hi, everyone, it's 4:00 in new york, and around the country growing concern over what's beginning to look like a repeat of the disinformation campaign that helped elect donald trump in 2016. concern that the same kinds of dishonest, divisive and race-baiting attacks waged on social media against hillary clinton in the last election are now tafrrgeting 2020 democrats. and like last time they're being amplified by donald trump's allies. brought to the forefront recently when the president's son retweeted shades of birtherism that his father brought up. here's a reminder what donald trump jr. tweeted and retweeted on backlash.

kamala harris is not indian-black. she's half indian and half jamaican. i'm sick of people robbing history. and what's worse is the person behind the tweet and its author ali alexander takes on a more sin sister stone. "the new york times" reporting, quote, for people like mr. alexander and an alt-right fringe person figure is the entire point -- e entire point - and there's more -- caroline orr, a social media researchers cited by "the times"

was among the first to warn a coordinated attack was breaking out online. she tweeted on debate night, a lot of suspect accounts are pushing the kamala harris is not black tonight. it's everywhere and has all of the signs of being a coordinated artificial operation. we should stress again coordinated operation was supported at least briefly by the president's son. for joe biden, it's not just tr that the trump campaign was aiding and abetting the online campaign, but it was his mastermind. "the times" reports a consultant for team trump created a fake campaign sign for biden that is unflattering to say the least. in the last three months that site has become the most popular site on the internet. this is not normal. that is where we start today with some of our favorite reporters and friends. eddie glide, share of the department of african-american studies at princeton university, corinne jean-pierre, senior

adviser to move on.org. former chairman of the rnc, michael steele and joy reid, host of "a.m. joy" here on msnbc and author of the brand-new book "the man who sold america: trump and the unraveling of the american story," which bewill get to later in the hour. joy, i have always been concerned and i said it on the show before, going back to 2016 not one of the six republicans who ran against trump, not hillary clinton, ever figured out how address and combat the asymmetry running against someone like donald trump. >> absolutely. the campaign assumed the american voter could sort it out. you have to remember if you read the mueller report, the first half of it describes to what eventually mounts to a voter suppression machine, in which they injected anti-hillary memes, the super predder ovator

she wrote the crime bill or supported the crime bill. it's not to get people to vote for donald trump, it's to get them to not vote. suppress themselves. and it doesn't just start with the debates. this happened in january. the minute she launched a slew of online activity accusing her of not being genuinely african-american, attacking her on the basis of her parents' immigrant status and basis of her marriage, that started in january. when i interviewed kamala harris, i asked her if they were ready for the online barrage of cyber attacks against her. and the campaign or she seemed to say i think we're ready for it and she expressed a lot of confidence, which is good. i think you're supposed to express confidence but what i worry about is i'm not sure the democratic party understands the scope and sail how this is going to work and it's going to be on steroids versus the way it was in 2016. i hope they're ready. i hope she's right and their

confidence is warranted but it's intense and going to get worse. >> in another era, you ran a major political party. and we're so old that -- i was there, we were worried about mailers going to the right homes. and there's something really backward about the campaign having to worry about this. it should be your government, your president should be protecting the country from an attack because these are not just attacks on kamala harris, these are attacks on the democracy. >> i think that would require acknowledgment by that government and the head of that government this is a problem. when up have that left of denial still in play going into the next political cycle, presidential political cycle, campaigns do need to step up their game and become almost independent actors in this space. we're on a new platform, new frontier here where it is at least under this administration signals given to foreign adversaries and backdoor is

open, come on in any way you can. just make sure you pick the right side. >> yeah. >> so i think the campaigns need to up their expectation game here of themselves. and not even rely on their respective parties, democrats or republicans to actually get this right. >> yeah. i guess the corollary to that is when the obama administration figured out that the russians were in our elections, they went to brief congress and mitch mcconnell said no, no, no, no. >> should have been the first clue and warning in that moment by the administration. we need to go beyond that. we need to step into this space. we don't need to get mcconnell's permission to warn the american people that we have a problem here. >> could you ever imagine that you would have had to say that sentence, you shouldn't need mcconnell's permission to warn the american public russia is coming. amazing. >> amazing. >> why is kamala harris already a target, and why is birtherism one of the first smears? >> because it worked the first

