coming up, frontrunner joe biden fends off attacks from his competitors as one tries too hard for breakout moment. >> you said they would have to buy in. are you forgetting what you said two minutes ago? are you forgetting already what you said just two minutes ago? trigger point. after el paso, beto o'rourke's passionate plea for gun control. but did he give ammunition to the gun lobby by going too far? >> hell yes, we're going to take your ar-15, your ak-47. we're not going to allow them to be used against fellow americans anymore. and the big easy. the president says no problem finding a fourth national security adviser in three years. >> we have 15 candidates. everybody wants it badly, as you can imagine. it's a great job. it's great because it's a lot of fun to work with donald trump and it's very easy, actually, to work with him.

and good day, everyone, i'm andrea mitchell in new york. the reviews are in on thursday night's big debate. joe biden's team relieved after he did do better than in the first two debates. the anticipated face-off between biden and elizabeth warren did not materialize. instead the conflict was between biden and julian castro, a fellow veteran of the obama administration who critics say was too eager to draw blood or so eager to draw blood in fact that he got his facts what wrong while trying to imply that biden's age is a problem. >> the difference between what i support and what you support is whether people have to buy in. >> they do not have to buy in. >> you said two minutes ago that they have to buy in. are you forgetting what you said two minutes ago?

are you forgetting already what you said just two minutes ago? i'm fulfilling the legacy of barack obama and you're not. >> that will be a surprise to him. >> in fact our fact checkers say that he was wrong, biden has called that a cheap shot. joining me, nbc's garrett haake in houston, kimberly atkins, political analyst mike murphy, and msnbc national political correspondent who does not sleep, steve kornacki. steve, what a night. let's talk about, first of all, the biden/castro matchup. castro getting criticized pretty soundly for being too tough and for not getting his facts straight and for seeming to suggest, really suggesting by three times saying "did you forget what you just said."

>> it was so interesting to watch that, that's kind of been the subtext of this campaign. the issue of the concerns about 3w50 biden's age, you've had his other components trying more gingerly to raise that. castro went at it pretty much head-on there. those concerns, it's tough to measure them. it's a unique situation we haven't had before. but clearly those concerns exist with democratic voters. what works to biden's advantage last night is, if it's going to be raised directly that way, biden held up well in the exchange. as we mentioned, the fact checkers sided with him. castro i think looking smaller by comparison. for that to be the first major direct test of biden's age with all these concerns that are the backdrop of this campaign, his campaign couldn't have asked for better moment. we've got five months 'til iowa, we have more debates like this, other candidates might get more desperate, might launch more tactful attacks on him.

but the first time the issue was raised directly, you have to say he held up well. >> mayor pete jumped in and said this is exactly the problem, he tried to be the grown-up in the room, in fact the youngest candidate in the race. >> this reminds everybody of what they can't stand about washington, scoring points against each other, poking at each other, and telling each other that my plan, your plan -- >> look, that's called a democratic primary election. that's called an election. that's an election, you know? this is what we're here for, it's an election. >> garrett haake, what is the castro campaign saying in rebuttal today? >> they're doubling down on it, they're trying to fund raise off those remarks, saying castro was being aggressive with biden because the facts in this case matter. now, the facts aren't on his side, but castro has made this his whole m.o. he's had these moments in the debates and it gets talked about

in the days afterwards but he barely qualified for this debate so he's trying to make some momentum on home turf, trying to make the case that he'll be a fighter, that he'll fact check donald trump or even i meafact mike pence if you want to game this out. yes, the democratic party wants somebody to take on donald trump, metaphorically punch him in the jaw. but it looks like from the instant, snap reaction to this, castro hung too far to the other side for that. we'll have to see the polling to see if this is what voters wanted to see. >> on the issue of guns, mike murphy, republicans have been accusing the democrats of trying to take your guns away from you. did beto o'rourke walk right

