into it. ayman, thank you. and be sure to check out this piece on msnbc.com. that brings this hour to a close. i will be back here for "the bea be beat." "deadline: white house" with nicolle wallace right now. aloha, namaste, everyone. it's 4:00 in new york city. i'm john heilemann, here for nicolle wallace again. the assertion donald trump is a racist president has been overwhelming for some time but what happened this weekend and continued today advances the story to a new place. the racist president is openly telling us he's drawing a racist campaign. he all but announced that with an attack on elijah cummings, a african-american congressman around baltimore. we want to avoid amplifying trump's racist messages by repeating them here, we're also facing the reality we will be

dealing with presidential racism the next 15 months and we've seen few signs trump will be held accountable by members of his own party so it's our job to co-author racism when we see it. -- call out racism when we see it. like this tweet of appalling decency -- baltimore is a rat-infested mess. that is a racist link filled with filth and crime, especially when it is a pattern, as with trump it is. calling john lewis african-american, and calling his district crime i fested. he said trump did pour is into and infest our country. crime i fested. all of that was and is racist and just a small sampling. the white house is claiming he's not at all racist and people are

reading too much into the president's comments but that's to put it trump would understand the purest bs. on fox news, chris wallace pretty much said so. here he is with the chief of staff mick mulvaney. >> infested. it sounds like vermin, ub human and these are all members of congress that are people of color. >> i think you're spending too much time reading between the lines. >> i'm not reading between the lines, i'm reading the lines. >> read the lines of trump's messages and you will see a racist bubbling over until donald trump was given a voice. it was a voice elijah cummings recognized two years ago when i talked to him for my showtime show "the surface." >> i would be befuddled the first african-american president could be followed by trump. i don't understand how those two americ americas coexist. >> as an african-american and student of politics, trying to come up with the answer is painful.

to see this as i walk towards the evening of my life, it makes me want to work night and day for the rest of my life to try to make sure that we make the best of the situation. this is about the soul of our democracy. >> joining the conversation we have from "the washington post" and the d.c. white house reporter ashley parker here on set, karine jean-pierre, chief public affairs officer for moveon.org, former republican congressman and now proudly independent, david jolly, associated editor for real politics, amy stoddard and reverend al sharpton, host here

and president of the action network and trending on twitter today. we will talk about what donald trump had to say about you and get your thoughts on it shortly. karine, i want to start with you. like i said at the beginning of this, donald trump being racist is not news. if you put together the diatribe that went on a long time with the squad with congressman cummings, we will talk about rev over the course of the last few weeks, i just don't understand other than putting out a press release from the trump re-elect saying we are running a racist election campaign, i don't know how much clearer it can be. >> it's pretty clear and especially if you're a person of color living in this country, what you're hearing from the president of the united states, right, who is in the white house week after week after week is daunting. and it's exhausting. but to how you talk about leading into the show, we have to continue to call out this race inch. we cannot stop not doing that.

and just that line that you just played that elijah cummings just said about we're fighting for the soul of our country, it is so true. i have a former republican sitting here next to my left here. i have to say this is a problem i have with the republican party. because we are fighting for the soul of our country. and then being quiet, them not saying anything, is going to cost such long-lasting damage to our country, to our democracy. then not calling out donald trump is incredibly problematic. and history is going to remember this dark time. it will remember donald trump poorly and it will remember the republicans who stayed silent. and that is the thing that i just don't understand what's going on with the republicans. >> david jolly, i want to put this tweet out. over the weekend and all of the social media traffic the tweet that struck me more than almost any other and it's at the edge but i think it says something true, your friend and also

republican rick wilson's tweet, fellow floridian, here it is p this is directed at donald trump. why don't you just use the n-word and get it over with? you're almost there. and you really want to. that jump the out ed out at me. there's something visceral about that feels like the truth. what do you think about that? >> you feel it because it is true. this is to karine's point a moment for the republican party but i think a moment for white america to also realize there's an inflection point here that we've arrived at. we look at the african-american community, black americans obviously on the receiving end of the racism. we often frame it that way. there's a responsibility among white america to understand why this is racist. and i'll be honest with you, i knew it when the president said it, that's racist. but to understand exactly why takes understanding some of the elements of racism. i think white america right now

