colleague alicia menendez in for nicolle wallace begins right now. ♪ hi, everyone. it's 4:00 in new york. i'm alicia menendez in again for nicolle wallace. as we monitor new indications that mitch mcconnell's partisan impeachment blockade might not be as insurmountable as once thought. republican senator lisa murkowski opening up a hairline fracture in mcconnell's firewall to be in total coordination with the white house on impeachment. >> in fairness, when i heard that, i was disturbed. if we are tasked as the full senate to do impartial justice under the constitution and the law, that's the oath that we will swear to uphold at the commencement of this proceeding. then, to me, it means that we have to take that step back from

being hand and glove with the defense. >> and it seems the holiday wasn't enough to distract trump from the impeachment process. look at his twitter account. the president is evidently consumed by it along with the democrats leading the charge. case in point, after a brief merry christmas tweet early yesterday morning, trump spent the rest of the day attacking nancy pelosi and his other political opponents, a trend that continued today, but it's more than just analyzing the president's mood on twitter. as greg miller of "washington post" writes, quote, the fallout of the impeachment battle extends far beyond trump's political survival in a senate trial. tensions have fed trump's belief that he is surrounded by disloyal subordinates and has fuelled animosity toward the supposed deep state. the idea that they can serve people of either party, a bedrock principle of the country's approach to foreign

policy since world war ii is under attack. joining us for all of that and more, nick confessori, political reporter for the "new york times." former senior adviser with the dnc, doug thornell, and republican strategist rick tyler. all right, nick. what do you make of those remarks from murkowski? >> i think that sometimes when a senator says they're concerned or they are worried, it's just a small thing, it's not really a major concern. i think in her case she is often the kind of senator who when she says she is concerned, she is actually concerned. and mcconnell saying i am hand in glove with the president is not going to work for everyone in his caucus. >> do you think he knew that? >> i'm not sure. and he must have because even beforehand you could hear noises from some senators on the right that they wanted the appearance at least of a real process, that it had to show some of their voters that they were taking

serious the charges against the president. and what has come out since then has just undermined that strategy for those senators, i think. >> betsy, do those comments from murkowski change the calculus for mcconnell? >> what's important about the comment that she made is that it could indicate there would potentially be republicans who would break with senate leadership, not looking at the overall vote on whether or not to remove the president but on many of the potentially smaller decisions the senate has to make as a body regarding which witnesses to bring in. the likelihood that the senate overall votes to remove president trump is, you know, maybe a hair bigger than zero. however, the likelihood that 51 senators vote to bring in a witness who mcconnell and the president himself don't want brought in is much greater than zero. and the fact right now that we have murkowski tell graphing publicly her frustration with the powerful leader of her party indicates perhaps that that

frustration is not limited solely to her. >> all right, doug, if you were chuck schumer and you were trying to get to 51 votes, how do you then capitalize on these comments from murkowski? >> symbolically they mean something because what we've seen in the house is total obedience from everyone, from the intelligence committee on to the full house. so you didn't hear many republicans at all breaking -- you know, saying anything bad about trump. but when you have lisa murkowski, and i would expect you may see someone like mitt romney as well, both of them aren't up for re-election in 2020 raising these cautionary flags. i think what you use for schumer is this is a rationale to have a fair, honest, and open trial where there can be witnesses called that, you know, that weren't allowed to be called by the administration in the house. i would think that the president would want his chief of staff and others who had first-hand knowledge to be able to

exonerate him but clearly is worried about that. but i think this gives schumer at least a rationale to say, look, we need to have a fair trial, we need it to be open, honest, we need to have witnesses. >> rick, do you think there is someone who follows murkowski? >> she is worried, as nick said, and she can make other senators worried, and one of the senators she likes to talk to is susan collins who is up for re-election and she should be worried. you can look at it as an incremental step. the first step is to get mcconnell to agree to witnesses, then witnesses will come. and then we will hear -- we'll have enough support for those witnesses to testify, and we'll hear what those witnesses have to say. that's a process for which minds get changed. think about it as a campaign. you are polling at 2 or 3%, and over time you make your case until you win. that is no different. >> do you think it is really about that senator to senator conversation between the two of them? or do you think it is about going home to their states, to

