are similarly situated need justice. don't try and distract from that point. that does it for me. thanks for watching. i'll see you back here next saturday at 5:00 p.m. eastern. up next, "meet the press" with chuck todd. this sunday, president trump testing limits. his chief of staff mick mulvaney admitting a quid pro quo with ukraine. >> we do that all the time with foreign policy. i have news for everybody. get over it. >> stunning many republicans. >> i have no idea he said what he said. >> prompting mulvaney to deny his own words. and blame a media witch hunt. >> i think he clarified his statement to be very clear. >> plus, turkey, syria, and the kurds. president trump's green light to turkey. >> the kurds are much safer right now. >> leads to a bipartisan condemnation by the house. >> the yeas 354. the nays are 60. >> angry meetings with democrats

>> he just couldn't handle it so he engaged in a meltdown. >> and an agreement to push out the kurds hailed by the president. >> a great day for the kurds. really a great day for civilization. >> and criticized by many republicans. >> what we have done to the kurds will stand as a blood stain in the annals of american history. >> my guest, former republican now independent congressman justin amash of michigan, and brett mcgirt, who ran policies for presidents obama and trump. >> also, the democratic race. >> your signature is to have a plan for everything except this. >> i'll talk to mayor pete buttigieg who just had his most aggressive debate performance yet. joining me for insight and analysis are dan balz, danielle pletka, joshua johnson, and betsy woodruff swan of the daily beast. welcome to sunday. it's "meet the press."

>> from nbc news in washington, the longest running show in television history. this is "meet the press" with chuck todd. >> good sunday morning. this week, we saw president trump test the limits of his presidency, gambling on how much the public, his party, and the world can accept. at home, mr. trump tested the limits of how much the public is willing to believe. shortly after his chief of staff mick mulvaney said yes, of course, the president held back aid to ukraine as a quid pro quo, he had to revise and extend his remarks saying there was absolutely no quid pro quo. on chill, mr. trump tested the limits of what his party would accept. a majority of republicans joined democrats. and then after vice president pence announced a deal that was seen as a total capitulation to turkey, the president called it great someday for civilization. and over seas, he tested the world's faith in relying on america, as william mcraven wrote in an op-ed essay that was fairly powerful, if our promises are meaningless, how will our

allies ever trust us? in a sign of mr. trump's weakening position, apparently, there are limits. last night, he gave in to critics and reversed his decision to hold next year's g-7 summit at his florida doral resort. despite cracks in his support in washington, his approval rating remains resilience among republicans so far, as it has throughout other crises in his presidency, and his base is showing no sign that its patience is being tested yet. >> i took a lot of heat, even from some of our congressmen, even from some of our senators, but now they're all happy. >> that's not true. after a week of damaging impeachment depositions in congress, a much criticized so-called cease-fire in syria, and the admission of a quid pro quo in ukraine, the president's republican support in congress is showing signs of erosion. on monday, the president's former top adviser on russia testified that former national security adviser john bolton called rudy giuliani a hand grenade who is going to blow

everybody up. bolton describing giuliani's work in ukraine as a drug deal. on wednesday, the house voted 354-60 to condemn the president's syria policy. a stinging bipartisan rebuke. >> we ceded effectively syria over to russia and turkey. >> that afternoon, the president exploded in a closed-door white house meeting with democrats. after comments from speaker nancy pelosi. >> i have concerns about all roads leading to putin. that seemed to have angered the president. >> on thursday, the president's acting chief of staff, mick mulvaney, admitted what the president has long denied. >> there was no quid pro quo. >> no quid pro quo. >> no quid pro quo. >> but mulvaney said president trump did hold up military aid to ukraine to pressure its president to assist in a justice department investigation into the 2016 election. >> what you just described is a quid pro quo. >> we do that all the time with foreign policy. >> just hours after confirming

the quid pro quo, mulvaney walked it back. in a statement, there was absolutely no quid pro quo between ukrainian military aid and any investigation into the 2016 election. some republicans have defended the president. >> mick mulvaney clarified his statement to be very clear. >> but increasingly, there is skepticism and now criticism. >> you don't hold up foreign aid that we had previously appropriated for a political initiative. >> and the so-called syria cease-fire vice president pence announced that afternoon gave turkey what it wanted. at no cost. >> what we have done to the kurds will stand as a blood stain in the annals of american history. >> senator lindsey graham warns of ethnic cleansing and senate republican leader mitch mcconnell calls the president's policy a grave strategic mistake. while the majority of republicans continue to oppose impeachment, cracks are beginning to appear. >> does this rise to the level of impeachment?