needs a better understanding of concepts around casual racism, covert racism, that praepz it's not based on supremacy of a race but the reinforcement of negative stereotypes, negative inferences, done with the intent to marginalize, done with the intent to demean. and once you realize that's going on, i wrestled with how do you respond? what do you do, right? rick wilson said just okay and say the n-word. i thought frankly about reverend al going to baltimore today and thought you know what, people who had to face this generation after generation, first thing they do is call it out and stand up to it. white america needs to be doing that now saying this president is engaging in this racist narrative. >> i want to put this graphic up of things donald trump said about major american cities. as a political matter, we will talk about the politics in the first half of the show. these are about american cities, atlanta, falling apart. philadelphia struggling. chicago, totally out of control.

san francisco, disgusting. baltimore, a filthy place. he's also attacked los angeles and other places. i ask you something strangely, i note commonality of those places, each of those places have a rather launch nonwhite population and they all with the exception of philadelphia and atlanta, which are in cities and states that donald trump won, many of those cities are in blue states donald trump's never going to win. i get do we note see even the geographic targeting, do we not see an undercurrent or overturn if you prefer to strayed forward racism? >> it's funny you mentioned new york, where donald trump and i both grew up but it's always the democrats create homelessness and chaos and they can't govern their cities and they can't take care of their own people. and that at the beginning was part of his appeal to his coalition that the elitists they they know better and instead they're not taking care of

anything. and there was a time when he sort of just defended other people at charlottesville or just pretended with jake to know what he was talking about when he mentioned david duke. then it was look at the homelessness in l.a. a couple months ago. when you look at friday when he actually called for the investigation of barack obama's book deal, and then that night 149 african-american former obama administration officials came out to push back against go home and send her back tweets and chants and then the next morning he went on to this whole series of attacks on elijah cummings, it really went to a new level where he's saying there are peoples like this. i'm now, as you said, intentionally a running out in the open racist campaign because this is going to work for me and it was at the same time "the washington post" report came out saturday the campaign affirms they think this is working.

where it used to be sort of on the side, it was very out there about kind of urban areas and elite democratic leaders who were blind to the real problems and couldn't take care of it, now it's we have to investigate two men for doing nothing who happen to be black officials, one, a president of the united states. and then we can't even get into the fact the son-in-law is a slum lord in baltimore and all of these other things. it's incredible. it's taken off as this out in the open press release. >> i want to ask you, ashley, as we've been talking about this, one of the things the president tweeted over the weekend was, quote, no human being would want to live there, about baltimore. 600,000 people live in baltimore. it seems to be a pretty, again, nakedly racist kind of appeal. i ask you as a reporter and somebody who covers this white house, is there any attempt

other than mick mulvaney tried a little bit but is anybody there trying to make some kind of argument for how these things can be construed in any other way then as not just race created, not just race coded or race baiting, let's straight up appeal to race divisions in this country as a way to win? >> yeah, i will say that reasonable people can certainly disagree, especially some of the tweets we talked about earlier, the back tweets. but any single person you talk to in the administration, the president's orbit, republican officials, they say will say with a straight face this is not racist. what they will say and this is what we wrote about this weekend is these appeals, which they say are not racist but sort of culture, right? it's about do you love or hate the country? it's about sort of cities versus urban areas. they will say these issues are

good issues for the president to run on. so when you first saw this happening, the obvious question to the campaign, to the white house was, you know, aren't you worried you're going to turn off these moderate voters, these independent voters? that you're going to drive turnout for the democrats and you would have -- conventionalism would have expected the answer to be yes, the president tweets his comments are either racial or racially charged are a huge problem and the answer they said is well, not really. they said we think this sort of solidifies the base. we think it further energizes the base and maybe gets trump reporters who didn't show up in 2016 to show up again. frankly, we don't even know it hurts us with say suburban women in indianapolis because we think with this president, sort of the racism or the -- his comments about women are baked in the cake and we believe these two voters will say i don't like the tweets or language but i still support him. so that is sort of their feeling.

