you can find me on twitter @chris jansing. have a great weekend. "deadline: white house" with nicolle wallace starts right now. hi, everyone. donald trump's wall has come to symbolize everything that's wrong with the trump presidency, a project so unpopular that even the longest government shutdown in the country's history failed to generate a single dollar of additional funding for trump's passion projects. it's also donald trump's political ball and chain and he's acting like without a wall with some shiny steel slats along the southern border, he may be in trouble in 2020 and that might explain this block bust are report in "the new york times," reporting on the president's plan to spend money allotted for school construction at an army base on his border wall instead. and the impact that decision will have on u.s. service members and their children. from that "times" report, quote, for almost two decades the

families at ft. campbell along the kentucky-tennessee border have borne the brunt of the country's efforts clip of troops with 101 hft airborne division and from special operations units deployed to afghanistan and iraq. this morning they discovered this he would not get the new school they were expecting because of president trump's desire to build the border wall. the plan to divert $62 million towards the construction of ft. campbell's middle school means 562 students in sixth, seventh and eighth grade will continue to cram themselves in 30 to a classroom in some cases, at the beige's aging mahaffey middle school. and they said, most of our students don't know what it's like to live in a war without war, where you don't have to worry about mom or pop being killed. the one big benefit of the

school is we try to support all of those emotional needs. funding for ft. campbell is something the senator mitch mcconnell bragged about, including in an op-ed in his local paper back in january where he wrote this, quote, our commonwealth is the proud home of military instillations critical to our national defense. i secured -- i secured much-needed assistance for ft. campbell, helping the men and women serving there to keep america safe. when the u.s. contacted his office about the funding for ft. campbell being raided for trump's wall, he said, quote, we wouldn't be in this situation if democrats were serious about protecting our homeland and work with us to provide the funds we needed to secure our borders during our appropriations process. so mitch mcconnell, the most powerful senator in the country, is blaming democrats, even though it's his political ally donald trump siphoning off money from a base in his state to fund the president's campaign promise.

building a wall isn't the only campaign promise on the line here. t trump made promises to the military as well. >> i can tell you there's nobody that respects the military more than your president, donald trump. i will be so good at the military, your head will spin. there's nobody bigger or better at the military than i am. >> would you have served -- >> i would not have minded that at all. i would have been honored, but i think i make up for it right now. >> that is where we start with some of our favorite reporters and friends. retired four-star general and nbc military analyst barry mccaffrey, mark jacobson is back, former senior adviser to defense secretary ash carter, plus axios political reporter alexi mccammond with us on set, sprf vf national correspondent emily jane fox and "the new york times" political reporter nick

con scory is here. i hit myself almost every day but can you imagine how many times i hit myself this morning. what do you think? >> read that at the end of the day this was a seizure of department of defense funds that goes through a five-year process, congressmen are intimately involved in it, it does affect the readiness and family welfare of the u.s. armed forces here and overseas. congress refused to fund that wall and the president has taken an emergency declaration and essentially defied congress on the power of the purse. i think it's unprecedented. it's simply astonishing and they got our new secretary of defense, secretary mark esper, to sign off on it that he could use these funds for a different purpose. i think it's a fundamental threat to the way our democracy works. >> general mccaffrey, i wonder

if you can just speculate on how this happens. i think for presidents, democratic and republican presidents, there are people around them in the white house before an idea this harebrained gets to the pentagon. and there are people, hopefully, ideally, traditionally at the pentagon that would stop something like this from happening. there's a national security adviser that can stop it. how are we here where at ft. campbell where you have to have one of the highest numbers of deploymen deployments in iraq and afghanistan, they're being deprived of a middle school, i don't have to tell anyone with kids, at a very crucial age. >> yes, plus things like funding for air force base fire and crash rescue services. it's closely operational and family oriented. i would be interested in seeing how mark esper, the secretary of the department of defense, got his own lawyers to sign off on this as legal.

