less a year. better, faster. i mean sign me up. comcast business. beyond fast. that's it for me on this hour of "weekends with alex witt." i'll see you at noon eastern. now it's time for "up" with david gura. this is "up." i'm david gura and the conversation this morning continues to center on president trump's comments in a hugely consequential interview especially what he said about his former white house counsel whom he has accused of lying under oath. >> why would don mcgahn lie under oath? >> because he wanted to make himself look like a good lawyer. >> sources telling nbc news the president is living in a fantasyland with those remarks. we've got the lineup for the first democratic debate.

the final 20 who made the cut divided by two. >> people are in a very, i think, short amount of time going to start getting a sense of where all the candidates fall. >> that's candidate julian castro. i sat down with him to talk about his run. you'll hear his thoughts on impeachment and the campaign. there continues to be no consensus over what will happen to the citizenship question on the census. you like that? how democrats are pushing back after president trump asserted executive privilege. >> making sure that the census counts every single american, no citizenship question, on that census. >> it is saturday, june 15th. conservative commentators continue to wonder aloud why president trump would agree to sit down for an extended interview with abc news. >> laura ingram said why did anyone put trump in that situation? it's an interview with the president. not putting a baby on a horse.

>> up with me this morning clint watts a former fbi special agent and msnbc national security analyst affiliated with the foreign policy research institute. assistant professor at harvard. chris lu, now a senior fellow at the university of virginia's miller center and sally kohn the author of the book "the opposite of hate." let me start with you and the comments, what the president said, how he tried to walk them back as the week wore on and in fairness it took some time for him to do that. 24, 36 hours elapsed between when the abc news interview aired and when he called to his friends over at fox news to talk more about it. and the word maybe turned into absolutely. >> why did that happen? because republicans came out and checked the president. whenever the republicans actually come out and say, yes. you should call the fbi, then the president starts to panic and you see him resurface a day or two later and basically

contradict what he just said. i think his answer to george stephanopoulos is exactly what he thinks. he did that because his son was at the senate that day. he was trying to rationalize what they had done and also sending a message to every adversary around the world, hey, if you want a presidential candidate elected you should hack away and you should offer people opposition research. if you're an ally who has been getting beaten up by trump on twitter and in person what would you do? maybe i should start sending information on trump businesses to candidates i like. this creates a disaster. imagine being an fbi agent on the foreign influence task force going out and briefing these democratic candidates right now. you get to the end of the briefing and they go, well, the president says he is not going to do it so why should i call you because i am at a disadvantage. and he just discredited your boss. i mean, the whole interview was a disaster when we're looking at how do we stop 2020 from being 2016.

>> sally kohn picking up on what clint just said that this was a moment for honesty on the president's part we've seen this time and again when it comes to nearly every policy he presents. you get him in an interview, speaking off the cuff, he says what he really believes and there is this kind of agitation clint is describing. some republicans talked about this and pushed back. it wasn't a huge chorus i think it is fair to say. >> i mean, you notice that when he tells the truth, that's when it's controversial. let's just sit with that for a second. look, this is actually consistent with obviously his behavior and the behavior of his campaign and his family and his close allies. and the fact that, you know, i was at a trump rally during the 2016 election where he's waving pieces of paper and thanking god for wikileaks. so what's shocking, of course, was -- you know, it's interesting about republicans and his allies -- they pretend he is some naive kitten stuck up a tree. oh, well he just doesn't know.

he is the president. he knows it now. he knows he was investigated for collusion. his line is, no, no, no collusion but i'm open to it. you know? like what? just every day. every day you think it can't get worse and here it is. it's shocking and horrifying. i am, by the way, to your point, clint, very reassured that we have more than 20 people running for the democratic primary who would not do this. that i think is hopefully, i don't know, the three swing voters still left in this country if they're paying attention and they see that. they know i want a president who at the very least is not going to collude and welcome collusion with a foreign government. >> which is of course illegal. a great piece in the "new york times" about this. i'll quote a little bit from it. with the end of robert mueller's special counsel investigation house democrats crave and fear launching an impeachment. the president is reveling in his own impunity.

what does that look like? help us understand the consequences of that. he has said this now. i am going to keep coming back to the fact there was no immediate pushback from republicans on what he had to say. we waited to see if the senate majority leader would say something after he was goaded into it by the minority leader chuck schumer. it didn't happen. you watched kevin mccarthy the majority leader in the house hem and haw at the podium trying to say all that he could except that the comments were inexcusable and illegal. >> so i had some personal experience with this. i ran president obama's transition. i did that for about nine months. i had no foreign officials, russian or norway, reach out to me with any damaging information. i knew if i had been approached i should have gone to the fbi. i wasn't briefed on that. i just knew that was the right thing to do. if you talk to any campaign professional that's worked on any presidential campaign, they will tell you that is standard operating procedure. what was fascinating about kevin mccarthy when you saw him stand up there he kept prefacing it by saying, well this is hypothetical. the president hasn't actually done this. in fact they actually have done

this. the june 16th, june, 2016, trump tower meeting was an effort to get information from russians. and so republicans are putting their heads in the sand. on top of that, it's not just the message it sends to government professionals that are trying to shore up our election systems. it's mitch mcconnell putting the kibosh on election security, election integrity legislation. across the board, it's open season. what is important to understand is that tom perez the chairman of the democratic national committee said the democrats will not use stolen information. in the 2020 election. he put that challenge out to his counterpart at the rnc. she would not accept that. >> leah, i'll read a bit from david graham writing for "the atlantic" about, again, the ramifications of all of this, what happened in the past as well. there's been this white washing of what happened in 2016, ignorance of what is in robert mueller's report. he writes the fact remains the trump campaign profited from foreign interference in 2016. it did not rebuff explicit offers of assistance from russia

and capitalized on the round about assistance russia's release of hacked material provided. how much longer can this go on where, all right. maybe everybody is not going to read this 400 plus page mueller report but the history is there. the facts are there. still, we see republicans blindly ignoring what's in it. >> so the problem is we're beyond facts at this point. we're not talking about alternative facts. we are talking about alternative realities. we have a president who is showing he has constructed and is completely comfortable constructing his own reality, who has complete disregard for rule of law and is not running the federal government as if it's the white house or it's transparent or, you know, accountable to the american people. but instead, running it like as if he is shug knight. we have all kinds of questions and problems and issues right now including questions of national security, including questions of democracy and, you know, the responsibility and accountability to the american people. what remains to be seen, though, and i think this is the really

pressing concern, is that all of this, a lot of this, what goes into this, is accountability. what are the structures, what is the environment that is going to hold the president of the united states accountable? we've seen that for the most part republicans are not going to hold the president accountable. we've seen that democrats even in some cases, you know, even as they push back, are still uneasy about what it may mean to hold the president accountable. the good thing is that we have seen some -- we have seen some figures, you know, the head of the fbc coming out and saying i didn't think i'd ever have to do this. >> lo and behold. >> here is a reminder that you can't do this. there are significant consequences for that. as a reminder that even though the president has no interest in following the rules that there are still ways, kind of gatekeepers to protect the integrity and national security of the nation. >> clint, you alluded to this in your first answer. of the many memorable moments in this interview one was when

george stephanopoulos said the fbi director said this on capitol hill. he said if there is interference do this. contact the fbi. and the president said the fbi director is wrong. it was an astonishing comment. politico wrote about this, how this is reverberating through law enforcement and something they wrote is, nearly two years ago fbi director chris wray set up an office solely for the stopping of the russian interference efforts that infected the 2016 campaign. on wednesday night president trump undercut the whole operation in a matter of seconds. from your background with the fbi help us understand how that sentence reverberated through the fbi and law enforcement and what it says to those who have been dealing with this for the past two years. >> it is consistent, right? if you are an investigator doing counterintelligence of our election in 2020 you could be working at the cia or the fbi. chances are you will be the one ultimately investigated if you push this forward.