when -- rev, we will get to you but i will say when you send out tweets about a city with a very large african-american population and implicitly question the humanity of those people who live in the city, no human would want to live in this city, again, i find it inescapably racist but i want to get the attacks on you. here's what donald trump did this morning. he apparently was done with elijah cummings. you said you're going to baltimore and next thing we know, donald trump's on twitter. al's a conman, always looking for a score, just doing his thing. must have intimidated comcast/msnbc. hates whites and cops. >> donald trump has decided that he is going to run a blatantly racist campaign. he's counting on the american people to be that bigoted and he's trying to energize that base. because you've got to ask

yourself, first of all, it is the typical playbook to call civil rights guys conmen. j. edgar hoover said that about mrt martin luther king. you don't belong in the field if you think you won't be called that. and you hate whites and cops, why did he call me to the white house several times since he's been president and come to my action network convention, which i released the photos, he's been there two, three times. he doesn't read that. he's playing on what he hopes is the racial ignorance of a lot of americans that he calls his base. i think he's racist because he's comfortable in doing that, because you got to be racist to be comfortable. we were going to baltimore today. michael steele, who was the former chairman of his party, the republican party, and i to show a bipartisan meeting to deal with the fact that black homeowners are dealing with a

decrease in being able to keep their home. this is s was scheduled a month ago. we just happened to be going after he picked a fight with the congressman there. he sees i'm going to baltimore and assumes i'm leading a protest from baltimore to the white house, which i might do. and he goes into this whole tirade against me because he knows his base is not going to say wait a minute, you asked reverend al to come to the white house and he wouldn't come. you used to go to his conventions. all elijah cummings all of a sudden becomes the worst thing in the world. if you have a man that would say that the president of the united states at the time, a deliberate, thoughtful man named barack obama was not even born here, there's nothing he won't do. the real question is why republicans are not standing up. the real question is not why was al sharpton involved this morning? where was governor hogan, the republican government of maryland who has not opened his

mouth and defended the people of his state and said anything about elijah cummings. not who's coming to baltimore, it's who's there and seems to have a case of political laryngitis. >> i want to do something with you that we often sit around this table because you had this relationship with trump and you had known him a long time and you had a complicated relationship but not overly hostile in the past. you have not been in big fights with trump. on certain issues you fought but it's not like you have been antagonists, always in opposite corners in the whole history of your life. so i wonder what was it, do you think -- there are a lot of questions to ask about why are republicans and what democrats should do, we'll get to those. what but is it that you think made him this morning decide to seize on you? does he think suddenly you're vulnerable, that your divisive, that you're a figure to suede voters? >> i think he thinks any visible black, because he could have

picked on other civil rights guys, but he thinks they know my name and they're visible. it doesn't matter whether it's me or cummings or maxine waters. we're good targets because people know me. so i happen to play into the stereotype. you have to remember many of us in new york never took donald trump seriously. so the reason you can have this complicated relationship is i'm in new york, i grew up here. you always had these bigger-than-life figures. broadway is down the block. you see the guy out two, three years and then he dies out of his career. nobody took them seriously. i jumped on him on the central park five case and housing. go to fights don king and mike tyson and the character donald trump sitting there, no big deal. until birtherism, and then he becomes the face of a political movement that we started taking him seriously.

so it wasn't like we were all cool with donald trump. we were nothing with donald trump. it was like if i guy walked in here right now and was the head of the circus at madison square garden, you know, i might like him or not like him but nobody took him that seriously. you would say to him, oh, can i have that seat or something. donald trump was not a player. nobody was running to him if they were running to office in new york saying i need your endorsement. nobody was saying i need a photograph with you. he was not that kind of figure until birtherism. >> i want to say to you, karine, i think as i look at -- we know trump is a master of distraction, right? >> yep. >> he likes to, he gets in these fights to make you look away from whatever the more important thing is we should be looking at. he went after the squad. he regards them as he sees from his point of view, he looks at them and says they're divisive of the democratic party.