i dealt with a lot of military budgets. if we divert money from one purpose to another, even when we think we have the legal authority, we always would go back to the congressional appropriations committee and seek their support. apparently that whole system is now broken down. and i think the president feels, apparently, he has the authority under emergency powers to move funds and not go to congress under the power of the purse. we're getting into troubled waters here. >> general mccaffrey, can you speak personally about the toll it takes on men and women deployed -- how much time they spend worrying about their family? so much of what was provided on bases in terms of childcare and in terms of counseling and in terms of support for families is so that the men and women fighting to protect us don't have these burdens, don't have to worry about these things. what is sort of the psychological toll on the military? >> well, fortunately, it's far less than it was a few years

ago. we got only around 15,000 troops in iraq, maybe 7,000 -- excuse me, afghanistan, 7,000, 8,000 in iraq and 7,000 elsewhere. but look, the bottom line is the law enforcements have been at war for 18 years. some of the special ops or personnel or c-130 squadrons or navy s.e.a.l. teams have been deployed a dozen times. we've had -- i have to remind people of this, we had essentially 60,000 killed and wounded fighting the war on terror. so it's an ongoing, constant deployment for the armed forces. and, you know, at the end of the day we really need to give them the tools and to take care of their families so that when we call them at midnight and tell them you're leaving, you're going to be gone six months, you're going to be fighting in afghanistan, they know the system is behind them. this strikes at the heart of that whole process. >> nick, it's an incredible

piece of reporting from your colleague. i just want to reread this quote, this is the gut you punch for me from a teacher at ft. campbell, jayne loggins, who says this -- most of our students don't know what it's like to live in a world without war, where you don't have to worry about mom or pop being killed. the one big benefit at this school is we try to support all of those emotional needs. this school that has overcrowding issues, funding has been gutted to pay for donald trump's steel slats or whatever we're calling it this week. >> this is porn because it shows there's a human cost to the budget cuts the president is using to pay for his wall. this is a school that serves the children of the 101st. they've been deployed over and over again. they have borne a lot of the bankrupt of the wars we fought. their kids are going to school in a place where there isn't enough room to eat lunch in the cafeteria, where there's no

air-conditioning in some places and leaks and we're sending their parents to fight in iraq and afghanistan. i think it shows, look, if there was some national emergency and a consensus we had to find dollars and move them to pay for something else important, that would be one thing but there's no consensus. congress has the power of the purse. it did not appropriate the money for this wall and it's in the service of a presidential fiction that we're being invaded from the south, we haven't got a wall there, we have to have a huge wall. we have a wall there. it's working pretty good. our border defenses are pretty good. it's a manufactured crisis for political purposes and these kids are the one people bearing the brunt of it. >> mark jacobson, nick said something important, it's the work of fiction. and we spent the week talking about the fiction of alabama being in the path of hurricane dorian, the fiction being furthered by donald trump's

sharpie. i always hoped donald trump's fictions would be walled off from the military, and it would appear -- and i agree with nick's assessment, that is just not the case. >> the reality here is that this administration is lost past the time they're going to do something because it's moral, because it's ethical, or because it's just or good. but the reality is the actions that the secretary of defense has signed off on, they're hurting military readiness. it's not just -- it's not just the military construction. it's also aircraft simulators, it's small arms ranges and it's also undermining our deterrents and our credibility in europe. secretary esper said yesterday evening during his trip to europe that the europeans are going to have to pick up the slack on some of the money the department of defense won't be able to spend now. that's undercutting one of the major missions of the department. and then finally to get to the heart of the school's issue,

it's well known military -- i think general mccaffrey would agree militaries recruit soldiers but retain families. but right now trump has a dagger pointed at the heart of those families. so it's not just the emotional argument, it's that he's hurting our readiness, that he's distracting soldiers from focusing on the mission and undermining our deinterprterren posture in europe. >> general mccaffrey, would you like to respond to anything mark said you would like to elaborate on but i would also like you to address some of the politics on this. if donald trump were a democratic president and he were raiding the military budget in almost an extra judicial manner in terms of not following the laws that congress has the legal right to appropriate funds, i think republicans would be going bananas. how is donald trump going to survive a move like this politically in terms of the deep and emotional and historical support that the military and