i now believe that it does. >> very mindful of the fact that back in watergate, everybody said oh, it's a witch hunt to get nixon. turns out it wasn't a witch hunt. it was absolutely correct. >> and joining me now are nbc news foreign correspondent richard engle from northern syria, and brent mcguirk, the former envoy for the mission to defeat evi isis for presidents a and bush. >> yesterday, erdogan said about the pause, cease-fire, if it works, it works. if it doesn't, the minute 120 hours expire, we will continue where we left and keep crushing the heads of the terrorists. i know you have been in touch with the sdf commander in the ground there. in 48 hours is when this expires. what's going to happen? >> well, the commander told me he fully expects that the violence is going to resume because the kurdish forces here

led by the commander i spoke to and the turkish government which brokered a deal with the united states don't agree on the terms. they're talking about two different things. turkey says unless the kurds pull out of a very large area, they're going to restart the violence, but the kurdish commander says it's a much smaller area that he's talking about. so they're set up to resume a collision course. and while this is happening, there is ethnic cleansing under way. that is a very, very big word, but it is the only word we are hearing right now. already, a quarter of a million people have been forced to leave their homes. and the kurdish commander thinks once the turks restart this offensive, the rest of them are going to be forced out. >> brett, you just heard that record from richard. you have been to syria. you have been to where richard is at right now. ethnic cleansing is a strong phrase. is there any other way to describe it, though? >> well, first, where richard is standing, that is the heart of what used to be the isis

caliphate. it's important to remember why is this area important, why are we there? this is the headquarters of isis, the main supply routes for isis which came through turkey when they were enslaving thousands of women, holding slave markets to trade them around to different fighters. planning and plotting attacks against us in the united states and against our frndz in europe. that's why this is so important. erdogan by his own terms, i think we have to listen to what he's saying. he's saying that he is planning a safe zone and he has an agreement with president trump which runs 450 kilometers by 30 kilometers, which is the entire, from the ueuphrates river all te way to iraq and he will repopulate that zone with 2 million people and he claims that has been agreed to with the united states. u.s. officials describe it as a much more narrow area. and i think kurdish fighters will probably begin to pull out of that much more narrow area, but then to be replaced by these turkish-backed extremist groups who are responsible for war crimes and all sorts of other

atrocities. another reason why this is a real strategic debacle is that in 48 hours, the cease-fire ends, but also in 48 hours, president erdogan will be meeting with president putin in sochi. that is where the fate of the kurds, particularly in these areas like kaboni and others, which are majority kurd, there are other areas in the strip that are majority christian. and the fate of those areas, unfortunately, as we are evacuating our bases and ceding all of our influence, will be decided by president putin of russia. >> richard, the defense secretary announced earlier today on his way to i believe he's headed, we just found out he's in afghanistan, he announced that these troops are not coming home. they're going to be moved from syria to iraq, which actually already has some republicans who actually supported the withdrawal going, well, what's the point of this now if you're not even bringing them home? you're sending them to iraq. what are they going to be doing in iraq?

>> well, partly they're going to continue to fight against isis, but effectively what they will be doing is leaving their old friends, their old allies, the kurds, 2 million people who fought alongside of them, who supported them, who did not attack them here in northern syria. they will be leaving them to a broadened campaign of ethnic cleansing. now, brett was just talking about these extremist groups. they are fundamental to this entire equation. because there are about 10,000 of them, according to kurdish and u.s. officials, who are now operating in conjunction with the turkish government. it's not just that the turkish military, a nato country, is assaulting, has paused now, will soon assault again in 48 hours, it seems very likely, this area extremist fighters going house to house, killing people, terrifying people, putting out videos threatening to behead people. and that is why so many people

are already running for their lives, heading toward regime areas, heading toward the iraqi border, heading anywhere they can because they're afraid they're going to be slaughtered. >> brett, what is syria now? is it a full-fledged country? is it being carved up? is turkey annexing a piece of it? what is the future of syria here? >> well, it's always been one of the most complex situations. and the situation president trump inherited actually was on the road to some stability. and we executed a plan. and i served two years in his administration in which we defeated the physical isis caliphate and stabilized a third of syria. the rest of syria, most of it, is under the control of the assad regime, and then in northwest syria, another serious problem, that's where the opposition is, but also it's the dominant home for al qaeda in syria, the largest al qaeda safe haven really in the world. it's kind of in these three zones. the zone in the northeast was

