"deadline: white house" with nicolle wallace begins right now. hi, everyone. it's 4:00 in new york. donald trump today has the republican party in a vice. the likes of which they haven't experienced since charlottesville. and before that, in the aftermath of the "access hollywood" tape. republicans who have hardly been profiles in courage today found just over a dozen of their members break rank and slowly, timidly, begin to call out donald trump's flagrant bellicose racist attacks against four female members of congress. we made a decision on this show not to amplify trump's attacks by showing them or even reading them here but it should surprise no one that they're false and that they serve as ugly reminders of donald trump's xenophobia, misogyny and racism. don't take our word for it though. here's the one, the brave, the likely now endangered republican who spoke out on camera. >> i think those tweets are

racist and xenophobic. they're also inaccurate. the four women he's referring to are actually citizens of the united states. three of the four were born here. it's also behavior that's unbecoming of the leader of the free world. you should be talking about things that unite us, not divides us. >> to be clear, there is one republican who said that today f any other do this hour, we'll bring it right to you. about a dozen others have tweeted their objection though. but as of this hour the rarely camera-shy species of members of congress have been m.i.a. we reached out to top gop leaders in the house to invite them on the show today, and guess what? we didn't hear back. while it's not news the president is a racist or the republican party is largely following his lead, what should serve as a warning to all democrats is this is the terrain on which the 2020 election will be waged. "the new york times" peter baker

writes it this way, quote, president trump woke up sunday morning gazed out at the nation he leads and saw the dry kindling of race relations and decided to throw a match on it. it was not the first time nor is it likely to be the last. he has a pretty large carton and matches and ready supply of kerosene. and anyone who doubts this is central to trump's re-election strategy missed the trump summit with his purveyors of fake news and baseless fears. last week he praised the social media provocateurs who spread tension to sew racial divisions. he added -- heading into next year's election he appears to be drawing a deep line of the white, native-born america of his memory and ethnically diverse of the foreign born country he's presiding over. challenging voters in 2020 to declare which side of that line they're on. that is where we start today with some of our favorite reporters and friends and new friend, from "the washington post" senior reporter aaron

blake. with us on set associated press white house reporter jonathan lemire, former democratic congresswoman donna edwards, chair of the center for african-american studies at princeton university, eddie glaude and tim albert is with us, chief correspondent for politico magazine, author of an unbelievable new book "american carnage: on the front lines of the republican civil war." we will dive into that. and i want to start with you. you're a authority on the republican party. does anything about today surprise you? >> no, not really and i would start with will heard. if i had to go to las vegas and bet my kids' college funds on the first republican to make a statement like that, it would be will heard. a black candidate on the hispanic southern border, only republican left and he has the most, 820 mild from san antonio to el paso.

not koins ecoincidentally durin shutdown, met with the president day in and day out but will heard never got a call. he survived by a fewer than a thousand votes in 2019 despite being about 20 points over in his district. that's how bad the president's numbers are there. it was difficult to see him surviving another cycle. that doesn't surprise me. the rest of the silence from the republican party does not surprise me. republicans say presidentration is the name of the game. if you cross trump as we have seen from jeff flake, sam corker, go down the line, you're not meant for this world. >> i agree with all of that and the analysis is spot on. but i have a little bit of a flip in my stomach, not pausing and talking about what that means. that means the republican now enthusiastically in the light of day, daylight program, braces

racism and xenophobia. >> and also peter mentions the way in which race has been used by the republican party and democrats over the course of my political lifetime. so talking about the dog whistles of ronald reagan's welfare queen, bush's willie horton. all of this stuff has been a part -- bill clinton sister soldier moment. but he said trump has taken it from dog whistle to dog horn. now it's just a blatant appeal and that blatant appeal makes sense in the context of anxiety and anguish around the democratic shifts that are evident in our society. this country is changing and being felt in the intimate spaces of our lives. so you see donald trump appealing to those anxieties, those hatreds, those fears and making political hay of it. but i want to say this, what's interesting is if this is the battlefield we're going to play on, the democrats have to make a decision. they have to make a decision whether or not they will try to get aid. they have to make a decision