would you want to run down a lead when you hear your boss is wrong, oh, by the way every fbi agent that touched the case going in to 2016 is essentially pushed out, fired, demoted. there are people in the ranks right now that are probably wanting to get out of foreign counterintelligence against russia because they don't want to be put in this position again. and then you hear that. this sends downward pressure. what i've not heard from the attorney general, who seems to be very worried that this investigation started for some sort of nefarious reasons, has never said when woo he would actually do counterintelligence to protect in 2020. i would love to see him show up, provide testimony, and say under the following conditions i have asserted with the entire department of justice this is when we'll do counterintelligence going into the election of 2020, if we see a foreign entity, a cut out, a foreign espionage agent trying to contact. right now if i wanted to tie up an fbi agent if i was a foreign adversary i would send in

someone to do a bump meeting at the may flower hotel or trump tower and i would tie that fbi agent and his squad in knots. >> sally, where do we go -- >> sorry. sorry. i have a lot of -- go ahead. sorry. >> where do we go from here? chris lu saying a moment ago there have been efforts passed through the house, brought to the senate to make sure the elections are more secure. i was struck as i talked to julian castro how the conversation among candidates has shifted. there was concern about election integrity in a broad sense. now there is this real sense that as they approach the nomination, the regular election, that it isn't going to be a fair fight. >> oh, i think that's a fairly reasonable assumption here, right, between what we're about to talk about, the census, to the president inviting norway and russia's interference in our elections, to the active voter suppression of the republican party which obviously began before this president, but this president is ramping up and then

some to, you know, this information online which again they seem uninvested in doing anything about and in fact propping up. the problem here is you want a fair fight. and the answer to the, first it was alternative facts, then it's alternative laws and alternative reality, is that in november of 2020 the american people get to pick an alternative president, if the election is fair and we have the information we need as voters. >> all right. before we go here public service announcement for our elected officials. you can call your fbi office. find the number at fbi.gov. you can report tips to fbi.gov/tips. just want to make that clear for all watching. that is the protocol. handily put there on a full screen right on your television. coming up on "up" my sitdown with presidential candidate julian castro.

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>> this is "up." i'm david gura. this week i traveled to phoenix, arizona to interview 2020 candidate julian castro the former head of hud during the obama administration. he was one of the first to join the 2020 race and one of the first candidates to call for president trump's impeachment.

we spoke just hours after abc news released this clip of george stephanopoulos's interview with president trump. >> if foreigners, russia, china, someone else offers information should they accept it or call the fbi? >> i think maybe you do both. you might want to listen. there's nothing wrong with listening. i think i'd want to hear it. >> you want that kind of interference in our elections? >> it's not interference. they have information. i think i'd take it. >> over pastries and a tall glass of iced tea at the cafe in the latest edition of "politicians and the pastry plate." >> that's unprecedented in the history of our country and what it says is that you have a man in the oval office right now that does not put the interest of this country first because it's not just an issue of somebody bringing opposition research to you. >> called it opo. >> whatever you want to call it. what it means is you are participating in the breaking of

a law, the committing of a crime. by these individuals. and that's what happened. i believe in 2016. i think he is inviting it for 2020. >> i want to know how this changes the conversation. you said there should be impeachment proceedings. hearing this kmaent hcomment hot change our focus and conversation about impeachment in this country? >> look, 20 years from now when people look back on this time period and this president i hope that they rightfully say what the hell were we thinking? because this president has gone so far off the beaten path of someone who is fit for office, much less fit to be the president of the greatest country in the world. and the evidence that mueller presented in his report about the ten different instances of obstruction of justice, give congress enough reason to begin impeachment proceedings. the fact that he said he would

do it all again should make people understand the urgency of beginning impeachment proceedings against the president. and i just think i've said before that i believe that it's a mistake not to be forward with impeachment because the substance is there that he either obstructed justice or tried to obstruct justice. i know there is some concern about political ramifications. i don't think you should look at this through a political lens. >> how frustrated are you about the quality of the conversation surrounding this issue? it is so often reactive to what the president does or policy that he puts in place or threatens to put in place. even within the democratic party. is there a frustration that it's not being dealt with in the way in which you're dealing with it? you put out a 15, 20-page policy proposal to deal with immigration. you're not getting i imagine the kind of traction you'd like to get on that. >> the most disappointing thing is that too often in our politics we let fear and

paranoia rule the day. i understand why the average american citizen would be concerned when 144,000 people are coming to the southern border. i completely get that. but at that point it is time for all of us to understand, okay. how do we deal with this in a way that of course enforces our border, any country is going to do that, does it in an orderly and reasonable way, and also recognizes that this is about something bigger than just somebody showing up at the border. that we have a real crisis in honduras and guatemala and el salvador and we'll never get to the root challenge of this unless we address those issues. what i'd like people to do is understand we can both have border security but we need to take a longer-term view and also while we're doing that treat people like human beings. treat them with common sense and compassion instead of with cruelty. >> what strikes me as you talk

about this, amid so much pessimism about washington's ability to do things, you seem to have a lot of faith that policy making can effect cultural change. if you have a policing policy that focuses on these beliefs, how they approach their day-to-day jobs, that can really be transformative. it can be a big cultural change. >> i'm a mayor at heart. you know, i started out in local politics. i served as the mayor of may hometown of san antonio for five years. i am excited about the prospect of working with people who may not always agree but in spirit of rolling your sleeves up and getting things done being mayor is all about getting things done. i still believe and still fundamentally believe that there are issues people want us to tackle, to work on, they want us to keep working on them. almost like a jury that is there. and they tell the jury, no. go back and make a decision. they want us to keep working on these things as hard as we can

to provide solutions for the problems that they have in their communities. and that's the spirit of what i've done. >> as you craft and present policies, do you feel like this is a policy focused campaign? >> i mean, you know. with politics you'll always have a combination of those things that are important. why does somebody vote for somebody, right? it is a combination of things. i like him or i like her. also, okay. what is this person going to do for me and my family? in this campaign i hope i'm hitting the sweet spot. i hope you all like me but i also hope that they see i'm running a campaign of substance that i have the right experience and track record of getting things done, when i talk about education, this is not the first time i've worked on this. i worked on something in san antonio, a ballot initiative to significantly expand high quality fold in pre-k. part of what sets me apart is i've been an executive and have