their districts, hearing from constituents, and that pressure -- >> it's both. because what happens is when they go home they hear from the district directors, here's a list of the calls you've been getting, here's the activity. and then they go to their campaign pollster who says this is what people think about it. and we already know that almost 70% of the american people want to see witnesses called. they want a fair process. and part of that process is inconceivable to people that you wouldn't have people who haven't formerly testified or you haven't heard from them at all because president trump is blocking them, that they should come forward, they have first-hand accounts, but it is a political process. it's voters first. then they talk to each other and say, yeah, my voters are saying the same thing. >> do you want to jump in? >> i just think that trump wants hunter biden in handcuffs in the well of the senate. that's his idea of the trial. i think most people in this party understand, in the senate at least, understand that it

would not be helpful for him to have more information, more witnesses, and more documents. so it's in their interest to have a straight-ahead trial. >> let's say there are 51 votes, they get to call witnesses. what does it look like to have pompeo or giuliani testify? >> that's certainly something that is very unlikely to be helpful for president trump. if pompeo had access to information that would have benefitted the president, the likelihood that it would've found its way into the public discourse through one method or another is fairly high. remember, rick perry gave an on-the-record interview to the "wall street journal" shortly before some of the depositions in congress happened, sharing information that he clearly believed was helpful to the trump administration. if pompeo had evidence that was exculpatory, it's likely we would know about it thus far. and of course giuliani is a topic in and of himself, just about every time he goes on tv or sits for an interview, he says something that creates huge headaches for the white house. so for either of those guys to go in is unlikely, to put it

diplomatically, to be something that would be strategically useful to the white house. the two biggest outliers, the two most important voices we haven't heard from yet, most likely, of course are mick mulvaney who was totally in the thick of this entire situation and john bolton, the former national security adviser who has intimated that he had extensive visibility into the ukraine story. either of those guys coming forward would be an enormous coup for democrats in the senate but would probably come after a lengthy court battle. >> i want to go back to something that we talked about in the open, which is this atmosphere coming out of the white house and this piece that we have from greg miller and "the washington post" who writes some of the responsibility for the mounting collateral damage falls on career officials and political appointees who took jobs in the administration despite deep objections to the president's view. these officials hoped they could steer the unconventional president who has an affinity for autocrats and an aversion to traditional allies. others came to see themselves as

doing damage control, taking advantage of trump's short attention span to advance their preferred objectives and counter what they regarded as his destructive impulses. their actions have fed the view among some republicans that impeachment is not just an isolated fight about trump's actions toward ukraine but also is an extension of a broader, unfinished conflict. i mean, are we really at the point where we're saying that the responsibility lies with career officials who are trying to do their job? >> well, i mean, that's where trump is trying to steer it. now the reality is, is whether they are career officials or political appointees, a lot of these people were hired by trump. putting themselves in the deep-state category, which is convenient for trump. he can make that argument that everyone is against him. but this is really a climate in the atmosphere that he's trying to generate across the whole country. >> which is just fear and intimidation of your opponents. these are career -- most of these career officials have been -- they have worked for

republicans and democrats. political ideology is not really something that they factor into their decision-making process. but trump is clearly using this to, you know, stoke his base, create this aura of, you know, everyone's out to get him. and it's totally unfair to these folks who are doing a pretty honorable thing by serving in this government. >> you had a smirk on your face when you heard deep state. >> yeah. i've heard deep state for a long time. there is some truth, and we can argue about, you know, how large a bureaucracy should be and what it should do and all that it encompasses. a but now it's conspiracy that, you know, the deep state, they all meet in secret and they go against their civilian elected leadership. it's just nonsense. and to the point that trump doesn't want to hear witnesses. i think it was 17 witnesses, i think all of them were trump appointees or appointees of

trump appointees. these are all trump witnesses. and they came out and look what happened. of course they don't want anybody else to testify because everything they said led to impeachment. >> i think the core point of that argument is that, in that's we talked about impeachment becoming a big part of trump's legacy, there is also the reality of the way in which this administration has changed our diplomatic apparatus has changed the state department. is that the real tragedy here? >> he has privatized the state department. he's fired, he kind of hasn't hired others. and as a result foreign policy, american foreign policy has been outsourced to business people, tunists and lobby lists. it's possible to have a foreign policy that is different, and he has the right to have that policy. what's happening here is he was against his own stated policy on ukraine. and so to blame the officials for trying to keep the policy

