facebook, instagram, snapchat and linked in. thank you for watching. have a great weekend. "deadline: white house" with nicolle wallace starts right now. hi, everyone, it's 4:00 in new york. breaking news, turns out the blast radius from an 11-year-old sex scandal can still prove lethal. if you're the labor secretary. alex acosta, who prior to serving in donald trump's cabin cabinet, served as the top prosecutor in miami out today over his role in negotiating a sweetheart deal for accused pedophile and sex trafficker jeffrey epstein. as this scandal dragged into its fifth day, donald trump bid acosta a farewell on the south lawn with a sorry/not sorry to see you go. >> alex, i think you'll agree, i said you don't have to do this. he doesn't have to do this. he made a deal people were happy with and 12 years later they're not happy with it. you'll have to figure all of that out. but the fact is he has been a

fantastic secretary of labor. >> trump, known to be consumed by media coverage of his administration, was clearly not distraught about the deal that acosta negotiated for epstein, but concerned about the bad press acosta was getting. from "the washington post," quote, trump did not originally want to be seen as cutting ties with him over a decade-old episode, even if some of his longest advisers believed the departure was inevitable. even with the news coverage and facts of the case. with acosta out of the picture, trump is trying to put distance between himself and epstein. >> i was not a fan of jeffrey epstein's. you watched people yesterday saying that i threw him out of a club. i didn't want anything to do with him. that was many, many years ago. it shows you one thing, that i have good taste, okay. other people, they went all over with him. they went to his island. they went all over the place.

he was very well known in palm beach. but jeffrey epstein was not somebody that i respected. i threw him out. in fact, i think the great james patterson, who's a member of mar-a-lago, made a statement yesterday that many years ago i threw him out. i'm not a fan of jeffrey epstein. >> the pedophile, the prosecutor, and the president. that is where we start today with some of our favorite reporters and friends. former u.s. attorney joyce vance. white house reporter for "the washington post," ashley parker. with us at the table former assistant director for counterintelligence at the fbi, frank figliuzzi. karine jean-pierre is back, senior adviser to moveon.org and executive editor for bloomberg opinion. tim o'brien is here. i want to start with you, joyce vance, and just leap into a parallel universe where on the day that it is unsustainable for

the labor secretary to continue to serve in the trump administration, no one utterst word victim. no one says a word about a mischarge of justice. all they say is read the james patterson fictionalized version of the sex scandal. i never liked him and i and did the make acosta go. what is happening, joyce? >> trump just doesn't seem to understand that justice isn't just another deal. and this is so lard i think to watch as a prosecutor knowing that when you enter into a plea agreement in a case, you have equity that's you have to be aware of. you have a community. you have victims. you have the courts and you're trying to do the right thing. you're not just delivering a deal. the president apparently views this as purely transactional. it's an old deal. without any concern for the victims that were left behind when this happened. and the notion that acosta is

leaving without any conversation about the victims and about what this means for women in the era of me too is i just think tonedeton tonedeaf completely. >> and for acosta to walk out the door without cleaning up any of the damage of his own reputation, frank, is stunning to me as a person who handled former communications for high government-level officials to not stand there and say, i did my best but i'm sorry i provided over a system that failed these young victims. these weren't women. these were girls. these were children. some of their lives were ruined. some of them are dead. i mean, to not -- we cover the dehumanization of migrants at the border. we cover the flippant way donald trump talks about dictators. but we don't have a lot of tangible examples of people actually being dehumanized in realtime. the treatment of this case, of the epstein victims, has been the dehumanization of girls and women in realtime. >> we're living in an era where

children are being detained in inhumane conditions so why would we expect any kind of remorse or apology from acosta or trump? and let's be clear, acosta leaving is not because of moral outrage from the president. >> correct. >> it's because he's reading the tea leaves and he understands more than we probably give him credit for where this is going. public corruption investigators are tearing apart the u.s. attorney's handling of this in miami. and this isn't going to get better. it's going to get more and more ugly for acosta and likely his staff at the time in miami. and this image of acosta standing for half an hour on the white house lawn next to lawn is going to come back to haunt them during the 2020 campaign. >> let me press you on that. what does that investigation look like? >> i will tell what you it looks like, interviews of all of the ausa and fbi agents in south