this track record of actually working on these issues and i have a plan to focus on the future of our country and get better things done. >> let me start with you. and something we focused on there a lot is the plan for immigration. from texas. cares a lot of this issue, the child of immigrants as he pointed out in the interview. why can't someone like that with a 20-page proposal that is not reactive, not something based on what the current president has done but about his plans for immigration. he talks about refugees, and why isn't that catching fire? when you look at the whole democratic field, he was one of the first if not the first to introduce a plan on immigration. >> the challenge right now is there is not enough oxygen. hopefully some of these second tier candidates will get a little bit wind in their sails. because many of them are in the first debate which is kind of an interesting opportunity for people like castro and booker and klobuchar and beto o'rourke to try to get a little traction. i think the challenge, this kind of laying of policy has been

coopted by elizabeth warren so some of these people struggle. that being said it is so early in the race. i think it is very possible one of these people, particularly in the day one, could have kind of the viral moment that kind of pops them up to the top. you know, whether it is castro or booker or klobuchar they certainly have the qualifications behind them. >> leah, do you agree? i was talking to him about how he has plans to go to all 50 states. you talk to all these guys and gals they say i'm in it to win it. no one is saying i'm doing this to do something else when in fact one person is going to win. what is your sense of the timing? how much time does someone like julian castro, polling kind of low, have to get a name for himself to get that traction? >> on the one hand it is very, very early. we always forget donald trump jumped into the republican side of things and i think it was right around july, 2015, when he launched his campaign and descended down the golden escalators. he also had name recognition and things like that.

so it is very early. there is still a lot. you know, the democratic debates are actually good opportunities for people to introduce themselves to the country because right now what we're really seeing is people gathering around name recognition, brand recognition. joe biden, bernie sanders, elizabeth warren, kamala harris, even harris and warren are still struggling in that respect. on the other hand, however, this is a crowded field. i absolutely agree that because there are so many people running, there are a number of people who are kind of taking up space. so some candidates that might have, might be polling in larger numbers are losing out to people who are saying, well i'll put my money here and invest in this person, support this person. so it is actually extra hard, going into this right now. and it does mean that somebody like castro is going to have to quite possibly put on a show at the democratic debates, right, put on some sparkle, some razzle

dazzle, right? show them the razzle dazzle. in order to make a mark beyond having, you know, great policies and going state to state to state. there has to be something about the candidate that sticks out and sticks out in people's minds, particularly in terms of does this person have fight and does this person have what it takes to win? >> we'll leave it more and have more in the next hour. julian castro and i talked about the democratic debate and how he plans to extinguidistinguish hi. my experience with usaa has been excellent. they really appreciate the military family and it really shows. with all that usaa offers why go with anybody else? we know their rates are good, we know that they're always going to take care of us. it was an instant savings and i should have changed a long time ago. it was funny because when we would call another insurance company, hey would say "oh we can't beat usaa"

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the first democratic debate in miami only 11 days away, right here on msnbc. we have the line-ups. night one is on wednesday, june 26th, and the candidates on that stage include senator cory booker, former hud secretary julio castro, bill de blasio, and on the second night vice president joe biden, mayor pete, senators kamala harris, bernie sanders among others. jonathan allen points out in a new piece for nbc news the opening 2020 democratic debate double feature is set. elizabeth warren versus the field on the first night and establishment joe biden versus democratic socialist bernie

sanders plus two more of the top five polling hopefuls and six undercard candidates in the lord of the flies closer. a lot of ink has been spilled about whether the draw is good or bad for senator warren. democratic strategist told politico she has an unlucky draw because she won't be on stage with most of the other polling top candidates. others say it is her night to lose. the performance can be significant as we have learned from past presidential debates. >> i am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience. >> jack kennedy was a friend of mine. senator, you're no jack kennedy. >> i don't think i'm that bad. >> you're likeable enough. >> thank you. >> nice to meet you. can i call you joe? >> took the president 14 days before he called the attack in benghazi an act of terror. >> get the transcript. >> he did, in fact, sir. so let me call it an act of

terror. >> can we say that a little louder? >> he did call it an act of terror. >> i went to a number of women's groups and said can you help us find folks and they brought us whole binders full of women. >> commerce, education, and the, what is the third one there? let's see. i can't. the third one i can't. sorry. oops. >> the american people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn e-mails. >> all right. several memorable moments there including one from the secretary of education. sally kohn i'll pass it to you with the lord of the flies theme about the second night's debate. walk us through how you see everything shaking out here and let's focus on the senator elizabeth warren part of all this. there is a lot of ink being spilled and people saying this could be good or bad. your read on that. her being on the stage the first night not the second as she is pulling close to the higher tier. >> there will be many debates, the longest election in history. don't worry about it.

a couple points. one is i think we have to step back and take the big picture view which is what the american people are going to see over two nights is that any one of these democratic candidates has more know how, thoughtfulness, and i don't know, respect for the law in their pinky finger than the current president. the current occupant of the white house. i think that is going to be the overall impression is that this is a very strong and leaderful slate of candidates number one, overwhelmingly. number two, and this is really a challenge to the media, i'll be honest. we are so petty. we have a politics of pettiness right now instead of a politics of policy. i'll hand it to elizabeth warren. she has done a really good job of trying to steer the debate in the direction of policy but i guarantee all those candidates also want to be talking about policy and ideas. and so far have not attacked each other, not been nasty, not been petty, not even toward the president, who is an easy

target. what is disappointing to me is if you have 20 people show up on stage and present really strong ideas for the future of our country and the media just wants to talk about who said one slightly nasty thing or who screwed up or who didn't, like, you know what? focusing on pettiness and gafs and all that ascent tang enter it is gets us to this mess we have right now with the president. >> what do you make of what sally is saying? the odds that over the two nights it is going to be a substance focused debate and we'll wake up the next morning thursday and friday and have a better sense where they stand on policies? >> i was with obama in 2007. his early debate performances were not particularly good. we just showed the one clip and that was right before the new hampshire primary. you're right. we'll have debates really for the next year and a half. we'll quickly forget about it. i think in the first debate there is an opportunity for some of the second tier candidates to have that breakthrough moment. the challenge is that whatever

breakthrough moment they'll have is going to be dampened by day two. it is a little bit like march madness. you basically put the two number one seeds of biden and sanders into that second debate. i think that provides an opportunity for the contrast and allows kamala harris and pete buttigieg in particular to do that generational contrast. frankly, it'll be fascinating to see what marianne williamson turns out to be. >> what is the contrast you're looking for when you see the two debates? >> for me it goes back to 2015. i mean, the formula which she just referenced was, hey. all you got to do is stand out, be nasty, have good sound bites. make it a reality tv show and guess what? you'll move to the top, right? i feel like if you're one of the lower tiered candidates you're polling 1% to 2%, you say to yourself, if i want to be in this race i have to follow that formula. i got to get out. sure. i can talk about policy and i'm out of this whole thing in three months. >> we'll leave it there.