there was a fight between him and pelosi. maybe i could drive a wedge in the democratic parties. he looks at sharpton, who has been a controversial figure in various ways with the civil rights organization for many decades. seizy to see for him to make into a demonized figure. in the middle you have elijah cummings, who whatever else you think about him, has been somebody respected in a bipartisan way. >> absolutely. >> he's not a polarizing guy. hasn't historically been a polarizing guy. i wonder if part of what was happening to rev was trump realized he got over his skis with cummings and looked up and saw rev is going to baltimore. i'm going after that guy. >> right. the way i see all of this, donald trump has always been a racist. we have to put that concept out there. this is who he is. he genuinely bleeselieves doubl down, tripling down on this campaign will help him. this behavior is not out of

ignorance, right? it's truly, truly intentional. this is what he thinks is going to help him win. and he sits -- he literally sits in the residence and he's trying to figure out who can i pick a fight to? how am i going to excite my base even more. what red meat am i going to throw? you're right. he saw, he looked at reverend al's twitter and saw he was going to baltimore and probably construed a bunch of things in his mind and started tweeting. but this is really, truly who he is. the problem is that in 2018 -- in 2016, a lot of people didn't know who he was. a lot of people didn't take him seriously and they stayed home. or whatever reason they stayed home. then you had russia being involved in all types of crazy ways. now in 2018 we saw we can totally beat trump. there's a referendum on trump that does exist.

and i don't know how this works in 2020. we will keep this conversation going after we need in a little break. ashley parker, thank you for your time. when we come back, the risk of running on racism and how the president feels can and will fight back. also, one of the most trusted voices in this administration, dan coats out, replaced by a congressman who has passed trump's loyalty test with flying colors, and the growing number of democrats that support impeaching the president, but will they act? ♪ ♪ let's go! ♪

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my nieces and nephews are people of color. not many people know that. you know that, mr. chairman. you and i have a personal relationship that's not based on color. >> mr. meadows, you know of all of the people on this committee, i have said it and got in trouble for it, you're one of my best friends. i know that shocks a lot of people. >> and likewise, mr. chairman. >> but you are. i could see and feel your pain. i feel it. >> so that was elijah cummings defending mark meadows, david jolly. we were talking about, we took a break about where are republicans now? i don't want to hold you responsible because you left the party. but you have insight into the mindset. that's mark meadows defend, but

where is mark meadows over the weekend defending the attack of elijah cummings? >> this is the character of americans who refuse to speak out. republicans need to realize if they haven't already that donald trump is a small man with a dekrep id moral compass who love before birtherism in the central park five had to settle a discrimination action for settling 39 properties he owned in new york and upon the settlement he bragged, well, at least i don't have to rent to welfare recipients. he now found the pathway in 2016 peddling the grievance policy that worked largely with white america. what he found in 2018 is health care, immigration, taxes and domestic policy does not work. republicans got their clocked clean in 2018. so he knows he can't run on his policy record in 2020, so he has

to return to what got him there in 2016, which is play for constituencies in four, five, pivotal electal colleges that relight on him. and what they don't realize and their coward's in not speaking out, trying to protect the white house, donald trump is handing it back to the democrats in 2020. this might work when it comes to a majority but in 2020, the republicans will not retake the house. >> not that long ago, governor hogan fought back against donald trump. enough is enough. people are completely fed up with this nonsense. why are we not focused on just getting the work done? what is the president doing? what is congress doing? he's a very popular figure, just

elected in a blue state. but there's another republican governor in the country who's done with larry hogan did. it's clearly whenever larry hogan sees something, he gets that this kind of politics does not work for republicans in plu states. i ask you to put aside any republicans, mark meadows a second ago, he was a birther on barack obama. we have video of that. but we're republicans who are smart about strategy and tactics looking at donald trump saying, this is going to work for us? >> this is the problem. when you talk to republicans, they say what am i going to do? say something every single day? because it happens every four days. there's an explosion and i just -- i can't comment on every tweet. i just can't -- it's his problem. o the problem is the president has as you put it all but announced this is the plan. he's going to deploy it on a weekly basis, maybe even more