whether or not they're going to dog whistle, what they're going to be a republican light and appeal to the trump voter, rust belt, all of the stuff to my ear sounds like dog whistle, right, that i have been a part of since not only bill clinton been that gary hart and now we hear a version of it, it's the third way. all of this stuff is a part of this mixture. where it's easy -- and i know tim will say a lot more about this later -- it's easy for us to identify donald trump as the exceptional villain. and not see he's the reflection of what we have been doing for decades, nicolle. >> let me press you, why can't it be the majority who isn't raising their child to look at someone with brown or black skin to say they weren't born here and demonize them? why can't one party, the better party, the democratic party, flip the script and make that the majority, make that more popular with the majority of black, white, female, old, young

voters? >> this is what we have to do, this is our opportunity. we're at an inflection point. we're in a cold civil war to echo steve schmidt from a long time ago. people have to choose sides. yes, we have to choose sides. can't play games. who the hell is donald trump to tell me i have to leave? that he has to tell she can leave? i hear this all the time. you can leave if you don't like it. folks used to hear this in the context of the vietnam war. if you don't like it, you can leave. because they think it doesn't belong to us. the country is not ours. so the democrats have to show spine. they have to actually believe, nicolle, in the world that you're describing. they actually have to believe that we can fundamentally become a multi racial democracy. they have to stop lying, just like the republicans. they have to stop believing in the lie and confront the ugliness of who we are. i probably won't say anything else on this show but --

>> don't threaten me with that. >> you have to understand, nicolle, this is not melodrama. this is not all of my children. this is not identifiable villains. what donald trump is, what he's doing, it's all of our faults. >> you have cracked my brain open. what do we tell our babies? >> that's a good question. as james baldwin would say, whenever the babies are involved, you don't have time to tears because you have to raise them without this stuff taking root in their soul. hopefully we can give them license to imagine themselves otherwise and tell them that man who is the president of the united states is everything we do not stand for. >> can i add something? >> please. >> we talk about politics in terms of coalitions all the time. and while we may focus on trump's commentary, mobilizing and galvanizing his base, which he is obsessed.

you talk to anyone around the president, he talks about the base. how do we fire these people up and keep them mobilized? is it important if you look at the data and exit polling and micro targeting figures we have at our disposal, there are a lot of folks who voted for the president in 2016, who voted democrat in 2018, and by and large they are living in the suburbs, upscale, wealthy, traditionally republican voters who on these culture issues we have been talking so much about, they're beginning to take a step away from this republican party. so for all of the talk of how this can help the president engage that core base of voters that he has, he's not going to be able to win re-election without that broader coalition, including a lot of these suburbanites who were not going to pull the lever for hillary clinton. they cared about tax cuts and supreme court, they cared about obama care, but when they see things like this, there's an old adage how mitt romney or john

mccain would address the naacp in 2012, why are they going to address the netanyah address the naacp? not because they want to win over blackboarde voters but mor b suburbanites. >> i'm not usually the sell ver lining person but here's my silver lining. >> i need it. >> coming out of last week we were talking about the census and citizenship question. democrats doubled down to call on the president for exactly why he was pursuing the citizenship question. it was all about race and all about demographics. then you get to the end of the week and we're talking about the fighting going on between democrats. thank you, donald trump. you have just unified the democratic party that understands you're the party of that 35% may or may not be or identify with you as a racist and the rest of us -- and here's where democrats' strength is, is

in their diversity, in their numbers, in the women. i think that that's the winning message going in to 2020. >> make no mistake, this is the play from this white house. the president, tim said it, it's about the base. it's about fighting this election on the same terms as the last election. they can echo these things whether it's dog whistles or fog horns but they can sound these notes and energize people to come out and turn out for the president. this is a fight he wants. last week the discussion of the so-called squad, if you will, congresswomen of color, dominated tucker carlson's show on fox news at night. the president last friday in the south lawn teased this attack a little bit, suggesting he sort of stepped in and tried to defend speaker pelosi saying, look, she should be treated better by these women and mentioned a few by name. over the weekend we know because of our reporting he was pleased he sort of meddled in that, stirred the pot a little bit.