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>> the falsification of audio video allows highly convincing ways provoking responses that lead to widespread mistrust and at times physical mobilizations. >> this is david gura. that was clint watts at the

first ever house hearing on what are known as deep fakes the house convened by the house intelligence chairman adam schiff. >> so-called deep fakes that enable malicious actors to foment chaos, division, or crisis and have the capacity to disrupt entire campaigns including that for the presidency. >> deep fakes are more and more prevalent according to "the washington post" powerful new a.i. software has effectively democratized the creation of convincing deep fake videos making it appear as if someone did or said something they didn't really do. the videos spread like wildfire. the social networks have rules against posting potentially misleading information but also try to encourage free expression. finding a balance is proving difficult, particularly as what promises to be a bruising election season heats up. there is this focus on the election. let's step back more broadly. something you warned about is

how this can lead to sort of physical manifestations, mobilizations outside cyber space. how real a threat is that? pull back the curtain here and look at this broadly. >> so the places i'm most worried about are in the developing world where they've gone from physical conversations in groups like this to facebook, right? they didn't -- they weren't reading newspapers. there aren't television news services that can debunk things. this makes deep fakes much more powerful. in an acute setting you could take a benghazi or in 2016 the runnup rt started pushing there were more things going, there could be a protester uprising. add a video of that, of an atrocity that is completely made up or some sort of smear against a diplomat individually. you can mobilize people in the hundreds or thousands very quickly. over the longer term, it's the what is reality? what is true? i think for 2020 we should be worried about a faked video and an election machine that says my vote didn't count or it changed.

right? that sends conspiracy throughout the entire community. and then they don't trust that their vote was counted. the longest term is how do we ever know what is true if we can't figure it out which leads to widespread apathy over time. >> as we take on these issues, i'm struck by this term "the liar's dividend" i've seen floatd as well. we focus on how manipulated video can catch fire. somebody could do something wrong and say somewhat plaus bali oh, it wasn't me. that wasn't me in that video. how real is that threat? >> it is happening right now in malaysia. there is a story right now in malaysia about is this a real confession about a sex tape kind of situation, or is it a deep fake? they don't know. the newspapers are even struggling to do that. this goes viral. what happens is it allows the liars to essentially get away with anything because you can say that's fake. prove it. how would you prove? we have to look at triage at the social media kms. how do we quickly take this stuff down if it is starting to

affect public opinion and also verification. how do we put a date, time, location stamp on video, on audio so a user can say, okay. this actually happened. like this tv show right now. >> it happened by the way. we're here. >> if it goes out on facebook you should be able as a user to say, okay. there is a registry that shows that this actually occurred. >> the last question. you have like a minute left. i wonder where you see the solution. clint mentioned the role of social media companies. is it legislation? our good friend clint doing his due diligence talking to lawmakers about this in washington, d.c. do you see a solution in the hands of congress, in the hands of lawmakers? >> so, one, i think this is, clint pointed out we were talking between the break that there are some technologies, some technicians who have ideas but are thinking about how to do this to scale. how do you come up with solutions that can address this both in terms of speed but also in terms of size and spread. the second thing is that any candidate moving forward into the 2020 election needs to take

this seriously. this needs to be part of any kind of serious policy platform thinking about democracy, thinking about national security, thinking about domestic questions and integrity and truth. essentially putting the idea of fact, putting the idea of reality, putting the idea of truth and abilities or solutions to address this on the table. the other thing is that as voters, as part, you know, part and parcel of the electorate, we need to actually hold our elected officials accountable to incorporating this into their campaigns. this needs to be necessary. this needs to be a focus. i think part of, you know, part of what we have to do going into 2020 is that we have to take this very seriously and really demand that there be an objective, you know, as close as we can get, standard to truth, to fact, to reality. so yeah. >> under a minute.

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say whether or not a person is an american citizen. >> i'm david gura. president trump attempting to down play his involvement in exerting executive privilege over information related to the citizenship question his administration wants wants adde to the 2020 census calling it a legal matter. investigations into the trump administration's motives behind adding that question ramped up last month after the hard drives of a gop operative revealed the white house appeared to lift language and claims directly from a 2015 study he conducted. according to the court file, citizenship data would be a disadvantage for the democrats and advantageous to republicans and nonhispanic whites. all these documents have been filed with the supreme court. joining us now is an npr correspondent wo covers the census for npr. reaped a lot of rewards for the network. great to have you. where things stand. by now we're familiar with this question. is this person a citizen of the united states? i mentioned the supreme court is

deliberating here. where do things stand in terms of the conversation in terms of whether or not those words will be printed on that census document in 2020? >> everyone's waiting to see if the supreme court rules soon. the next round of decisions from the supreme court are expected to come out on monday. so we could have the supreme court's ruling on the legal fate of this question on monday. i'm also watching to see what happens in district court in maryland on tuesday. that's when the maryland lawsuits over the citizenship question whether a judge there, a federal judge, is being asked to reconsider claims that the supreme court has not heard about, claims that the trump administration allegedly added this question to discriminate against immigrant communities of color and that there was a conspiracy amongst trump administration officials to add this question. these are claims that could result in new rulings that will block the citizenship question and complicate the legal fate here. the deadline is coming very soon to start printing the 2020

census forms, the letters, the mailings, 1.5 billion pieces of paper to be printed to get to every household in the country. july 1st is when the census bureau says that has to start happening. >> you write about the paper trail. help us understand what we know and don't know about the conversations taking place within the administration about this question. >> we do know the initial story that the administration officials are saying, that this citizenship question was initiated by the justice department in order to better protect the voting rights of racial minorities. these documents contradict that story. these documents show that the justice department was not the first agency to want this question. in fact, the justice department when they were first approached by the commerce department, which oversees the census bureau, to request the question, declined to do so and in fact in the early months of commerce secretary wilbur ross being the head of the commerce department, he pressured his staff to find a way to get a citizenship question onto the 2020 census.

it's unclear why. the voting rights act did not come up in early discussions. but new documents have been rereeled point to possibly wanting to give an advantage to republicans and nonhispanic white people. >> chris, help us understand the importance of this. i want to put up here the programs within the federal government that rely on the information we get from census statistics, medicaid at $361 billion, federal direct student loans, snap, medicare part b, pell grants. you look at the potential consequences of this, what this might mean for undercounted hispanics across the country. help us understand why this. again, looking at just the few words and this one question. >> there's both the substance and the politics. the substance is critically important. the census is used to provide federal funding to states around the country so if you're not counting everyone, states are at a disadvantage.

this doesn't cut across red states and blue states. this is also used for redistricting purposes, so not adequately counting people potentially disenfranchising people of color. a study this week said as many as 4 million people of color might not be counted. then there's the politics of this. i managed president obama's cabinet in 2009, 2010, when we had the 2010 census. he had no involvement in the census at all because he's not supposed to. it's supposed to be done by the career officials at the bureau of labor statics. there is a paper trail that goes from steve bannon to wilbur ross to kris kobach to the rnc. the invocation this week of executive privilege by the white house is an effort to delay congress getting access to information until they get what they believe will be a favorable supreme court opinion. >> that's where i want to go with you, sally.

jonathan schaub talked about prophylactic executive privilege. >> ew. >> i know. has absolute constitutional authority to further the president's constitutional authority to assert executive privilege. put this, him claiming privilege, in a larger context of how the white house is approaching this. >> the larger context of the republican party. you have to partly see -- there's a way we view trump as exceptional and the way he is because of his willingness to completely repeatedly cross the line of moral decency, of what we consider the law. but this is a party that has systematically gerrymandered to exclude and dilute the vote of people who they don't like and who they tend to vote for, especially people of color. this is a party that has systematically intimidated, threatened, cracked down on immigrants, documented and nondocumented. this is a party that has tried

to suppress voters over and over again. this is consistent with an ideology and the only thing that -- honestly, they might have gotten away with it and still might under the supreme court ruling but for some found hard drives that revealed the paper trail they said didn't exist. this is just -- this is their dream come true, to be able to exclude and control and constrain the lawful vote of this country in order to maintain their disproportionate political power. >> thanks for the good reporting. thanks to my guests joining me here in new york. joining us tomorrow, brace yourselves, pete dominic and l. joy williams. much more to come next hour. sarah huckabee sanders heading back to arkansas as we pick up the pieces and more of my interview with julio castro.