frequently. for 15 months, we're already melting into the ground the last two weeks. send her back seems like it was two years ago. republicans, he does mott care if this will bury them alive. he can eke out an electoral college victory in his mind with this strategy and leave every vulnerable senate republican back in their seat and every house republican member hoping they might in a fantasy reflip the house back to their control just done. and they know donald trump doesn't care. at what point will he survive their primaries and then speak out? at what point will they say enough is enough? how hard is it emz really earned a reputation with his republican colleagues as someone putting country over party and working across the aisle, but how party is it to come out and say those women are anti-semitic, the squad members disrespect the

speaker, imply racism. but i have white poverty in miss district too and black poverty. we don't speak this cruel way about people who are suffering. how hard would it be to come out today and say that >> . >> we >> i don't give the same credit you do to hogan. hogan's statement this morning is not the strongest statement. he did not call it racist. he said enough is enough. i mean, that's not really directly taking on what donald trump did here. it's like okay, kids, you all behave. no, it's a lot deeper than that and it's a consistent pattern and a deliberate political strategy that would make george wallace blush, with what this president's doing. i remember when i was a kid, george wallace ran in '68. george wallace didn't do some of the things in the campaign. george wallace is a terrible guy, spilling the dirt over the

university of alabama. but in the campaign he tried to dress it up more than what we are seeing this president do. >> kevin kruse wrote this piece in "the new york times" over the weekend saying donald trump is like george wallace, even worse. tell us the risk here for president trump. he thinks this will work for him in some way. if i can inflame enough white resentment in a certain number of counties and states i might lose the popular vote but still somehow thread the needle and get through an electoral college. there's risks here. you think about hillary clinton in 2016 and the states she lost. you look at wisconsin, michigan and pennsylvania. particularly wisconsin and michigan, very, very narrow moat margins where black turnout was done, in milwaukee it was down, detroit. donald trump to me is courting disaster here by inflaming african-american constituencies. he will make it easier for any

democrats running against him. ands there's some benefit he gets with white racist voters but it seems to be the risks for him are huge. >> the politics of it, i always believed people who have been marginalized as we have been as african-americans, latino, brown, yellow, asians, red, whatever the color we attribute to different racial ethnic groups as well as lgbtq and women, we vote out of pride or out of anger. so many of us said we will vote for a man because we never had a black male or lady senator because we didn't have one or barack obama, this is our time. and we get angry. and what he's doing is getting the anger out. >> this is my point. >> and it may be that i don't like this or that about it, but

he will be waiting by the poll and he doesn't have enough racism there. >> i wrote down wisconsin, 23,000 votes, half a baseball stadium, the number ever votes. the turnout number, african-american turnout in 2016, 5%. african-american turnout in 2012 for barack obama, 74%. that's a big gap. >> that's a big gap. >> and in that 20-point gap, you get way more than those 20,000 votes if you can go back anywhere to close to what obama got. is trump not just killing himself here by doing this? >> he is. you have to remember what's happening the last three years, there's been an excitement, an energy, even in the special elections we lost, democrats lost, people turned out. 2018 should be a huge awakening for donald trump because what did he do? double down on immigration and doub doubled down on the caravan. and in michigan and wisconsin in particular, those two states,

african-american votes were down by more than 12 points. in wisconsin there was voter suppression as well happening in wisconsin where hundreds of thousands of people were not able to vote. what he's doing is really just going to excite the base. it's going to excite african-americans. every one white vote that he's trying to get, we should be able to he get two black votes from what he's trying to do. >> i will ask you real quick because you've got to go. first of all, calling anyone a conman is like one of the funniest things i ever heard. but here's my question, as briefly as you can, whoever the democratic nominee is in the democratic field, we have a racist president running a racist re-election campaign. what should do they, what would be your advice on this front, how will democrats deal with the issue other than obviously pointing out the divisions of color, you have to turn out in 2020? >> they have to show they understand it's a racist campaign. we're dealing with blatant race