the pentagon traditionally has in congress? >> i think we're so polarized, nicolle, it's hard to imagine either party in past years would accept this extra judicial action by the president of the united states. at the end of the day if you read english and read the constitution, congress has to appropriate money. if they deliberately have not chosen to fund the wall, whether you like it or not, it's hard to understand how the lawyers in the department of defense or any other department of government could justify seizure of funds and divert to a new mission. so we're just on new ground. i cannot imagine how a republican in the appropriations committee of the house of the senate would not see this as striking at the heart of congressional power. >> alexi, you have reporting on this very topic. what are -- and i'm just going to guess it's democrats because republicans have to this point in the trump presidency marched

in lockstep with this president no matter what he's doing. what is the plan to either reverse these decisions or draw attention to their foolishness? >> so that's right. today i obtained a document that was compiled by the dnc's research team that sort of outlines all of the times president trump said as he was campaigning for president back in 2016 that mexico would pay for the wall and how it was going to be paid for by mexico and no one else, and we didn't have to worry about anything. this document shows in great detail not just the things he said but where he said it in the crucial battleground areas. i have been told from various democrats i have spoken with that are sort of familiar with the plan that the national party and other democratic groups are doing to try to thwart his efforts to make this happen without people really noticing is target hyper local areas in battleground states like florida, texas, arizona, colorado, target these voters in these communities by showing them exactly what he has said and promises he has made and

inconsistencies in what has actually happened since he made those promises and ultimately let's not forget got elected based on these promises by the little guys and gals he said he was looking out for by having mexico pay for this wall, among other things. they're going to go for the type of the strategy to design donald trump's broken or ambiguous promise ideas but focus on what happened now that he has a policy record. and for oppo researchers, especially democratic oppo researchers, these things president trump accumulated and things he's trying to move forward on, like moving military funds to pay for the border wall instead, are a dream to them. they didn't have that in 2016. we saw the way oppo research wouldn't stick to trump like it would to some others but something like these failed promises that go against everything and everyone he said he stood for when he was campaigning is one way to define him that could lead to their success.

>> you know what else sticks to donald trump even more than oppo research, attacks from fox news. here's one from journal napolitano. >> when donald trump imposes a sales tax on items from china, when he builds a wall at the mexico/texas border using funds that the congress denied him but he takes the funds anyway, he is merely using the power that congress has given to him and former presidents in violation university constitution. when that happens, and congress throws up its hands and says let the president do it, that's dangerous to our liberty, because the beauty of our liberty is the division, the separation of powers. congress writes the laws, the president enforces them, the courts interpret them. but when congress lets president write his own laws, he's not a president, he's a prince. >> so lexi, the democrats may have some assistance in terms of

echoing their message in places that could really hurt from none other than fox news on-air talent, judge napolitano. >> i think that's a good point, nicolle. obviously the democrats are preparing this type of oppo research for their own gains. but something like this is not really a part destine issue wisu consider the fact they're pointing out to trump voters they want to win in 2020 trump screwed them over, not just democrats over, but he's screwing republicans over too in the things he's doing. the more republicans like napolitano and others from fox will add pressure to donald trump but at the end of the day we see the ways in which he will drag his heels and dig in two, three times for whatever he has to get a border wall to divert funds or shut down the government. i'm not sure someone like napolitano will convince him otherwise but i'm sure that could add to the pressure and gravity of what democrats are putting forward. >> mark, something else that

could add to the pressure would be former sebcretary of defense. do you expect your old bosz to speak out or general mattis, who is in the middle of a book tour, do you expect to hear from any of them? >> i guess we all want to hear what secretary mattis wants to say but i suspect you're right there. i think former secretary pin etta has been more outspoken than the others. but what i would like to see is other retired generals speaking out particularly about the war of families, we have the war on education and children, but we're getting to the heart of what the military is about, it's about its people. i would like to hear from retired military leaders from a substantive standpoint on why this is the wrong policy. >> emily jane fox, mark mentioned the war on children in an op-ed on "the washington post" that goes like this, even without trump's baby jails and

proposed med akayed cuts the proposed emphasis on children's well being is seriously sufficient. spending of the budget is also expecting to shrink over the coming decade, crowded out by debt spent on the elderly. together with what trump's war on children is, that's what democrats should be running on. do i remember this correctly, was obama maybe going to spend some time on women and children or did that get scuttled? >> that was the original purpose in washington, skirting anti-nepotism laws that were on the books 50 years, that was the whole reason she got that corner office in the west wing right above the oval office. she's actually on a foreign trip right now promoting women inept prenurship because it's her role in the west wing to be supporting women and families. but it's funny on issues like this where her father is either gutting schools for military families or keeping children in cages on the border or looting

