets the last controversial they were outraged about. and that puts democrats in a tough spot playing wily coyote to president trump's roadrunner, also getting flattened by the acme anvil. joining me is congressman tom cole. he's a former chairman of the national republican campaign committee. basically he thinks like a consultant sometimes who just happened to be an elected

official too. i'm teasing you there. congressman, good to see you. >> fair enough. good to see you, chuck. >> let me start with this election interference bill. why is this so hard? set aside what the president said. why can't you guys vote in a bipartisan way to criminalize foreign interference in elections? >> i think we can. i think we should. look, this is a no-brainer to me. look, somebody calls you up from a foreign government offering you information or help in your campaign, it's illegal. you should immediately call the appropriate law enforcement people, normally the fbi since it involves a foreign government. that's what i would do, confront them with a case like this. we ought to be able to pass something like this. i don't sit on the relevant committees of jurisdiction, but as long as it wasn't a gotcha police of legislation but a serious effort to make clear the

guidelines. and frankly the fec commission -- chair of the fec commission laid out this is illegal. you don't do it. i'd be happy to support something like that. it's just wrong. hopefully that's something congress can get together on. >> look, i buy the fact that you would be in on this if it happened. but there doesn't seem to be political fallout on your side of the aisle over what the president said. is it fair to say, fair or not, that he has conditioned the republican base that this isn't that serious? >> i don't think so. actually, the fact that the president basically backtracked and, you know, took a different position, i'm glad he did by the way. you know, within 48 hours suggests to me that they did understand that this was a mistake. the president misspoke, or you can put it however you want. but at the end of the day, you can't be for allowing foreign powers to participate in american elections. i'm glad that the president came around to that. i would also say this, though, by the way.

i think if you're law enforcement and you have some evidence that they are, you owe it to the campaigns to contact them and they tell that. that didn't happen in the president's case in 2016. that's a mistake, you know. if the fbi or anybody thinks a foreign country is trying to penetrate a campaign, i think the campaign deserves a call from them to say, hey, we've picked this up. something may be happening here. we want you to be extra alert. >> isn't that what the amendment process is for? this is what i don't get. this is something that has -- if you look at polling -- bipartisan support. have an amendment in there that would force the fbi to do this. this is what i don't understand, is it seems as if particularly on the senate side, there is no interest in even trying to do this. >> again, i can't comment on the senate side. i would be happy to work on an effort on the house side with somebody. again, i'm not on the relevant committee of jurisdiction, and you know how this place works. you really need to be to actually do something. but i'd be happy to sit down, work with people from a political consultant standpoint,

having been one for many years, about what we should do, how we should do it, and dprafrankly w law enforcement should do. we were confronted with something pretty unprecedented in 2016, so i'm not pointing fingers at anybody anywhere. but we know a lot more now because of the mueller investigation, which has been very helpful. i wish we had more focus on what he said in the first part of the investigation about russian involvement. and so we should act on that. we should take that part of it where i think you could have bipartisan agreement and say, okay, these are the rules of the road. these are the things law enforcement should do. they should alert the campaigns. these are the things the campaign should do. we had a lot of people frankly, particularly in the trump campaign, i think had never been in campaigns before, didn't know much about them. i think sort of stumbled into some difficult situations. let's clarify that. if we need to do it legally, i'm happy to help do that. >> you have the homeland security secretary that wanted to convene a cabinet meeting on it, and apparently the president

didn't want it. >> well, i regret that because we should have that. look, this is a question of protecting our own political institutions and processes. i actually don't believe a foreign power can manipulate a presidential election. i believe they tried. they have tried, by the way, ever since the 1790s with citizen janee and the french, so that's not new, and nobody's succeeded at it. frankly it becomes a bad thing for you, and i think the president reacts to that. he worries it will color or undermine the legitimacy of his election. i don't think it does. but, again, let's be crystal clear on this. this is something all americans all to be able to unite around, ought to be able to work on together, and we ought to be able to send a really united message to anybody outside our borders, don't come mess with our aelectielections. >> most fridays we're at a crescendo of some controversial thing the president said or did or threatened.