florida that handled the case, the police officers who interacted with those agents and prosecutors. and they're going to figure out what was the phone activity, who was dangled money, cash, jobs by epstein and/or his cutouts, and where are these people today? who objected to the deal in the u.s. attorney's office? and was that documented or not? >> your colleague bob costas said something on this program wednesday that sort of sent a chill up my spine. he said that what every journalist in the country woorj his or her salt worth pursuing is the answer to what was trump's knowledge? what was trump's knowledge of jeffrey epstein's conduct? i haven't seen that reported out anywhere but i wonder your theory of that case. >> well, we know just from that one comment that has gotten some attention, i believe it was to "new york magazine" in 2002, that the president had at least some general awareness. there's that quote where he

praises jeffrey epstein as a great guy and sort of says something along the lines of -- this is not verbatim, but something along the lines of like me, he enjoys beautiful women. his often a lot younger. so this was an open secret in the circles jeffrey epstein ran, in the circles that the president traveled in. it was something the president sort of spoke openly about. again, we don't know if he knew that jeffrey epstein was raping and abusing young girls but he was certainly aware jeffrey epstein was often surrounded by very young women. >> tim o'brien, let me put up the headlines ashley just referenced. trump called him a terrific guy who enjoyed younger women before denying a relationship with them, so he was close enough to know what kind of women he surrounded himself in. jeffrey epstein was a terrific guy. from "the new york times," donald trump once said and now he's not a fan. that story, i believe, chronicled a party where the women were flown in and only two men in attendance -- 28 women, i

think, jeffrey epstein and donald trump in "vanity fair," him, epstein and 28 girls. florida man drops the dime on trump. >> when the president stands on the white house lawn and said he barely knew jeffrey epstein, that's not supported by the facts. they knew each other well from 2002 until 2011. he traveled on his jet at least once. was seen at a member of mar-a-lago in name or substance but he was there all the time and the president wanted him to be there. i spent about two years, a lot of time with trump in the mid-2000s, and he routinely talked about jeffrey epstein as someone he admired, he knefelt y were in sync. >> what did he admire about limb? >> that he was able to pursue women whenever he wanted to, he was able to spend money the way he wanted to. he didn't care about the law or civility or women being targets

because that's frankly the way the president approaches the world. at one point when i was working on the book about him, he took me on the upper east side. he just bought the rights to the miss america pageant. we went up there and one of the main things i'm excited about in this pageant is i can introduce these girls to eric, his son eric. and we went into the offices of the pageant, and it was just a very uncomfortable environment with him around these women because i think his sole reason for buying the pageant, it was not a business decision, it was an access to women decision. and some of the court papers that have come up, jeffrey epstein said he wanted to buy a modeling agency because he wanted to use a modeling agency in the same way the president at the time, donald trump, used his agency, again, access to women. so there's a lot of similarities to how these two men approached the world. and it is not credible that the president didn't have a close relationship with jeffrey epstein, and they were worried about it up until election day.

you know, shortly before the election, michae kohn and david pecker at the national inquirer, who were having discussions about whether or not questions would come about jeffrey epstein's island and who had visited the island. so it was clearly front of mind for them, at least until election day. >> you know, i think it's important to be careful, every journalist that's been on this show, every lawyer who's been on this show has been careful but donald trump is credibly accused of sexual deevance and misconduct ranging from rain from e. jean carroll to misconduct and things that do not fall under a criminal umbrella but there are examples of him walking behind stage at the miss america pageant scrutinizing the near-naked bodys of young women. so i guess my question -- >> there also was during the election, a woman filed a jane doe lawsuit alleging trump raped

her in jeffrey epstein's town house in new york. she withdrew the suit. the lawyer said she withdrew the suit because after she filed it, she got death threats. i don't know anything about the facts around that other than that. but i do think that as you say, it's not just hearsay with trump. there are a lot of examples of him walking up to a boundary and many examples of him prosecuting it in the way epstein did. >> why isn't this a more salient political anchor around his neck? why -- and i remember when hillary clinton made an issue out of some of these accusations. she i think aligned herself with miss ma chateau, who donald trump called miss piggy. but it's all the same bucket of abusive, denigrating, derogatory and these accusations far more serious criminal conduct around women. >> it's a good question because i think what has happened is, as we all say everything we see is