into that by being as passionate and as credible and as strong in the debate as he was on the assault weapon that he believes should be taken away, should be not just a voluntary buyback but a mandatory buyback? this was beto today with willie on "morning joe." >> it will by and large be dependent on people complying with the law. >> to underline, it will be voluntary, it won't be hell yes, we'll come get your guns? >> no, it's not mandatory. i want to make sure we make the distinction. >> the law is that those guns are legal right now. how would they be breaking the law by owning those guns? >> well, because by working with congress and listening to the american people who i believe form a majority on this issue, buying back ar-15s and ak-47s. >> so mike, is that where the american people?

is that too far? politically guns, there's huge movement on the gun issue, but does a mandatory buyback go too far? >> well, we'll find out, because beto is going to campaign on it. i think he and castro are in the same situation last night, they had campaigns running out of money, at 1 and 2% in the polls, so they both went for the risky move. castro managed to blow up both his presidential campaign, which was dormant, and his vice presidential campaign, by attacking the most popular candidate in the party. beto is breaking the rules of gun politics. maybe we're in a new era where those rules don't count anymore. but historically some gun control legislation like background checks, large capacity magazine bans, assault weapons bans, have been fairly popular particularly with swing voters. but beto is taken it to a step we've never litigated in a presidential election, which is

mandatory buybacks. i thought it was interesting that amy klobuchar, she always has her eyes on the general election, and she's from one of those midwestern states, minnesota, that is part of a reasonable th region that may pick the president. she knows that's a bad issue for candidate to get that far out. maybe we're in a new era. but it's not politically the safest issue to take into a general election, particularly in the industrial midwest. >> speaking of amy klobuchar, she did have her best debate yet. she didn't get as much time, she got about 10 1/2 minutes versus 17 to 18 minutes for the front runners. this is how she used it. >> when it comes to our health care and our premiums, i go with the doctor's creed, which is do no harm. while bernie wrote the bill, i read the bill. and on page 8 of the bill, it

says that we will no longer have private insurance as we know it. and that means that 149 million americans will no longer be able to have their current insurance. that's four years. i don't think that's a bold idea. i think it's a bad idea. >> so kimberly adkins, there was a clear schism between elizabeth warren and bernie, talking about medicare for all, and biden, klobuchar, buttigieg, who are trying to carve out a more moderate candidacy that might be more appealing in the general election. >> yes, i think there are two things happening here. in the primary, we see the division among democrats, some of whom really want to shake things up and reinvent the system from the bottom up, whether it's the type of gun

policy that beto o'rourke was proceedin proposing, to health care, which is a clear delineator there. you see others that say, hey, i want to go back to the clear, steady leadership that existed before the trump administration and aren't necessarily as interested in blowing everything up, they want to see obamacare work. that's the distinction that senator klobuchar was really trying to make, and also, as you said, have an eye on the general election. keep in mind that the trump campaign was literally flying a flag of socialism a isism over them. no matter who emerges as the winner of this primary, president trump will tag them as too far left, as socialists who want to take your guns away. klobuchar and some of the others are trying to guard against that now as best as they can. >> and there were also some moments with joe biden, even though he had a better

performance than before, in answer to a question about segregation and what has happened as a result of segregation to, you know, large communities of color, he had a, let's say, rambling response that did again perhaps play up the age issue. let's watch. >> make sure that every single child does in fact have three, four, and 5-year-olds go to school, not day-care, school. we bring social workers into homes and parents and help them deal with how to raise their children. it's not they don't want to help. they don't know quite what to do. play the radio, make sure the television -- excuse me, make sure you have the record player on at night, the phone. make sure the kids hear words. >> garrett, that was a word salad if i ever saw one. and to some ears it was patronizing to talk about the social workers going into homes. and where did he get the record

player from? >> well, look, my 29-year-old brother owns a record player and he loves it. we all got baggogged down when heard that answer, it's a shambles of an answer. you said it, andrea, not me. especially as it relates to the original question about addressing racism, the answer was kind of a shambles. i did see and hear from people who found that answer to be patronizing and not exactly indicative of someone who is comfortable talking about race and racial issues in a broadway. i mean, this is core to the democratic party now, motivating younger african-american voters is essential to this. biden's numbers have been rock solid with african-american numbers, so perhaps this won't matter. especially if you sit down and look at the transcript, you think, i'm not sure what question this would actually be a good answer to. it certainly wasn't one to the question that was posed to him.