sunday morning another fox segment about the net roots summit the night before these women appeared. he saw that. 20 minutes later the tweet came out. a few minutes after that he stepped out of the white house into the motorcade, went to virginia to golf and he was there for hours. >> who did he golf with? >> that day he golfed with staffers and friends. the day before was with senator graham and paul and dave purdue was there as well. when he came back to the white house that sunday, the tweet had been out there for hours, and he came back to silence from republicans. he told people around him, look, no one challenged me i'm going to double down and triple down. at night he tweeted again. monday morning today we've seen it in several tweets and the white house itself echoing even harder language, they can leave if they don't love america. this is the play. 9 preside the president wants to fight. >> i think it's tempting to look at the strategy in it. this obviously fits the pattern

of playing for the base. it obviously fits the pattern of never backing down or apologizing even when people in his party said he went too far. by the way, in this case, we have not necessarily seen that pushback. i think there's an argument to be made this is not a great idea just from a strategic standpoint, setting aside moral considerations here. if you look at polling about how americans feel about immigrants and what they bring to this country even over the last three, fours years since donald trump rolled down that golden elevate ir elevator in trump tower, people have gotten more accepting in immigrants, more believing they bring something to this country that they're helping us more than they're hurting us. i looked at the numbers today, even if you look at numbers within the republican party, there has not been a move towards the president and towards tucker carlson's questioning, it has been stat fick ic if it hasn't gone in the opposite direction. there may be base play but as of these things there's risz of

counterveiling effect, does it turn off people who are not quite on board with the president and motivate suburban swing voters we were talking about. >> and look to aaron's point, i agree with that. and i have said this to republican strategists and friends, if you're still fretting about the base, you're shaking in your boots. isn't the base locked up with gorsuch, with kavanaugh? isn't -- why is he so worried about the base? >> to piggy back on aaron's point, it's actually very fascinating. we all move so quickly it's hard to remember what happened yesterday much less a couple days ago. in 2016 in the republican nominating season, in every single state where they did exit polling, they asked a question, what do you do with the undocumented population? do you prefer to see mass numbers deported or would you prefer to see them put on a path to legal status, if not citizenship? in the total of states, only two states said, yes, mass deportation. the rest of the states 33, 34

said no, path to citizenship, if not path to legalization. >> i know the whole pay a fine. get to the end of the line. what were the two states? >> i believe -- don't hold me, i believe it was alabama and mississippi. but to your question about the base, nicolle, would you appreciate this having worked in the white house, it's so interesting because historically you see presidents attempting to have broad appeal, attempting to appeal to the many at the expense of a few, and president trump basically does the opposite. >> correct. >> consistently with his policy, it's engaging and appealing to the few at the expense of the broader section. >> and believing this will be -- math may not back them up on this, believe this will be an election about turning out more trump voters, people who didn't come out last time, haven't voted in a long time. that's strategy, thread the needle enough in those states and we know where they are, rust belts and so on.

even if they potentially lose the popular vote by that much more this time around. >> for democrats this is why it's really important to come out with a really comprehensive approach to immigration so that you're actually appealing to some of those voters and these sort of narrow interests that come up -- >> the 90% republicans who are for a legal pathway to citizenship? >> exactly. >> i can help them write that. bush took a stab at it. i think president obama did too. >> it's out there. it's been voted on. it's not that complicated. i think for democrats to narrow in on that nuanced this much border funding, that much border funding and who are you enforcing immigration policy on? and i think the rally around these -- not these four women but the rally around this idea of a diverse nation is a real rallying cry for democrats and americans, for 22 million naturalized citizens in the

country. >> i agree with you. i have all of this sound from lindsey graham. i want to get to them, their response. i wonder if they do what you just described. i wonder if you described the democratic party as now being more united than it was 70 hours ago. i found their messages really messages that should speak to the question i have too, what do mamas tell their babies? they sound like the ones who understand the moment maybe ahead of the mute and camera shy republicans on capitol hill. let me play their response. we don't have it yet. but -- so here. this is congresswoman presley -- this is what racism looks like. we're what democracy looks like and we're not going anywhere. congresswoman tlaib -- i'm proud of my palestinian roots and a weak bully like you never wins. congresswoman omar, you're stoking white nationalism because you're angry people like us are serving in congress. and oscasio-cortez, you're

comfortable the leading gop into outright racism and that should concern all americans. to a woman, each one of them took the message with the broadest appeal, this is what racism looks like, this is what america looks like, i will not be bullied because i'm female and not white. i mean, each one of them seem to be the better version of themselves when they're fighting amongst the democratic caucus. >> it's a unifying message for the democratic caucus but it's a unifying message for the country. so if think can stick to that, we want them saying all of those things. >> i think that's right. i think the ideological battle that's happening within the democratic party is a healthy one. it's a diverse tent. you will have people who disagree, never-trumpers moving over. you will have all kinds of arguments happening under that banner. i think this is a good thing. i think the vision of these four amazing women are putting forward is an a vision that is good for the country.