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this is "up." i'm david gura. no white house press briefing yesterday. there has not been one in 96 days. the last official one was in march. there have been just two briefings in 2019. the press secretary sarah huckabee sanders has called it quits after 2 1/2 years in the

white house or 3 1/2 years by the president's count. our wonderful sarah huckabee sanders will be leaving the white house at the end of the, month he tweeted. sarah sanders broke the news. quote, the white house press secretary, the office, if not the person, is an outgrowth of the idea that in a democracy, information matters and facts matter and while politicians and the press may tangle and tussle they are ultimately on the same team. megan says she rejected that idea. she clashed with jim acosta while refusing to say the press is not the enemy of the people. >> it's ironic, jim, that not only you and the media attack the president for his rhetoric when they frequently lower the level of conversation in this country. the media has attacked me personally on a number of occasions including your own netwo network, said i should be harassed as a life sentence, i

should be echoked. you brought a median up to attack my appearance and called me a traitor to my own gender. >> the job is not what it was. and for that you can blame sanders and president trump who treated his outgoing press secretary to a rare public good bye. more nikki haley to rex tillerson. >> i'm going to continue to be one of the most outspoken and loyal supporters of the president. >> the conference back in december, she was asked to reflect on her tenure and what she had wrought. >> i hope that it will be that i showed up every day and did the very best job that i could to put forward the president's message to do the best job i could to answer questions, to be transparent and honest throughout that process, and to do everything i could to make america a little better that day

than it was the day before. >> that led to this from "the washington post's" margaret sullivan, "when sarah huckabee sanders said she hoped to be remembered for her honesty and transparency, the first impulse was to laugh." she's admitted to doing that as part of her legacy and one of those lines made it into the mueller report. here it is from 2017 after president trump fired james comey. >> i mean, i've heard from a large number of individuals that work at the fbi that said that they're very happy with the president's decision. >> she later acknowledged her comments were not founded on anything. she told robert mueller's team it was a slip of the tongue. president trump has not said who will replace sarah sanders or if there will be a replacement and she has not said what she will do next. of course she could continue to do what she was doing most of her tenure at the white house, not holding daily press

briefings. >> seriously, it is by the miracle of satellite technology, white house press secretary sarah sanders joins us from in front of the white house. sarah sanders, white house secretary from our nation's capital. >> she has made 15 appearances on fox news since the last briefing at the white house. jeff jarvis, alexa mccann non, joyce vance, a former u.s. attorney and msnbc contributor, and i should say the first house judiciary committee committee hearing on the mueller report, and van rhodes, deputy national security adviser to president obama and msnbc political contributor. his book is called "the world as it is." jeff jarvis, you're the media guy. your reaction to where we stand at this point having been through 2 1/2 years of this. what happens next? >> lies, all lies. i think in the effort to find some good news here, i guess maybe the idea that all white

house reporters are doing the same thing all day, maybe ending the press briefings isn't a bad thing. maybe it forces reporters to do more real reporting. i'm trying hard to find something good. in general what's happened here is in an administration built entirety on lies, its spokesperson of course lies, the "washington post" did a great compilation of her highs today, that's all we got. nothing official is going to matter. >> alexa, as jeff pushes that metaphorical rock up the hill and it rolls back down again, how is it not to have somebody stand behind that podium but these gaggles, these moments to talk to sarah sanders or kellyanne conway as he or she walks back from an interview with fox news more often than not? >> i have never once attended a press briefing because we decided it wasn't worth our time. one, we could watch it on tv.

two, she would get up and high and spin and would not give us any information to use. we didn't want to subject ourselves to sitting in a press briefing with sarah sanders or whoever comes after her because of the lies but also because at the end of the day, president trump thinks he is his best own press secretary and communications director. we'll take his word for what he says and i think that's better than listening to someone like sarah sanders to who just pushes false narratives on behalf of the president. >> bravo. >> van rhodes, someone writes, the press secretary's role as withered under successive presidents and in the donald trump era has been functionally distributed. halfway between the west wing, the president's office, and the briefing room where the press gathers and the occupant is supposed to be behold on the both. he or she is supposed to carry some waters from the president to the reporters. how much has that broken down as

you've observed what's happened? >> it's nonexistent. part of what the press secretary would do, and i sat behind that podium because i had a communications responsibility, is to bring the concerns of the press to the president of the united states, whether it means that they need more access or there's a particular demand for certain information. the reality is from the very first moment when sean spicer came out in the very first briefing and lied about something that we could all see with our own eyes, you know, the crowd was bigger at trump's inauguration than obama's, a demonstrable lie directed to do that by the president, from that very moment the credibility of that position was destroyed because the reality is if you're demonstrating that on behalf of this president you will say that two lus two equals five instead of four, how can you trust this? why does that matter? you could say it's a charade, you get up there, brief every day, it matters because that's how the world gets information

about where the president of the united states stands. a lot of times there were things that weren't necessarily in the news here but people were carefully watching those words to know where the united states was going. two, what if there's a crisis, an ebola epidemic, a hurricane, a potential war with iran and we have to trust the information coming from that white house? we can't do that anymore. i don't know how you put it back together. >> joyce, we draw the contrast between that, the former press briefing, somebody speaking for the president, so difficult to do seemingly, and what we saw this week with abc news, this lengthy interview took place in multiple locations and you had the president unbridled speaking from the gut, evidently, speaking what he believes to be true. put that in the context of how this administration conveys truth and regard truth. >> this is to lexi's point. the president has always been the best communicator of his own use. >> very limited words. >> very limited sense there. as you point out, sarah huckabee sanders has been absent from the

podium in the white house, and i think, you know, hopefully not for all future administrations, for this administration at least twitter is the official vehicle for learning about what the president thinks. but it's always subject to change. so this week, when the president in the abc report got into a little bit of trouble, seeming to acknowledge intent, the piece that bob mueller was missing when he went looking for collusion and conspiracy, the president simply changes his story a couple hours later or the next morning on fox. then he tells the american people he gets to pick his best answer and that's what they should believe. the problem is we need to have an evolved mechanism for holding him accountable. sure, the press got taken unawares by this new twitter podium. we've been watching this for two years. we need to hold him accountable for the lies. >> the atlantic writes about how this is a product of partisanship, a war like mentality taking place and sarah