>> and there was a moment or several moments, i should say, at the end of the debate, in talking about resilience and issues that they had overcome, i think all of the candidates said things that were so moving, but one was really historically significant and that was mayor pete buttigieg. watch. >> i came back from the deployment and realized that you only get to live one life and i was not interested in not knowing what it was like to be in love any longer. so i just came out. i had no idea what kind of professional setback it would be, especially because, inconveniently, it was an election year in my socially conservative community. what happened was that when i trusted voters to judge me based on the job that i did for them, they decided to trust me and reelected me with 80% of the vote. >> steve kornacki, this was so different from anything we had heard before from a candidate in

a national debate. it was so moving. and so authentic. clearly this is a such a talented young political leader if not for this campaign, for some future role. >> yeah, no, i think that moment too reflects that broader topic there of gay rights and how dramatically public opinion has drifted on that, in recent years, in recent decades. 2015 was the supreme court ruling, this is the second presidential campaign since that happened. this is sort of a new reality of american politics that you're sort of seeing for the first time there. for buttigieg, he's doing better than i think anybody would have ever expected the mayor of a city of 100,000 people would do. i think the challenge for him is his support seems to have hit a wall in the last few months. the question is can he expand it outside of more of the higher income college educated, what they call the wine track, can he expand it to the beer track. >> he's raised a lot of money,

he can keep going. thank you very much, great to see all of you. coming up, the waiting game. andrew mccabe's plea to avoid criminal charges is rejected. will the grand jury indict the former fbi deputy director? his lawyers are asking for answers today. stay with us. we'll have the latest right here on "andrea mitchell reports" right here on msnbc. at fidelity, we believe your money

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be running into trouble in its efforts to indict former top fbi official andrew mccabe after calling back a grand jury on the case this week and not taking action yesterday. today mccabe's lawyers have written to the prosecutors asking whether that grand jury rejected their bid to indict. that would be highly unusual. mccabe's lawyers say if that is the case, the government should not keep trying, given the longstanding rule that prosecutors should only take a case to trial when they have a reasonable chance of success. president trump has beenvil vi y vilifying mccabe for months and mccabe was fired days before receiving his pension for decades of service. he had reportedly misled investigators for talking to reporters. joining me, chuck rosenberg, former assistant u.s. attorney, and maya wiley, senior vice president for social justice at the new school and msnbc legal analyst. chuck, obviously you know andy

mccabe. how unusual would it be for a grand jury first of all to say to a prosecutor when we're always told, and the cliche is, grand juries will indict a ham sandwich, to say no? >> highly unusual, andrea. let me address the ham sandwich remark because that stinks a little bit. the reason grand juries often or almost always indict is because the standard in grand juries is probable cause, a relatively low standard in the low. prosecutors know they must have a reasonable probability of conviction in order to proceed. so a good prosecutor would never go to a grand jury with a bad case. a good prosecutor would go when she knew that she had more than she needed. and if you have more than you need, you certainly have at least probable cause. but for grand jury, if in fact this is what happened, to reject the government's indictment, highly, highly unusual. >> so maya, there are options, the prosecutors' options were to