i'm worried though. you guys know about this more than i do. i appear in whatever air i'm in, what's the relationship between greed, selfishness and racism? oftentimes we would think that the person who is pulling back from the culture stuff, i'm not that but i like this tax cut. i'm not that, but i like deregulation. i'm not that but i like these policies that are actually helping my small business. so you get this intersection of racism and greed and selfishness that he might be banking on. you can go from the few to the many because you think some folks are going to double down and being selfish. >> i want to you answer that but we asked the question about misogyny after the "access hollywood" tape. and i was loud and wrong. we will not elect somebody who is so flagrantly misogynist. and we did. do you have an answer? >> it's so interesting. i spoke with kellyanne conway for this book. she said something that really

stuck in my mind. we were talking about "access hollywood weekend," and she said look, people can mock me to my grave for saying this but i'm telling you there is a truth. there's a difference for voters about what affects them and what offends them. they're going to vote on what affects them 99.9% of the time. i think she's right. she's right and i think the president believes in that. to put a bow on the point you were making main ago, john boehner, former speaker, used to have this great quip he would use talking to his conference when they were having this in-fighting. he would say look, in politics when your opponent is committing suicide, don't shoot them. and donald trump just gave the democrats this incredible gift. they're coming off this tumultuous week and you have this incredible amount of warfare on the democratic side and what does the president do but hand them this rallying cry, it's incredibly mismessaged as a political matter. >> in a response, 2018 was

actually that response by the electorate. they said we will vote for what affects us and what offends us. >> what offends you can affect you. >> that's right. no one is going anywhere. they're too good. after the break, donald trump and his deportation raids. the much-publicized raids the president himself leaked twice. we will bring you the latest on that. and the polls that have trump turning to base building. all of the top republicans running to challenge trump beat him in the head-to-head matchups. also ahead the real, definitive, authorized republican autopsy, one of the biggest and best books out today. he's already at the table but we will go inside his stunning exclusive reporting. all of those stories coming up. what's the hesitation? eh, it just feels too complicated, you know? well sure, at first, but jj can help you with that. jj, will you break it down for this gentleman? hey, ian. you know, at td ameritrade, we can walk you through your options trades step by step until you're comfortable. i could be up for that.

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successful. people came into our country illegally. illegally. many were felons. many were convicted of crimes. many, many were taken out on sunday. you just didn't know about it. in fact i went to and i spoke to the head of i.c.e. i spoke to a couple of people. we had many people, it was a very successful day, but you didn't see a lot of it because it was done a lot. you'll speak to them. i'm not even sure they should be telling you, but it was a lot. >> maybe you should delete them. trust in them, he says, the i.c.e. raids were very, very, very successful. "the washington post" put it this way, the nationwide immigration raids failed to materialize on the streets of major u.s. cities. even as his statement cast a cloud of fear that kept many families indoors.

immigration enforcement authorities said their plans to track down migrants with deportation orders would continue. but the operations over the weekend appeared more akin to routine actions rather than the mass roundups the president promised. and the cruelty towards immigrants doesn't stop there. the immigration announcing the move to end asylum protections for most central american migrants. quote, the new rule says asylum seekers at the southern border who passed through another country and who did not seek asylum there would not be eligible for protection in the u.s. according to a statement from the department of justice and homeland security. everyone is still here. i want to start with you, aaron blake. your colleague who accompanied the vice president to the board friday rocked my world, ruined my friday night with that gut-wrenching, searing description of what he saw and to the last conversation we were having, and i banned this expression here but we will use it one last time, the cruelty is