where it was supposed to go is strange to me. on the other hand, it's unprecedented to have the president himself freelancing the foreign policy. >> there's also the question though of how then you rebuild, if you have this moment of chaos, it is not as though once president trump leaves office, everything just goes back to normal, whatever normal was. there has to be a process for actually rebuilding these institutions. >> yeah. it starts by getting trump out of office. but, yeah, it's going to take a while to rebuild, not only our image across the globe where trump has done some serious damage, but also the confidence within the intelligence community. these were staples of the conservative of republicans for years in terms of defending the cia, defending the fbi. now there's a coordinated constant attack against their credibility, against their honesty, against the men and women who served there every day, in part, because trump doesn't like what they are finding, what they are discovering about -- he's just not -- and this goes into the

folks who are working as these career officials. he doesn't like the fact that, for example, everyone came to the same conclusion about russia that they meddled in our election. that doesn't fit his story line. so that's why he doesn't like a lot of these folks. so, yeah, i mean, look -- i don't know what more -- i mean, the answer is to beat him. >> betsy, i'm going to let you have the last word. i know you are following this impeachment story closely. where do you think it goes in the next few days? >> the big challenge is whether or not any other republicans start making the same type of noise that senator murkowski is making. i'm especially keeping an eye on cory gardner in colorado who has a really difficult re-election coming up. if there is any sort of telegraphing from his camp about frustration with the way mcconnell is handling this process, that's something that would have the potential to be quite meaningful. and, of course, be as usual, when there is anything controversial in the senate, it's always all eyes on susan collins. so keeping an eye on the two of them for sure. >> my thanks to you.

when we come back, just in time for the holiday season, how the trump campaign is getting their base on message. plus, is the democratic establishment ready to embrace bernie sanders? and will he embrace them back? and with impeachment consuming much of the president's head space, his top immigration adviser plows ahead with changes to remake america. all those stories coming up. what are you doing back there, junior?

since we're obviously lost, i'm rescheduling my xfinity customer service appointment. ah, relax. i got this. which gps are you using anyway? a little something called instinct. been using it for years. yeah, that's what i'm afraid of. he knows exactly where we're going. my whole body is a compass. oh boy... the my account app makes today's xfinity customer service simple, easy, awesome. not my thing.

as americans across the country gathered with family to celebrate the holidays, the trump campaign gave its supporters a toolkit, of sorts, for engaging those at the table.

a website snowflakevictory.com composed of bulletpoints and videos on a dozen issues ranging from the economy to trump and minorities to impeachment. the site's purpose, to arm trump supporters with talking points to take on their liberal relatives, or, as the trump calls them, snowflakes. the site had some basic republican positions like this one on health care. ask your relative if they like going to the dmv. now tell them to imagine the government controlling their health care system because that's exactly what it would be like. but some points were truly trumpian. president trump asked for nothing in exchange for lethal military aid to ukraine. impeaching president trump has always been an election tactic. democrats have never accepted the results of the last election, so they're trying to interfere with the next one. joining us at the table annette

lopez, a columnist with "business insider." and jenna johnson. all right, jenna, i want to start with you. what do those talking points tell you about the mindset of the trump campaign going into 2020? >> well, they're trying to be very careful about their messaging. during the last election, the president kind of said whatever he wanted and the message was whatever people might take away from that. the president still says whatever he wants. but the campaign is being very careful to really echo that messaging, to make very clear to trump supporters where the president stands and how they should talk about these things. and it was interesting to hear you read through some of those talking points. i was at the trump rally in michigan last week, and almost word for word those were some of the responses that i was hearing from some of the president's supporters when i would ask them

about impeachment or about different various things the president has done. >> so jenna is talking about message discipline. my question with those talking points are is it the campaign, taking the talking points of the president and putting them in a document, or are those actual calibrated campaign talking points that they want people using? >> you have to go to the dmv every ten years to get your photo taken in virginia. otherwise i've sold cars, renewed licenses, gotten the admission test online. it takes no time at all. so if we could have health care that'd be like that, it'd be terrific. i noticed they put the biggest snowflake on the front page, which is the president himself who can't take any criticism of himself whatsoever. and the other thing is they put out these sort of pat stupid arguments, if you actually got into the substance of discussions with your relatives, if you used their talking points, you would get creamed rhetorically. >> is that supposed to be a document is that is meant for

