donnie outed me in the break. some day i'll out him. today is not that day. my thanks to garrett, juanita, alicea and donnie. that does it for us. thank you so much for watching. i'm nicole wallace. "mtp daily" starts with chuck todd right now. if it's tuesday, the campaign that never stopped officially begins. and ahead of the president's big re-election rally, there are signs he's got some big problems. tonight, i'm talking to one of the 20 plus 2020 candidates vying to take him on. plus, cabinet chaos and a lack of leadership. the number of vacancies in the trump administration is so vast a , an acting secretary is now being replaced by, wait, an acting secretary. perhaps the best supporting

acting secretary will become a category. if it's tuesday, welcome to "meet the press daily." i'm chuck todd here in new york city, in just a few hours, in florida, florida, florida, president trump will formally kick off his re-election campaign in one of the weakest political positions we've seen an incumbent president in modern history. therese by conventional metrics. the public numbers look ominous. the internal numbers look ominous. there's already been a shake up in the campaign team. and the president's actions look desperate, from inviting foreign powers to help his campaign to threatening to round up millions of undocumented immigrants on the eve of his kickoff rally. here's what he said about that deportation threat just moments ago while speaking with reporters as he departed the white house for orlando. >> immigration officials say they don't know anything about a planned roundup of millions of people next week. >> well, they know. they know. they'r and they're going to start next week. and when people come into our country and come in illegally, they have to go out. the democrats should get together and solve the asylum

problem, which is very easy to solve. and they should solve the loophole problem, also very easy to solve. >> and this afternoon with the president in florida, more ominous polling from florida. a new florida quinnipiac poll has the president losing to the democratic front-runner by nine points in a head-to-head matchup. that's actually an improvement on what the president's own polling showed against biden two months earlier. he also trails bernie sanders by six and elizabeth warren by four. folks, in any other conventional protest, there would be serious talk of a primary challenger inside the republican party to a sitting president. but this is ant conventional presidency, and donald trump has taken over the republican party. he has changed the rules, he's blown up our politics, and katie barred the door, because only now is his campaign officially getting started, but we should note that the president filed his re-election paperwork earlier than any other president in history. he did so on the day he was inaugurated. and today is not the second or

third rally of his presidency. it's his 60th. this presidency has blown up you are understanding of modern presidential politics. and as he kicks off his campaign, he's facing nearly two dozen hopefuls who think they can beat him. let's get down to orlando. our own white house correspondent peter alexander is down there monitoring the scene. they've let people in. the president is kicking off his re-election. he's very excited about the crowd he's going to have. peter, tell me about this crowd. it's been a rainy, messy day outside, but now they're inside. >> reporter: yeah, chuck, they finally moved inside. the president hoping to rev the engines of his base, surrounded by 20,000 of his favorite floridians. you were talking about some of that bad polling for the president. moments ago, i spoke to one of the president's campaign officials and this individual said to me that they think that those recent polls, certainly

the once here in florida that show the president way beyond of joe biden, bernie sanders, even lelizabeth warren or in this aide's words are meaningless. they say this thing hasn't even started yet. they say, in effect, the president hasn't begun battering away at any of these individuals. nonetheless, it is an ominous sign, one that these folks have been peppered with repeatedly by reporters' questions. but why is this night different from all other nights? in the words of this campaign official, this is the definitive marker. this is really their opportunity to turn on the lights and get things started here. and one thing that struck me, we've heard the president in some of those 60 rallies he's hosted over the course of his first two and a half years in office talking about his favorite campaign motto. he said, it was the best that was ever invented, make america great again. tonight for the first time, there's a lot of signage that says, keep america great. that's what aides say he'll be focused on tonight. they say he's going to focus on safety, security, and the economy right now. nonetheless, in some of the

president's own actions that have threatened all of those things, most notably on the economy, the trade war, those tariffs the president has announced, posing real challenges for the president. but among this crowd, those immigration comments you reported on moments ago, that trade war, all of it is something that they embrace. >> look, obviously, they believe the presidency begins and ends in florida. it's our understanding this is the first place they did a rally, it's the place they want to do their re-election. why orlando and not another part of florida? clearly, they want to be there. >> reporter: yeah, no, chuck, you're exactly right. the first sort of maga-type rally he held after he was elected, that sort of victory lap tour as he described it took place at melbourne. but this time he's right here in orlando, you know this better than anybody, right along that i-4 corridor. we drove across the state last night trying to avoid some bad florida weather from tampa to orlando. and it is that stretch that they think will be crucial. obviously, behind the scenes,