pretty stable. and we had it about 2,000 american troops. it was peaceful. i used to go in there every couple months. what really, when this really started to get much harder is when president trump in december announced that he wanted to leave entirely. he then somewhat reversed that but cut the force arbitrarily by 50%. that sent the message to all the other players in the region here. to putin, to erdogan, to assad, that the americans want to leave. it also significantly decreased our leverage and influence to manage the situation. so it happened on october 6th in this phone call. the president just threw all of our leverage out the window. i'm afraid that now the future of syria will be determined by actors who are quite hostile to our interests, and that includes iran, assad, and erdogan, and putting 1,000 troops in western iraq is good because we want to help the iraqis, but it's not going to make a significant difference. one final point.

leaving syria cedes so much influence to our adversaries. it's ceded influence to iran. that's why we're seeing increased tension in the region and the president has sent 14,000 troops to the region since may. he can't tell his political rallies he's getting troops out of endless wars when he's sending 14 times the amount back into the region. >> an excellent point to end on there. brett mcgurk, the former special envoy who was essentially in charge of the isis policy for presidents obama and trump. richard engle in northern syria for us. richard, as also, stay safe out there. >> joining me is a former republicage, now independent member of congress, justin amash of michigan, who left the republican shortly after reading robert mueller's report on election interference. >> thanks for having me on. >> i want to start with the syria decision. you have a very principled stand when it comes to foreign policy. and you seem to be caught in

your own principles. you voted present because on one hand, you didn't think whave ev first place. on the other hand, you weren't comfortable with explain this conundrum for you. >> that's right. i don't think we should have been in syria without congressional approval. we never had congressional approval for the mission. i think the president should have withdrawn troops long ago. but when you withdraw troops. you have to plan ahead of time how to handle it. and he could have prepared in advance for the obvious consequences. he certainly knew what turkey would do. and then he acted surprises that they're coming in and committing acts of violence. i think you don't wait until after withdrawing the troops to make a plan to go pressure turkey to ease up and then call for a cease-fire. >> what can be done now? this feels like a chaotic situation. again, i know where you are philosophically, but what should we do now? >> i think it's very difficult to put it all back together.

you can't, i think, return the troops into the combat zone. i don't think that's feasible right now, and i defer to some military experts on that, but certainly, if you're going to put troops back in harm's way, you should get congressional approval. you should go back to congress and ask for approval from the american people. >> the president has talked about this as sort of, hey, he's fulfilling a promise. that he made that troops need to come home. do you believe people in michigan that voted for him will view this move as him fulfilling a promise, that he's bringing troops home from the middle east? >> i think there are people who support the president, who believes things he says. but it's pretty clear he's not bringing home the troops. he's just moving them to other parts of the middle east. >> you tweeted about that this morning. you're like, you said words versus actions. >> yeah, he's moving troops back into iraq. he's moving other troops into saudi arabia. and he's using our forces almost as mercenaries, paid mercenaries

who are going to go in and as long as saudi arabia pays us some money, it's good to go. what happened to the american people having their voices heard through their representatives in congress? we should make those decisions in congress. and frankly, we have been in the middle east for way too long. we have been in afghanistan for obviously way too long. and we should bring people home. >> if there was a vote right now in congress to decide it's time to open an impeachment inquiry, and i know there's still a debate about whether there's a vote or not, how many former republican colleagues do you think after this week's actions might actually vote with the democrats on that? >> i think maybe one or two. >> we may have heard one of them in there in francis rooney. >> yeah, but realistically, politics drives a lot of this. and representatives are elected every two years. and they hear from their constituents, and frankly, a lot of the republicans will be worried about primaries, and they think the president is popular within the primary electorate, and he is.

>> is this why you left the party? in order to stick to your principles you felt if you wanted to criticize the president and did it as a republic republican, you would have been voted out? >> i don't think so. i was comfortable sticking to my principles. they know i'm independent. they know i will do what i believe in and stand by, by what i said on the campaign trail. >> but you left the party anyway. >> but i have been frustrated for long time with the party system. i have been frustrated with the way washington works. i have been frustrated with the top-down approach to everything in washington, where a few leaders dictate everything to everyone. whether it's the president of the united states or the speaker of the house or the senate majority leader. we need to open things up again. >> all right. how can you do that, i'm curious, you left the party. what has that meant? does kevin mccarthy still talk to you? >> he talks to me, but not in a nice way. >> do you feel as if you can be effective? >> yes, i can be more effective. >> why? >> i can reach people on the other side of the aisle i