not normal, right. none of this is normal. but what donald trump has managed to do is make it normal. it's the most bizarre kind of backward thing that we're seeing. just what you were describing. i was thinking about what you were saying about epstein and donald trump. those are things you hear in a movie. >> those are things that end the political career of anybody before donald trump. >> that's so true. you hear about it in the movies but it's playing out in the white house right in front of us. we see donald trump doing a perp walk with alex acosta and giving a 30-minute press conference. first of all, alex acosta never should have had that job in the first place. let's not forget who was supposed to have that job, the labor secretary he wanted was accused of dating his wife. these are the types of people he's bringing into the white house, into his administration. so what is not normal becomes in this weird way normal because we're talking about all of these awful things week after week after week. next week it will be something else.

>> ashley parker, maybe this is oversharing, i started to wonder in this sort of vain abnormalizing donald trump's conduct, those who talk about it and cover it are part of the problem. do you ever sit down and type a lead and say i can't believe i just wrote that? i wrote that line, the president, a pedophile and prosecutor and i thought, where am i? >> i will say there's something they started doing at "the post" which is recognizing stuff happens that in any other administration would end a career or dominate a news cycle and it sort of takes up three hours or six hours because something else push it's from the headlines. we're aware of that. so we sometimes try to go back and take an issue that may have moved out of the news cycle but is still really important and give it the second look that it deserves. an example was we sort of took some time and went back and really re-created what happened in president trump's response to charlottesville. we've done that on some other

issues. but as a journalist, there is sort of an industrywide recognition that a lot of these issues don't necessarily get the time they deserve because there's just such a cascade and firehose of news in terms of what you were saying, the headlines we're writing, the leads we're writing and even the time we can devote to some of this coverage. >> i appreciate we all kind of hit pause here and let this sink in. i want to let this sink in for you and for joyce. this is kamala harris on -- alex acosta's defense of the agreement. that's not normal either. let's listen. >> any prosecutor worth their salt, especially one who understands the nature of these cases which any prosecutor should if they're taking the case on, knows that this is the exact kind of case that is typical of somebody who's preyed on children. that case should go before a jury and that case should go to prison for a long period of time.

>> hopefully he will now. >> hopefully he will. but the thing i found, obviously, you can tell by the tone of my perspective, the thing that i found so troubling, disheartening and really unbelievable was the way that acosta has described the challenge he had, because it's like saying it's really difficult to make an omelet. well, get out of the kitchen if you don't know how to cook. >> ashley, this is something i've heard from the right and the left in the legal community this week. any thoughts on sort of how acosta's -- i know the performance was viewed as passable from the president's perspective and the white house, but the legal arguments are not holding up with the test of time. >> well, there is a sense again in the white house that he sort of initially, he made a somewhat forceful case for why he made that decision at the time. but in talking to people as the week progressed, there was also

especially when we heard from the prosecutor, the state attorney general, i believe, saying this was absolutely false and when does a federal attorney general defer to the state? he had a 53-page indictment. he absolutely could have gone forward if he had wanted to. i believe that has become increasingly the prevailing sentiment even in the hours after his news conference there was a sense he quote/unquote won by doing himself no harm. one final point, again the formative aspect in the white house is everything, there were some people who did want to see him be more animated and i was talking to someone today who said they wanted him to show more compassion, not just animated himself but the president might have wanted to see. these were young women, these were children, they were raped, they were abused and it might have been at the very least, regardless if it would have saved his career or not, an appropriate moment to speak to them and show some empathy and compassion. >> joyce, ashley referenced that

53-page indictment. why don't we reference that lest we let the facts get too far. facing a 53-page federal indictment, epstein could have ended up in federal prison for the rest of his life. but a deal was struck, an extraordinary plea agreement, that would conceal the full extent of epstein's crimes and the number of people involved. that one sentence or one paragraph, two sentences seems at the moment to be the sum total of alex acosta's legacy. >> at the time that acosta made this decision, doj guidelines for prosecutors required us to charge the most serious, readily provable offense in a case. so for acosta to abandon this indictment that he had prepared, it was supported by evidence with victims who were willing to come forward, is inexplicable. and in mind siengt nhindsight a

years later for him to stand up and defend that decision is unexplicable. on the same timeline i had a case in my office, i was an appellate chief about making pornography with young victims. the sentence received was not the maximum sentence but it was long enough to keep that defendant in jail functionally for the rest of his life and she was outraged. she wanted to appeal to the judge. she wanted every last minute, every last day she was entitled to of this sentence. that's how strongly prosecutors feel about these cases and about protecting young children. i don't understand acosta's point of view here. >> i want to ask you about the role of money. we talk a lot about mischarge of justice for women. acosta trotted out this ludicrous argument about things were so different, it wasn't 1907. it was 2008. but money seems to be the variable, not a point in time.