when you talk to campaign officials and some of the president's allies, they put the best spin possible on this in spite of the president's own bad internal polling that they have brushed off, they think it is the least swingy of states in their language. they feel strongly that florida is turning their way. there is a lot of data that shows that that may not be the case. >> i tell you, republicans always seem to pull the rabbit out of their hat, though. so in that sense, i understand why there is optimism on that side of the aisle. peter alexander, should be quite an eventful few hours down there in the amway center, i believe they call it. as i mentioned, president trump has blown up our presidential politics. and there's arguably no better example of the new reality we're all grappling with than my next guest. in many ways, andrew yang's candidacy is proof of how vulnerable some see this president's re-election chances but also how unpredictable our politics have become. here we have a businessman out of nowhere, no prior political or military experience, not only vying to defeat the president,

but also getting enough voters to take him seriously that he's made the democratic debate stage. mr. yang joins me now. andrew yang, welcome to "meet the press daily," sir. >> thanks for having me, sir. it's a pleasure to be here. >> let me go with this immediate premise here. would you be here if donald trump hadn't won the presidency? >> categorically not. i'm running to solve the problems that got donald trump elected in the first place. primarily, the fact that we automated away 4 million manufacturing jobs in michigan, ohio, pennsylvania, wisconsin, missouri, and iowa. but i would not be running if donald trump were not our president today. >> what is it you think the democratic party misunderstood about trump's appeal four years ago? >> well, if you remember, donald trump pointed out the devastation and suffering in many american communities. >> he wasn't alone, though. many democrats pointed this out. bernie sanders pointed this out. barack obama pointed it out four years earlier. that's why i only -- he wasn't the only one. he's just the most recent one. >> well, bernie sanders

definitely pointed out the same thing, but if you remember the prevailing response was america's already doing great. and you know, like, americans heard that and did not think that the democratic party was truly trying to solve the problems on the ground that many americans were experiencing. and what happened to the manufacturing workers will now happen to the retail workers, the call center workers, the fast food workers, the truck drivers. we're in the midst of the greatest economic transformation in the history of our country and democrats should be laser focused on addressing that reality than focusing on the symptom, which is donald trump. >> in some ways, your signature proposal doesn't necessarily solve the problem. it feels like a band-aid. and i say, your signature proposal, this universal income, because you're trying to fill the gap as we figure out what the jobs of the 21st century look like. am i being too cynical about it? >> if you think what happened to communities around the country if every american adult got

$1,000 a month, it would create 2 million jobs in our communities, help recognize the kind of work that my wife does every day at home with our two boys, one of whom is autistic. it's not a band-aid. it supercharges our economy and creates jobs in the direction we need to go, which includes the caring community, arts, and main street jobs because of an increase in consumer buying power. >> so you think one of the positive aspects about your plan is if somebody wanted to pursue an art and really couldn't afford to make a living doing it, you're giving them an opportunity to do it. i get that, but how does that grow our economy? >> well, our economy right now is up to a record $20 trillion, up $5 trillion in the last 12 years alone. the problem is that we have these winner take all dynamics that the gains are concentrated in just a handful of industries and companies and individuals. and so if you spread that bounty more broadly throughout the american economy, it does create opportunities including in the

arts, but also entrepreneurship. and i'm a serial entrepreneur. we need to have more americans being put into position to do the kind of work they actually want to do. >> let's talk about the border. there is a lot of angst and anxiety over the border. the president believes the issue is our asylum laws. democrats believe that some of this has to do with just, you can't pull money away from central america. we've got to have a difference tolerance policy here. we have an increase in migration over the border. what would you be doing about it? >> the first thing we have to do is put adequate resources to work at the border. we have a shortage of not just asylum judges and facilities, but even border patrol personnel. there are hundreds, maybe thousands of unfilled positions, because these positions don't pay as competitively as other roles in our government. and also, these are not appealing places to live. so we have to do the work that we know needs to be done in order to have our policies actually be effective on the ground. it serves nobody if there's a