time in donald trump's mind, right, when he entered the political arena in 2011, he used birtherism and one of the things that came out of that, which i remember very well because i was on the obama campaign in 2011 is obama released his long firm birth certificate, which was a win. which was a win to donald trump. i remember when it happened, i think there was a feeling like this had to happen. we were going into re-election. and that was a major, major win and so he took that and he went into 2015 and it all, you know, we know what happened after that. in his mind, i think it's like okay, birtherism 2.o now kamala harris is clearly what we saw the performance from last week, she's rising and they're thinking it will work again. and, you know, there's a couple of things too. you're talking about how the campaign needs to step up and they should not rely on the party. i think that's really true. the other part of this that's concerning is donald trump has raised more than $100 million in a quarter so he's much more well

more of a functioning campaign. we know he's funding in the facebook arena, and so that's a concern to me as well. we're going to be out-funded by the other side and they're going to use it to do home. >> i want to come back to both of these with you. but first on what the government is doing, i think one of the most startling things to have watched over the last two years is the government, national security officials are often at odds for ott public statement of the president on this question of russia. no one more so than current fbi director chris wray. watch this. >> maligned foreign influence we usually use to describe the fairly aggressive campaign that we saw in 2016 and described in special counsel's report. >> no, russia did not help get elected. you know who got me elected? you know who got me elected? i got me elected. >> the use of social media, fake news, propaganda, false

personas, et cetera, to spin us up, pin us against each other so divisive and discord undermined america's faith and democracy. >> that's a joke. not any help from the russians. >> that's not just a election psych many threat, that's a 365 days a year threat. >> and when you look at russia did and buy facebook ads, it's a terrible thing but i think the investigations and all of the speculation that lasted the last two years had a much harsher attack on our democracy than a couple facebook has. >> the investigation has had a much harsher impact than a

couple facebook ads. >> so they think to concede that claim is in some ways questioning the legitimacy of the election. and he's always concerned that he was legitimately elected. >> probably because he wasn't! >> because he's a narcissist who doesn't give a damn about the country. i will say that and take a hit. he's willing to leave the country vulnerable. i think it's important to make distinctions here. clint watts, who's come on msnbc on a regular basis, regularly reported it's not only the russians. what we saw in the election in 2016 was in some ways a kind of weaponization of processes that were evidence or is evident throughout the american election system. and what he was saying was not only foreign forces deploying these techniques but domestic forces deploying these techniques. not only $100 million what could trump do, right?

what can candidates do? if there are not any, what can operatives do? >> right. >> it's not simply oppo research anymore. something else can happen in the context of our election system and in the context of the birtherism and what happened to senator harris, there are folks out there, the american dissendants of slaves who are making hay in all sorts of places across the country and have a presence on the web. they're not bots. they're not russian folk. they're actually trying to have an impact on the way in which we talk about race in this country. unless we understand and be able to differentiate these various forces, we are going to lump them all into the same thing and not understand the nature of the dangers that we face in our electoral system. >> i guess the toxic brew that seems to be getting mixed up in the kitchen already is trump's racism, the complete 578 biv

lens amo -- ambivalence, we looked high and low. christopher wray was the only one with the deepest thread and robert mueller, who will testify off the scetheme here. not only does he not care about the intricacy conversation about race, he wouldn't understand it. you have the toxicity of the fear on race and the texts tweeted and let's delete it. nobody that saw donald trump jr.'s original tweet questioning birtherism is going to see this conversation that it's absolute bs, nobody. and i will put this up because i was startled to see this, the way birtherism started was donald trump saying, i don't know. i don't know. it's just a question. watch. >> many, many people have questions. very serious questions. perhaps he was born in this country. and that's a chance.