couldn't reach before. a lot of times -- >> but have you been rejected by your former members? >> no, actually, they're less frustrated in many ways because when you're a republican and you break from the party, they treat it like you have abandoned the family or something on a particular issue. so i can be more effective because the people in my former party are more respectful of my decisions now. they're more accepting of the fact i'm going to, you know, vary from their views on a whole bunch of issues. and then people on the other side of the aisle will be more accepting of me because they don't think i'm just going along with the republicans. >> is the house the most effective place for you to make your political arguments these days or is the senate or running for the presidency a better place? >> well, i think i'm very effective in the house. i think my constituents want an independent congressman. my support in the district has been great, as an independent. but we do need new voices on the national stage running for national office, including the presidency. i don't think that the current

democratic field is sufficient. if you look at the top three candidates on the democratic side, they're all over 70 years old. the president is over 70 years old. i think that there is a large segment of the population that's is not represented in the top candidates on either side of the aisle, and that's something i think about. >> are you concerned of what would happen if the president survived impeachment? meaning the house impeaches him and the senate acquits? >> i'm more concerned forward with impeachment. i think congress has so neglected checks and balances. over the years, the executive branch has become so powerful. we need to restore that power in congress. we need to restore separation of powers. and yeah, there are consequences to finding him not guilty in the senate, but there are consequences to not holding him accountable in the house. >> is there, i guess the fear, and i have heard he will think, boy, i'm untouchable. >> he's going to think that anyways. here's a guy who thinks nothing

matters. everything he does is applauded by people who are afraid of him, frankly, and you know, i don't think he's that concerned about it. >> what is -- what is it that you think that voters in michigan saw in him versus -- was it about him or hillary clinton? >> i think it was a little bit of both. you know, in my neck of the woods on the west side of the state, he wasn't that popular, but neither was hillary clinton. i do think that hillary, you know, upset a lot of people in the midwest. that she did not connect with them in a way. and she certainly connected with people in the northeast and on the west coast. but in places like the midwest, she didn't really connect. and people were drawn to donald trump because they thought she wasn't connecting. >> 100% you're running for congress or could you still run for another office? >> i wouldn't say 100% of anything. >> but there had been talk about a libertarian presidential candidate. >> i wouldn't rule anything out. >> justin amash, thanks for

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panel is here. joshua johnson on np. . danielle pletka of the american enterprise institute. betsy woodruff swan of the daily beast, and dan balz, chief correspondent for "the washington post." peter nicklaus wrote the following. the country is entering a new and precarious phase in which the central question about president trump is not whether he's coming unstrung but how unstrung he's going to get. the question is whether trump's base starts to noting or care that the man they elected, facing pressures he's never seen before, is devolving unmistakenly into a different sort of man. joshua johnson, it certainly feels like there's something different about the president this week, perhaps. >> not to me. >> yeah? >> people have been talking about whether donald trump is unraveling. i think he's just unwrapping.

there's nothing that we have seen this week that has not at peace with everything we have known about donald trump thus far. this is still the same person who has dealt in conspiracy theories including against barack obama who was in fact born in the united states. the same person who came to prominence through his reputation as a bomb thrower and a disrupter on this network, on the apprentice. this is the donald trump we have known kind of throughout. i don't know why washington has not learned the lesson that maya angelou tried to teach us. when people show you who they really are, believe them the first time. and i think what's more interesting whether or not he's unraveling, which he's not, is whether or not his base is going to start to move away or i would suspect this remains of a peace with the person they elected so i'm not sure this week for the base moves the needle. what may move the needle is the behavior and how congress may react to that that forces him in another direction. but this is him. >> let me put it another way. is this a week that republicans in congress started to get more

uncomfortable with him? >> i think there's no doubt about that, when you see the majority leader in the senate coming out to the president of the united states in the pages of "the washington post," yes, i think this is a real split. the question is, is if going to widen or is it just going to remain that way? and that in some ways it's up to the democrats. we have talked about this again and again. if the democrats end up with a far left set of choices then the republicans are going to stick with donald trump. if in fact it looks like there are other options. then maybe you start to see the split become wider. >> dan balz. >> i think that the last several weeks, i think since ukraine became the central issue. >> since the start of impeachment, essentially. >> i think we have seen a somewhat different donald trump. i take your point that donald trump is donald trump. but i think that there has been more sort of a sense of defensiveness, a franticness on his part. a kind of a sense of urgency on his part to keep his view pushed forward. i think it has manifested in a