>> so much of what acosta said in his weak defense simply doesn't ring true. for one of the most disturbing portions of my fbi career, i supervised a crimes against children squad in northern california. and i have to tell you, it still impacts me today. and i can tell you this, no u.s. attorney, no assistant u.s. attorney ever said to me, i'm feeling a lot of pressure from this defense team. i really think the money they're throwing around on this is going to hurt us. we've got to cut a deal. it does not happen when you're talking about exploiting children. does it happen in white collar crime, big-time corporate defense? i have been involved in indictments and convictions in cases and fortune 100 corporations and, yes, they have incredibly powerful attorneys and, yes, there's a lot of money floating around. but to hear acosta equate that kind of environment to a case where women, young girls, are being exploited sexually, it simply doesn't happen. something's wrong with this

picture. i continue to say that's why we see public corruption prosecutors involved in this sdny case. >> you know also to what frank was saying about how the pressures are only going to step up on acosta in florida, there's another piece of this in new york with i think the other shoe to drop, which is what kind of records did jeffrey he steep have in his vaults? are there films or photographs? >> yeah, ashley's paper had reported in an address book he had 12 entries for the trumps. >> that was originally -- gawker had it out for years. >> he's a meticulous notetaker. >> meticulous notetaker. camera and security in all of his homes. whether or not he was blackmailing people who funded his, quote, money management firm. because i don't think he was actually managing money. the issue that arises is trump had an alliance with david

pecker. trump routinely threatened journalists with tape recordings. you don't mind if i tape this and when we litigated with him under a deposition, we said you don't have a taping system, do you? he said no. he would tell people in new york, he would tell business competitors that they should watch out what they were doing because he could go to david pecker or the "today" show or page six of "the new york post" and embarrass them. i think when trump is standing on the white house lawn saying there's no proof he had a close relationship with jeffrey epstein, there's going to be the southern district of new york, which already lifted pecker's relationship with trump land and stormy daniels. looking at the same thing with trump and epstein and video recordings and there could be -- i don't know if there is -- but i think there's a possibility there could be a very visible record of their relationship. >> more questions than answers on another front. ashley parker, thank you for spending time with us today and this week. it's a weird and depressing and bleak story but we're grateful to have your insights.

after the break, robert mueller offers to give congress more time for questions if they delay his appearance on capitol hill. but do lawmakers risk losing momentum by waiting? also ahead, is donald trump putting his own immigration officials in danger by constantly talking about planned raids, raids? democratic candidates for president pounce. and what do the latest polls in the 2020 democratic primary tell us about what voters want? democrats still laser-focused on electability for one thing. all of those stories coming up. johnson & johnson is a baby company.

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the moment many have been waiting for since the conclusion of robert mueller's investigation in march. the existential site trump and his allies have been prepping for, robert mueller's public testimony. originally scheduled for next wednesday, now may be coming to you at a date still to be determined. according to "the washington post's" latest reporting, the fos former special counsel is offering to delay his testimony by one week so the house could schedule a longer session, longer for everyone to get in on the questioning. joyce and the table are back. joyce, i'm of two minds on this story. one, for a man who stood in that doj briefing room and said this is it, you will never see or hear from me again. the report is my testimony. call me a snitch skeptical if we wait a week, i have six hours, not five. and the other side i have always felt like with every minute of

every day with every hour with every news cycle, the democrats lose whatever advantage remains. >> right. the democrats really lost this story at the outset when the attorney general put forth this summary of what the report supposedly said and it wasn't really what the report said. and they've never regained that momentum or presented the true story to the public. that's the opportunity that they have. it's tough to do that in a committee hearing. we all know that choppy back and forth of questioning among the parties makes that tough. democrats need to be disciplined. they need a strategy. they need to get mueller to talk about what's in the report and stay focused on that mission. >> and not to beat up on a democrat but we're only hard on them because you're all we have as a country, as a citizenry. but the other i think frame that they lost control of is robert mueller doesn't need to talk about anything outside of the four corners of the report. can he close his eyes, flip to