multi-month or even year-long waiting process to have an asylum hearing. >> i want to go back to your universal income proposal, because our debt is already up to $20 trillion. and i know in some ways, if you already get some government assistance, you wouldn't get this money. but how does this not, even in the short-term, inflate our debt and put us in a budgetary crisis going forward? >> well, if you look up, chuck, who are the big winners in this economy? it's amazon and other $1 trillion tech companies. and in amazon's case, they're literally paying zero in federal taxes. you're 100% right that if you have that situation, it's going to be very difficult zp. >> so you're going to change the tax structure first before you hand out these checks? >> we do it simultaneously. and we would be taking money from the amazons of the world and put it directly into the hands of american consumers. >> explain how that works?

jeff bezos will write you a check? >> we'll do better than that. we'll join any other advanced economy in the world and have a value-added tax which would give the american public a tiny slice of every amazon sale, every google search, every facebook add, every robot mile. >> and if you're the nominee, i have seen people push either a fair tax or a vat tax or a national sales tax. and every candidate that has tried to put it out there, if they win a nomination, they get eviscerated because somebody basically shows, hey, look at how much it's going to cost to take your kids back to school now. look at how much it's going to cost to buy everyday products. how do you beat back which has been a tried and trued method politically to defeat national sales taxes, to defeat the vat, things like this, where people see the initial bill and i don't care what kind of refund situation you put in there, that does scare people. >> well, it's more than a refund, chuck. it's actually a dividend.

and for every dollar from the vat american consumers would be receiving $3. it would increase the buying power of approximately the 92% of americans. and americans understand what $12,000 a year would mean for them and their families. very, very few americans would consume enough for a mild vat come anywhere near counterbalancing a $1,000 vat a month. >> so let's move on to the situation in iran. how would you try to deal with iran's belligerent nature in the middle east? the biggest criticism of president obama and the iran nuclear deal was, okay, the good news is, you got them to agree on some limits when it comes to the nuclear issue. but it did nothing when it came to them funding terrorist organizations and things like th that. what would your administration do to curtail some of that bad behavior by iran?

>> i would look to reenter the nuclear deal. even after the u.s. pulled out under the trump administration, there are other countries that signed on that are still there. we need to de-escalate tensions in the iran region and make it so that the iran government's incentives are actually aligned with ours in terms of both de-escalating the nuclear development and hopefully getting them to reduce their funding of terrorist organizations in other parts of the region. >> do you have a theory of the case on how to deal with the trump meat grinder? you know, he has a different way of talking to the public, of talking to candidates. why will you be different at handling the trump-style of political campaign differently than others have tried and failed at? >> well, they say, chuck, that the opposite of donald trump is an asian man who likes math. and i'm already peeling off thousands of trump supporters, independents, libertarians, conservatives, as well as obviously democrats and progressives. but i agree with many of your colleagues that we need to be focused on beating donald trump and i'm the ideal candidate for

that. >> but does that mean taking him on directly? leaving these things, not letting stuff go unanswered? or is it ignoring some of the antics? >> it's about cutting to the heart of the matter and the truth. and i've talked to many people who voted for donald trump who recognize that his bluster is not serving them well. it's one reason why many americans who voted for donald trump are looking for a different solution. and i'm happy to say that my campaign is drawing many of those voters over to our side of the aisle. >> why aren't you running for a lower office first and maybe see if you can win and get more people to mainstream your proposals? i just say that, you know, shooting for the presidency, i get it. it is one way, and you're certainly getting more attention than you would if you were running for the u.s. senate somewhere, but isn't it more practical to try to build this ground up? >> chuck, i dearly wish that i felt like we had the time. but the reality is that robot trucks are five to ten years away from hitting our highways and driving a truck is the most

common job. 39% of our malls are closing in the next five years. so if i took decades to try to climb the political ladder, unfortunately, our economy would be transforming underneath our feet. we just don't have the time for someone to play political gamesmanship. >> all right. andrew yang, as i said, one of the more unusual candidates and in some ways the donald trump era has inspired. see you in miami. >> looking forward to it. >> you got it. up ahead, president trump is sounding a lot like candidate trump when it comes to immigration. he's issuing a new threat of mass deportations just hours before his big event tonight in florida. is it a coincidence? we've got a fact check on that up ahead. and speaking of that big rally, are there bigger troubles ahead for the president's re-election? that's next. d for the president re-election? that's next.