variety of ways. we have seen it in the tweets. we have seen it in oval office sprays, we have seen it in the south lawn, we have seen it at the rally. he is feeling under pressure in a way that i don't think he felt quite as much during the russia investigation. >> at the same time, the shift in his impeachment conversation. the longer he's in office, the more comfortable he is going with his gut. following his instincts, and jettisoning what his advisers tell him. the turkey decision was the perfect encapsulation of that. we saw him withdraw u.s. troops without any credible plan from his team, it appeared there wasn't much of an infrastructure in place to do that successfully, and it's really significant not just because of this trend line but also because of how it impacts his base. a really important subplot of the last two weeks that's gotten lost because the last two weeks were so crazy, was the extent to which franklin graham, the son of billy graham, and a really influential evangelical

christian leader was part of the conversation about syria. once the president announced the decision to pull troops back, graham actually urged his followers on twitter to pray that trump would change his mind because of the christian communities in northern syria who the kurds protect. when mike pence, who would be close with graham, close with the evangelicals, negotiated the cease-fire, if we'll call it that, in turkey, graham said it was great and came out in support of it. >> so it didn't take much. i'm curious what you guys think of the doral decision now overnight. because look at this. it feels as if maybe he actually got buzzed by the electric fence for once. there were members of congress criticizing him who we had not seen criticize him. mike simpson, you have to go out and try to defend him. i don't know if i can do it. i don't know if the optics are good, said the south carolina republican. tom reed of new york, this is a legitimate criticism. i understand the arguments

others are going to make, but as a floridian, you know, i think it was good for florida to have that event. >> that's such a florida thing to say. >> it was. rick scott didn't even hand wring. he just said there's no conflict, bring it to florida. he knew he was putting too much pressure on his own party. >> he was putting too much pressure on his own party, and i said this to you before the show, this is not just corrupt. this is like south florida corrupt. this is corruption -- >> you're taking those tweets today, brother. >> you know what, look, i covered south florida for a very long time. you and i both know that region has dealt in an array of very open, naked, almost brazen corruption. >> pay to play is sort of the first line. >> the idea that the president would deal a federal contract to himself is unlawful. doral is a bad place to hold this event. it's right under the flight path of mia, surrounded by univision, carnival cruise line, the miami herald. it's inland. it's surrounded by property. you can't buttress it on one side with say water, which is what is often done at g-7

summits. so it's a bad place. the idea this is the best place in the country to hold the g-7 is ridiculous. beyond that, i'm not sure the g-7 really cares that much because they have bigger things to worry about. this week, they were more concerned with facebook's cryptocurrency like raw and whether it would harm real currencies like the dollar or euro. it makes it more south florida corrupt, because at the end of the day, it may not matter that it happened at all. >> i wonder. donald trump is so adept at throwing stuff out to distract you from what happened last week. we talked about this again and again. none of it can remember what the outrage of two weeks ago was because he picks another one. i wonder maybe he dids this on purpose because it seemed so ridiculous. it seemed to confirm every single thing everyone had said. >> what was weird was the motive to send mick mulvaney out there. >> to me, it was inexplicable, but it did deflect fire onto

mick mulvaney. acting chief of staff. >> they always insist on calling him acting. >> i guess i would disagree with you slightly by the idea that this administration has never seemed to be that cleverly strategic in the kinds of things they do. it's chaotic in the way they operate. my sense on the doral decision is he's just got too many fronts he's fighting right now, and just take some of the pressure off, back away. and give his republican friends or allies or critics an opportunity to say, well, he did the right thing. >> the mulvaney press conference was truly one for the history books. and for people outside the white house, many of his close allies, even before he got to the quid pro quo part, there was a lot of head scratching about the fact that the white house would have a press conference to brag about this particular situation, the same week when they have spent tons and tons of air time complaining about the biden family, because of this focus on how self-dealing the trump administration was arguing, was inappropriate. it was a weird call and obviously did not go the way they hoped. >> it was. and as everybody knows, mick

mulvaney did not make that decision by himself. >> when we come back, democratic presidential candidate pete buttigieg. but as we go to break, a word about congressman elijah cummings who died this week at the age of 68. the son of a sharecropper, he became a lawyer, a baltimore congressman, and one of noes powerful democrats in the country, but he was also that rare figure in current day washington, a man who sought to build, not burn bridges between people of opposing viewpoints. when president trump's personal lawyer michael cohen testified before congress, cummings reminded us all of his humanity, faith, and grace in america. >> when we're dancing with the angels, the question will be asked, in 2019, what did we do? to make sure we kept our democracy intact? did we stand on the sidelines and say nothing? that i can get.all the s at liberty butchemel...