school budgets for any number of reasons to pay for a fake crises on the border she goes silent, disappears and rather poses for photo-ops and do the hard work of standing up to her father and saying this is is wrong, if i'm here to advocate for women and children, there's no better way to advocate than saying let's keep these schools that help support militaries in place. but this is the fiction of ivanka trump's role. we hoped and prayed they would can give us moderating influence. >> moderate, this is human, humanizing influence. >> and a humanizing or modern influence or any real policy influence at all coming from the first daughter has been fooled the last two years. >> general mccaffrey, i want to give you the last word on this topic. michelle obama and dr. joe biden made the health and well being of military families which in a lot of cases are spouses and children, they're central causes. i guess there are a lot of

things to mess with with the ob presidency but they're focused on that issue and vacuum created by a removal of a focus on that issue at a time there's not just troops deplayoyed but a heavy burden or service is carrying and i don't need to tell you that. what do they need? what needs to be made up based on the deficit from this president and this white house? >> well, you're actually quite right that both the first lady and jill biden were very focused on directly supporting military families. and it's been a huge part of it. somebody earlier mentioned we recruit individual soldiers, we retain families. so they're part and parcel to the national security process. if you take away an assurance that look, we got your back. the medical care, the housing, the emotional needs of children will be met, then you have a

stronger force. this seizure of dod funds though, i would argue, goes well beyond supporting military families. this is basically it seems at first glance to be extra constitutional seizure of funds and we can't live with that in a democracy. >> general mccaffrey, thank you very much for spending some time with us. mark jacobson, thank you as well. always great to see both of you. after the break, shep smith from fox news goes there, calling out donald trump as a purveyor of fake news. we'll show it to you. and the white house war on truth targets "the washington post" today. we will speak to the reporter who wrote this story that is lodged so deep under the president's skin, his press office is still responding to it many days later. and congressman eric swalwell joins us on the president's latest walkback on gun control and impeachment in the house over presidential pardon, hush money and obstruction of justice. all of those stories coming up. who's dog is this?

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the united states do this? he decries fake news that isn't and disseminates fake news that is. this is one where he could apologize and just move on. that map is from the day the hurricane became a hurricane, a days august, august 28th. it was four days old at the precise time he said alabama would likely be hit hard. on that it was fake news defined. on a very serious subject. yet he forged on. this morning another statement,

what i said was accurate. it wasn't and it isn't. >> shep smith, you are perfect. is that was shep smith ar articulating why today we will dedicate air time about donald trump doubling, tripling, quadrupling down about hurricane dorian impacting alabama. but even today, six days after the controversy started, trump tweeted about it again, attacking the media again, saying they're going crazy, as if the repeated tweeting and digging in over a false claim knocked down by the weather service did not arguably make your question about who is really craze by about this store kwlier. fox news beckoned fox news john roberts to the oval office yesterday just to insist he wasn't wrong about alabama and complain about -- wait for it -- shep smith. and to put an exclamation point on this pattern of insecurity from the president. the final piece of mystery, the

whodunit, who doctored that white house map to include alabama as the storm passed? it's been solved thanks to reporting from "the washington post." nbc news has not independently matched this reporting but here's the post reporting on this story, quote, it was trump. he used a black sharpie to mark up an official national oceanic and atmospheric, noaa map, which he displayed during an oval office briefing wednesday. that's according to a white house official who spoke anonymously. joining our conversation, rev al sharpton, host of "politicsnation" here on msnbc and president of the national action network and phil rucker, white house chief for "the washington post." phil rucker, it's your scoop. to you first. >> well, nicolle, it's actually my colleague's scoop but what they're reporting overnight is it was indeed the president that used that sharpie to alter the map that was displayed in that oval office briefing. and it speaks to his frustration with this story line. so much of the reaction he had over the last few days on the