the point of these policies. in this case it's another example though of what would appear to be either an incompetently executed publicized raid or some defiance within the department of homeland security. aaron, i think we lost your mic. we will fix it. let me start with you, lemire. >> it's a few things. yes, by all accounts the raids were not as widespread or significant as the president promised. but we don't want to forget the impact they have on people here in the communities. there were images around this weekend, very immigrant heavy neighborhoods in new york city, jackson heights, queens, brooklyn, so on. ball fields usually teaming with people, empty. no soccer being played. not many shoppers on the streets. there was a sense of fear. the idea is it's about the

rhetoric and imagery. certainly that's the case with changing the asylum rules and what josh and others saw friday during the vice president's visit. just to recap briefly to what was there, it was border facility in texas and they saw -- there was one room where children were, and according to reporters that was relatively queen and kept and children seemed okay and it was the room where the adult men were being held. they're behind caging where it was foul smelling, it was sweptering. there was not enough room for the men to sit down. they had to stand. there was not enough room to lay down. they were calling out to reporters saying they were desperate to brush their teeth or take a shower. we are seeing some of the imagery there. and the vice president went in and didn't say anything, he didn't acknowledge their questions. and we had the president since then, whether gaslighting seems to be the only phrase for it, describing twitter to how many

wonderful commissioners there were there. >> aaron, we have you back and your mic working. josh dossy described a stench. >> yes, and i thought the thing that was really telling from that story is when mike pence was asked after the visits to the detention center, one was newer and things were apparently better and another where things were significantly worse and tightly packed and the vice president didn't spend as much time signed the facility but actually looked down upon the facility kind of from a bird's-eye view they saw from the whole grounds there, he was asked twice if the conditions at this detention center were ones that he was okay with and vice president pence in neither of those circumstances came back and said he was okay with them. he didn't answer in the affirmative. he basically demurred and didn't answer the question directly. i think if anything that reinforces that to the extent this may be meant as a

deterrent, they want these images out there because it met people don't come, people like vice president pence who probably had designs on becoming president one day, they don't want to have this be something that they're seen as vouching for necessarily or having their brand associated with it. >> tim, i see these pictures and after my heart breaks and i wonder what we have become, i think about the fact george w. bush won 44% of the hispanic vote in '04 and i wonder if no one care that's will never happen again as the republican party became associated with this. >> obviously there's the question where does the republican party go after donald trump? it's a fair question to start asking, people like nikki haley and ted cruz and others are asking themselves. there has to be some element of that trumpist populist and the

writing is on the wall. >> say that again. >> the blueprint not the anomaly, i think we should trademark that. >> you should. like chicken soup for the aching political soul. >> one of the truly shakespearean elements of this past decade in republican politics is reince priebus, the republican national committee chairman, is the one who commissioned the autopsy after mitt romney won in 2012 and the autopsy said in so many words, we cannot win presidential elections by only appealing to white working class voters. it's not sustainable. and he crumpled it up and tossed it in the waste basket. but donald trump in so doing created out of whole cloth this visionary way for republicans to win the white house but he essentially delayed the inevitable. you wonder when you look back at 2004 and george w. bush winning states like new mexico and you look at 2020, is there any

chance in hot double hockey sticks trump can win or even get up to 45%? the answer is obviously no. and these i.c.e. raids will not help him with the hispanic community. think about florida and places like georgia and texas, where four years ago barack obama -- excuse me, back in 2012 barack obama and mitt romney essentially fought harris county, texas, to a draw. biggest county of texas, and beto o'rouke won by a quarter of a million votes. that is a census of where that state is heading and that should scare every republican. >> yes, but they can cheat. gerrymander, we have to understand this immigration policy as a way of addressing and suppressing the vote, trying to in some ways make the country white. if you can't beat them by the numbers, what do you do?

you try to rig it. >> joy recalls it so the minority continues to rule the majority. >> exactly. part of what we have to do then is be very diligent. we have to be very diligent to our electoral processes and very dill tent diligent to some that are in tandem of what we heard around the four congress persons. the demographics are clear but people cheat. and we need to understand people cheat. >> i think it's the reason you saw democrats really doubling down on this citizenship question. because it gets to exactly that, have you changed the system so you can rig it? that was actually an important victory over this administration. beyond that, i look at the visuals of mike pence and what i noticed was a man who could not look at the population that was