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juul took $12.8 billion from big tobacco. markets e-cigarettes with kid friendly flavors and uses nicotine to addict them. 5 million kids use e-cigarettes. juul is "following big tobacco's playbook." and now, juul is pushing prop c to overturn e-cigarette protections. vote no on juul. no on big tobacco. no on prop c. welcome back. pete buttigieg burst on the democratic primary scene with a gusher of good press and campaign contributions. after the impressive start, he did fall back into the second tier of candidates. but in tuesday's debate, the south bend mayor tried to regain the initiative with a more aggressive approach. >> we heard it tonight. a yes or no question that didn't get a yes or no answer. your signature, senator, is to have a plan for everything.

except this. >> i don't need lessons from you on courage, political or personal. >> you can put an end to endless war without embracing donald trump's policy. >> will you end the regime? >> and mayor pete buttigieg joins me now. >> thanks for having me. >> before we get to the campaign, i want to start with the current situation in northern syria. you may inherit a situation if you're president where the turks have this sort of uneasy oversight over northern syria. the kurds are a bit displaced. we have multiple nations in sort of with troops in syria. what do you do? what do you do now? we know what you wouldn't do? i understand that. what do you do now? >> things are going to evolve in so many different ways that it's hard to gauge the future except for this. we know we need to promote stinlt. we need to stand by our allies and there will be legitimate turkish security concerns that will also be part of the equation. right now, what's happening is the future over there is being

decided by everybody but the united states. russia, iran, turkey, and we are nowhere because american leadership has been withdrawn. and the implications of this aren't just the regional security picture in the middle east. it's the credibility of the united states ourselves. and the first order of business will be to restore u.s. credibility, not just with regard to the middle east, but globally. >> the first -- one of the first relationships that might need reorienting, is turkey. does turkey belong in nato? >> what we know is that they are not behaving in a way that's consistent with stability, and i think if they continue to behave in this way, there have to be consequences. >> a suspeng or kicking out some form of suspension from nato one of those consequence snz. >> right now, what we have to do is engage turkey as an ally. i served alongside turkish troops in afghanistan. it's leverage for us to make sure that we use our influence to prevent bad outcomes like the one that donald trump green lighted that they're doing right now. if they don't act like an ally

in the long run, that's going to have consequences. >> i want to ask you about afghanistan. peter barnhart reacting to your debate performance, and he writes this. over this headline. democrats are hypocrites for condemnic trump over syria. if trump's unilateral nonnegotiated withdrawal from syria makes it hearter for buttigieg to look afghan allies in the eye, the same could be said for what the democratic candidates are proposing in afghanistan itself. is there a lesson to be learned about the lesson in afghanistan? >> the lesson validates my position. what i said about afghanistan is where we need to get to, and by the way, it will involve negotiations, not a unilateral nonnegotiated withdrawal. we have to get a light footprint presence of counterterrorism, specialized special operations troops and whatever intelligence capabilities we need to protect the homeland and know more. >> in your mind, for the

foreseeable future, we're going to have am force in kabul. >> the way to end our unending massive ground troop presence here is to have this other footprint in the median term. that's exactly what we had in syria. a matter of just a few dozen troops, special operators in just the right places. making it possible to prevent the dissent into chaos we're seeing now. what was withdrawn from syria is exactly the sort of thing that if we had it in afghanistan would prevent endless war of the scale we're seeing now. >> one of the criticisms you and others have leveled is that the president is not respecting sort of deals that america has made. we're walking away from the kurds in particular. this is this part is un-american. how constrained are you going to feel by deals that president trump cut? because on one hand, you've got to restore faith among folks around the world that when you cut a deal with america, america will stick by it. but if you don't like a deal

that president trump cut, what are you going to do? >> make a better deal. >> sound like president trump. >> what president trump does is wake up in the morning, have a phone call, or maybe a tweet, and completely change years or even decades of u.s. policy, surprising his own generals and country in the process. that's not how this works. if we think that there is a commitment, a treaty, or a deal that we can improve on, we go to the table and we make it happen. but the credibility of the united states is something that our lives depend on. and when the president undermines it with things like the action in syria, that is going to cost us for years and years. we have got to be a country known to keep its word. >> let me move to the debate in the back and forth in particular you had with senator warren. you were pretty tough on her and her inability to tell you how she's going to pay for her medicare for all plan. you have been pretty evasive on how you're paying for yours. you said it's going to be cost savings plus corporate tax reform. but you haven't said much after that. what are some details on how you're paying for your medicare for all who want it.