go back to the grand jury again, try to get 12 out of 23, or to convene a new grand jury, dismiss this grand jury. could they be accused then of prosecutorial impropriety? what would be the standard here if they keep going at it and going at it? especially because this kind of charge, misleading them over leaks to a news reporter, could have been handled administratively, it didn't have to be a criminal case, right? >> correct. and i think your point, andrea, is that for the government to expend taxpayer dollars to try over and over again to get an indictment, in a case where typically what the department has done in a lack of candor case, that's what it's called in the inspector general's report, lack of candor, to do something actually that andrew mccabe had the authority to do, he did have the authority to essentially

confirm an investigation with "the wall street journal," we should remember that, that normally what would happen is a disciplinary proceeding internally that was more of an employment action. remember that andrew mccabe was both demoted and ultimately fired, and fired two days, as you said, before his pension. and donald trump tweeting that instead of robert mueller looking to him, he should be going after people like andrew mccabe while the department of justice is trying to decide what it should do. all of this, even before you get to the question of whether or not they should go for another indictment, we already had the question of, why? prosecutorial discretion is a very powerful form of discretion. chuck is exactly right that therefore, there are standards about how it's exercised. in this case, not whether andrew mccabe could have had disciplinary action taken against him, i don't think there's any question that there

were grounds for that. but they were taken. why is this criminal when we have a president who is very explicitly making political the decisions that prosecutors are making about what is a crime? >> how unusual is it that the president of the united states would be so vociferous about an fbi official, now a former fbi official, and that he would be fired on that timeline, denied his pension? and we should point out he is suing as well, chuck. >> that's right. so very unusual, and by the way, to maya's point, the notion that a president, any president, would weigh in on a particular case and call for particular outcome affects this in ways that some people may not think about, andrea. let me give you an example. the criminal justice system has to be fair but it also has to be perceived as fair. so it would, you know, hypothetically be fair to prosecute somebody for lying during an inspector general

report. it would never be perceived as fair if the president of the united states is weighing in on whether or not that person should be prosecuted. from the outset of this, once the president started to vilify andy mccabe, and his wife, by the way, it was so unseemly, it was so wrong, and frankly disgusting, this case should never have been brought. i hope it's true that the grand jury refused to indict, because the president tainted this process by calling for mccabe's prosecution. >> chuck rosenberg and maya wily, thank you so much. season 2 of "the oath" with chuck rosenberg is available this week, he sits down with 9/11 prosecutor rob spencer. li listen for free wherever you get your podcasts. coming up, president trump meeting with protesters as he visits baltimore for the first time since calling the city rat

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future of cities like baltimore that have been destroyed by decades of failed and corrupt rule. these are our great american cities and they're an embarrassment, what the democrats have let happen. >> president trump was in baltimore last night, his first visit since trashing the city as rat and rodent-infested. in a speech to the annual congressional republican retreat he did not back off his criticism of baltimore and protesters outside made it clear they are not backing off either. joining me now, eugene scott, "washington post" political reporter, and margaret carlson, columnist for the daily beast. margaret, this was an unusual speech, actually, from the president. there were some moments there. what were some of your highlights? >> there were protesters on the outside, there was great love on the inside, laughing at all his jokes, whether or not they were funny. and part of it, he was the 11th person at the debate, calling up the names he gives for people.

he was touting his tax cut, i'm going to give you a tax cut, you a tax cut, middle class a tax cut, on and on. and even revived pocahontas, which he hasn't done for a long time. also everything the democrats are talking about, he made fun of. the environment, he went after aoc. he said one thing that was kind of amusing, he went after light bulbs. that's now the new issue that points out how squishy democrats are. he's going to bring back old light bulbs, like this was what a president is elected to do. and he said, "they make me look orange, but they make you look orange too." >> margaret, this is of course an energy saving measure that was done under the obama administration, it's one of the rollbacks. let's play that. >> the bulb that we're being forced to use, number one, to me, most importantly, the light is no good, i always look orange.