engaged. he looked down, he turned his back on them. his body language actually spoke to what we were all seeing there. so they can't rewrite this. i think some of the challenges for the president right now is he's trying to tell like a completely different story that we didn't all see the pictures. and we like movies. >> aaron blake, i want to give you the last word on this. i saw these images come in late friday night. i saw josh dossy's tweet and turned on this network and watched brian williams' coverage of it and i wept. i thought about donald trump saying at a maga rally a few months back saying don't believe what you see, don't believe what you hear, believe me. this does feel like that kind of story. i wonder what your reporting and analysis bears out about the democrats, where trump really does seem to be this 800-pound gorilla in the conversation about immigration that it feels like democrats are increasingly on the defensive about questions

of immigration. >> yes, and i think to some degree that has to do to the fact the party is trying to figure out exactly where its footing is on this issue. a decade ago democrats were using much of the same language about illegal immigrants and using deportations. barack obama, of course, deported up wards of 3 million illegal immigrants during his time in office. you know, it's only really in the last couple of years here where democrats have started moving to the left on this issue. they started talking about maybe decriminalizing crossing the border illegally. they talked about health care coverage of some sort for undocumented immigrants. that was a big one at the debate a couple weeks ago. so i think there is a sense in the republican party and among trump's campaign at least that the democrats are really hurting themselves on this issue. the question from there is, is it wise to do these things on the other stream that could

alienate people who may be are somewhat uncertain exactly how the democrats are talking about this issue. and i think there are reasons to be skeptical if that's the case. >> we have to go but i want to come back to what we're talking about. this can seem -- democrats cannot lose the upper ground. there's only one party and one man separating families. there's only one person who has it in his legacy to the end of time that he proudly announced a policy separating babies from their parents and that's donald j. trump. >> that's right and this is why it's very important for national democrats to really think carefully how it is they talk about the kind of immigration policy we would like to see. and there is an affirmative policy. go big but don't separate families, but i think it's beyond that. if democrats go down this sort of rabbit hole of where republicans want them to on this, we can hand them the issue right back. >> aaron blake, thank you for spending time with us.

always grateful. after the break, donald trump didn't just wake up on the wrong side of the bed. he woke up to this, three top democrats beating him in head-to-head matchups. with moderate to severe ulcerative colitis or crohn's, your plans can change in minutes. your head wants to do one thing, but your gut says, "not today." if your current treatment isn't working, ask your doctor about entyvio. entyvio acts specifically in the gi tract to prevent an excess of white blood cells from entering and causing damaging inflammation. entyvio has helped many patients achieve long-term relief and remission. infusion and serious allergic reactions can happen during or after treatment. entyvio may increase risk of infection, which can be serious. pml, a rare, serious, potentially fatal brain infection caused by a virus

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brand spanking new poll numbers show donald trump trailing the top tier candidates in hypothetical 2020 matchups and it apparently got under the president's skin. look at this. earlier he attacked the nbc news/"wall street journal" survey which found this, i will read it slow, former vice president joe biden beats donald j. trump by nine points. senator bernie sanders by seven points. senator elizabeth warren, who trump said he would love to run against, beats him by five points and senator kamala harris in a statistical tie with donald trump, up by one. everyone's still here. polls are polls and polls have been wrong but these are not so

good. >> these are not so good. granted, it's early. it's a national poll. >> all of the disclaimers. >> we put them out there. but this is not great for this white house. they will sound notes of confidence but those are legitimate deficits, some of them there. and i think it points to what we were discussing earlier, as much as the president tends to his base, his base is probably not going to be enough. it's an effort to grow his area of support, people who back him. and as we reported time and time again, his advisers eternal frustration that one person says if they can take away his phone or restrict him to bring back the economy, they would win going away. they feel like they have a good issue there. i traveled -- >> my 7-year-old has days of discipline. this is president of the united states and he has moments of

discipline. 1. >> a few. >> how many moments? >> few and far between. but that's what he hopes he can do, the economy is great. focus on that. but time and time again he falls into side shows, he stirs the pot. he can't help himself that. will turn off the sliver of independence or obama democrats that voted for him last time that will have a problem pulling the lever this time. >> i have a question for you. this is uncomfortable for the democrats, why are the smartest democrats i know, people like you two, so much more pessimistic about the process of joe biden making it to the end of the process than any democrats who i know in real life, moms at drop-off, moms and friends out in nevada, they all like biden. i position is known, i will vote for the automobile if that's who the democrats nominate. i have no dog in the fight. but there is a lot of feeling from democratic voters, not smart folks like yourself, that we are covering biden in a way