>> we score it out as $1.5 trillion over that period of time. the vast majority of that can be recovered by rolling back the corporate tax rate cut portion of the trump tax cuts. >> so it will go from what to what? >> that will take care of the 1 $1.4 trillion. >> you want to roll back the entire corporate tax cut? that's easier said than done. >> governing is easier said than done, but we have a responsibility to make sure that dollars that have gone to line the pockets of people who didn't even need it are instead going to make sure that the american people can get health care. now, just to give you a full mathematical answer, that's almost enough to deliver what i say that we need, but there's a little more we're going to recover through the savings to the government from my prescription drug plan because when we allow the government to negotiate drug prices, that actually leads to a return to the treasury. so the bigger point here is my plan is paid for. and we have an opportunity to get everybody health care without kicking people off their private plans, and without the

multitrillion dollar hold that appears to be there unexplained in senator warren's plan. >> before i let you go, i'm curious if you had reaction to former secretary of state hillary clinton implying that congressman tulsi gabbard might be a russian asset. >> what i'll say is that i'm not going to get into their dispute. what i will say is we know right now -- >> is that appropriate? >> well, i suppose when you become a private citizen, you can say whatever you want. >> she was a sitting member of congress, she served. >> under her service, as we saw in the debate, i also have strong disagreements with her on topics like syria, but the bigger issue here is russia is working to interfere with our elections right now. and we know a big part of how they're going to do is exploiting divisions among the american people with their information operations. we've got to become a harder target, and as president, i will make sure using all of our tools, diplomatic, economic, and security, that there is enough

deterrence, that russia or any country would never again calculate that it's in their interests to mess with our democracy. >> i just wonder if you're comfortable -- i mean, throw a charge out there making her deny it. that's a trumpian move. >> well, we have to focus on the task at hand right now. and that includes making sure that this presidency comes to an end. that is my focus. that and what happens after this presidency comes to an end. >> so you're comfortable with hillary clinton's critique of tulsi gabbard and how she went about it? >> no, i'm not, but i'm also not going to get in the middle of it. >> pete buttigieg, the soon to be former mayor of south bend. got another ten more weeks. stay safe on the trail. >> good to be with you. >> when we come back, how the nba is hardly alone among u.s. businesses being very careful about criticizing china's human rights abuses. see if you can guess why.

welcome back. data download time. politicians on both sides of the aisle have been grandstanding in their criticism against the nba in recent weeks for allegedly placing dollars over human right in china. it happened after the general manager of the houston rockets tweeted support for the hong kong protesters and then felt pressured into apologizing. but the numbers explain why the league cares so much about china. and why so many other american businesses should be breathing a sigh of relief that it's the nba taking the arrows publicly right now and not any of them. last season, roughly 800 million

people in china watched an nba game. that's more than twice as many people as there are in the united states. and the nba is a stand-alone business is estimated to be worth more than $5 billion in china. but the league is not alone. there are hundreds of companies here in america with ties and deep roots in china. everything from amazon to westinghouse, and they have largely escaped scrutiny these past few weeks. start with general motors. the big detroit automaker currently involved in contract negotiations with the united autoworkers. the contract story is a big one here, but in reality, there are 9,000 more gm workers in china than there are uaw workers here in the states. and then there's nike. the company has about 5400 employees here in the united states. just over 40 factories. compared with 145,000 employees in china at over 100 factory said, according to its website. what's more american than kentucky fried chicken? well, you count restaurant

locations, the c in kfc may stand for china now. as of late june, there were more than 4,000 kfc locations in the united states and more than 6,000 in china, according to the fast food chain's parent company. look, while it's fair to criticism the nba and its stake in china is no different than that of many, many other american businesses in this country, so politicians who are grandstanding about this issue might want to look in the mirror and decide why their outrage appears to be so selective and why so many companies can legally do what they are doing. >> when we come back, exactly what did hillary clinton mean when she suggested a democratic candidate was backed by russia and being groomed as a third-party candidate. end game is next. puberty means personal space. so sports clothes sit around growing odors.