last friday it was the terrorist threat at the border having to do with mexico and this sort of moment where there was a threat that it was going to happen. they were insisting it was going to happen. we pulled back from the brink, and i think economically a whole bunch of people, particularly in your region, is happy about that. but this sort of threat to the border, pull it back, threat to the border, pull it back -- what has that done to your district? what has that done to the communities there that frankly are being impacted a little bit more by all this? >> well, frankly there is a real threat to the border. last month we picked up 144,000 people, including 10,000 unaccompanied minors that had entered the country illegally. in my district -- >> they're being put into your district, right? >> absolutely. this is not our first rodeo here by the way. in 2014, president obama faced the same crisis, and fort sill in my district was tapped as one of the places that these unaccompanied minors would be

housed. that's happened again. at least we don't have them yet. we don't have a timetable, but we've been told this may be necessary and fort sill is on the list. so, again, we handled this before. we can handle it again. but the real problem is what do you do about the border and the immigration issue, and i think, look, you harden the border, number one. you change the laws, which i think congress has been incapable of doing. and you obviously provide relief. one of the thing that concerns me the most about this, chuck, democrats so far haven't been willing to vote the money that the president needs to take care of these unaccompanied minors. we did that for president obama when we were in the majority. they should do that for president trump. this is not a partisan issue. we're legally required to take care of these unaccompanied minors. we should. >> given the way the president has gone back on these threats with the tariffs and using economic pain perhaps to try to deal with this immigration, is

he making it fing hard for demo come the table? >> they haven't come to the table period. this is their fault. we've had over 100,000 a month, illegally entries for three months. they spent the first six weeks telling us there wasn't a crisis at the border. now it's a crisis at the border because president trump has said he's going to enforce the border laws so more people are coming so they can get ahead of him doing that. what's that say about their commitment to helping? number one, we should put more money and resources here. we made some progress last year. we've got to do a lot more. i think the president is frustrated with congress and is trying to do that. number two, we have to seriously look at the laws. with all due respect, some of my colleagues on the other side really are for open borders f. you're for getting rid of i.c.e. for immigration custom enforcement, that means you really want to let the borders open to human trafficking, to drug problems, and to illegal entry. and i don't think the american

people are there. i actually don't think most democrats are there. they've got to get past not liking president trump and sit down and bargain with president trump. >> put your pollster hat on for me. there's been this theory, the president's approval rating basically sits in the mid-40s. it can fluctuate two or three points north or south of that. the unemployment rate's below 4. would he be in worse shape in a worse economy? would he be in better shape if he didn't step on his own toes all the time? >> he'd be in worse shape if we had a worse economy. he would be in better shape if he were a more presidential-type candidate. to be fair to the present, i think he won because he was unconventional. i don't think he's changed very much over the last three years and that's why he's kept his base. but i do think we need to reach out to people. >> are you concerned he's not reaching out and trying to do something? you looked at these polls this

week. trump's at 42 against everybody, right? that's the best he can do. that's not a winning number even unless you get six more candidates in the general election. >> it's not a winning number until they actually pick un. look, right now nobody's waged a campaign against any of the democratic front-runners. i can assure you that will happen. they'll start it themselves. it will continue in a general election. so i think this thing gets more competitive. but, look, more traditional outreach, and i tell this to my friends at the white house and the administration, you've got to think about not who you have, but who have you added? we have the ability to add a lot of people given the state of the economy, given the success of rebuilding the military, given deregulation. he's kept a lot of his commitments, the movement of the embassy from tel aviv to jerusalem. let's talk about the positive things we've done, not pick a fight every day. >> yeah. >> i think if we saw more speeches like we saw in normandy, i think the president's numbers would go up. >> as i said, he wants to make it a referendum on his record,

not his character. we'll see what happens on that front. congressman tom cole, republican from oklahoma, good to see you. thanks for coming on. >> thanks for having me. up ahead, another go-around of the outrage cycle. the president's comments prompt fury. we react, then eventually move on. why no matter how out of the norm they may be, the president's latest remarks will likely change nothing? and later on, a collision course. fears of war are growing as the trump administration points the finger at iran over attacks on two oil tankers. and there may be more videotape evidence to prove it. i'll discuss it with a former u.s. ambassador in the middle east. that's next. the first survivor of alzheimer's disease is out there. and the alzheimer's association