but who knows? >> you really think this guy -- >> i don't want to answer e answer the question. >> his mother was a u.s. citizen, born in kansas. is he a national born citizen? >> who knows, who knows? >> who knows, joy. >> and this dovetails with what you talked about with his legitima legitimacy crisis. he's fake. he knew he wasn't really rich and he understood he couldn't date prince diana for god's sake but he said it. he's constantly trying to prove to the real leets heelites he's he is there. he cannot stand this black man legitimately got into harvard university when his daddy had to pay him in become elected of the president of the united states with a 10 million vote margin and releengt-elected at a 5 mil vote margin and popular as president and loved and

respected him, it bugged donald trump the same way it bothered voters he got the job and their kid didn't get into harvard or princeton but a black kid did. he feels the same anger and misplaced rage at obama. birtherism is him doing what his voters do. the reason my life is bad not because of my choices i made but it's because of mexicans. mexicans are the problem. not the coal barrons and shut it down. it's not them, it's mexicans. it's a plsimplistic view of the world that lets you off the hook. donald trump is the king of that. he knows he's a fraud. a former question jimmy carter has questioned his legitimacy openly. so donald trump trying to fix his psyche by attacking barack obama, he needs a new person to fix his psyche. on comes kamala harris. he knows these attacks will happen. his base eats it up. his son's been duped twice.

we know trump is an easy mark. >> it's what you say it is, i love it. >> yes, he's an easy mark. whatever so he thinks his father loves him more. >> to what you said quick, joy, listening to clip on birtherism and everything else that the president says, america, here is your tell, whenever the president said, i heard shut it down, stop it, call it a lie and move on because the next sentence, word, phrase out of his mouth will be a lie. i want to know who are all of these people talking to him, telling him this information he's spewing out? i hear there were 500,000 people, not 50,000. you're correcting -- or at that moment he's correcting putin when putin said 25 million people that presumably the president of the country should know how many people died in world war ii and trump comes back, i hear it was 50 million. stop it. press, don't write that story. it is a lie.

whenever he comes out with the i heard or people say, that's a -- >> or my friend jimmy. jimmy isn't real. he doesn't know anyone named jimmy. >> jimmy is running for this eyeball to that eyeball. he's right here! this eyeball to that eyeball. that's the space, people. >> i want to push you on something though because i have heard this from someone who saw him around the holidays after mattis' resignation, seems like we live in dog years, feels like seven years ago but it felt like a perilous time. after mattis left and he was laying the foundation for the government shutdown, which was a political and human calamity, this person was with the president and said the difference between the president now and president before he was elected is he doesn't know anymore when he's lying. >> that is --

>> wow. >> i just let that marinade for a moment because that the essence of where we are. when you engage in this space and those of us in politics, particularly those of us who deals with candidates and operatives, you're almost kind of trained to get a sense of that, where the lying edge is. when someone crosses over that line where they're reality becomes the lie and the lie becomes the reality, that's a problem. and it's particularly a problem when they are in leadership. and when your star and people who are there to protect you, remember the conversations three years ago, all of those folks were going to come to the white house. >> very best people. >> when you get to the point when the very best people can't deal with jimmy, who's playing between the two eyeballs, it's over. >> i'm guessing when ivanka's holding daddy's had into north korea, we're there. when we come back, tackling the issue of electability in a crowded democratic field. how the first debates changed

that equation for voters. also ahead -- the man who sold america. one of our friends here calls it the greatest con job in this nation's history. what does donald trump do for his encore? gearing up for one of the political showdowns of the year, robert mueller's public testimony on capitol hill, all of those stories coming up. torip ♪ as your life grows, so do your needs. ♪ and with bank of america and merrill, the benefits you get can grow, too.