inch. and their message to blacks and others of color is that you have everything at stake and you need to come out and vote not just for me but to preserve voting rights and the other thing we gain and to move forward. but they must say to whites, we are better than that. we've come from too far behind to become they again. these people do not respect and regard the everyboolution this country has made. it hasn't gone as far as i think it should go. but we're not where we were in the '50s. and an appeal to white americans to let us not go backwards in terms of how we proceed. if they can balance that, appeal to white americans, then we cannot become what we used to be or even be perceived that that. and reveal everything is at risk. it won't even be a close election. the reason donald trump thinks

there will be all of these electal college shenanigans he can play is because has not looked at the numbers. you're talking about a guy who won't read his security briefings. he thinks he request play one or two tricks. this is not "the apprentice" mr. president. you're going to fashion a real wave of voters that for different reasons are going to come out because this is serious to us. it is everything that we fought and believed in and i don't think he nerss that. i think whatever candidate can strike that balance will be the candidate to win. the only he's got is if he has a democratic nominee that does understand the vefrpg. >> we talked about george wall i. i say democrats who want to win should go back and look at the david duke races in indiana. most openly racist campaigns i ever covered and the way to do that is not pretend like it's not an issue. call it out and rally white votes as well as nonwhite votes. reverend sharpton, thank you very much for being with us

today. up next, donald trump honoring a royalist that shows russia poses a great threat to our democracy. the ex-director of national intelligence. we will look at that. this is the couple who wanted to get away who used expedia to book the vacation rental which led to the discovery that sometimes a little down time can lift you right up. expedia. everything you need to go. to deal with the problem.icians but they wouldn't. so we took it to the voters

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a number of people in donald trump's cabinet willing to speak truth to power is rapidly approaching zero. one of the last, national director dan coats, who will be replaced by ratcliffe, who essentially auditioned for trump during the mueller hearings last week. >> respectfully, director, you did not follow the regulations, reflect by do that you managed to violate the most sacred traditions about prosecutor not offering ex-patorial analysis. i agree with the chairman this morning when he said donald trump is not above the law, he's not. but he damn sure shouldn't be below the law, where volume two

of this report puts him. >> joining us now, frank figliuzzi, former assistant director for counterintelligence at the feb and at the table nbc news correspondent carol lee. carol, i want to ask you this question, who is this man, mr. ratcliffe, who will now be the most powerful person in our intelligence bureaucracy? >> as you pointed out, he's a strong supporter of president trump. he was elected to the house in 2014. he comes from a very, very republican district. one of the most republican in the house. he's served on the intelligence committee but he doesn't have the kind of background we have typically seen with the previous five dnis. so that's one of the criticisms he's getting. but he has criticized the fbi for being biased. he's, you know, as we saw from the clip brought into a lot of the republican -- he bought into the republican line that the president is being wrongfully investigated and he's really

curried favor with the president. and obviously his questioning is in the light of what we know, they had met and discussed this job and he was going to be put forward for it really kind of casts a different light on it. you can see certainly looks like somebody who is auditioning for this job. but those are believes he long held. >> up until this day we had a trump administration where people who had jobs in the national security environment would be all what we considered to be people who had a grasp of reality. we have not had people within the administration with those jobs that violent investigate the investigator types. now we have someone firmly from that camp, devin nun oes schoolf intelligence. some republicans privately expressed concerned, including senator richard m bur that cautioned the advisers he considered mr. ratcliffe too political for the post,

according to people familiar with the discussions. so, frank, i ask you, too political for the post? >> i think we have a combination of too partisan and not qualified. those two are dangerous combinations. since the beginning of the trump administration, john, we've been on a slippery slope not only towards the complete discounting of raw intelligence but also the weaponization and politicizing of intelligence towards the president's agenda against his enemies, for his personal friends, so when you appoint someone like ratcliffe, you run into the true risk of fake news getting to the white house, right? so think about the role of the dni. it's a post 9/11 position designed to oversee and coordinate the intelligence community but specifically to make sure everyone is rowing in the same direction, everyone has got the shopping list every year of what intel to collect, what the priorities are and report it up to the white house and out to congress and the public. so if the white house doesn't