any page and start reading and it's lights out, devastating content for donald j. trump. >> there's no question there's tremendous value in simply hearing from robert mueller. but understand he is indeed a reluctant witness. so the reports we're hearing he somehow volunteered to spend two hours extra in front of questioning is not the bob mueller i know, but it gets to the heart of how they're going to have to carefully craft their questions. he is a yes, no, maybe guy when he answers questions. we couldn't get him to do tv as fbi director. >> i know, i worked at the white house after 9/11. we couldn't get him to do tv at the white house either. >> so i can't emphasize enough the need to craft the questions to expect the yes, no, or maybe but it better be a well drafted question that gets to the heart of what you're looking for from mueller. >> this is a little inside but you're as inside as anyone, i viewed it as a missed opportunity to not have his two

deputies, mr. zeddly and quarles up there with him, two could speak to i believe everything but the obstruction investigation in florida. do you thi in particular. do you think democrats should have fought that ruling from the doj? >> i do. not because we don't trust mueller -- >> he didn't do anything in the 22 months. >> this is clearly not a one-man show. you have to have team leaders and supervisors and simply to get the most accurate possible answer, you need the supervisors in the room. >> joyce, politico had some of the questions out today that they would recommend democrats ask. i wonder if we could take them to school a little bit. what do you think about this one, why don't you push harder to interview trump in person? and can you help us understand how significant it was that some witnesses lied to you? i guess that would be manafort. deleted or lost communications, i guess that would be stone.

or pleaded the fifth to deprive you of testimony. my guess there is donald trump jr. what do you think, good question? >> it's a really good question but the way would i ask it is i would have the report in front of me with the page and i would reference each of those instances and would i ask him to read the page in the report that explains the answer. >> all right. i'm going to give one of these to you. when did you decide -- why did you decide to end the investigation when you did? it seems like there's a lot of smoke around ending the decision and around the decision not to decide on obstruction. >> yes, that question to me feels so open ended i think -- i could imagine that being a question in which bob mueller simply says it reached its conclusion. i decided we had gone as far as our mandate allowed us to. as i said at the end of my report, i believe the next step was where the congress should step up. >> i have that one too. >> but i don't think he's going to say because i realized that

the president was obstructing justice and i wanted america to get behind me. he's not going to give answers like that. >> correct. not scripted politically. >> correct. one of the things i admire about mueller, he's an amazing public servant. he got end ran in my view by bill barr in terms of how to spin this to the public. bill barr is a much more savvy political operative than bob mueller is. bob mueller is a better person for it and better law official for it. >> bob mueller isn't a political operative at all. >> no, he's not. but part of the role in here is help america understand what happened. in a way in which you were recognized as unbiased and not a political operative. would i hope in these next ten days to two weeks he has that he does think about adding a little bit more to his public testimony that helps people understand how serious this matter is, because you have a president of the

united states who is a law breaker and he's surrounded by lawmakers but he has a very shrewd attorney general who has helped him cast this as a quote/unquote witch-hunt. that's to bob mueller's detriment. >> karine, i have felt since the day the barr letter came out, if we could have asserted laws were not broken or we could have cleared him, whatever that one sentence was, we would have. he had the opportunity to say laws were not broken as well as broken and let bill barr say no, they weren't. why the democrats could not get on offense when robert s. mueller came out and said we can't say laws are not broken. we cannot say the obstruction of justice section did not prove obstructive comment. we just carried out the investigation as we cannot indict a sitting president. >> i agree with you 110%. i think the inquiries should have started months ago. the moment they got the robert

mueller they should have been right on top of it and gotten the underlying documents and move forward and let the process speak for itself. as far as the questions go, i would say don't ask any questions, don't. just ask robert mueller to read the report on obstruction. tell him to turn to page 238. read page 85. >> page 85. >> because most people have not read this report. they don't know what's in it. let robert mueller be the storyteller. let him tell the report in his own voice. >> oh, my god, my friend, i hope they're listening to you. frank? >> my question is, and to use another football analogy end around, i will say mueller was charlie brown and lucy pulled the football away and that's barr. >> totally agree. >> here's my question to mueller, you were clearly operating in cliens with doj policy that you can't indict a sitting president. did you ever have a discussion with the attorney general of united states to make sure you were on the same sheet of music?