that's reminiscent of hillary clinton's coverage. >> i don't buy that. first of all, i will vote for your automobile also no matter who gets the nomination. but i'm actually not pessimistic over joe biden. but i think it will be a fight for him to get to the nomination. and i think there are people like elizabeth warren who are putting up really sort of credible fights to him. i don't think this is easy nor should it be. because of this process we have right now, whoever gets the nomination around spring, summer next year will actually be toughened for the fight for the general trkselection. i think that's a healthy thing for the democratic party. if it's joe biden, he has to win over some of those democrat and people like me and others who say, okay, we will raise our hands to vote for you or pull that lever. but looking at these numbers, the argument that you only need to elect sbhob can win over --

who can beat trump, you know, works for four of those candidates right now. so it's going to be a fight to the finish. >> this i think the most optimistic thing about this poll for democrats is electability is now seen as something, joe biden, bernie sanders, elizabeth warren and kamala harris all have going for them. >> right. and those numbers also reflect name recognition. >> sure. >> as the campaign continues, primary continues, more and more of the field will be able to introduce themselves to folks, more folks will get to know who kamala harris is, who elizabeth warren is, who cory booker, whomever is in the last final field. so i think biden shows up because he's a familiar name. but i think there's some question whether or not we want to go backwards, whether or not what was was actually working when in fact we still have deep inequality, when in fact we still have people figuring out how they will make ends meet, why folks are still trying to figure out what they're going to do with their houses underwater. going backwards isn't the answer

to our problem, because the problems existed before donald trump. he exacerbated them but they existed before. biden has to put forward a vi , vision, forward-looking vision. let's go back to normal because normal wasn't good. he has to put forward a forward-looking vision and he has to do that alongside of other folks who are putting forward forward-looking vision. i used forward twice. >> we're all going forward. >> i think name recognition is important. >> i have heard from someone who spent time with the president recently joe biden is the one he's most warmed about, but not to factor into how democrats can do but he worries about biden's appeal to his base. >> it's interesting because donald trump is the most unconventional candidate is taking a very conventional view of the race. >> he watches too of cable. >> probably. us and the chattering fact of talking about electability. if trump proved one thing the notion of electability is complete horse crap. what is electability?

it's a fallacy. we don't know if anybody is electable until they're elected as donald trump showed in 2016. from the risk of repeating myself from a minute ago, we talk about trump's base a lot and it's important because we know about the folks at a diner in western p.a. who are -- who have fallen on hard times. i grew up in a small town in michigan where the auto recession killed people. i get it. i hear them. but this election is going to be decided in the suburbs of detroit. this election is going to be decided in the suburbs of milwaukee and philly and pittsburgh. donald trump wins the presidency on those three states, michigan, wisconsin and pennsylvania by a combined 77,740 votes. hillary clinton underperforms barack obama in those three states by 600,000 votes. and where you look at the margins it's yes, it's in those urban cores with minority voters but donald trump if he did not bring across a whole lot of reluctant republicans across that finish line to pull the lev are for him, however reluctantly in 2016, he doesn't win the

presidency. and a lot of the same folks as i said earlier, they flipped and went blue and won back the house of representatives because democrats flipped all of the republican, suburban based district as cross the country. that is where this election will be won and lost. i think democrats have to think long and hard about who has appeal in those suburbs, not just who has appeal to their base or trump's base. >> you just wrote your own tease. stick a pin in it. we will pick this right up on the other side. when we come back, ripog, the author of this stunning new book, the death of the grand old party as it once was as the hand much donald trump takes us through scoops including many mothers distressed. wow!