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back now with end game to try to figure out hotd front-runner for the democratic party is, sometimes you should ask the candidates running for president. i think that's a good way of putting it. if you just ask the candidates, they told us who the front-runner was. take a look. >> we heard it tonight. a yes or no question that didn't get a yes or no answer. >> i appreciate elizabeth's work, but, again, the difference between a plan and a pipe dream is something that you can actually get done. >> i went on the floor and got you votes. i got votes for that bill. i cop vinced people to vote for it so let's get those things straight, too. >> elizabeth warren, the democrats think she's the front-runner, not joe biden anymore.

>> she's the person who has been rising in the polls and who is roughly even with vice president biden and is moving in iowa, good organizations, has run a very disciplined campaign. in that debate there are questions that she has to answer that she's unwilling to answer. those aren't going to go away. she's going to have to figure out how to cut power through that. so far she hasn't been prepared to think about what she would do on that medicare plan. >> betsy, she didn't take the bait directly from anybody. she tried to brush it all off. >> that's right. she sort of always wanted to seize back the center of gravity in a way that provided her some protection but these attacks are only going to get more intense. now that she's the front-runner, she's going to be facing it not just from democrats but also from the president and his allies. that's something that's difficult for her. this week itself was pretty challenging for the warren campaign. she not only had the tough answer in the debate where she didn't give a clear explanation of the pay fors for the health care plan, but on top of that,

alexandria ocasio-cortez and others endorsed bernie sanders. that's a big loss for warren. >> what does it say about biden? >> i think and i've said this before. i am viewing the field right now like the democratic candidates are the avengers and joe biden is robert downy jr. he's the one you can bank on. i'm not convinced he's the front-runner in the sense of getting the most fervent response where people are like, yes, i want you to lead the country. you have one or two ideas that i'm so passionate about. he's the one that's so bankable. he has the barack obama halo around him understandably. he's the defak foe leader right now. i think in a way it's great for democratic voters. if there's one thing that democratic voters said in 2016, they don't like being told who the front-runner is supposed to be. if we're going on enthusiasm, andrew yang has a tremendous center of gravity. he's getting ignored.

democrats are like, no, no, no, we like this guy. the fact that the front-runner keeps moving, it means they are still driving the process. >> i think the biden campaign likes that. >> i like that analogy. robert downey jr. looks old. i'm sorry. please don't hate me. >> he's still a bankable star. >> he's not -- i don't see joe biden being able to take this back from elizabeth warren. maybe they'll start changing around and get back to the top of the batting order with him. he doesn't have what it takes, he's shown in fund-raising and in own fundraising, he doesn't have it. >> does buttigieg -- if there's anybody in tier 1a, dan, not in tier 1, sort of in front-runner purgatory maybe. >> he's moved in iowa into a place where you could envision him in the top three by the time this ends. and maybe the top two if biden were to fall significantly, but

i'm not predicting that frankly. but i think that what we've seen with him is he has clear campaign skills but we don't know whether he has a low ceiling. >> right. >> this question of can he expand beyond that kind of well-educated white electric. >> i'm going to move to the bizarre hillary clinton attack that's seen on tulsi gabbard. >> i think they've got their eye on somebody who's currently in the democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third party candidate. she's a favorite of the russians and that's assuming jill steen wi stein will give it up. >> a russian asset. tulsi responded, you, the queen of war amomongerers, tulsi gabb is on the verge of not making it into the next debate.

hillary clinton just gave her a life line. >> either hillary clinton has some very explosive information that none of the rest of the public has access to or she floated a conspiracy theory about tulsi gabbard claiming that someone who deployed twice, who joined the military is covertly being groomed by the russian government, that's a conspiracy theory. there's not public evidence for it. it's understandable gabbard would respond. gabbard is saying clinton was conspiring. this particular episode was -- >> joshua, criticize her for happening out with bashar al assad. none of this is fact based. >> not fact based and i'm just not sure, like you said, i'm not sure it was going to make a difference. if she said this about elizabeth warren, difference.

in the end this might not move the needle. >> weird side step especially when people are lecturing conspiracy theory in chief, donald trump. that's all i have for today. thank you for watching. the world series starts tuesday. our washington nationals are coming. we'll be back next week because if it's sunday, it's "meet the press." us. houston you have a problem, our washington nationals are coming. we'll be back next week. because if it's sunday, it's "meet the press." it's tough to quit smoking cold turkey.

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welcome to kasied.c. i'm ayman mohyeldin. the president hasn't played golf for two days in a row, the nationals are in the world series. things are a little weird in washington, d.c., tonight. in the news though, the next g-7 summit won't be at the president's struggling doral resort after all. can all of those world leaders and entourages get their deposits back. emphasis on the acting in acting chief of staff. mick