and if you had that discussion, what did he say? because he did pull the football out from under you. there was dysfunction between those two offices, and i need answers as to why. >> and why did you write two letters? what was your concern? >> exactly. what was the dysfunction. how hard back does it go? was rob rosenstein involved in the dysfunction? did he tell you to play by the rules and yank it out from under you? >> a few more. i also would want to know, i would like to hear him say if he wasn't the president of the united states, would he be facing three, four, seven, six counts of obstruction of justice? >> mueller was a united states attorney so let's ask him that. >> if he were scooter libby. >> maybe this anybody else. are you charging obstruction? >> and if paul manafort cooperated -- he won't answer this -- but just to hear him ask, if paul manafort had not blown up his own corporation agreement and continued to cooperate, were there active lines of the investigation, the conspiracy investigation?

>> wore likely to get an answer like i'm not going to talk about hypotheticals or what could be a continuing investigation somewhere else. he's probably not going to answer that. >> joyce, can you get in on all, anything? >> i think it would be helpful if someone would ask mueller early on why he's not willing to talk about issues outside the four corners of the report. because there's an explanation here and i expects it has to do with the integrity of the process, not prejudicing any prosecutions that might take place. those redacted investigations that are ongoing. it would be helpful for the country to understand why mueller comes before them as someone who's committed to the report and for these extraneous questions, i don't think democrats have tleed to to lead with them. republicans will be pushing mueller. they will be asking questions. as prosecutors say that will open the door for democrats to come back and do some cleanup given mueller the opportunity to, for instance, fully explain

some of the questions where republicans will probably try to cut him off, having gotten him in the defensive mode and that might be where we learn some of the answers to these questions that are processed questions about the investigation that come from outside of the report itself. >> joyce vance, we're going to be calling on you often, more often than usual, leading up to this and during the mueller hearing. when we come back, donald trump blows it again, telegraphing planned i.c.e. raids of immigrant families as democrats turn up the volume on their attacks on the president's inhumane immigration policy. that story next. the worst... ...especially when your easily distracted teenager has the car. at subaru, we're taking on distracted driving [ping] with sensors that alert you when your eyes are off the road. the all-new subaru forester. the safest forester ever.

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there's nothing to be secretive about. i.c.e. is law enforcement. they have a tough jobs. if word gets out, it gets out. hundreds of people know about it. it's a major operation. if word gets out, it gets out.

it starts on sunday, and they will take people out and bring them back to their countries or they will take criminals out and put them in prison or put them in prison in the countries they came from. we're focused on criminals as much as we can. >> huh, really? in the span of 24 hours, we went from an i.c.e. spokesman refusing to confirm raids against undocumented migrants this weekend out of concern for agents' safety to donald trump there announcing those raids willy-nilly on the white house south lawn. you might remember the last trump roundup tweeting about it which, quote, blind-sided i.c.e. acts who feared officials would be compromised as a result. sound familiar? trump undermining and exposing his own officers. that combined with a well documented history with cruel policies directed at undocumented immigrants and their families is making a hit for democrats to replace him.

just listen to kamala harris on rachel maddow . >> he's failed to perform on every level by which we should measure the president of the united states. not to mention failed as a commander in chief. so he's going to create as he often does this distraction. i agree with you. and do these raids which is a crime against humanity and i believe in the way he's coming about this, the way he's been handling the issue. >> during the conversation, the reverend al sharpton, host of "politicsnation" here on msnbc and president of the political action network. i love the way she's talking about this. they are crimes against hue mantzy. they're also -- i don't support the raids. i'm happy if they don't happen. but for the acts who have to carry them out and follow the chain of command, he's endangering their lives as well. >> he's the leak, first ever all. >> correct. it's not even a leak. that's the south lawn.