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there are two dozen democrats running for president with two dozen plans it seems in a historically large field with every ideas representing every corner of their big tent. for democrats this time around, there's something that might be of equal importance -- i would argue more. the ability to beat trump.

that sentiment is reflected in recent polling, democrats found prioritizing beating trump on a consensus of policy issues by a two-to-one margin. with that in mind another poll asked democrats to rate candidates with the best policy ideas. elizabeth warren was the clear favorite. joe biden in third. but when asked to rate the candidates the best to beat trump, it's biden ahead by a mile, more than 42%, more than the next three candidates combined. everybody is still here. do you think the new quinnipiac poll out and kamala harris' in the debate shakes up electability? they totally track. >> i totally think it switches up electability. what did we say? a woman taking charge, first one, woman won. a woman won the second one. and who is it -- elizabeth -- hillary -- no, i switched them.

warren and harris. they showed they can be on the stage 1 with donald trump, in particular harris as we saw in the second of the debate. you're seeing that in the polls right now. >> i don't think they can just be on the stage but kick his as. >> yes. i'm trying to say it nicely. >> established. nicer than me. you're nicer than me too. go. >> here's where the fight happens. >> all right. >> with all due respect to all of my brothers and sisters at the table, the electability question relative to the quinnipiac poll, there is no correlation in my estimation at this point between the two in the voters' minds. i think the voters saw the performances by both of those women, very fine performances both of those two nights, and said like them and that moves them up.

the electability question -- i don't think -- this is the thing about -- i don't the voters are in that space yet, where maybe you have some democrats in the primary sphere maybe. i'm thinking more broadly. these polls are not distinguishing between a primary and general election. they're lumping it all together. you have to look at how the voters are seeing it in totality and i don't think they're making a judgment this woman is a fighter, she can beat trump. >> that's who gets the priority. >> go ahead. >> i was thinking the whole point of joe biden leading is because people think he can beat donald trump, right? that's the whole point. and they might be -- >> the definite ability argument. that's 42%. >> when you have kamala harris showing that she can take on joe biden, what message does that send? >> you know what helps -- you

know what's helping ee lektdability is the very thing that elizabeth warren and others are putting on the table. you're not going to divorce the policy positions that these individuals are taking today into a general election and think that's going to get any of them elected. the country is not going to bite down on what they're selling. >> the two things -- >> just the video you showed, nicolle, going in, when i interviewed kamala harris, it was the same thing o when i asked her what was her big idea, she said middle class tax cut. i was taken aback. middle class tax cut. the video you saw, raise teacher's pay. the thing she's doing that's very smart, yes, she signed on with medicare for all and some of the big, big progressive ideas but when she talks to voters, she does in a sense talk about the primary electorate to a general electorate and she presents herself as a kitchen table candidate. she's always careful to say number one, i can prosecute trump.

let me demonstrate, if i take this guy biden, i can take trump. that's the base that maybe biden isn't the only one to take trump part. now i know her and like her. when she's asked, what would you do, cut your taxes and raise teacher pay. who didn't like that? i think she aa great way to speak to the general electorate. >> it seems to me the name recognition of biden is at the heart of the number, 42%. the idea becomes he comes out of the obama administration almost guarantees us victory against donald trump. underneath that from my vantage point is broader kind of analysis, that the problem we face as a country isn't just simply donald trump as i said on this show, it cuts much deeper. the problem isn't it goes to the republican party, goes to the senate, mcconnell, it goes to the republican party, the corporate democrats, centrist democrats who are bold and been

complicit with these folks. i think at the base there are folks looking for substantive change because i still think we're in a change election cycle. so people aren't trying to settle and go back for something that once was. the reason obama got elected, the reason trump got elected is the electorate, they do not like what is happening in d.c. and what is happening in their homes. that hasn't changed. so if you get someone who biden wants to double down on what we once had, when that was the source of the change election, folks aren't going to be excited about it. particularly now. democrats are who they are. so what i'm seeing is over the course of this -- otherwise of the course 69 primary you're going to see folks introducing themselves and introducing bold changes. kitchen table policies. and then you're going to see shifts in those numbers, i think. so we're actually in batting practice right now. we haven't thrown the pitch for the first inning. >> that sounds exciting. up next, let's talk about

joy's book about trump waged a new civil war in america.