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orlando was the site of his first rally after being sworn into office. and as we noted at the top of the show tonight, will be his 60th. it comes amid a flood of ominous poll numbers to begin his re-election kickoff. but one of the biggest questions in american politics right now is whether president trump is really as weak as those numbers suggest. joining me now, nbc national political correspondent, steve kornacki. president of voto latina, maria teresa kumar and sam nunberg. welcome all. steve, let me start with you. i sometimes think we overrate president trump this cycle because we underrated him last cycle. the question is, how confident are you of even that being correct? >> there are days when i wake up and think we are overreading 2016 and there are days when i wake up and think we're underreading it. and the same basic question hovers over this election that did in 2016. if you looked at our exit poll on election day 2016, not just the majority, but the

overwhelming majority of voters said that they didn't like trump, didn't think he was honest or qualified to be president of the united states. more than 60% of voters said that. these are questions we were trained to think of as threshold questions. you've got to get a majority on whether you're qualified to be president before they'll even vote for you. he got the votes of him who didn't think he was qualified or competent or trust him with the button. he did that once. so now there's a track record. that will change a critical number of voters. it's possible, but the other possibility is that he brings about such intense polarization and brings the negatives of his opponent up so high that it create just a narrow enough path that he did it once, it's not off-limits a second time. >> but he had two foils. foil one in 2016 was the person who he was trolling the day he announced, the day after that person announced, jeb bush. and then there was hillary clinton. neither one of those people

exist. the question has always been, is trump's success more of our blind spot for how weak hillary clinton was. >> i think trump recognizes that people were unfavorable with her, but he started campaigning the most he was inaugurated. he had already filed his papers. but more importantly, he's been running a digital campaign that has been offer the radar for the majority of americans. but the fact that my staff at voto latina are directly getting messaged at facebook is because he's not leaving any voter on the table. and the polls are basically identifying voters. we have a whole slate of individuals who are not even participating. i would not put anything past him. i think it has to be the election of our lifetime. >> you know, the most recent poll was 44%, 53 disapprove. our first one of him as

president, 48% approve, 48% disapprove. so things change, yet nothing's changed. >> and i think the other outlier is what's going to happen with the party. we don't talk about. the last election we had close to 6% voting for gary johnson and jill stiein. the most since 1996. and the idea that donald trump will be able to, as bill mcentire will say, make this a large decision candidacy, make it about socialism against american exceptionalism, things like that. he showed that he can be disciplined during that last month, disciplined for him. >> 11 days. it was 11 days. >> since the second debate. >> i think the video scared him in the second debate. but with that said, as you've said, chuck, and as steve has said, you know, he's never shown that he can get 48, 49% of the national vote. and that is going to be the minimum he needs to get re-elected president. >> it's interesting to start in poll and we had this quinnipiac

poll today. yes, quinnipiac has a wider range sometimes in their numbers in florida. but the fact is, their trump/biden number is actually more narrow than the trump campaign's trump/biden. but this was interesting. biden led by nine and sanders by s six, warren by four, o'rourke one, buttigieg by one. but the trump number really didn't budge. it was 41-44. and if it's biden, boy, that 44 is a mess. buttigieg, well, that 44 is a neck and neck. >> and you'll see that in florida. you see that in the national polls. you see poll numbers. really, if you just told me that this president or any president has the approval rating that he has, this is about what i would expect to see in terms of head-to-head matchups. if you take biden and a former vice president that well known, that's what you would expect to see. the question with biden is, and i think this is, you've got to go back in time a little bit here when you try to size up what his vulnerabilities are. 2014 and 2015, the reason why the democrats turned to hillary