persuasion? or is that really just to rile up the people already -- >> i am glad that the gop saved christmas just in time for trump to ruin it to own the libs. like, perfect timing, christmas saved. now you can just completely screw it up. i don't think this is meant to persuade anyone. i think this is meant to cause division, just like everything else trump does. it's meant to create a line between these are the people who agree with me and these are the people who don't. now i know which family members i can talk to, who i can trust, who i can't trust. anybody who has read about the ukraine situation, nobody's going to hear that and think this is an informed person making decisions about our politics. they're going to hear this is a crazy relative who has been consumed by donald trump. and at least now you know. now you know who's crazy who's sitting at the table. >> i am shocked. i brought these talking points to family christmas and i totally won the argument. [ laughter ] i won when my entire family -- i got up from dinner -- picked me

up and threw me into the ocean, and that was the end of the conversation. >> and you're here. >> resilient. >> he is telegraphing to democrats what the talking points are going to be, which, theoretically, gives democrats an opportunity to prepare and go on offense. but how do you go on offense with these talking points? >> exactly. >> nothing is new. this is all the same stuff we've seen from trump. but what i think it reveals is that his campaign, he's not going to run a persuasion campaign. he's going to run a base campaign. that's what his entire administration is about right now and that's what his entire campaign is about. it's about -- firing up his base and turning out as many white working class males as he possibly can and noncollege educated white voters as he possibly can, and not even worrying about trying to persuade. that's what they're doing. they are spending a ton of money on digital strategy, and they're

not focused on persuadable voters. it's all base turnout. >> jenna, if that is true, and this is all about base turnout and they are not trying to persuade anyone, who then does the trump campaign want to see as the democratic nominee? >> uh, that's a great question. i mean, obviously the president is obsessed with joe biden and has long been very focused on joe biden. depending on who's up or down in the polls, you know, the answers to that can change day-to-day, week to week. but, like another thing with these talking points that we don't want to forget is -- i mean, this is a campaign that's really seizing on division in this country. i mean, this country is more divided than it ever has been before. most politicians will know that that division's out there, maybe subtlety do things that stoke it, let their surrogates and their supporters go at it. but this is a campaign that is,

you know, driving that division themselves. so if you think that going, you know, challenging your relatives over christmas dinner is something new, let's just try to think of what 2020 is going to be like. the democratic candidates that campaigns that i chat with, i mean, everyone is just kind of bracing themselves for next year. they really don't know what to expect. but they know it's going to be nasty. they know it's going to be divisive. >> you brought up joe biden so let's stick with joe biden. there is a piece in the "new york times" about republicans who might vote for joe biden. as voters at biden events jostle to take pictures with the former vice president and listen to him preach about national unity, they are often thinking about someone else, a dad, a neighbor, or a colleague. they consider the political leanings of people close to them who are uncomfortable with the most liberal presidential contenders but who hate the chaos of the trump era and are receptive to the kind of centrist, seasoned candidacy mr. biden offers.

this has been the core argument of the biden campaign, have we gotten to a point where he has won or lost that argument? >> it remains to be seen. but, yes, it is a return to normalcy. there is this huge mess, and i'm going to clean it up, i'm not going to put forward radical change, but i am going to put forward pragmatic change, whether that's health care with a public option. i am going to be able to restore our relationships overseas and bring us together domestically. and it's a pretty simple argument. again, he is not trying to be, go to the left of the party. he knows there's no space there for him. and it wouldn't really be authentic to who joe biden is. so he and his advisers are running a campaign that's based on who joe biden has been his entire career. >> but if trump is running a campaign based on division, does it then behoove joe biden to really run as the uniter in chief, to underscore a three-part message? >> look, if there's anything that i felt when i read this