i'm serious, african-american hispanics are living in hell because it's so dangerous. you walk down the street and you get shot. but you also had people that were very fine people on both sides. >> it has always, always been at the heart of candidate president trump's pitch to voters. "the man who sold america" writes this -- trump seemed to

normalize the public display of thuggery and open racism by white americans who felt powered to assert themselves as the arbiters of culture legitimacy in his name. they would decide who's really an american, who belonged in public spaces whon hand who had rights they were bound to respect. donald trump was indeed waging a new american civil war. i remember seeing you and talking to you on election night when the shock was still really raw. and my faerns offense to trump' campaign was built around two pillars, i accepted it because i thought americans will not elect someone who said women will let you do anything when you're famous, can you grab their bleep. she was bleeding everywhere, attacked a former miss america pageant and all of the things we just played and muslim ban, which we didn't play. he running for american president where some of our

closest allies for better or worse, he's very close to, the saudis. the racism out in public, i remember thinking on election night that was going to be one of the finger in the socket things for our country, and it has. and you write the best book written today about that. >> thank you, that's very kind. you know who else agreed with that? lindsey graham. he said donald trump is bag oa and not fit to be president. i did a lot of research and read a lot of research to make sure i was clear out he got elected. there's no data to support donald trump elects because of economic anxiety. what got him elected was racial society so if your economics were bad, you can blame it on mexicans, the fact coal is dead and corporations employ

overseas, you don't process that. it's mexicans. that's simple. one thing i quote and it's not my original quote, democrats and people of color may not control the economy, the economics and the money but liberals control the commanding heights of culture. for a lot of white americans the idea they don't control the culture, the culture doesn't revolve around them anymore, they're not the focus of the democratic party's attention they're now looking at brown immigrants. they care more about them than me. i turn on the tv and i'm told who are the coolest and most impressionable are black or brown. oprah is the person i'm supposed to think is the most important rich person, not someone like me. donald trump is your racist uncle jerry sitting around screaming about japan and china ruining america and mexicans moving into the neighborhood and making it dirty and trashy. that's who he is. he can live in a gold palace all

he wants. he's them. >> archie bunker lives in this parallel but archie bunker was a lot warmer. >> he had a heart. and he was from queens. >> that's true. if you see trump in public, i think he's much more isolated than archie bunker. we could have this debate another time. i want to stay on the book. this point about culture, just listening around came across fox, and the segment was about telling hollywood we don't need your stinking movies. really? like we did a fake tariff war and stuff republicans used to care about. what is the sort of undercurrent of that culture war? we don't really talk about that all the time but there's a raging, hot, culture war. >> tdonald trump recepts hollywood. when he got married the third time, he wanted everybody

celebrity there. anna wintour was there. rudy giuliani and politicians but a lot of stars were there. a lot would probably not admit to it now but his third wedding was the dream of his ultimate cheem. donald trump resents hollywood and cultural elite and craves them. he wants "the new york times" to love him. he wanted to be getted in hollywood. he wants to be able to throw parties like barack obama used to do for an unveiling of a movie in the white house and have stars show up. he can't. >> netflix, baby. >> exactly. he can't do it. i think in his mind if the black guy can get all of that by being elected president, so should i. i deserve it more than him. i think he resents the culture won't come to him or cater to him and they're not the heroes in the american story. they want to be the center of attention and donald trump said you're the center of my

attention. i don't give a damn about the brown people. i will hurt them for you. i will help you watch them get hurt. i will do a coliseum and put little brown kids in it and physically demonstrate i'm you're guy and not their guy and it's not their country. >> what's amazing to me the analysis, that's enough for his base but not enough for donald trump. >> no. >> he wakes up everything morning completely, completely off his game. agitated it would appear wooeepg in his pop tarts at a snarky stormy in "the new york times" and commentary from joe scars boro and mika brzezinski or here at msnbc, or something a soccer star or basketball player said. this is where his base is getting screwed. if he was happy with their love, and he has their love, no doubt, he wouldn't be agitating for everyone else's attention. he would be happy knowing i'm for you, you're for me, kumbaya.