and so do you. the light is the worst. >> so eugene, i don't know what we can make of this but it was an unusual moment, it was clearly counterprogramming for the faithful, but it was more than the faithful, there was the congressional republican annual retreat. >> absolutely, it was quite interesting, if you watch this speech, it was pretty identical to any speech that the president would have given at a campaign rally. the response was different because this was a different audience, yes, these are republican lawmakers who support the president in large numbers but it wasn't his base and it wasn't the energy we usually see from those types of gatherings. so one would have expected, i believe, the president to speak in a bit more detail about what he and his fellow policymakers were going to do to respond to the issues that the president, he himself sees when he looks at

baltimore, and he didn't do that. it's a reminder that the president promised in 2016, even 2015, to fix the challenges that exist across the country's big cities. but here we are a year from 2020, his reelection campaign, and he has not very often made it clear to say this is what i have done. he continues to say this is what i will do. and i think that's going to be a challenge for him as voters are looking for someone who will address the issues that he himself pointed out. >> and one of the other things that happened, margaret and eugene, is the president refusing to clarify his position on expanding gun background checks, after senior advisers presented him with various courses of action. what beto o'rourke said last night may have actually complicated this measure for the democrats on the hill who are trying to negotiate a deal, chris murphy, chris coons, now pat toomey has tweeted out that what beto had said has actually made it more difficult to get

consensus on the background checks. margaret, first to you. >> i'm sorry, andrea. no, i'm lost in the constitutional thing and the aspirations of, you know, beto o'rourke, democrats, and the country, if you look at the polls. when he said, of course we're going to take away your assault weapons, that's what people think, why do we have assault weapons? it's even more urgent than the background check because the assault weapons are the one consistent thing in all of these mass shootings. and if those weren't out there, even, you know, the people that trump says are responsible, which is people with mental health issues, wouldn't have a gun that could do the damage that these guns do. but if you're on the hill and you're looking at the constitution and you're looking at the nra and you see trump saying one thing but then the minute he talks to wayne la pierre saying something else,

you see the uphill climb that it is. >> margaret carlson, eugene scott, thanks so much to both of you. coming up, the apprentice. president trump says he has plenty of candidates to be national security adviser. that's next on "andrea mitchell reports" on msnbc. l reports" on msnbc. ♪

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easy gig. >> we have 15 candidates. everybody wants it badly, as you can imagine. and we'll probably next week sometime make that decision. a lot of people want the job. and we -- it's a great job. it's great because it's a lot of fun to work with donald trump. and it's very easy, actually, to work with me. you know why it's easy? because i make all the decisions and they don't have to work. >> what can you say? joining me is john ganz, former chief speechwriter for the pentagon, now with the university of pennsylvania. his new book is "white house warriors." and ben rhodes, former deputy national security adviser to president obama, now an msnbc political contributor. ben, you were a deputy national security adviser, it's an easy job because he made all the decisions, your job must have been harder because president obama didn't make all the decisions. >> i guess so. look, andrea, as someone who was deputy national security adviser for eight years, that is the

hardest job in the entire u.s. government. it's not just about making recommendations to the president's decisions. you're coordinating this vast apparatus at the state department, defense department, intelligence, security. you're also dealing with foreign governments. it's destabilizing to have four different national security advisers in three years. foreign allies don't know who to call. you can see that in the chaos around the world today. >> you're describing a collaborative process. i can think of brent scowcroft, i can think of others, democrats as well, and steve hadley among the republicans, who pulled people together, condie rice was a national security adviser. we had of course sandy berger and others, tony lake before him. and in your administration, you worked for several people. >> yes. >> and they held meetings. >> yes. >> they consulted, what does the state department want, what does the pentagon say about this.