snowflake website is exhaustion. the rage that people feel, even in the trump administration, the rage they feel towards libs or the rage they feel towards anybody else. how long can you sustain that kind of anger? how long can you really just dislike everyone around you? and i think that joe biden is kind of out there and he's saying, you know what, you don't have to hate everything. you can just be kind of mad about it. i'm not either this way or that way. you can be okay with other americans again. you don't have to hate them. >> at the same time that you have this argument coming from biden, you also still have the argument coming from sanders and this buzz from the "new york times" caught my eye. sanders has a strained relationship with the democratic establishment, which remains bitter over the division he and his supporters sowed after the 2016 primaries and chafes at his refusal to engage with the traditional party apparatus. yet in iowa and elsewhere, the tension with the party has served only to reenergize mr. sanders and his loyalists

who are faithful to him in a way that no other candidate supporters are. while backers of other democrats often list three or four contenders when asked to name their top choice, mr. sanders fans are unwavering. this is about the piece about the democratic establishment taking sanders seriously. what does it tell us that it is late december and this piece is being written? >> bernie sanders has a million donors. he's raised the second most amount of money, second to trump, over $70 million. he's remained relatively consistent in the polls. he recovered from a heart attack. he's been one of the more consistent debaters. if you look at statewide polls and national polls, he is somewhere between one, two, or three. and for him, if he's viable at 15%, which is what he's going to need to be in iowa and all the different counties across this country, he is going to accumulate a lot of delegates. he may not win the nomination, but he is going to accumulate a lot of delegates. >> first of all, do you agree

that that's where the establishment is that they are willing to admit that he may be the nominee? >> he may be the nominee. if you look at where he is in the polling, if you look at how he's doing with money, he's going to be able to stay in all the way to milwaukee because he's going to be able to raise money all day long. >> if you were bernie sanders, do you want the establishment wrapping their arms around you? certainly from an infrastructure vantage point you do, but in this primary, does it behoove him? >> it's certainly been good for his message and his campaign to be the president that's being dumped on by the media and the establishment. but the truth is you could have written this article at any time in the past eight months. it's well timed because the primaries are now upon us. but he has always been a frontrunner. and biden has led for most of the campaign. but the most enduring feature of this primary so far is how unchanging it has been with a few exceptions like warren rising. so, yeah, of course he could be the nominee. >> his favorables are very high as well. the problem sanders has is he has a base that holds to him in

the same way that trump does. that's not the problem. the problem is can he go beyond that base the way trump is not going to be able to go beyond his base. i think if you elect someone like sanders who represents a radical change in the economy, which, by the way, is by all metrics is going very well. you elect someone like that who wants to change the economy, you introduce a whole set of unknowns and i think that's going to be very difficult to bring those republican voters and now biden is talking about bringing over into his camp. i think it's a tough sell. >> the other advantage is that he has not necessarily had that moment on the debate stage where everyone has felt the need to rough them up. i wonder as everyone thinks as they read that piece if that's what we'll see at the next debate. >> we'll just have to wait and see. i think for the last few months there has kind of been this unspoken assumption in some of the other campaigns among some

strategists, even some voters, that bernie sanders wasn't going to be in this for the long haul, essential after that heart attack, people thought that that was it. and now here we are a little bit more than a month before the iowa caucuses. bernie sanders is still very much in this with a very loyal following. and so is joe biden. and people are realizing that they've been near the top of the polls for a reason. not just because they have name recognition but because there's voters out there who really like them and are going to stick with them. so we're going to -- i mean, we have, again, a little over a month till the iowa caucuses. who knows how this is going to shake out in that time. when we come back, it could be the single biggest factor in determining the 2020 outcome. can congress guarantee a safe, secure election free from outside meddling? we'll be right back. >> right now russia's security services and their proxies have

geared up to repeat their interference in the 2020 election. we are running out of time to stop them.

it is a matter of fact that the president is an ongoing threat to our national security and the integrity of our elections, the basis of our democracy. >> we cannot rely on the next election as a remedy for presidential misconduct when the president threatens the very integrity of that election. >> president trump's wrongdoing and the urgent threat that his actions present to our next election and our democracy leaves us no principled alternative but to support these articles of impeachment. >> we are on the precipice of the 2020 election and congress has ultimate responsibility to protect the sacred equalizer, our right to vote. >> the foundation of the democrats' impeachment argument is that the president's use of a