>> it amazes me how we redefine what raid is. the idea of a raid is no one know what's you're coming. and then when you look at the cities he's outlined, they are very clearly cities that have been -- that the mayors are democrats and they are cities he lost the vote. if you're really that concerned about the issue he raises, then why aren't you going after some of your friends' cities and why aren't you telling those mayors they ought to be raided? this is very calculated and certainly what senator harris said is that he's -- be it's not only crime against humanity, it's clearly him trying to use a distraction to say i'm going in, but he's going into democratic cities, he's not challenging republican mayors and we suspect that they're looking for certain profile of immigrant, because as we have discussed on this show before, when you look at those who had come across the border

that were mostly suspected of terrorist ties or possible terrorism, it it was a canadian border at the time we looked at it. we looking for canadians? who are we looking for, president trump? >> and i spoke to a former counterterror official the last time this was in the news and he said there were no known terrorists that crossed the u.s./mexico border. you would know better than me. >> it's a fallacy, doesn't happen. drug dealers, yes. middle eastern terrorists? no. if you want to plan tactically a law enforcement operation across the country that gets someone hurt, this is how you would do it. you would specifically name the cities you're going to hit, the categories of people you're looking for, which are the over-stays, right, who have paper on them, and then say it's going to happen on sunday. so there are two extremes, one, the rage will result in the sound of crickets and no one's there because they're gone if they heard about it. the other extreme -- boy, i hope

i'm wrong -- somebody gets hurt. you have barricaded subjects or armed subjects and now you have to force entry. where are you forcing entry into? churches, shelters, refuge centers? where is that going on? this is not how you plan a law enforcement operation. >> it's so remarkable this idea that nothing is sacred. i mean traditionally law enforcement communities, law enforcement officials and their families and their communities have been open to normal republican messages. to end up even against the interest and the safety of law enforcement is just a remarkable feat. >> the one thing we have to remember about donald trump is he's not governing. this is a political campaign for him. this is political survival for him. he's thinking about his own re-election. he's a desperate man, which i have said many times on your show before. and that's all he's doing. he doesn't care about anybody else except himself and that small, shrinking base. he's communicating with them every time, any time he's on the

south lawn or on twitter, he's telling them, i'm fighting for you. i've got you. i'm taking care of the others. you don't have to worry. that's what he does. he doesn't even care about the agents, right, as we just mentioned. he doesn't care about them. he cares about himself and this re-election. that's what he's doing. it's not governing. it's running a political campaign and he's doing it right there on the southern lawn. >> the real story here is migrant families living in most instances with expired papers, living in communities, a lot have children born in this country, and the plan telegraphed by the trump administration is to tear these families apart, incarcerate them and deport some or all of them. are we missing any of this? >> you're not missing any of that. and i don't think we should be surprised that he's cold-blooded or calculating about that because this is the same administration that decided a

zero-tolerance policy was proper, that decided to separate children from their parents, that decided it doesn't matter whether or not people have a place to sleep, beiathe or food while they're being incarcerated. donald trump cares about the atmospherics of policy. he cares about the stage show. he doesn't care about the impact of the lives of people that work for him or lives of the people affected. he's happy to launch an air raid to iran and call it back, even if it puts our military at risk. he's glad to put a citizenship question in the census, not because he cares about the policy but because he doesn't want to come off as a loser. now to what frank is just saying, he's prepared to broadcast a raid in advance so he could look macho and decisive, even though he's putting the lives and safety of his own agents at risk and putting small children and families in harm's way. >> may i add this as well, don't

forget this week there was an arrest, a real raid in philadelphia, of a cargo ship bringing in $1.3 billion worth of cocaine. not one word by this president. not one tweet. no mention on the lawn today about $1.3 billion that would have gone to the streets of philadelphia. why isn't he talking about that? why aren't we looking at cargo ships? these were not mexicans coming across the border. this cargo ship, owned by jpmorgan chase, who has no involvement in this, i'm sure, but thighs are reese are real t the community. can you imagine if that cocaine hit the streets of philly? >> and most of the drugs are coming in ports, not the southern border. >> my last question for you, frank, how long until he sort of breaks the code and breaks the back of law enforcement? he has their silence, not because of him but because of them. and the way they do their jobs.