alabama situation is because he's reacting to news media reports such as shep smith's show on fox yesterday and he's angry because he believes -- and this is according to his aides, he believes that he was correct in his announcement on sunday that alabama was in the hurricane track. of course, that was old information, as you just explained, and alabama was indeed not in the track of hurricane dorian when he made that announcement on sunday. and it's the is reason why the national weather service took to twitter to correct the president. but we know from years of studying donald trump that he is not somebody who will admit a mistake. he's not somebody who easily apologizes or really ever corrects himself and so that explains why he's doubled and tripled and quadrupled down and so forth. >> rev, i have a theory that this is more than just being angry about press conference. this is about the president almost like a cartoon character, just about to burst, about to

burst and then the steam starts coming out of ears because he's not being covered as someone who gets confused about a weather briefing, he's being covered as a fool? >> i think that clearly you are right, it's indicative of a man with a deep knowledge that he is really inept to do the job. so any time someone raises his errors, he is overdefensive because he really has the internal problem of saying they're saying i'm inept, they're saying i can't do this, when he really knows he has those doubts himself. it reminds me of a kid getting a 62 on his report card and he takes a sharpie and changed the 6 into an 8 before he brings it home to his mother thinking he can fool his mother. he's not fooling mom. he's trying to fool the nation about something as important and something as horrific as this storm has been. but he can't get past himself his own insecurities.

he covers it by trying to play the strong man. that's why he likes people like putin and kim jong-un. they're strong men and he looks up to that and tries to pretend to be that, even down to a phony hurricane report. >> i know there's some fatigue with this story but i don't know there's any more vivid sort of dissection of his brain than this story because the -- the whole sort of narrative that i'm told even the president is concerned about is that the summer was just a blowout, that he accomplished nothing politically. there were things he could have shored up for himself on the economy. he sort of proved he has nine lives after the mueller testimony, and we're going to get to that. phil rucker wrote a great story on that, that still has the white house sieging. ta -- seething, talking about smoke coming out of his ears. but this shows why he can't get the pbd, why he can't be briefed

on foreign policy, why he says things about north korea and brutal slaughter of jamal khashoggi and iran that are totally inconsistent with the intelligence committee because no information can go into him. he cannot receive any information or any facts, he can only sort of see and experience what he sees on television. >> what is not surprising to me about this story is that he does not take in information, that he gets things wrong, that he has no attention span to sit there and listen to the pdb or study it. and what also strikes me at the very heart of his insecurity, it's hitting him exactly in his soft spot and why he's had this reaction. what is surprising to me is he hasn't thrown someone under the bus for it. what would have been very easy and very characteristic for him was on sunday to say this person told me the wrong information. thank god this is not what happened. thank god for the people in alabama that this is not what happened but this person really told me the wrong stuff and i

was right all along. >> he tried. he had a admiral -- >> but that was days after he said i got it right, i got it right. it would be so much easier for him to throw someone under the bus, which is what he's done time and time again. it's shocking to me he went to this instead of his tried and true throw somebody under the bus. >> alexi, i always come back to your big scoop about his schedules. i think any parent in new york city that sent their kids back to school, too much unstructured, free time is not a good thing for the under 18-year-old set. clearly the same is true for donald trump. he has nothing on his schedule almost ever, he had a couple ceremonies this week but otherwise nothing. he had nothing on his schedule last weekend when this disaster was put in motion and that seems to be at the root of all of the major kree sei major crises at the white house. >> and sarah sanders told us at axios when i was reporting this story that was time he could

have an approach of governing creatively, which we see that now through the use of a sharpie. and it's funny how he denied this sharpie situation because when my colleague jonathan swan interviewed him for our axios show last year, in the end credit there was a scene in which president trump was showing off the sharpie pens to the axios folks there interviewing him as though it was some sort of golden pen or trophy and we all know he loves to use it. why would he deny something as simple as that? but the other part of this that i think is fascinating that instead of coming out and apologizing, which we know he's not going to do, he could have said something to the effect of thank god alabama is no longer in the storm's eye. but that is no who president trump is. he thrives on fear and he thrives on sort of the american carnage narrative he unveiled when he was giving his inauguration speech because he likes everything to be grim and doom and glum. including alabama in something like this as horrific as a