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when mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. they're not sending you. they're not sending you. they're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us.

they're bringing drugs. they're bringing crime. they're rapists, and some, i assume, are good people. >> that really happened. as i said, that was four years ago tomorrow when donald trump gave us his first outrage-inducing comment, and since then it's been one cycle after another. let's bring in some people to break down the outrage cycle. leigh ann caldwell, cornell belltry, and michael steele, former adviser to jeb busch and john bayoehneboehner. i do like to remind people, michael steele, that donald trump planned his entire campaign that day, that entire announcement was planned to troll your guy, jeb bush. jeb bush announced june 16th. people don't remember like why did trump all of a sudden just

say, oh, let's do june 15th. it's because you guys had this elaborate rollout in miami for the big jeb bush candidacy, and he was going to step on your announcement, and it worked. >> at a school with a massive latino population. >> the largest in the country. >> with a message of education reform and inclusion and immigration reform and building a new republican party and a new america, and an image he didn't seem quite happy with. >> why didn't you guys beat him by the way? >> lack of votes largely. >> and low energy. very low energy. >> it is astounding that since that day, leigh ann, pretty much every week -- it was sort of this week we're in the, oh, my god, he would take foreign government. last week it was the blazing saddles tariff, which is stop or i'll shoot myself. the week before that, it was the "uss john mccain." we can keep going, but when people say how come there isn't outrage over donald trump, this is actually one of my explanations. it's sort of a numbness to it. >> oh, absolutely. there's an exhaustion to it.

it's something that people -- it's the new normalization. this is how it works. the president is obsessed with being the center of attention. when he's not, he creates chaos, and then he gets all of the attention again. and so when it comes to congress, they're exhausted too. but the republicans have done very little to try to separate themselves from the president because they know his base is still strong. >> you know, john, we were talking about this earlier at our meeting. you know, under any other circumstance in a normal presidency where the president's struggling like this, you'd start to see people breaking away. i'm running as a democrat or a republican, not as a clinton democrat or an obama -- you know, whatever, romney republican. you start to see splitting off. what is interesting is a lot of us over the years have said, why do they bother trying to distance? they might as well jump off the cliff together. well, the republican party has decided, i lose without him, so i might as well, if i'm going to lose, i'm better off losing with him. >> it seems like he's settled at his ceiling and his floor, which

are about the same place. >> his personal rating, his approval rating, and his ballot test are practically the same number. >> exactly. so there isn't that much give on the republican side in terms of how they feel about him, and, you know, when you talk about why doesn't it trigger outrage, i think it does, but it's outrage with the same people who were outraged before. it's not new people. and we saw in the 2018 elections that that's a lot of people, and it's a lot of people -- enough people to put president trump in very severe political danger. and i simply think that views of him are so fixed right now, it's extremely difficult to change them, which is why, you know, brad parscale, when abc today published the internal poll numbers where trump was losing by a wide margin to joe biden in pennsylvania and some other places, he said all those are ancient. they were taken in march. trump's poll numbers don't really change. >> they never move, yeah.

he's got his base. >> he does have his base, and to pick up your point, there is outrage. listen, i'm sorry, my fellow democrats, but we had almost 10 million more people vote democrat this time in the midterm than in the past. that wasn't all about being in love with democrats, right? >> well, you don't -- i am curious. do you see it as a referendum on health care or a referendum on donald trump? >> the health care referendum thing i think is completely overblown. we've had a lot of elections about health care, and we didn't win 10 million more people. >> every one in my lifetime, it feels like. >> the democrats are saying it's a health care election. was health care an important issue? yes, it was. but not as important an issue as donald trump and division, and you get in focus groups with these women in suburban districts who once upon a time republicans carried, and the first thing they talk about is how divided the country is and what this means for the kids. >> a bunch of people like us would say, you guys don't know how to handle trump when you're