want to hear unplease amendment news in the form of intelligence, like for example the saudis are responsible for the murder of khashoggi or north koreans are continuing their nuclear program or putin is poisoning people, the white house doesn't want to hear it and it's never going to get collected and never get reported so we will live in a fake news, fake intel bubble. that's the danger of somebody like ratcliffe. >> here's another guy who knows something about national security. his name is john brennan. he used to head the cia. let's listen to what he used to say about ratcliffe here. >> i have no sense that trump is looking for somebody to speak truth to him about all of these challenges around the globe that really threaten our national security. mr. ratcliffe does not give me any confidence at all that he will be able to direct the men and women of the intelligence community to do what they need to do at this troubling time. >> there's two smart guys who know a lot about national security. neither of them historically partisan figures. both of whom reading the dangers of this appointment and

motivation for this appointment. are you as disconcerted by this as they are? >> only by a matter of degrees less so. look, he could have appointed jared kushner to be dni and he chose not to. john ratcliffe, i will say this, i served with him, perfectly capable of running an organization and serving in an executive capacity, be it coordinating intelligence agencies. he's a former u.s. attorney for the eastern district of texas. very capable. what we've seen on display though is he's willing to play to the political narrative that enabled donald trump. i believe ratcliffe will approach his job with a certain amount of solemn duty. i really do. i think he will present the president with the intelligence the president needs to be presented with. the question is, when the president says no, we're not going in that direction or reprioritizes things or refuses to commit to the fact russia and north korea are adversaries and not friends, does ratcliffe then fall in line and peddle that

narrative public facing tonight congress? based on what we saw in judiciary, he may be willing to do so. he's a capable person but will he turn this into a political spot we have not seen before? i say the likelihood is pretty good. >> i go back to frank, jolly tried to put a decent face on it saying this resume makes him moderately qualified for this job. i looked around the last 2 1/2 years and we thought some of the guardrails we had. we talked about those before. mattis, coats was one of the last remaining guardrails. the notion ratcliffe will step in and be the kind of guardrail that dan coats was strikes me as implausible, not on the bice sis basis of his resume but the performance he turned in last week sitting in front of robert mueller. >> i'm encouraged by david's personal insights and observations of ratcliffe.

but let's look at the recent record, which is what i have to go on here? and my understanding of the dni position, having briefed the dni throughout my career. look, ratcliffe's come after the investigators. he wants to investigate the investigators. he harangued mueller wrongly so. he's advocated for going after those in the intel community and fbi and doj who the president disagrees with and so what kind of environment does that create now in the intelligence community if the big boss coming in is someone who says, you do the wrong thing, i don't have your back. you come at this from a true unvarnished fact-finding perspective, you send up to me raw intel that's bad news, i may end up advocating going after you. moral is low enough already in the intelligence community and i think it may drop further. >> carol, we go to break but i want to get this quick thing to you. people say it was like he was

auditioning last week in the hearings. do you think he was auditioning in the hearings? had we heard anything about ratcliffe being up for this job before last week? >> there were certainly discussions about that. yes, there was an awareness, absolutely. whether or not it was a sealed deal, i don't know. was that part of the audition? i don't know but they already had the discussions. the point you guys are making here, one of the first riffs between president trump and dan coats is when the president asked him to go find evidence that barack obama had wiretapped him ton go o go out publicly an criticize his own intelligence agency he was overseeing. i think those are the questions people have about to your point, and dan coats didn't do that and often had conversations with the vice president and said i don't know what to do here, how do i handle these things? the question is will ratcliffe go ahead and do that same thing? and there are a lot of people who think he won't. coming up -- nearly half of