huckabee sanders was at the forefront, fighting for the president. help us understand how that's gone beyond this crack of people who surround president trump. yes, they're performing for an audience who might relish the fact she or he is scoring points iffer the president. how endemic is that? how much has it gone beyond the walls of the white house? >> i think we have to move past the political analysis to a psychological analysis. one who says this man is deranged, is going to hold a town hall for congressional members and says this man is dangerous. as we get back inevitably to the question of impeachment and what do we have to do love to protect the country, i think there's a protection of political institutions, but then soon, as ben says, there could be a war in iran, there's a protection of human life at stake here. this isn't as simple as we have somebody who's a little far left or far right in the white house and that's spreading out. there's a psychosis involved, and i don't think we've figured

out how to grapple with that at all. >> i want to ask about the consequences of running a press shop in the way he is. in the past, the job of the press secretary is so damn difficult, he or she spends the morning and much of the afternoon, reading in, talking to officials, establishing the policy points. when you cede everything to a president who acts on whim, you're not doing any of that. what does it say about general comprehension of these issues and the policy issues, how a person is able to function in a decisionmaking environment not knowing the facts? >> well, it's interesting. the way in which the press briefing used to work, about midday, the press secretary gets up there with a thick book. and the whole morning what happens is all the government, people are providing inputs, what are the facts on these issues, what are the questions we need to answer, then we prepare carefully the press secretary so he doesn't say anything that is inaccurate, so he's telling the truth. that process -- and first of all, i don't know what these people are doing because that's

what used to happen. >> stoking the fire. >> watching trump's twitter feed. but that process does force some accountability. right because it forces everybody in the government to prepare answers to the questions that are on the minds of the american people and the american press. without that kind of accountability loop in place, you're just totally cut off from reality. you're sitting there in the white house and i react negatively to the kind of partisanship thing, sure people spin left and right, but facts are facts. and once you cut the rope that ties what you're saying from the white house from any factual basis, we're just living in a reality emanating from donald trump as hi views. and you cannot govern in democracy that way. and that's how you get policies that ignore the reality of climate change. that's how you get policies that ignore the reality of what's happening to people around the world. so to me, it's not just the question of like should we have a press briefing or not, it's

should the people in pow ber accountable to the citizens who put them there and be account to believe the truth, and right now we have a government that is not accountable to either. >> i take your rock metaphor like a gemstone tumbler. two of them. you have the rock being run through the tumbler to make it shine as best as it can. when we come back, washington puts iran on notice. the latest details from our correspondent in tehran live as tensions escalate. . . finally organics that work. tested and refined by plant scientists... for twice the results, guaranteed. don't grow a snack, grow a feast. don't grow a flower, grow a million dollar view. this new organic collection of soil and plant food is what you always wanted. no compromise, just results, guaranteed. miracle-gro performance organics.

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welcome back. i'm david gura. we continue to focus on the tensions in the persian gulf after attacks on two tanker ships. the united states and iran are pointing fingers at each other and now the u.s. is also accusing iran of firing at drones. our colleague joins us from tehran. ali, get us up to speed here. what's the latest? >> reporter: well, david, it's a murky picture as accusations and denials keep getting exchanged. the latest claim is that in the hours before the two tankers in the gulf of oman were attacked, the iranians had spotted a u.s. drone flying overhead and launched a surface to air missile at it. the missile missed the drone and fell into the sea. and apparently, just days before that attack, a u.s. reaper drone was shot down in the red sea by what u.s. officials believe was

an irani yaian missile fired by houthi rebels. this comes after video released by the u.s. military saying it shows the irgc removing a mine from the hull of one of the tankers attacked yesterday in order to cover their tracks. president trump says this is irrefutable evidence that iran is behind the attack, but at this point there's no smoking gun, david. the only evidence that's been provided so far is that grainy video which many of america's allies except for the uk are saying is not conclusive evidence and there needs to be a full investigation conducted before any conclusions are drawn. now, there are also contradicting reports as to what caused the damage. u.s. military say mines caused the damage, which were attached to the hull of the ship. but the japanese owner of the ship cast doubt on part of the u.s. narrative saying that the

vessel's crew saw flying objects before the blast, calling reports of a mine attack false and saying that the crew, they're dismissing any reports that a bomb was attached to the side of the ship. so things are still very murky and i don't think we'll know exactly what's going on until the results of an investigation are given to us. >> ali, thank you very much. ben rhodes, to you first, a couple pieces in "the new york times" this morning about this incident, these attacks, writing the challenges are diplomatic and economic as well as military. in another piece, pointing out there's a deeper distrust of an american administration that has pulled out of the iran nuclear deal, spurning its european allies and sowing suspicion that the united states is spoiling for a fight with iran. that's where i want to go with you. it's been a year plus since the u.s. left that deal. what's your sense of how your peen al highs are looking at things like the video that the pentagon presented yesterday? >> they think they're living in a crisis of america's making,

not iran's. a year ago trump pull us out of the deal, having said that iran wasn't complying when the international agency responsible said that iran was. so again here we are on the precipice of a potential war and why are they going to trust president trump? ever since he pulled out of that deal, they've stacked on provocations emanating from us towards iran, so stacking up sanctions, designating the iranian revolutionary guard as a terrorist organization, rhetoric that suggests we're going to hold iran accountable for anything any of its proxies do in the region even though they had tenuous control over some of those proxies in the middle east. to me it has felt like and i think the europeans have felt like the trump administration bullying iran into doing something that could then give the trump administration a pretext to go to war. and so this is exactly the kind of scenario that the europeans are worried about. we push the iranians further into a corner, something happens in this very volatile region, maybe it's iran, a proxy, somebody else, we blame iran and

it can escalate quickly into a war. the europeans are saying publicly, they're calling for restraint, calling for what is right, which is an international investigation to establish the facts about what happened, and what they don't want is a war over this tanker. and by the way, we're having all these debates about who did this. let's say for a second the iranians had some responsibility for this, which i think is not yet fully established. do people want to go to war over that? we're having this conversation as if this is some event that would trigger a war. why are we even having that conversation? do people watching this really think we should go to war with iran over this tanker that's on fire? >> joyce, ben brings up that question. it's clear that's a question with which members of the administration are wrestling. we have another incident here where the president is saying one thing, his secretary of state is saying something entirely different, and the acting secretary of defense is still trying to figure out what kind of troops we could see in the middle east. >> integrity is certainly not a

high priority for this administration in its communications of any kind, so we have this situation where we have a president who's constantly spoiling for a fight, who always needs to have somebody, the enemy that he's working against, whether it's hillary clinton or iran, and we end up in this situation where a president who has spent the last two yearsintegrity of the intelligence community, constantly making them his whipping boy, the cia, the fbi, or any of the other agencies in the intelligence community, and now a grainy video, asks the world to believe it, and people aren't -- germany became the most recent country to say they need more evidence. >> up next, president trump trying to revise what he said on wednesday turning a maybe into an absolutely that he would tell the fbi if he was offered dirt on a political opponent. hmm. exactly.