running against him as a candidate. now it's like you people in the media don't know how to cover trump. you democrats don't know how to deal with trump. it's like we're sitting in -- it is nobody knows how to handle this. you guys have tried different tactics. what works or does nothing work? >> nothing works yet, and it's not just political opponents. it's not just the media. it's social media companies. it's the law. it's courts that can't figure out that we have a president who is okay with having someone who violated the hatch act on their staff, and it turns out we don't have an enforcement mechanism because we assumed that if you told the president someone on his staff was violating the law, they would be asked to resign. and it's just the lack of functional sense of shame and the willingness to disregard every norm of our democratic society is what makes him teflon. and i don't know how to fix that. >> wait, if he was teflon, democrats wouldn't hold the house majority right now. >> teflon isn't transferrable. this is -- >> trump is the teflon, not the

republicans. >> exactly. >> is that the point? >> does that mean you think he's invulnerable in 2020? >> i think he has a better chance of winning in 2020 than most people in this town, in washington, d.c., think he does. and to chuck's point, i think one of the reasons that joe biden is doing better than i expected certainly right now is because he's borrowing a slogan from warren g. harding. he's promising a return to normalcy. he is saying, remember those obama years when the tan suit was a terrible thing? that wasn't that bad. don't you miss that? >> don't you miss the outrage on that? >> but the election is going to be a choice of two people. so the way that biden is also running his campaign right now, yes, he's the front leader. he's not drawing tons of enthusiasm. if it's those two against each other, it could very well be a race to suppress the vote. it's going to be a very low -- >> no, but this is my concern actually with what trump did this week. we've not talked about this fallout, and that is the fact that when we were worried about this in the run-up to the '16 election, which is i think now,

if it's a very close election, the losing side's not going to believe they lost legitimately. and whether it's a trumped up version of that -- no pun intended -- or there's evidence to prove it, it won't matter. it's going to -- and how do we deal with this, john? >> well, i think the president's behavior is fueling doubts on the democratic side in ways that we haven't seen before. you know, republicans complained in 2016 and trump complained, well, the election process is rigged. and that's because we've got a country that has been moving more toward democratic constituencies and democrats have won the popular vote six of the last seven times. on the democratic side, when you have president trump saying it would be okay to cooperate agents of a foreign power because it's just information, and he said it so brazenly and so unashamedly, you have to wonder what other kind ofs s ki

assistant would he welcome if he could get it? if he were told by russian -- do you think president trump would say, i think that's wrong? don't do that. >> he already said no to the hatch act. we've talked about foreign government. what about using the federal government in ways that has been thought to be illegal? he's okay with the hatch act? >> will we even know? if you look at the headlines out of my hometown, durham, north carolina, they're talking about people showed up to vote in the midterms and were told that they had already voted. and after an extensive investigation, they came out in headlines today, it turns out we failed to update the software. it was a technical glitch. it wasn't the russians, but -- >> a technical glitch, or did somebody find a way to glitch that day? that's a convenient glitch in durham, north carolina. >> in a swing state. >> this is a big deal. when you look at suppression, when you look at the majority of

african-americans in polls said voter suppression impacted the election. that is a really big deal, and that grows larger, guess where, in places like georgia where the african-american wait time was double that of the white time for whites. so you do have it on both sides. on one side, you know, you had 39% in the poll republicans saying voter fraud is a really big deal in elections. and on the democratic side, you have suppression saying it's a really big deal. >> you're bringing up -- remember that great "saturday night live" skit where it had trump conspiracy theorists, some african-american longtime advocates and, oh, we agree on a lot of this stuff. don't trust the government on -- oh, wait. it was like blank lives matter. >> to michael's point earlier, we have a president who explicitly, by his own tongue, does not recognize the distinction between right and wrong. what do you do with that? >> the amoral issue. all right. leigh ann, john, cornell, michael, stick around. coming up, the plans are set

for the first democratic debates. we now know who's in, and we now know on witch nighich night. let's break down the tournament. we'll be right back. the first survivor of alzheimer's disease is out there. and the alzheimer's association is going to make it happen. but we won't get there without you. visit alz.org to join the fight. who got an awful skin condition. with uncontrolled moderate-to-severe eczema,