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the three-row subaru ascent. love. it's what makes a subaru a subaru. my personal view is that he richly deserves impeachment. he has done many impeachable offenses. he's violated the law six ways from sundays but that's not the question. the question is can we develop enough evidence to put before the american people. we've broken the logjam. the president and the attorney general were lying to the american people consistently saying that the mueller report found no obstruction, no collusion and exonerated the president. i think the hearing the other day was an inflection point because it showed quite clearly that the report did not exonerate the president. >> house judiciary committee jerry nadler addressing the big question democrats are grappling with, what did robert mueller's performance on the hill last

week mean on the debate of impeachment. according to politico, more than a dozen democrats, including katherine clark, have newly signalled their support since former special counsel robert mueller testified to congress on wednesday. mueller affirmed that his 22-month investigation uncovered that the president repeatedly tried to obstruct his inquiry and he noted trump could be vulnerable to prosecution after his term ends. according to nbc news' latest count, 108 democrats, nearly half of all democrats in the house, but newly independent justin amash, now back launching an impeachment inquiry. the table is back. jolly. nancy pelosi. put yourself in her head at this moment. you're heading into recess -- >> don't throw this to me. if i'm honest, i'm going to get the dirt beat out of me. >> you're headed into this recess. there's new people coming out all the time.

we saw mueller, et cetera, et cetera. i'm not saying what should she decide. what are the factors she needs to factor into her decision? >> the same factors she should have factored in 90 days ago when the mueller report was released and gave us all the evidence we need for an impeachment proceeding immediately right then. look, there were important facts presented by bob mueller. they were impeachable facts but they weren't new facts. we've had this information. i see a big hot mess in the politics of impeachment in the house right now. even hearing jerry nadler say absolutely impeachable conduct but we're not there yet, i hear a lot of democrats, particularly in leadership in the house right now talking like susan collins. they're expressing concern, they're expressing lament, they're upset about it, but not willing to take that next move to open an impeachment proceeding. honestly -- several things. they're hurting the constitution, hurting the constitution of t institution of the congress and not doing right by the

democratic presidential candidates who would prefer to have this done before they get to iowa and new hampshire. >> a.b., last week the conventional wisdom was mueller did not help democrats who want impeachment, did not help their cause. and again this is not the media making this up. democratic congress people were telling reporters who called them on the record, off the record, saying this did not help us. then suddenly over this week more and more people joined the list. i'm struggling to understand what's going on here? >> well, you can definitely counting on the fact that their constituents are growing more interested in impeachment, even if that doesn't manifest in the polling yet. we have seen swing district democrats come out for impeachment. so those who have waited this long and have thus far opposed it, they are hearing from their voters. whether or not -- that doesn't make nancy pelosi's calculation any less reasonable or sane. she believes an acquittal fuels the election of donald trump. would a trial be devastating? it might be to senator thom tillis, who's trying to get re-elected in north carolina.

it certainly will be for joni ernst in iowa and mcsally for arizona, but will it be for president trump? this is the calculation they continue to make. it is hard for jerry nadler, who is facing a primary challenge. it is obviously making him nervous. he was definitely in the camp of no impeach. he's switching. their explanations sound increasingly tortured. >> more momentum at the end of this recess or less? >> it's going to be more because they're going back into their districts and will hear from their skpit sglenconstituents? >> more or less momentum? >> it depends who your district is. usually in these type of situations people follow the herd so you'll see more people going in that direction. >> we've got to fit in a quick break and we'll be right back. vk break and we'll be right back. and it really shows. with all that usaa offers why go with anybody else? we know their rates are good, we know that they're always going to take care of us. it was an instant savings and i should have changed a long time ago. it was funny because when we would call

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my great thanks for frankie figgs, karine, a.b., david. i will not be here tomorrow. "mtp daily" with steve kornacki in for chuck todd is starting right now. if it's monday, base instincts. president trump ramps up his racially charged rhetoric as he ramps up his re-election bid. plus, more than 100 house democrats now support an impeachment inquiry. will that momentum lead to movement? and one of the administration officials most willing to