the fact that these meetings weren't held -- now, john ganz, is the process broken, do we no longer have a collaborative national security team in the aftermath of bolton? >> absolutely. i think, you know, the trump administration suggests it's not a very hard job, the history that i write about in "white house warrior" suggesting that it's n it's not an easy job. running the machinery of meetings and memoranda, to pull the information to the president and pull his decisions down to government is a full-time job, it's more than a full-time job. it's not exactly a complicated job. it's writing, thinking, debating, all those sorts of things. but it is a hard job. and what's worrying about the president's comments suggests, number one, he hasn't learned that much about government in 2 1/2 years of being in office,

but his confidence has grown. this is not a man and not a president that sounds like he's really interested in a partner or really an adviser. he's looking for somebody to sort of pal around with and let him make all the decisions. >> and one thing that he did shoot down was the suggestion that mike pompeo would do both jobs the way henry kissinger did. the fact that mike pompeo will be the biggest person in the room, the survivor of the national security team, the one with most influence, who has managed the tightrope of getting his own way but making sure he's on the right side of donald trump, i don't know how you triangulate that, ben rhodes, this is part of what the president had to say last night, suggesting he will not do both jobs. take a look. >> i think he's fantastic but i actually spoke to mike pompeo about that, and he decided, and he and i -- i get along with him so well, we have a lot of the same views, and a couple of

little different views, but he likes the idea of having somebody in their with him, and i do too. >> you've got the most powerful secretary of state you've had in many years. >> you absolutely do, but in part, andrea, because he has had his own views malab ablleable t trump's. mike pompeo came in as this huge hawk, right? and now he's a point man in negotiations with the taliban, or chasing a meeting with the iranians, or, you know, even in north korea, reaching out to a dictator, kim jong-un. you see this schizophrenic foreign policy where nobody knows what trump is aiming for. he's been very belligerent, picking fights with allies, and now the china trade war is escalating, the dispute with north korea is escalating, now he wants to make deals, after

he's broken apart the iran deal and broken apart western alliances. they're seeking to resolve crises of their own making, without a functioning national security process that we talked about. so when you want deals, you need government that can implement them. we saw with the taliban talks falling apart, we see them chasing this deal with the iranians now, they're incapable of actually implementing a desired diplomatic agreement because they've broken the state department, they've broken the national security council. >> john ganz, this is exactly what you get when you don't have people weighing in and weighing the different equities before you reach a decision, when you have announcements of syrian withdrawal on twitter without the defense secretary knowing. >> absolutely. i think the little interlude when there was a possibility that president trump was going to name mike pompeo national security adviser, number one, credit to him, it would have been a mad mistake, and

secretary kissinger knew after reflecting on it that it was too hard to do both those jobs. the idea of even flirting with the issue suggests that donald trump doesn't really trust government. he only really trusts mike pompeo and a few others. when you don't have trust, you can't have conversations about the hard decisions and share the information you need to make the hard decisions about national security, about all the issues ben mentioned. >> john ganz, thank you so much, great book, thank you for being with us today, ben rhodes, thank you as well. a same-sex couple is suing the state department, trying to keep their daughter in the u.s. you're watching "andrea mitchell reports" on msnbc. c. memory su. you can find it in the vitamin aisle in stores everywhere. prevagen. healthier brain. better life.

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the couple joins us now with their two children and the kids could not be cuter. thank you so much, congratulations on the new baby. first, tell us, when did you first learn that your infant daughter, she's 6 months old now, does not have birth right citizenship because her sir surrogacy was out of the country. >> the first time is when we applied for her passport in los angeles. we went to the passport agency office, we submitted the application, we submitted our marriage certificate. we got married six years ago in california. we submitted our u.s. passports and all the information that is expected from us. and surprisingly, the officer wrote surrogacy on our application. and since then, it's just been a

chase of us trying to get a reply from the state department. >> what is the risk here? are you afraid that she could be deported and taken from you? >> we're confident the law is on our side. the law is very clear. the problem is flawed discriminatory policy by the state department. one of the reasons we are confident is a judge ruled in favor of us in similar plaintiffs earlier this year. where he a family just as much as yours. we held our daughter first the moment she was born and we gave her first feeding and sleep was on our chests. we gave her, her first baths. we are family by any definition. we refuse to let anyone, any government officials to tell us otherwise. >> thank you for having us on the show. >> thank you.