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will be going head to head and when they will be appearing. the first group on wednesday, june 26th, will feature cory booker, julian castro, bill de blasio, tulsi gabbard, jay inslee, amy klobuchar, beto o'rourke and elizabeth warren, in the second group, it will include michael bennet, joe biden, pete buttigieg, kirsten gillibrand, kamala harris, john hickenlooper, bernie sanders. the dnc took steps to make sure there wouldn't be a debate of candidates that are solely low in the polls or solely high in the polls. candidates were divided into two groups, those who polled below 2 2% and those who polled above 2%. you can catch both nights of the action in one place, wednesday june 26th and thursday june 27th on the family of nbc news networks all live from miami.

now that the stage is set, i'm going to break down where the biggest tensions are going to be onstage and which candidates are happier than others about their spot. that's ahead. it's funny what happens when people get together. we're there. so you can be too. holiday inn. holiday inn express. (woman) you have the support of a probiotic and the gastroenterologists who developed it. (vo) align naturally helps to soothe your

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well, iran did do it, and you know they did it because you saw the boat. i guess one of the mines didn't explode, and it's probably got essentially iran written all over it. >> welcome back. president trump and secretary of state mike pompeo are accusing iran officially of being behind the attacks on two oil tankers in the gulf of oman earlier this week. the u.s. military released this video that it says shows an islamic revolutionary guard corps boat pulling alongside one of the tankers after an initial explosion and then removing what the military -- u.s. military claims is an unexploded mine. they believe that could be the proof that it was indeed iran who was trying to hide its

involvement in those explosions. now, iran officially is denying any involvement in the attacks, accusing the united states of, quote, warmongering. the japanese owner of one of the tankers also refutes one of the u.s.'s assertions, saying some sailors onboard saw something flying towards the ship just before the explosion. it's all contributing, though, to increasing tensions in a part of the world already on edge. with me now is ambassador chris hall, former u.s. ambassador to iraq and south korea. apparently they only put him in hot spots. he's now an msnbc diplomacy expert and professor at the university of denver. ambassador hill, always good to see you. let me start here. >> pleasure. >> there seems to be a lot of weird players here. there's a divide inside iran about how aggressive to be. there's this theory that some in iran don't want to escalate, but the revolutionary guard does. there's this idea that the saudis, they're ready for this. they're ready for this

escalation. the united states, there seems to be a divide inside our government between the president perhaps and his secretary of state. where is all this heading in your view, and what is the driver of this right now? is this the entire iranian government, or is this the revolutionary guard? >> well, unlike president trump, i can't really interpret videos, but certainly there's reason to believe that this is some kind of quds force that is revolutionary guard action. that would lend some support to the theory that the iranians are in a couple of places as to how to handle this. but i think one of the big problems is we have a national security adviser and, to some extent, the secretary of state himself who, you know, they make assertions that they have trouble backing up. then they create more doubts, especially in europe. many people who feel this is a u.s. effort to kind of make sure

the europeans follow up on re-imposing sanctions. so as your setup piece suggests, they're kind of all over the map. i would think as a start, it would be good to take that video and discuss it with the europeans, take it to nato, talk to various europeans and get some support there because there is a credibility issue with this administration when they say things, you can't necessarily take it to the bank. >> the fact that it was sen com that released it, does that make you more confident that the administration is telling the truth here? >> yes, it does actually. it's still photo interpretation or video interpretation, but it certainly makes any feel a little more confident. but having lived in iraq, having experienced a roadside bomb, which was an iranian munition, having been hit by various katyusha rockets made in iran that came in the green zone, i

don't put it past the quds force, the revolutionary guard. my question, though, is does it rise to the level where we want to start a war? what is particularly unsettling about the whole thing is we have a secretary of state and a national security adviser who certainly need to explain the gravity of this, but shouldn't be kind of cheer leading in a rush to war. they should be talking about the gravity, what our options are, and frankly what we're doing. usually you want a kind of man in motion play. you want to send so and so to europe to start discussing this with allies, et cetera. so it's, again, another test of this administration's ability to kind of manage a crisis and foreign policy, and frankly they're not very good at it. >> here's what -- and i was wondering what you made of this puzzle here that i think a lot of us are trying to put together. here you have the prime minister of japan basically trying to play mediator here a little bit, trying to play diplomat on behalf of sort of between the west and iran.