>> within the ranks of border patrol, you're already seeing the human toll, right. you're seeing people say i can't take this anymore. the kids are getting to me. i'm not paid for this. i'm not trained for this. the more he puts them at that kind of risk and watch what happens and plays out sunday night, monday and the following week as they're dragging children out of barricade situations or churches, these going to begin to break any alliance he has with law enforcement. >> oh, that's so sad. frank, thank you. >> certainly. >> great to have you on set. when we come back, joe biden still sit as top the field of 2020 democrats and two women who fill out the other top spots in the top three. we will bring you the latest on that democratic primary next. snooe maria ramirez?

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really interesting new poll in from nbc news and the wa"wal street journal" on the state of the democratic primary. joe biden is maintaining his

lead, but it's elizabeth warren who is gaining on him. senator kamala harris and bernie sanders and some good news for candidates still trying to catch up. only 12% of democratic voters say their minds are definitely made up. something karine has been telling us for months. does any of this surprise you, one? and i have to put this out because this is what i experienced most in my sort of normal life that it's the people looking the most closely who are the most critical of biden and people still going about their lives still open to him. i think that's right. i think a lot of it is because it's too early, and people are just kind of looking at it in this 30,000 foot. they're, like, oh, biden, he's with obama. and i think that's where we are with many, many folks. i think what surprises me or what is interesting to see in this polling is really elizabeth warren, i mean, that is -- you have to remember she is battle-tested. she was attacked by donald trump

with the pocahontas, and then she did the dna that really fell flat. she has managed to get back into it raising $19.1 million without having big-donor events? that's amazing. she has a grassroots organization. >> joe biden, the poll, nbc news, wall street journal poll. kamala harris at 13%. bernie sanders at 13%. mayor pete buttigieg there at 7%. >> i think that what is the standouts for me with the poll is joe biden is still ahead. and i think a lot of that is -- it is too early. but a lot of it also is that pot part of what donald trump campaigns on and keeps touting is i'm going to undo everything that president obama did. well, that means i'm going to do everything obama/biden did. and a lot of people are standing with biden because they're

standing up against this anti-obama era kind of things that trump is saying which would cost them their health insurance, dealing with climate change, criminal justice reform. i think it's going to take more than one gaff at a debate to undo that for joe biden. i think it's going to be very critical the second debate what he and others do because then you develop a pattern. but i think i agree that the real story here is the continued rise of elizabeth warren. and when she came it with those money figures what, looked like a moment is now really a movement. and liz warren is real. and so is kamala harris. kamala harris has began edging up way above where she is. so i think biden so far is safe. and i think that he's earned that with his vice presidency even though i disagreed with him in the '90s, i turned into a fan of sorts during the obamacares. but you can't underestimate those two ladies.

>> let me just put up this question about electability because it seems to be something that -- someone that can beat trump, 5% more democratic voters are looking for someone to beat trump. and then sharing their views is down 5%. i point that out to him because a source yesterday described donald trump as most anxious about joe biden, not because of his talent on the stump, not because of his ties to obama, because of his similar ability to take from donald trump's coalition the kind of voters that donald trump needs to be re-elected in pennsylvania, ohio, michigan, florida, wisconsin. >> yeah. i think that, and we've talked about this before. i think when donald trump sees joe biden, he sees that collection of five or six states. he knows that it's a threat. and i think that biden is probably strong in those states for the same reason that hillary clinton was weak. and trump knows that that's an

electoral challenge facing him. i'm interested, though, in -- i think one of the happy results of warren and harris surging here is that people are responding to the fact that they were well prepared, and they know what they're talking about. they came to play at both of those debates. that separates them certainly from beto o'rourke who i think i said early on i think he always felt a sense of entitlement to be in the game here. biden is at risk because he also, i think, conveyed at least to his staff and to the american public watching that debate that he was entitled as well. that's a dangerous place to be, and i think what's keeping him aloft isn't necessarily people think that he has the expertise, they think that he can beat trump. all right. we're going to sneak in our last break. don't go anywhere. we'll be right back. ack. visited ireland, met another 20 cousins. they took me to the cliffs of moher,

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i kind of kept talking to these friends, but we're out of time. thanks to my friends and most of all to you for watching. have a grade weekend. that does it for our hour. i'm nicolle wallace. "mtp daily" with my friend chuck todd starts now. ♪ if it's friday, another trump administration official is out. add alex acosta to the ever growing list of former cabinet members. so still a first term. is this any way to run the government? plus, i.c.e. immigration raids are set for the weekend.