>> you guys looked great. >> this is ongoing marriage authority. >> if they were not a same-sex couple and had done surrogatcy n canada, this would not be an issue? >> that's right. the government's position is unattendable. we have two dads who are married and both citizens. the idea their child is born out of wedlock is absurd. >> in fact, you have not married for several years now. you got two children and how do they rationalize this decision or this policy? >> i can't explain the rational. we see it as a single

discrimination as our lbgtq family. the department is treating us as a non-family and treating us as not as a married couple and to say that our child was born out of wedlock is just cruel. >> and louie, tell me about how she's doing. she looks great. >> she's wonderful. she loves her brother. he loves her, kiss your sister. they get along great. she's doing what every baby is doing. we want to be doing what parents of her age should be doing. we already worried our daughter being sick and our daughter not eating and what we don't worry about is being discriminated against by the government when you walk into the u.s. passport agency office. that's not something you would expect, right is this that's not where you want to focus our energy. we want to focus it on this.

>> all of that. >> she's not happy of the state department either. >> it is a lovely family, thank you all and aaron morris, thank you for your advocacy. >> the army men toys are getting an update thanks in part of a six-year-old girl in arkansas playing her favorite toys one day, she noticed none of the men were women. she wrote a letter. >> why do you not make girl army men? i will play with them everyday and my friends would, too. thank you. >> thank you because it turns out the head of the company, jeff imo had been working on what he calls the plastic army women's project with a prototype gun. the green army women will be available by christmas 2020.

you go girl! coming up next, desperate measures, felicity huffman will learn her fate this afternoon from the college scandal. you are watching "andrea mitchell reports" on msnbc. mitchell reports" on msnbc complicated. but you're not mad, because you're trading with e*trade, which isn't complicated. their app makes trading quick and simple so you can strike when the time is right. don't get mad, get e*trade and start trading today. but we're also a cancer fighting, hiv controlling, joint replacing, and depression relieving company. from the day you're born we never stop taking care of you.

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sentencing. huffman pleaded guilty admitting she paid 15,000 to boost her older daughter's sat scores. more dozen parents are set to be sent. actor lori loughlin continues to fight her charges. miguel almaguer is live outside the building. >> reporter: prosecutors said felicity should spend a month in prois s prison. it is up to the judge to decide. she's waying thoeighing those o. prosecutors are recommending a month in jail. she's hoping for probation, a fine, supervised probation and as well as community service, it will be up to that judge to see

what happens. the crowd here is getting much bigger. there is no sign of huffman, her hearing is not until a few hours. we expect for it to last 20 or 30 minutes then she's able to leave the courthouse here whether she will be given prison time or not. she won't be sent directly to prison. many experts believe she will get away with probation, it is the judge's decision, we still don't know yet. andrea. >> how many parents were involved in all of this? >> reporter: there were 51 people charged. many of those, dozens of parents but also several coaches who took bribe from the scandal. many of the parents here pled guilty while a few like lori loughlin is still fighting her case. miguel almaguer, it is going to be a busy courthouse. >> thank you for watching "andrea mitchell reports," remember for follow us online

and here is stephanie ruhle. >> great to have you in new york. it has been a long week. hello everybody, it is friday, september 13th, coming up this hour on "velshi & ruhle," what's next to the democratic candidate after last night's big debate. we have the strongest moments and the biggest issues aplus, trillion with a "t" deficit. what it means for you and your money. the bahamas now bracing for another major storm. we'll look at what the islands can expect just after hurricane dorian devastated the country. we should be paying attention to this one, too. we got to talk to the democratic presidential candidate back on the trail today after a night of debate arguing and attacking. the top ten polling candidates took the stage together for the first time. at times, the debe