apparently carried a personal letter from president trump to the ayatollah, which the ayatollah completely rejected. what would be the motivation in your mind if the quds force decided to attack a japanese tanker while the prime minister of japan was in iran? i'm trying to put all that together. what's your -- >> yeah. >> what is your read on that? >> you know, again, iran doesn't have particularly great command and control. i can manage quds force is so implaquably opposed to making any additional concessions, which would be the sort of underlying idea if there were a u.s./iran dialogue at this point, which seems to be something that president trump has suggested on a few occasions, including most recently through the japanese -- who by the way would really like this whole issue calmed down. they depend on oil from a number of sources, including iran. so i'm sure the japanese said,

well, let me carry the message. i mean, after all, you've tried before. so it might be something like that. but the president clearly would like to have the opportunity to show what a deal-maker he is. >> right. >> so we'll have another sort of kim jong-un moment. >> if the iranians comply -- and i don't know if the ayatollah wants to do that. i'm curious, though, regardless of whether you believe this escalation with iran has been precipitated by, you know, sort of unilateral decisions by this administration, the fact of the matter is the gulf of oman needs to be more secure for these oil tankers. you think that the u.s. military now has to be the escort for basically for the world right now, the police escort in the straits of hormuz? >> yeah. i don't know if we're there yet. i mean certainly we've played that role in the past. i'm not sure even the president wants that role at this point. i mean that's a huge undertaking. we've done it before, but this president -- he doesn't like that kind of stuff. he likes sort of these kinds of

moments where he can show how tough he is. so i think we're probably going to hold off on that much to the frustration perhaps of mr. bolton. and he and president trump probably ought to meet more often and make sure they have their signals straight because it's really kind of hard to tell. i suspect the president would like to get into a situation where he has personally taken some steps with the iranians to calm this down, and we can move to some, you know, better deal with iran, and he's the hero of the day, something like that. >> the problem he's got is he likes to meet with the people at the top, and, boy, the ayatollah seems like he's pretty -- pretty dug in on the idea that he's not even going to exchange letters. >> he's a little grouchy, yeah. >> yeah, that's the impression that i think he wants to give to the world. ambassador hill, as always, thank you. coming up, now that we know which 2020 candidates get to go face to face to face to face

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welcome back. tonight i'm obsessed with being understood because that's clearly an issue for president trump. consider his exchange in the rose garden wednesday with my colleague, kristen welker. >> you seem to suggest yesterday that you were essentially committing to not spying on north korea. is that what you meant? were those comments interpreted accurately? >> no, it's not what i meant. it's what i said, and i think it's different than maybe your interpretation. >> it's what he said, not what he meant. got that? it's been our fault this whole time. we've all been listening to what the president says instead of what he means. >> look, i have -- nobody has greater respect for intelligence than donald trump. william mckinley, he has not been properly recognized. an island surrounded by water, big water. we're going to win in spades. by the way, without any musical

instruments. >> don't you see? you were listening to the words the president said but not the words he didn't say. the president might say what he means, but he might not mean what he says, or maybe it's the other way around if you know what i mean. even then, the words might not mean what you think they mean. right, president clinton? >> it depends upon what the meaning of the word is. >> so in essence, a president just said, don't believe what he says because he might not mean it. america, what say you? every day, visionaries are creating the future. so, every day, we put our latest technology and unrivaled network to work. the united states postal service makes more