>> he has their worship. >> he doesn't want it. >> what he wants is if robert de niro tomorrow would call him, he would be the happiest man on earth. he wants rubt murdoch but he got robert ailes. he couldn't get rupert murdoch to fall in love with him. as growing up he's the queens rich guy who looked afghanistan bridge and said i want to be with them and they looked at him and said he's garbage. they laughed at donald trump. everybody knew -- i have gone around the country and you talk to really rich people, they laugh at donald trump. they know he wasn't a billionaire. they know it was all a joke. he knows it too. there's legitimacy cries inside of him and bottomless pits of need inside of him and right now it's filled by his base because they worship him. and he wants what obama had but he will never have it. he wants to be the affirmative

action president. like that job i should have gotten, that person should have gotten it but they were black. he wants us but he can't have us. >> that's for sure. >> this book is amazing. congratulations. >> thank you, thank you. >> the book is "the man who sold america." go by it if you haven't already. >> still ahead, robert mueller prepares to public on capitol hill as democrats and republicans prepare for battle. e

there was relentless speculation in the news media about the president's personal culpability. yet as he said from the beginning there was in fact no collusion. >> mr. president, do you honestly -- >> mr. president -- >> do you believe robert mueller is honorable? >> yes. >> if we had confidence the president would not have committed a crime, we would have said so.

>> i think he's a total conflicted person. i think mueller is a too never trumper, just dislikes donald trump. >> when the difference to telling the truth, trump taking on a very different tone about robert mueller after hearing his findings straight from the source. it's now no surprise his testimony two weeks away has trump trump preparing for a political battle. as "the washington post" wrote, there's a reason, if mueller's investigation exonerated trump, would you think the best stralty for trump's allies would be to sit back while mueller describes those as much as possible. the monumental absurdity at the core of this disconnect is the reason the strategy will likely backfire on trump. joining our conversation, former u.s. attorney joyce vance. i never thought i would start a news read with the battle plan

to attack robert s. mueller from republicans in the house is x, y, z. ing robert s. mueller led the fbi in the terrifying months and years after 9/11. he's the only fbi director in the country's history to have his ten-year term extended to serve three additional years for a democratic president. where is the sort of wake me up, i'm in a hell cape of a nightmare? >> it tells you so much that republicans' approach of the results of the mueller report is to attack mueller himself. prosecutors are used to this strategy, when you don't have anything as a defendant, when you can't argue the facts or the law, you go after the prosecutors and it never works. you watch defendants do this over and over as a prosecutor and they never seem to learn prosecutors have only one job and that is to marshal the law and facts and see whether there's a prosecutable case.

this strategy is dubious. the republicans -- and we have seen them doing this in hearings and probably most of the folks on the committee will cede their time back to jim jordan and he will try to bump rimshots on mueller and see if the ret reince will keep him from going back on the attack but the reality is the rhetoric obtained in the mueller report is so damaging to the president, that will come through no matter what they do. >> joyce, let's talk about that for a little bit. i think this debate, the narrative around mueller's testimony has already slipped away from democrats' control. robert mueller doesn't need to say anything that's outside the four corners of the report. robert mueller would actually do the most devastating damage to donald trump to stay very much -- just right within the four corners of the report, like close his eyes and flip he open my faith and just start reading. >> could not agree with that more. and i think it's a mistake for

people who are viewing mueller through a partisan lens oh, they will support democrats or damage republicans -- >> he wouldn't know which was which. the reasons will be the ones acting like jerks but he won't know -- he's not a political animal. i'm going out on a limb here, i'm guessing he doesn't watch a lot of cable news. i don't know if he will know who all of these people are. they're famous in their own minds in the primetime hours of fox. >> mueller is savvy and he's spent time on capitol hill. it's not like he's coming up for his first match with congress. but i think that said, he will have a studied disregard as a prosecutor understanding that his job constitutionally speaking is a very limited one, and i think he will try to stick to his job and ultimately that may cause the republicans trying to do him damage a little bit of heart ache while he's up there with them. >> soets talk about the republicans, michael steele, likely to do more damage. mueller will face grailing from