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decades-long." it might also become the playbook for 2020 candidates hoping to end trump's presidency at one term. alberta describes the challenges candidates are up against. quote, rarely has a president so thoroughly altered the identity of his party. never has a president so ruthlessly exploited the insecurity of his people. fatal flaws of conduct and character like those exposed in the now infamous "access hollywood" tape incident, one of the juicest parts of the book pulls back the curtain on the trump campaign's response to that ultimate october surprise. roberta writes not for a moment would trump consider quitting the race. cru he could not have cared less what they had to say. to the extent trump felt regret, it was over disappointing the pences. oh, boy, he said friday afternoon after hanging up with his running mate. mother is not going to like

this. tables bag mother. i don't know, derogatory term they use to describe mrs. pence. take me through this. >> that's actually -- it's a term of endearment. mike pence would always call his wife, karen mother. that was his nick yam for her. and donald trump was always fascinated by mike pence's relationship with his wife because obviously these two gentleman are very, very different. [ laughter ] in terms of family relations and what have you. and, so, there were always these stories about how mike pence and karen pence would be holding hands or they'd be praying and trump would walk by and sort of bellow out, oh, look at them, they're so in love like teenagers. and trump was so amused by pence calling his wife mother that when he found out about the "access hollywood" tape and mike pence went back to indiana and basically went awol for 48 hours. trump was genuinely worried about pence. he was genuinely worried that he could lose pence. so he got off the phone and he

says mother is not going to like this. and people around him, you know, sort of left, but there was a great deal of concern mike pence actually wrote a letter that weekend to donald trump trying to put on paper what hearing that audiotape had done to him and his wife. and when i couple of trump's senior most aides heard of that letter, they thought he was off the ticket, that it was done. >> what else did trump say to you? >> we talked about a few things. obviously, you know, we had -- the sugar high a few days ago of the aoc nickname of evita which was actually in the context of the conversation we were having about populism. and trying to ask him what about attacks on the ultra rich? would that not seem to align? because there was all this polling at the time when aoc was getting killed after talking about this 70% tax rate or talking about a tax on this ultra wealthy. and a survey showed a number of

trump supporters would be behind that. if we think back in the 2012 campaign and mitt romney was giving these, like, graduate seminar classes on macro economics in these airplane hangers in rural virginia. and people were looking around like what the heck is he talking about. eric cantor said this to me. and he said to me afterwards romney's out here talking to all these rural republicans about the death tax. none of these people qualify for the death tax. does he not realize that? so trump can and i were trying to get into this conversation about populism. i was describing paul ryan's role in getting his legislative agenda passed, at least parts of his legislative agenda passed. and i described him as an ally of the president's. you must appreciate the fact that after he basically called you a racist and spent two years publicly and privately saying that you were immoral and unethical and unfit for office that he became this staunch ally

in helping you pass your agenda. >> and he said -- and this was before ryan gave me his interview where he sort of lit into the president. we covered a pretty wide gamut of things. but i think what's most striking is that whatever you think about donald trump, love the president or hate him, he was incredibly prescient in identifying in what happened in the republican party. when you look at yesterday's news and the lack of response for most of these republicans and we ask ourselves why the radio silence, why are they so afraid to take on donald trump? i think the answer is self-evident. and trump saw it. many in the republican party are afraid. they are not oriented toward political confrontation. and certainly even in 2016 most of these republicans spent the early stages of that campaign tip-towing around donald trump hoping, clinging around to this fantasy that he would drop out of the race and vanish in thin air. >> you have to come back because

i didn't get to ask you about sarah pail yip. but i do just want to ask you to put a button on these conversations with just a teaser for all that you write about the republican party. sarah palin was the most similar to donald trump. i described her once as a canary in the mind, speaking to the rage, speaking to the sort of white hillbilly angst. speaking to the xenophobia. and you have some incredible insights about her. >> george w. bush had this amazing reaction when he saw sarah palin being nominated. he said she has no idea what is about to hit her. these "isms," they are going to eat us alive. he was seeing it in that moment with palin. donald trump did not miss it. >> you have to come back so we can go through the whole thing. it's such a good book. i read hundreds of pages. my eyes started to twitch so i stopped. but it's a really important read.

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i want to alert you to some breaking news. the four congresswomen targeted by donald trump are about to respond to his attacks. msnbc will carry that live. you'll hear what they have to say in just a few minutes. in the meantime, my deep and sincere thanks to you all. your new book "american carnage" is out tomorrow. "mtp daily" with my friend steve kornacki in for chuck starts now. ♪ if it's monday, it's "meet the press daily." good morning. i'm steve karn acri in new york in for chuck todd. and we begin tonight with break news. you are looking live at capitol hill.