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welcome back. president trump disputing what donald mcgahn said to robert mueller. he was a key witness. he testified for some 30 hours under oath. after president trump suggested

he lied during that testimony, abc news' george stephanopoulos asked him why don mcgahn would do that. >> make himself look like a good lawyer or, or he believed it because i would constantly tell anybody that would listen including you, including the media, that robert mueller was conflicted, robert mueller had a total -- >> the president's direction, don mcdpan is currently fighting a subpoena from the house judiciary committee to testify publicly about his conversations with president trump among other things. stephanopoulos asked the president about what's on the table and what is not or hasn't been. >> but if you answered these questions to me now, why not answer them to robert mueller under oath? >> because they were looking to get us for lies, for misstatements. i looked at what happened to people and it was very unfair. >> "esquire" magazine characterizing that pause as the longest pause in trumpian

history. president trump grew increasingly frustrated when george stephanopoulos pointed out the president did not provide written answers to questions about potential obstruction of justice. >> wait a minute. i did answer questions. i answered them in writing. i don't know. i answered a lot of questions. they gave me questions. i answered them in writing. >> not on obstruction. >> look, george, you're being a little wise guy, which is typical for you. just so you understand, very simple, it's very simple, there was no crime. there was no collusion. >> digging into some of the specifics of this in a moment, but lexi, your perspective on this interview. >> because of my facial expressions? >> little guy, all that. your reaction to him doing this and how this changes the conversation, why he would do it. >> what is fascinating and clear is when he sits down in front of someone like george stephanopoulos, he totally unravels compared to sitting down with fox & friends, he has a sense of bravado and

confidence because he thinks he finds himself in a position of power. then suddenly that is gone when he is with someone who is combative and has the facts. it is shocking to me that the president thinks that anyone could believe that him saying someone else is lying is true when he lies so much and doesn't even know the answers that -- or the questions that he answered to robert mumer. it is just absurd. i think nicole wallace said it best i think yesterday, when she said if that had been robert mueller sitting with donald trump instead of george stephanopoulos, things would be totally different. >> joyce, do you agree with that? it strikes me how little engagement he had in the entire process, why he didn't answer questions about obstruction, he answered the questions that were put to him, it showcases a stunning lack of engagement with this investigation that was all consuming for so long. >> it is so easy for a witness to avoid being perjury trapped when they talk to federal prosecutors. the answer to that is just don't lie. and so the fact that the president essentially acknowledges that he knew that

if he sat down and talked with pob mueller or any of the prosecutors on his team that he would have had to have lied to maintain his facade, i think that's incredibly telling. look, i think as a prosecutor, it's difficult to know that mueller did not have the opportunity to interview the president, preferably under oath in a grand jury. the stated reason for that in the report is because they knew it would have dragged on for at least a year in litigation and they understood that ultimately they would not be able to charge the president with perjury based on the memo that says you can't indict a sitting president. but this interview is so resealing and i have to wonder if it leaves the special counsel with any reregrets. >> lexi brings up the "fox & friends" interview where is the hosts are trying to end the interview and the president wants to keep on talking. what do you make of the way stephanopoulos comported

himself? it was in a limousine on the way to a campaign e vice presidevenl office, what was it about his approach to this that seemed to be so effectivesome yes, the president was willing to talk and say all of this stuff, but what was it about him that made it so? >> i think lexi's analysis is spot on. it's about power. in this environment, he loses all power and he's got a schoolmarm going after him and he knows he lies, i think he knows he lies, and doesn't know what to do. and so i think the problem with us in media is that we keep trying to find some normal definition to compare things to. and we have to recognize the abnormality, the extreme abnormality of what's going on. george conway, who's close enough to know, says the media fails to uncover his unfitness. i go back to the dr. bandy lee from yale i mentioned earlier, one of the things she said was the psychiatrists got in trouble

for trying to judge his sanity from afar. but she said that the mueller report gave all the evidence a psychiatrist would need to, for example, in court, make an opinion about someone's fitness for trial or the presidency. >> all right. thank you all very much. back in just a moment. up next, i met up with houlian castro to talk about his approach to the upcoming democratic debate. that's coming up next. can we talk? we used to play so beautifully together. now we can barely play anything... even cards with the girls. if you have bent fingers, and can't lay your hand flat, talk to your doctor. it may be dupuytren's contracture. your hand is talking. isn't it time you listened? there are nonsurgical options.

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this is "up." i'm david gura. we are is 1 1 days away from the first democratic debate right here on msnbc. they'll square off on june if 26th and 27th. the former hud secretary, former mayor of san antonio was in arizona this week for a fox news town hall, something other democrats have declined to do. we talked about that event, upcoming debates and his policy proposals over pastries at the fair trade cafe in phoenix. let's start with the event itself, why you're here in phoenix and arizona. walk us through the calculus of deciding to do this. as you know, there are plenty of other candidates who said not going to do it on principle, on whatever grounds. why did you decide to do it? >> i'm very progressive. i've shown that when i've been out there on the stump and in the policies that we've rolled out. but i also respect what other

people believe, and i know that if we're going to get great things done for the country, it's going to take working with the other side. >> are you sympathetic to those other contenders who have said they're not going to do these town halls? >> sure. yeah, i mean, everybody has their own, you know, way of thinking about these things. i definitely take the concerns about fox news and i understand completely how people feel. but what i'm focused on is not the news organization. what i'm focused on are the people out there watching. >> could you have foreseen how many people would be running for democratic nomination? >> i was telling people, yeah, i was telling people a year and a half ago, a year ago, that i thought the there would be between 12 and 18 people, so this exceeded my wildest expectations even and how many people would run. but, you know, i think that some of the culling of that field is going to happen naturally. i know also with these debates it will be an opportunity for the voters to start sorting out, you know, maybe who they agree

with more and who they like more, who they can support. so i'm looking forward to that process. >> how do you do that? how do you distinguish yourself on that stage? >> i think my secret weapon is my charming personality, number within. i'm kidding. like i said before, it's a combination of things. it's how people feel about you as a candidate, but it's also where you stand on the issues. these debates, if anybody has watched, right, previous debates, they're going to get right into the differences among the candidates on issue, whether it's on the issue of the hyde amendment or the issue of immigration or what we would do for rural americans. people are in a very i think short amount of time going to start getting a sense of where all the candidates fall, and my strategy is, number one, to be my moos myself, because people want to know who you are, they don't want to think you're putting on airs or trying to be somebody

you're not, so i'm going to try to be myself, i'm going to try to talk to people about what i think is important for them and for their family, and let them know about my experience and track record of actually getting things done. and in the mix of all of that, i'm confident that i'm going to do well. >> former vice president joe biden has said he doesn't want to attack fellow democrats. do you take a position like that? when you look at what might on that stage these nights, is there room for that kind of disagreement? >> yeah, i think always in politics that the voters are making choices, legitimate choices based on what people are going to do for them and for their family and for countkrun o if people have issues related to the issues, yeah, i think that's fair. there's always going to be contrast. what i hope doesn't happen is personal attacks or some sort of donald trump-style attacks. but people that watch those 2016 debates, what you saw there was i think the dumbing down by

donald trump of the democratic process and we certainly don't need to emulate that and i don't think anyone will. >> beto o'rourke said it would be a return to the past. >> you cannot go back to the end of the obama administration and think that's good enough. as much as of a hor row show as trump has been, we had real problems before donald trump became president. we cannot return to the past. we cannot simply be about defeating donald trump. >> how do you see this moment? you were part of the last administration. you have a progressive agenda. you're looking forward. how do you do both things? >> i think what people want is somebody that both understands where we've been as a country and also understands, though, that we are in a moment and where we need to go. so apart from all the back and forth between other candidates, what i'll just say for myself is that i've been out there articulating a strong vision for america's future. >> is age a fair line of attack?