trump's top republican allies in congress including representative jim jordan never seen in a jacket. matt gate? he's the one that threatened cohen's wife and maybe was investigated himself and david nunez, who's been investigated for all sorts of shenanigans. with friends like those, why do you need the russians? but these are the constant accomplices to the collusion that is well established, even though the criminal conspiracy was not. this is "the new york times" reporting from their obstruction opus from the beginning of the year -- the president cheered on lawmakers on twitter and in interviews in private urging mr. geets -- he e is silent, sorry, on air force once and in 2017 to keep up the subsequent phone calls and house overnight work. he was hoping for fair treatment from mr. mueller, mr. trump told mr. geetz in one of the calls after the congressman appeared

on fox new that's did not preclude him from enkurcouragin his allies. it's hard to know who's running who. are they running trump in his tweets? these are the guys though, in all seriousness, want to talk about how ruthless republicans can be, they tried to impeach republican deputy attorney general rod rosenstein. so they're not elegant but they are ruthless. >> they are. what they're playing is the game of keepaway. they want to keep away from the president's doorstep everything 245 can be the least bint crimm nating, the least bit damaging, the least bit destructive to his presidency and in perspective to the campaign and subsequent. i look forward to these individuals dully named to go out and be the front line. this is for everything. >> this is war. >> this is war. you now have the guy who wrote the report sitting in front of them.

so as best and as much you can do the ultimate takedown of him and discredit him, the better. >> to them, not for the country. joyce vance, what would you advise democrats who will be asking the questions of special counsel mueller to ask? >> you know, i sat in the seat mueller is going to sit in a couple of weeks ago testifying, and it strikes me both in that seat but also watching that the democrats need a concerted approach. i understand it's a political moment for the members. but this is one of those times where they should either designate one of their number or perhaps use their professional staff and lead mueller through the results in the report through the conclusions that he reached that russia attacked us, that he could not prove a conspiracy but that there was a lot of evidence of coordination between the campaign and russia and that people tried to conceal evidence of conspiracy. and finally that there were multiple acts of obstruction committed.

if democrats can walk mueller through that litany, it will be a powerful moment. >> well, joyce vance, thank you for spending some time with us today. after the break filling the void of leadership in the age of donald trump. with the u.s. women's national team headed to the world cup, a woman making a name for herself as a new age-american hero.

not many kicks left in this game. that was it!

the u.s. wins. they're onto the final. >> feels so good to cheer. and with that the united states will play in the world cup final this sunday led by an emerging american hero, or shero. meghan rapinoe became the first white professional athlete to support colin kaepernick's protest of racial injustice. she knelt before u.s. soccer made standing a rule. then earlier this year she was part of a lawsuit that alleged gender discrimination. she and her teammates pointed to their counterparts of the men's team. as a result just a few weeks ago rapinoe and her teammates began to begin mediation with the u.s. soccer federation. then last week she went toe to toe with donald trump. rapinoe who came out as day in 2012 has repeatedly criticized the trump administration over a number of issues. she told a magazine she was,

quote, not going to the bleeping white house if they were invited. trump fired back with a three-tweet barrage where he insisted, quote, when before she talks. one journalist reflected on her legacy and said she is her generation's muhammad ali. quote, through her example, rapinoe has instructed the world on how to play soccer. her public persona and her playing style are one in the same. in every realm she is fearlessly open, outrageously joyous. my shero of the year, we will be right back. right back

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we are still talking and laughing here, but we're out of time. my thanks to you guys. most of all, thanks to you for watching. "mtp daily" starts right now with chuck todd. ♪ if it's friday, it's a special edition of meet the press daily." got to love it when the fourth of july is in the middle of a week. at a moment that we're celebrating the birth of this great country, it's also a time about when we're thinking about what matters in merg. we are going to be talking about the issues that matter to you, the voter. we are going to be talking about battleground politics. we've also got a few surprises up our