hurricane and fixating on it from this way is certainly not the way a president i think should act but the way president trump has shown he's willing to act since he ran for president and especially again at the inauguration speech when he talked over and over again about american carnage. >> and look, there's an old saying, i can't remember if it's george orwell or mark twain that there are few forces in human affairs that are more dangerous than a man who is determined to be proven right. and we've seen that here. look, he would not be the first person to get confused from a hurricane app omap one day and another four days later. it's not a big deal. but instead of saying i got confused, i was looking at the old map, he turned the entire power of the white house and his staff into proving himself right and this occupied four, five days of news cycle at a time his press staff is saying we're not covering all of the good things he's doing. they're creating this themselves. >> and there's no sign they will let up.

i think it sort of puts to rest any questions about whether ivanka or jared have a meaningful room, they clearly don't. there are no guardrails, i don't know who's left on the staff in the first place, that they clearly don't staff him. i don't know what they do. >> this is pure value that he doesn't want to say i screwed up and it wasn't really a big screwup. just take the loss. i got confused and move on because everybody else will in two seconds. >> that's the thing, he could have just let it die and given no response but this is a president who's unable to let things go and let it play out. >> this is true. after the break, the president's war on truth targets some of the best reporters on the white house, beat a couple of them, over the story about donald trump's wasted summer. the end of, you guessed it, a wasted week. that story is next.

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publicly and privately donald trump obsesses about one thing and one thing only -- his press coverage. the new front in his battle against the media comes in an op-ed from two trump press staffers who complain about their coverage from "the washington post." the post piece written by phil rucker and ashley parker that they're upset about category trump's lost summer. they're so enraged they're complaining about it a week later. we want to refresh your memories. quote, trump leveled raftist attacks against sfour congresswoman dubbed the squad and derided the city of baltimore as rat infested, and dlorts believe a mass shooting suspect posted his visits to dayton, ohio, and el paso after the gus massacres in those cities served to divide rather than heal. trump's economy also began to

falter with the markets ping-ponging based on the president's erratic behavior. his trade war with china grew more acrimonious. his wit saw diplomacy at the g7 summit left allies uncertain about america's leader ship. whip saw. so phil rucker, let me get the names, stephanie grik sham and hogan gridley wrote an op ed and campaigned about "the washington post" and wrote to -- the post could have written about the president's effort to ease loan debt for veterans but, oops, i have to stop because i think you guys did, right? didn't you? i think there has been reporting about that. but "the post" could have written about the fist time in history a sitting u.s. president walked across the dmz into north korea. i know you did.

what are we talking about? >> you're right, we covered those events in realtime. but let me tell what you ashley and i did, we wanted to take stock of the president's entire summer which had a lot of moments we covered on this broadcast. we started by reaching out to the white house to get their list of accomplishments, what do you think are the high points within included in our piece 26 examples, and fwhoetwe noted se examples. we also quoted from the the white house spokesperson saying this was an historic summer of achievement for the president. the other thing we did is talk to some of the other officials in the administration, some of the president's allies, other republicans outside of the orbit who are looking in to get their more candid reflections on the summer and the consensus for a lot of them were it was a challenging summer for president trump, a lost summer, and a moment in period that was marked by a lot of self-sabotage by the president. controversies and problems he

created for himself. >> rev, i talked to trump, and he's very worried about his political position. so it's clear the complaints about this story of the shiny be ott a object and what is real, and we put up two headlines "the post" he claimed they did not cover but they did, and the complaint is real that donald trump did waste his summer, he squandered his summer. he knows it and they know it. >> he knows it and it's like when someone calls you a name and you know you may fit that name, that's why you react. there's the old southern expression if you throw a brick in a pile of hogs, the one that hollers is the one you hit. that's why he's hollering, because they hit him exactly where he is. when you look even the op-ed

said he walked across the border and stepped into south korea and yes by the end of the summer they're firing missiles that everyone is saying is much more dangerous than they thought so what does walking across the border mean? the outrage of this summer, the divisiveness, the hatred, the things that he could have done and did not do, including the economy and then he ends the summer by deregulation on certain things that lead to gas emissions while we're facing obvious climate change, not only did he waste the summer, he has in many ways retracted some of the progress that was being made by the prior administration and some of the promises he made. >> you know, he's not without sort of tools to deploy if he wanted to. there's still an argument to be made, largely to his base but when it comes around to the general elections he has to make it about the economy, there is an argument to be made about some of the things he's done regardless of how his critics or