you're a young guy. on the other end of the spectrum, you have bernie sanders, joe biden, older guys who have been in politics for a very long time. is that something you think voters should take into account? >> i think it's something voters will take into account. i also think voters will take into account somebody's experience and oftentimes experience comes with somebody, you know, being more up in years. however, the most important thing that somebody should take into account is neither somebody's actual age or their experience, it's their judgment. >> thank you very much. appreciate it. >> thank you. >> lexi, i'm going to go to you first. where does he fit into all this? he talks about being out there, trying to make his mess only known, he's polling at the bottom of the candidates so at least he's there, but where does he fit in and that message fit in, somebody from the obama administration and now has that forward looking vision he described? >> on the trail, he relies heavy lay on talking about that executive experience he has to set himself apart not just from

president trump but other folks running in the field who don't have as much experience as him. the interesting thing that comes up all the time when i talk to people is people expressing surprise that someone like julian castro, the only latino in the race, in the year 2019, is one with the type of executive experience he has and someone who has been rolling out really thoughtful policy proposals. >> he's putting out the work. >> policing reform, immigration, education platforms. people express surprise that he hasn't broken through give than he's sort of doing all the right things. i don't know whether or not he'll break out of the debates. i think when you have a minute to give annens you have to rely more on making people feel something to have that longer lasting effect with voters rather than saying i'm going to do x, y, and z. >> ben, your take on that. you came from the obama administration. is what we saw there, is julian castro the candidate the same as julian castro, the guy in the cabinet? >> he's deliberate.

i think the key thing here is having worked on a presidential campaign, there's really two questions you have to answer. why are you running for president and why are you and not anybody else? you need a rationale that is very clear to people, that can jump out in a one-minute answer, at a debate, in an interview. elizabeth warren is getting traction because the answer to that question is very clear. why am i running? because of inequality and corruption. why me? i've been doing this my whole life. >> took like ten seconds. >> i think a lot of other candidates don't have that boiled down yet. if you don't get there, you're not going to break through. >> joyce, lexi talked about the plans he's released. what's your sense of why a messenger like that hasn't been successful so far? >> well, it's not a flattering portrait of the american people, right. we're not deeply substantive when it comes to selecting a president. in many ways, we want someone -- >> it's us, not them. it's me, it's not you.

>> this is a candidate with experience, but he hasn't connected, and that i think sums it up. >> jeff? >> is that the fault of the american people but the fault of us in media? i get so frustrated with the narrative, take kamala harris. seems to be dipping. what's the coverage of her bid? it's been joe, joe, joe, b, all the b boys, and i get so frustrated with my colleagues in the industry we think it's our job to predict when predicting does nothing to inform public. you want to be the person who's right. i picked biden or i said that trump could win. that's meaningless when it comes to our job to inform the public. we're not doing a good job of pulling up these people from the ranks. we have way too many candidates and someone who should not be there except thr v for their own e egos. once you get past that, we have a very good field of smart candidates and we're hearing nothing about what they're doing. elizabeth warren stands on policy, making a point of it. but kamala harris, castro have

policy and we don't hear about it. >> lexi, it's policy versus personality. i add the president to that as well. maybe more of a binary. that's what the candidates are wrestling with. what's your sense of how this progresses as that shakes out? a lot of optimism in the beginning, this was going to be a policy focused campaign. how far from that are we? >> it's interesting because elizabeth warren is known as a policy wonk. kamala harris is becoming more known for that, but because she's being strategic by proposing things by which she would use executive orders to get things done so that's contentious and sexy when you're talking about policy rather than saying i'm going to do this thing. she's getting attention for that. julian castro is putting out these things that speak to a lot of the democratic base. policing reform was huge in 2016. >> flint. >> and everyone else was in iowa. i think at this early point in the stage, everyone wants to feel something, they want to feel seen, heard, and taken care

of, not to talk about your plan. >> june 26th and june 27th, the first democratic debate. head to nbcnews.com/debate for live updates and analysis. coming up new data on the economics of black voters. ♪

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welcome back to 68% of those surveyed say they are enthusiastic. the economy that will determine who they vote for. it indicates black voters until they are facing significant economic challenges. the contenders for those are down in charleston, south carolina. you've written about this poll. to me, the most striking

headline in that whole survey. a large majority of black americans say it is hard to achieve the american dream today. this is true among black americans of all ages, income levels alike. this comes out of the douglas plan ahead of june 16th. elizabeth warren proposing legislation friday that will allocate $7 billion that will help minority entrepreneurs start businesses. talk about that. the reaction you've seen from ska candidates so far. >> i think because they are speaking precisely to the concern. this idea that, sure, maybe they

are taking in the economy. i think black voters in particular want someone they can smell immediately. if you are just pannedering or throwing out talking points. they want someone who can speak directly to those concerns whether through the douglas plan or something else. that will present a bigger problem with president trump who loves this talking point. we know that is just not the case. even if african-american unemployment were the lowest in history, i don't think black voters will suddenly go to trump. talking about racial inequality. talking health care and housing. they want specific plans, not just talking points. >> every time i go to do one of

these interviews, i talk to our editor, he or she says, make sure you get what they plan to do on the african-american support. >> how real is that concern and do you see these 20 plus candidates making strides to reckon with them. >> the politics and the way in which the map is set up. south carolina becomes the proxy. you don't have a lot of african-americans in iowa or new hampshire. you begin to have this dialogue. the other thing that is important here. obama trailed hillary with the african-american vote significantly with most of that

primary. when he won iowa, african-americans saw, he can do this and they swung heavily. the thing kamala has to do is to see the interest in these states. they know biden, they know he was obama's vice president. that doesn't mean they are not going to look around at these other candidates. >> when i look around, there is the focus on the economy and increasing opportunities and this criminal justice system as well. when i look at the plan mayor pete laid out. it has cut the jailed americans by half. how much residence do you think that had with voters? >> it will have tremendous

resonance. president trump asked black voters before 2016, what do you have to lose? now black voters know exactly what they have to lose. there is no real criminal justice reform. there is a celebrity pardon every come of months or a pardon to dangle the jokes who might testify for the president. but black voters understand we are put too many people in prison for too long for relatively minor crimes. that needs to change. >> thank you all for being here in new york. join us tomorrow on "up." sunday at 8:00 a.m. eastern time here on msnbc. coming up, cory booker sits down with joy reid for an interview.

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>> that does it for me today. i'll be back tomorrow at 8:00 eastern. "am joy" with joy reid starts right now. >> yesterday, the president gave us once again evidence that he does not know right from wrong. it is a very sad thing, very sad thing that he does not know right from wrong. i believe he has been involved

in a criminal cover up. >> would you consider that grounds to launch impeachment proceedings? >> it has nothing to do with any campaign. i want you to understand that. as we go down the path to seek the truth and hold the president accountable, it has nothing to do with politics. >> good morning and welcome to "am joy." i am here in miami this morning. maybe it is the son. i was just in london, so i'm not used to bright sunshine at the moment or maybe it is just the times we are in. i am going to come out and admit, i am completely plumanced. you just haefrd nancy pelosi say she believes the president doesn't know right from wrong and that he is involved in a cover up and yet refuses to use