clinton and not joe biden is they thought hillary clinton was more electable than joe biden. her poll numbers, when she -- >> who thought that?! >> i never understood that. i think it was, they department think biden -- to me the best argument against biden getting in the race was not that he was weaker or stronger than hillary clinton, it was that -- >> is that biden was going to hand sanders the nomination. i'm going back in time. when hillary stepped down as secretary of state, what was her favorable rating? >> she had -- >> from 2018 08 to 2013, when s was not a politician, she was removed from hit. and memories are so short-term in politics, you start thinking, that's the normal condition. you start thinking, this is a sure bet if you're a democrat. you've got that movement starting in early '13 saying, ready for hillary. you have a wave of endorsements and it foreclosed the possibility of biden. by the way, biden's numbers, if you look at the gallup poll as recently as 2014, higher

negative than positive. it was a reassessment of biden that played out why, why, because he didn't run? and he played the what could have been candidate. my question is, how permanent is that for him once you get into the day-to-day combat. >> i think we're missing the overall narrative, that every single person or matchup is against donald trump. so those voters -- they're basically saying through this narrative, anybody but donald trump right now. and while we're trying to figure out how to -- you know, what is the spread. the fact that buttigieg and warren, they are not household names and they're still doing a big matchup. there is an an tippetite by the american people, and that's where this whole idea of a thirty appeared, people are not resonating with that. they're basically saying, anybody but him. >> sam, you know this as well as anybody. we know how he feels about biden, probably how he feels about warren. who do you think in this field he's overlooking that he shouldn't be? >> elizabeth warren, actually. >> do you think he's going to be a tougher opponent? >> i think certainly she is going to be a tougher opponent.

had she not had the hiccup with the dna test, she would be seen as the top contender. this message she has going against big tech was genius. >> steel's an issue that the right cares about, too. >> it was the way we did immigration as opposed to barack obama or obamacare in the beginning. it's something that is a major issue that people care about. it's not going to be the top issue like climate change, but it's going to be an issue that if you care about it as your top issue, you're sticking with that candidate. and i think that, also, she is somebody who i hear is very, very good on the trail. that's somebody that i don't think should be underestimated. and my friends on the campaign, i said to them was, don't underestimate her and all we heard was pocahontas this and pocahontas that. >> explain how important immigration with as in you gett him disciplined in 2013? >> we made ate threshold issue for the primary. because in 2012 and then in 2013, we had an rnc report

telling us we had to be democrat lite in our opinion. and this was something that did not only resonate with a lot of the primary republican voter, but independent-minded voters. now the border is worse now than it was under barack obama, ironically. >> that's a problem for trump, isn't it? >> it's a major problem along with the wall. the wall is a threshold issue as wall -- as well. not as wall. i've seen the focus group and watched the video. when you see trump voters that were obama voters, the number one issue to them on immigration is getting that wall built. and if it's not built, what can the president say? he can say, look, you're better off with me than the alternative. and that's something where the democrats may poll too far to the left on immigration issues. >> respond to that. >> i think that we lost suburban white women to donald trump. and one of the reasons that when they came to the midterm elections we were able to bring them back is it was not just health care, but family separation, specifically. >> how he was doing immigration. >> how. >> they may not have liked it,

but we don't like the way you're doing it. >> and the fact that you're splitting family. that is something so personal regardless of party if he continues down this road and does not have to fix that, that is where a lot of moderate suburban women say, that is not okay. >> so steve, does this become a stramg by the democrats to basically say, you broke your promise on immigration over there and you tried to demoralize the turnout. you're not going to win that voter. >> and that's the other question, when you're talking about those final days of the 2016 campaign when trump wasn't the trump that we know, and you contrast that with the final days of the 2018 midterm when he leaned in hard on immigration, on the caravan, on the cultural hot butbuttons. a different response. >> sam, what do we make about the president firing these pollsters? does he blame them for the leaks? for the numbers? what do you imagine is the real motivation behind this? >> well, i think the real motivation is the fact that he doesn't like his numbers being