foreign government to interfere in our election is an ongoing and serious problem. that along with the fact that trump still has not accepted his intelligence community's findings that russia meddled in 2016 raises the question how can we make sure 2020 is secure? new reporting in "the washington post" details how military cyberofficials are developing tactics to secure our elections. one option being explored by u.s. cyber command would target senior leadership and russian elites, though probably not president vladimir putin, which would be considered too provocative. the idea would be to show that the target's sensitive personal data could be hit if the interference did not stop, though officials declined to be more specific. the table is back with me. nick, what do you make of that plan? >> look, i think that the russian interference campaign in 2016 for a small but was arguably the most successful intelligence operation in history. they changed the course of american politics. the russians have faced few consequences for it. and now we're here again. so if i were any foreign country

with the means and the interest to interfere in 2020, be it an enemy of ours or an ally, i would do it. and i think this is american officials trying to say it if you try it, we'll be there. but i think it's very hard for one piece of the government to operate effectively when the guy at the top is not pushing very hard for the outcome. >> i want to play a sound that you've all heard, but i think bears repeating given this conversation. it's from a june 18th interview between president trump and george stephanopoulos. take a listen. >> if russia, if china, if someone else offers you information on an opponent, should they accept it or should at the call the fbi? >> i think maybe you do both. i think you might want to listen. i don't think there's nothing wrong with listening. if somebody called from a country, norway, we have information on your opponent, oh, i think i'd want to hear it. >> you'd want that kind of interference in our elections? >> it's not an interference. it's information. i think i'd take it. if i thought there was something

wrong i'd go maybe to the fbi. congress men always do it, they always have. it's called oppo research. >> you can focus on the infrastructure on the voting. that alone does not make us secure. >> why does he always use norway? those poor norwegians. i think this is the u.s. government finally being able to pay attention to something that has been happening across the world, and the russians are amazing at it. it is hybrid warfare. it is being able to attack a country. a former obama official said we are not very good at things like this. we're not very good at cyber warfare. i don't care if we're not very good at it. we are going to have to get good at it because the russians have been going around do it for ten years and now they're really good at it. what we have to do is update the way that we think about our enemies and our, you know, frenemies and how they can

attack us without attacking us. this is a long-time and coming and it's sad that trump is president. he's one of the reasons why we are not where we need to be at this moment with this kind of aggression. >> i have something else i want you to listen to. mark short was on fox news sunday. take a listen. >> every major u.s. intelligence agency says it was russia that interfered in the election during the house intel committee hearings, a member of the trump -- let me just finish. a member of the trump national security council, fiona hill, said this idea that ukraine interfered in the election is kremlin disinformation. so why does the president think it's still worth investigating whether ukraine did something? >> why don't we try and find the bottom line and the answers? we are not questioning russia's interference. i am accepting that. but it doesn't mean that just because russia interfered doesn't mean others did as well? >> they are saying that the whole question of ukraine is russian disinformation.

and, in fact, according to reporting you may say was inaccurate, putin supposedly in a meeting they had in germany, told the president that it was ukraine, and he apparently said to some people in the administration, putin told me it was ukraine. >> how can we secure elections? >> by that standard, we should investigate fiji or mauritius or lesotho. but then look at the logic of it. that doesn't even make sense that they cracked the server to look into hillary clinton's emails. his argument is so simple to just obliterate. >> i'm going to let you have the last word, nick confessori, thank you so much for joining us. coming up, if you thought president trump's impeachment was taking the full attention of the white house, think again.

inside stephen miller's continued crusade to change american immigration. we will be right back. will be .

well, impeachment has gripped the nation and grabbed the front pages recently. donald trump and his administration have continued to push sweeping new immigration policies. just as the house voted to impeach "the washington post" out with a story, the trump's top immigration adviser stephen miller wanted to plant i.c.e. agents within the agency that cares for unaccompanied children to get information from their parents and relatives to target them for deportation. "the washington post" reports those senior officials at the department of health and human services rejected the attempt, they agreed to allow immigration and customs enforcement agents to collect fingerprints and other biometric information from adults seeking to claim.