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welcome back. the countdown has fully begun for the first 2020 debates later this month. now that the stages have been set, political watchers can start the pregame analysis. what do you think of the first round match-ups? who should be looking forward to them and who should be worried? let's get right to it. i'm going to start with you. >> why? >> who should be happy? who should be sad? i remind people, night two is the night of biden plus the big names of harris, buttigieg. night one, the biggest name maybe elizabeth warren. if i would have told you three months ago that it would also feature beto o'rourke and amy

klobuchar, that would be a good lineup, too. >> if you are not sanders or biden, if you're one of the cast who needs to break out. i think this is more potential to break out. the two big consistent front-runners are not sucking up all the air. >> everybody is worried about it. not the direct questions. rebuttal air time. >> and how much of your time, at some point you have to hit the front-runner. you have to hit sanders and biden. you can spend more of your time talking about yourself and breaking through. >> this is why they all tanked to get in the lottery. >> michael, though, it is interesting in these early debates, the conventional wisdom, we'd been through a bunch of them. when you do the first debate, you end up, they didn't go after

each other. until we entered the world of donald trump. i assume the campaigns you've worked on -- >> you want to tell your story. you want to state the case affirmatively for your candidacy. >> so which night would you prefer? the biden night or the nonbiden night? >> the nonbiden night. bernie and biden that night will take up more air time and justifiably so. he those of you who have moderated debates struggle. with do you give more time to the candidates who are doing better because they have a greater chance being president of the united states? >> it's not that you end up gravitating toward it. you have no choice but to have the rebuttal time. some of the candidates realizing, there is nothing we can worry about it. you get another 30 seconds.

>> i would feel differently if write pete buttigieg. i think being on that stage, for example, with kamala harris, bernie and biden reinforces the idea that he's a big player in this thing. and he gets to emphasize the youth with the two old guys. >> and he's come after biden more than anyone else. i'm sorry. >> it's okay. i'll talk now. so buttigieg's campaign is thrilled that they're on the first night. they think it is a huge opportunity. and i'm not convinced that the second night will have more viewers just because it is a biden and bernie. you'll have the first night. and then the first night will have two days of the monday night/day quarterbacking for all the media folks to talk about what was happening in the debate. i think it is a huge opportunity. i will say for the bottom tier

of candidates, the second night will be way better for them. >> that's interesting. do you buy that as well? i go back and forth about where it is good to be a bottom tier candidate. >> you have yang and williamson together. two of the most interesting presidential candidates. >> which of these are not like the other? >> right. and they'll be in the fray with biden and bernie. it will be good for them. >> i think there are two categories of lower tier. there is the out of the box yang and then -- >> andrew yang is my murray state. he can go a round or two. >> but there are people, more conventional candidates who have fallen flat. booker i put in that category, beto and gillibrand. and of those three, i think that booker, because he's peace and love and beto because he's kind of jibberish, are less likely to break through by a front-runner.

>> do you agree that the viewership will not be bigger on the second night? i don't know how to think about it. >> i don't know either. but i don't think it would have been fair to put the biden night on night one. >> yeah. then you definitely make it so night two, i think the way we have set this up is we're trying to create the fairest, most equal. a audiences you can create. i take your point. first point versus second night. that's why it should help even it out. >> and two quick things if write talking to someone. one, don't be rick perry. don't have the rick perry moment. well, yes. you don't want to have a big accident on national television. then you're done, right? >> he never got over it. he was done after that. and then the second thing is,

some of those guys and some of those women. they have to throw long ball. >> first debate? >> yes. if they'll make the second debate. >> do you think so? >> that's risky. >> what are they going to lose? >> they're going to fall off the stage. >> you're going to have to pay for that. >> okay. what does that look like? i've joked that somebody will come on already douse in the gasoline and just waiting. all right. i'm not getting a question? >> presumably, i'm going to guess without having paid for cornell's advice, i'm going to guess the long ball means going hard at joe biden. and trying to provoke a response. obviously hard he to do the first night because joe biden is not there. a lot of grassroots who don't

like the democratic establishment. >> an interesting theory, too. this is going to be fun. we've got two more weeks to break down the brackets. that's all we have tonight. we'll be back monday with more "meet the press daily." it's a good show this weekend. "meet the press." we'll look at president trump, foreign guest interference. my guest will be pete buttigieg. "the beat" start right now. >> good evening. that sounds like a strong lineup. and we have a big down down here. we're following several developing stories. president trump in full damage control mode explaining yes ended up being pro collusion. later, how mitch mcconnell is they know president's embrace of collusion and the fallout on the issue that relates to everything else that donald trump seems to be hiding. will don mcgahn ever