released publicly and they were able to -- there's been a lot of internal fighting among these pollsters for a while, since the last campaign, as you would well know with tony fabrizio. >> he went back to his core pollsters. johnny mclaughlin and tony fabrizio. those are the two he knows. he didn't know the other three as well, my guess. >> but he didn't like the aura of invincibility. sometimes we see that americans still think that donald trump is going to get re-elected. so he has to say and put out this bravado that i'm the front-runner here. i'm running for re-election. i'm a great president. the real problem, i think, right now is we've never seen something where everybody wants to point to the mcgovern, reagan poll at this point. they can point to the bush poll, they can point to bob dole at this point. but each of those candidates had economic headwinds. he has an economic tailwind. >> and he's still sit wting whe he's sitting. >> it's a problem. >> we'll pause it here. thank you very much, it's good to have you being the decipherer

somehow, to try to understand trump world. up ahead, the 2020 $20 million man or men? watch this one. we're taking a look at the fund-raising front-runners. does raking in the cash come with consequences anymore? rakie with consequences anymore? my insurance rates are probably gonna double. but dad, you've got allstate. with accident forgiveness they guarantee your rates won't go up just because of an accident. smart kid. indeed. are you in good hands? doctor bob, what should i take for back pain? before you take anything,

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it's always ready when needed. or... not. at bp, we see possibilities everywhere. to help the world keep advancing. in tonight's 2020 vision, it appears we know who the fund-raising front-runners are right now in the democratic field. joe biden appeared to reveal

last night that his campaign has already raised nearly $20 million since he got into this race. the former vice president told donors last night in new york that his campaign had 360,000 individual contributors who had given an average of $55. well, guess what that adds up to, if you do the math, $19.8 million, more than the $18 million bernie sanders raised in the first quarter. and there are still two weeks left in this quarter. elizabeth warren, who has pledged to avoid all high-dollar fund-raiser tweeted minutes after the biden fund-raising news first broke, quote, i don't spend time at fancy fund-raisers. instead, i spend my time meeting voters and thanking grassroots donors who chip in what they can. and biden is not the only one hauling in reportedly record amounts of cash. according to politico, buttigieg raised $7 million in april alone. that would match his entire total for the entire first quarter of 2019. we also understand that they're also about to hit their $50 million mark. so the question is, what is the new goal for the second quarter? are they going to get over 20

themselves? coming up, i'll talk about mayor pete's rise and what could be his downfall. the reverend al sharpton will join me. and don't forget, we are just eight days away from the first democratic presidential primary debate. you can catch both nights of the debate next thursday at 9:00 p.m. eastern right here on msnbc as well as nbc and telemundo. trust me, you just can't miss it. we'll be right back. just can't it we'll be right back. my experience with usaa has been excellent. they really appreciate the military family

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welcome back. donald trump made immigration a cornerstone of his 2016 campaign, even vowing to create a deportation force and promising mass deportations would begin in his first hour in office. well, president trump may have been channeling candidate trump when he tweeted last night, less than 24 hours before officially launching his re-election campaign, quote, next week i.c.e. will begin the process of removing the millions of illegal aliens who have illicitly found

their sinto the united states. they will be removed as fast as they come in. and then the president doubled down on that pledge just moments ago. >> they're going to start next week. and when people come into our country and come in illegally, they have to go out. democrats should get together and solve the asylum problem vis which are easy to solve and solve the loophole problem, also very easy to solve. >> but saying you're going to deport millions of people is far easier than actually deporting millions of people. let's get a bit of a fact check on this. jacob soboroff has been covering the crisis for months. his work is award winning to be perfectly frank. jacob, good to see you. >> eyou too. >> first of all. i.c.e. raids. you don't tell them in advance, do you? so i want to get to the policy in a minute. what has he -- if i.c.e., indeed, was planning something -- >> well, he's compromising -- i

think that's the most simple way to put it. he's compromised a law enforcement operation. if i had done that -- >> you've actually been embedded with these operations. >> if i had done that in advance of airing a story, say, you know, they gave us access, we're embedding with them, going out with them. if i had done that in advance of that, it not only blows their whole operation, we would never be asked to do it ever again. these are law enforcement sensitive operations. and the president is saying they're going to happen on the scale of millions of people. it's just operationally not possible. there are literally not the resources to do this in the way he's describing it. >> so what is this likely that he's referring -- you know, there's always a grain of truth into what he's talking about. what is it likely that he's referring to? >> part of it is politics. he thinks that this is something that appeals to his base. i have a theory about that, which i actually think this could backfire on him just like family separations did. this is family separation by another name. you know, he's saying he's going to go out and into interior removals on families living in the united states. remember who are in most of