anyone that sees that the sky is up and ground is down. he does still have a very strong grip on his base. i think what hurts about phil and ashley's reporting as far as i understand from people that have been in touch with the president is that he wasted even the space that was available to him. he didn't preach to the choir. that even the things he was saying to them at the maga rallies were off-putting and did not do much to draw them closer to him or excite him more. >> and the president is confronting the limits of his own strategy, which is rile the base, start fights with the media, he tried that. they fired everything, like in the "star trek" movie. it didn't work. they lost the house. they're firing everything now. it still isn't working. and he can still win re-election, but it's not improving his standing. so i think there are two audiences from this op-ed, one is the president himself, he wants to say any party, poor

guy. and two is they will not look up and bother and see the op-ed is a lie and they did cover those things. they will just assume it's true, it's part of the narrative the president wants to create and the only reason he's not doing well is the media is hiding the truth about his true successes and accomplishments, which is also not true. >> phil, i want to give you the last word that you and your colleagues are the targets of this attack that nick confessore described as a lie. >> yes, nicolle, this is not what we want to do with our reporting. what we try to do every day is find out new information and understand why the president is doing what he's doing and decisions he's making and bring light to all of that. this attack is unusual and it's something we just sort of move on from and continue reporting on. >> phil rucker, we're grateful for your reportling, we're grateful to have you and ashley as regulars on this show. thank you very much for spending

time with us. after the break, congressman eric swalwell on gun control efforts after a deadly wake of mass shootings that mark the end of summer. and house democrat investigations into donald trump. wow!

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alright who wants to go again? i do! i do! ♪ i have a really good feeling about this. ♪ congress returns to session on monday and atop the agenda, gun control, brought back into the spotlight after three mass shootings that in august alone left nearly 40 people dead. but so far there's no action, only waffling from the president on any potential legislation. and yesterday trump met with west virginia senator joe mansion to discuss the issue but those hoping for drastic action will likely be disappointed by that. "the new york times" reports, quote, president trump assured manchin on thursday he was still considering legislation that could include background checks for gun buyers but those familiar with the meeting said the president's likelier course of action was many smaller items

like a slimmer version of a background check bill and red flag lies, which allow the authorities to temporarily confiscate firearms from those found by a judge to be a danger to themselves or others. the potential actions, "the times" adds, according to two people briefed on the meeting, quote, the white house aides say they have polling data showing that gun control was politically problematic with the president. joining us now, congressman eric swalwell, a member of both the house judiciary and intelligence committees. congressman, nice to see groin. >> good afternoon. >> good afternoon. you made your presidential campaign about about this really intractable place where any sort of reforms, even those with 90% support among the american general public, do you see these string of mass shootings here in the final month of summer as shaking loose anything in washington? >> it's shaking loose people across the country.

and we can't wait for washington anymore. we certainly can't wait for the president or mitch mcconnell. i'm heartened to see that because of the works of moms demand action and so many other organizations, retailers are now saying, don't bring your open carry firearms into our stores. and that shows the power that we have as consumers, that we don't have to just rely on washington. we can demand that retailers in places where we go, that they can keep us safe, too. also, just to take count, we beat 17 nra-endorsed members of congress in the last election. that's what allowed us to pass background checks in the house. and when i step back and look at what we can do, i don't want us to nibble around the edges, because the momentum is with us. the nra is on the ropes. we should just go for background checks. we should go to put liability on manufacturers. we should require licensing, insurance, ban and buy back every single assault weapon. and know that the public is entirely behind us. >> let me just put up the names of the -- you mentioned the companies that ask customers to

stop carrying weapons in their stores. it's walmart, krogers, cvs, and wegmans. i know these are stores that take very seriously the sort of views and opinions of their customers. if you could argue that the customers of all of those retailers supported some common sense gun reforms, could you argue that the public opinion is moving in favor of people who want just some common sense things, like background checks and red flag laws and a waiting period and closing some of the loopholes? >> it is there. and actually, i would suggest it's always been there, but the nra has been this vocal tweeting, bullying minority. and i learned on the campaign trail, we don't have to fear them anymore. that you show up to events and i would see the moms demand action volunteers there with their shirts. you would see the brady and the giffords group and the march for our lives kids and they're going to have our back.