those families? american citizen children. >> yeah, there's going to be citizens, non-hfnon-citizens, i going to be breaking up families. it's a similar situation. what's the likely -- are we talking maybe a handful of raids that are focused on, oh -- i know you've been involved in people that have been also smuggling fentanyl in. >> right. i think it would be -- honestly, families. and mark morgan, tacking director of i.c.e. has talked about the desire to go after families more aggressively now. >> to send a message? >> yeah, exactly. but i just don't understand the thinking here. because you go after families at their schools, you go after families at their workplaces, we've seen videos like this before, chuck. you see i.c.e. going after people and all of a sudden it becomes a social media firestorm. the idea that this is going to help the president politically in some way i think is backwards. if, you know, he went after the -- the irony is, he went after the oakland mayor when she supposedly -- he said she tipped people off on this.

so what's likely happening right now, if anybody is thinking about it? i assume they're hiding. >> they're going back to the drawing board. first of all, the definition of terror is terrorizing 11 million people in this country illegally by saying at any minute i.c.e. may be may come knocking on your door. >> maybe that was the point? >> perhaps, but there was no point to doing that. they're probably going to go further underground, go to know your rights training sessions and what to do if i.c.e. comes knocking at your door. and this doesn't alleviate the humanitarian crisis at the border at all. >> sam nunberg, a former trump operative said, he believed it was connected to the launching the re-elect, because he said, it's plainly obvious, the border is worse now under president trump than it was when he was campaigning to be president trump. >> by far. when the president came into office, he had the lowest modern number of apprehensions on record in that first year of president trump's term.

now there are -- there have never been more families coming to the southern border than there are right now. >> i should show that. we have a full screen of this. it is sort of i rronic. the low was his first year in sau office, but he's up to the second highest. >> in 2017, they called it the trump effect, because he said, the way he talks is scaring people from coming into the country. they're not calling it the trump effect anymore. because people are coming because they think, i may not have another chance and they're just rushing in. >> i was going to say, it is a trump effect, but in reverse. they don't know when he's actually going to lock the doors. >> it's a trump effect they don't want to take credit for. let's put it that way. >> well put. >> jacob soboroff, thank you for making us smarter on this issue. up ahead, the acting defense secretary is out. not just acting out, he's out. soon to be replaced by a new acting defense secretary. is the white house suffering from an overacting problem? >> we need to have a secretary of defense without the word

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said over and over. well, it sure seems more and more like the president is acting alone. yet another cabinet member is leaving the administration. today, acting defense secretary patrick shanahan pulled his nomination to the permanent post or had his nomination pulled. the secretary of the army, mark asper, will replace shanahan in the interim. so the acting defense secretary will be replaced by another acting defense secretary. that's a whole lot of acting. but in this white house, it's all too real. scrolling beside me is a list of all the top trump administration officials with acting titles. and there are a few biggies here. defense secretary, homeland security secretary, u.n. ambassador. oh, by the way, the white house chief of staff, who is also the acting consumer financial protection board. he's two acting. and the president seems to be in no reassure to make any of these temporary roles permanent. >> i sort of like acting. it gives me morepl flexibility.

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welcome back. mayor pete buttigieg could face an uphill climb to win the support of the older more conservative african-american voters. i spoke to him this sunday on "meet the press" and asked him about those and prehencetive of supporting him as the first openly gay major presidential candidate. >> i'm from a socially conservative community. when i came out, we didn't know what the effects would be. it was during an election year. mike pence was the governor of our state. he was popular at the time. and what happened was, i won with 80% of the vote. what that tells you i think is that people, if you give them the chance will, evaluate you based on what you aim to do, what the results are, what the policies are. and i have every confidence that american voters especially democratic votes will not discriminate when the opportunity comes up to choose the right leader for the future. >> joining me now is the reverend al sharpton, founder of

national action network and host of "politics nation." it's good to see you. >> good to see you. >> look, it is the issue i get asked about inside of d.c. from people that love buttigieg would like to see him win the primary. how is he going to win african-american voters. what do you say to that? >> i think he has an uphill battle. i think he is probably the one that could, if anyone at this point, climb that uphill battle. when i took him to sylvia's restaurant in harlem, he was well received. almost moved. went to every table. no negatives because he seems comfortable in his own skin. he seems well informed. and he started reminding people that i know how it feels to be the outsider. so it's a bridge that he's going to have to cross particularly in south carolina which is conservative, but it's a bridge that he has seen to be able to cross. he has a local problem now.

>> he left the campaign trail. you were telling me he's got an officer shooting that impacted a person of color. he's been talking to you. what have you talked about. >> he called me today and calling others that worked in in area and asked, what we felt. i told him you've got to be very honest. you've got to be transparent. this family wants justice. i talked to the widow, her pastor has been in touch with some of our national action network people. the police camera off. that's a big problem. whied you. >> that seems to happen quite a bit in these shootings. >> the whole purpose of having cameras on police is that it be there. he admitted we've got to get to the bottom of it. he's met with the family. i think the fact that he had a problem with the black police chief in the past brings all of that back. so far he seems like he's trying to show he's learned more but at the same time, not prejudge the police >> he said something interesting about with why he went back. he said one of the lessons he

learned the last time he dealt with this as mayor, he didn't inform the public when he had nothing to say. he said i sort of learned that people want to hear i have no new information rather than not sharing anything. >> people want to hear because want to feel like you're not marginalizing and not concerned about the value of the life. that's one thing i will say he kept saying to me, all lives are sacred. this is a precious life to me, reverend. i'm not going to ignore it. >> from the other way, how did kamala remember ris anchorry booker break joe biden's stranglehold on african-american voters. >> you have to tell people the difference without being dre divisive. you've got to be able to say not only will i do a, b, c, d, that the others won't do, i understand. i relate to you better. i am you, you are me even though

i can govern for everyone. >> there was an obama halo that didn't tep hillary clinton "there a halo that he doia. >> i think joe biden does get some halo issue. i don't know to the degree that others think because he not only worked with obama. he was the co-pilot. >> defended him. >> he was there. he defended him. he fought for him. he was there for critical votes in terms of same-sex marriage, affordable care. so he was a little more visibly the partner of barack obama. >> all right. i wasn't planning on asking you a question about the central park five which is in some ways a very famous story here in new york city. >> that you fought up against a guy named donald trump at the time. >> absolutely. >> april ryan has been asking a version of this question finally got the president to respond to a central park five questionyer today. take a listen.

>> will you apologize to the central park five. >> they've been exonerated. there have been videos and movies shown about the case. you came out with a full page ad saying they should die. >> why do you bring that question up now? it's an interesting time to bring it up. you have people on both sides of that. they admitted their guilt. if you look at linda fair steen and some of the prosecutors they think that the city should never have settled that case. so we'll leave it at that. >> reb, your response. >> people on both sides, he can koefz charlottesville. we're talking about five young men who said they were coerced into confessions. what really got people like me out there marching for them and i marched on donald trump, he just bought the plaza hotel because he took full page ads calling for the death penalty is the see men they found at the scene of this vicious despicable crime didn't match any of the kids. we're not talking about now whether there's reason to

believe, i believe cases went wrong. if you've got dna evidence, the semen, you can't argue with science. i guess with you argue with climate change, you can. >> reverend, i had a feeling you would have something to say about that issue today. good to see the you, sir. thanks for sharing your views. always good to see you. don't miss the rev this weekend or any weekend on politics nation every weekend there is. that's all for tonight. back with are tomorrow. the beat with ari melber. >> thank you so much. we're tracking several major stories right now. donald trump threatening immigrants as he kicks off his re-election bid. later had his justice department intervening in paul manafort's case to protect him from detention at likers jail. and jon stewart toing mitch mcconnell over 9/11 funding. it is an important story and i'm thrilled to tell you we have a special guest that the rises to the level of the issues in that story later in the