and you should fear them a lot more now. and the spending in the last election, there was more money spent by gun safety groups than the nra. so i see the nra as an organization that is in its last days. and so there's no reason for us to negotiate down anymore. we should really seize the momentum. >> let me turn to your role on the judiciary committee and the intel committee. a very packed schedule. i think a lot of democrats pointed by the post. mueller outcome, which was basically nothing. what is the plan for september to either refocus the public's attention on some of the witnesses, star witnesses in the mueller report, or around news reports over the summer, that he promised pardons to people who illegally built his wall. and i've also seen reports about bringing the illegal hush money scheme that the southern district of new york prosecuted back into focus. >> we're going to hold accountable a lawless president. and one of the remedies is impeachment. now, nicole, here's where donald

trump benefits. and i urge my colleagues to not let him have this benefit. he will tell everyone, impeachment is politically unpopular and that will get in the heads of folks and they'll think, oh, there'll be a political consequence if we do that. and he'll also order his witnesses to not come forward, so it's harder to inform the public what exactly he and his aides have done. so they put us in this conundrum where it's hard to explain to the public and evidence is buried. but obstruction of justice is also an impeachable offense. if he's going to bury the evidence, we should assume he's doing it because he has a lot to hide and it goes to his guilt. and i believe doing nothing is not an option. if we do nothing, he gets worse and it is getting worse. and it shows future presidents that the standard of conduct is much lower. it's not a position we've asked for, but it's a position that we're in and i think we have to hold him accountable. and you'll see that in the next few weeks. >> do you understand why some democrats feel like you missed the moment when the southern district of new york described donald trump as an unindicted

co-conspirator in an illegal hush money scheme and robert mueller found ten counts of obstruction of justice. >> yeah, i get the frustration. this hasn't moved as fast as i want. and honestly, nicole, he's getting worse every single day and he's just got to go. but we've got to do it the right way. and i think we can't wait for court rulings. that's going to take a long time. if he's just not going to abide by the law, we should put forth an obstruction of justice of congress as one of the articles of impeachment as well. and one other point, nicole. he benefits so often from trying to get in our head and stop us from doing the right thing. think about russia. when the russians were interfering in the 2016 election, donald trump was saying the election is going to be rigged, the election is going to be rigged. and what happened? the obama administration was a little, you know, reluctant to call out russia and who knows what the effect was, because what the russians did. they didn't want to play into donald trump's claims. bob mueller testified that he did not interview donald trump because, in part, it was going to take too long.

and donald trump had been saying forever and over and over that this investigation is going on and on. so he got in bob mueller's head. and he was not interviewed. so, again, we can't let donald trump dictate the terms. we should dictate the terms and we should hold him accountable. >> just real quick, is can you name names? who's coming? has anyone accepted your offers to testify? >> as you know, we want corey lewandowski. we want rob porter. of course, we want don mcgahn and those are folks that we continue to seek. hope hicks, as well. but again, if they're not going to come in. if they're just going to obstruct, i say, just put that in the bucket of obstruction of justice and impeach him under those grounds. >> congressman swalwell, please come back when everyone's back and update us on these efforts. >> will do. thanks, nicole. >> thanks for spending time with us. we're going to sneak in a break. don't go anywhere. we'll be right back.

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we ran out of time. my thanks to the rev al, alexi, nick confessore. most of all to you for watching. that does it for hour. i'm nicole. "mtp daily" with chuck todd starts now. if it's friday, the sharpie, the wall, and the consequences. it's been a week of black marks for president trump. could moving military money to pay for the border wall wind up the most permanent mark on his presidency? plus, dnc chairman tom perez joins me here on set as the top tier of the 2020 field gets ready to face off ahead of a pivotal and potentially nasty primary stretch. and the first election of 2020 is about to happen. why one