i.c.e. could then use their information to target them for arrest and deportation. also on the immigration front, reporting from nbc news that the white house is making it harder for asylumseekers to make their case for asylum. nbc's julia ainsley writes lawyers representing migrants seeking asylum at the border say u.s. border agents are systematically writing the same wrong address on the migrants' papers leaving hundreds with no way to receive communications from the government about their cases and undermining their ability to win asylum in the united states. i want to bring in julia ainsley. julia, i have to ask you, just walk us through this reporting, because what i just read to the table i could see the responses. it is seemingly unbelievable. >> reporter: it really is, alicia. and when i looked at these cases, i couldn't believe that it was the same wrong address. so where this is happening is in el paso. this is when immigrants present themselves to customs and border protection and make an asulim

claim, they are sent back to mexico and in this case ciudad juarez as they wait for their asylum claim. and what they're given in that moment before they are sent back is something called a notice to appear, what they call an nta. and that is for give them all of the information about where they need to be at what date so that they can begin the process of claiming asylum. now, on these forms though what lawyers have found through hundreds of people that they have interviewed is that rather than having an address of a u.s. family member or somewhere where they could be contacted in mexico about their case, instead they are seeing the same address of a migrant shelter that none of these immigrants have ever heard of. it's somewhere in ciudad juarez. they haven't been there. it may have been a place where immigrants went this summer when the policy first started. and for some reason the border agents just got used to writing down that address. but in case after case, and i interviewed a woman who went by

the name as anjelina. they said i gave them the name of a u.s.-based partner, who could tell her exactly where she needed to be and when. and the officer heard the address and wrote down the wrong one. so it's incredibly frustrating. she has been in ciudad juarez since july and she isn't able to get the information she needs. >> i also want to bring in david leopold. a lot of deep sighing as you heard julia talk about her reporting. >> yeah, look. in the world of immigration, the notice to appear that julia described, that is the key document. and actually appearing at the hearing on the date and time that designates is extremely important because failure to appear is deadly. it's fatal to the claim. and what happens here is these people don't appear in el paso at the court because they didn't know about the hearing because they weren't given notice to appear. they weren't given subsequent notifications.

and so they're ordered deported in absentia, meaning their asylum case is thrown out by the immigration judge with no possibility of ever having their case heard. this is a violation of u.s. law. this is a direct violation -- >> i was going to say is this legal? >> of course it's not legal. and i am sorry, but there's no way that repeated mistakes, serial mistakes made by customs and border protections on these forms can be excused in any way. this is a scheme and this comes directly, in my view, from the attitude of this white house that's espoused by the president and espoused by stephen miller, his white nationalist adviser. >> julia, we hear a lot about the wall. but there is a big distinction. and i'd love for you to walk us through it between the wall and these asylumseekers. >> reporter: that's right. if you think about what the president campaigned on when he wanted to rally people to his cause, who wanted lower immigration, who wanted to combat illegal immigration to the united states, he focused on

the wall. but the thing that people like stephen miller knows is it has nothing to do with the wall. it's about making it harder for people who have a legitimate claim for asylum to come into the united states and make that claim. the reason why so many people continue to be pushed back right now is not because of a wall but because of this policy known as remain in mexico where they have to wait in mexico for what could be years until they get their day in court. now, part of the argument for this from the trump administration is that asylumseekers come here, they pass the initial interview, and then it could be two years unless they actually get to a judge who can make a decision. and then the rates of passing that day in court actually getting the asylum granted to them by a judge are far lower than the rates to pass that initial interview. and so you have some people who could disappear into the country or simply not qualify and the united states doesn't have the resources to deport them all. so that is the argument for

tougher asylum stance. but there have been other ways to grapple with this problem in the past. you could have more immigration judges. you could have a number of things to deal with the backlog without just throwing things at the wall in a way that will hurt people and their right for due process. >> i do want to make sure that we get to the i.c.e. deportation story. what does that mean for an unaccompanied minor who is sitting waiting for somebody to claim them or for these relatives and loved ones who want to come forward? >> the ones remaining in mexico? >> no, for the ones who are now afraid that they will have information collected on them. >> again, this is another stephen miller scheme to blot out refugee care, unaccompanied minors, and asylum from the law without congress doing anything. they know full well that this checking of potential sponsors and arresting potential sponsors is intimidating and has a chilling effect on the whole process. so what that means is longer detention for the children, more

abuse for the children in detention. and we know from the government's own inspector, office of inspector general reports, that the children in detention in i.c.e. and i.c.e. custody are not safe. >> david leopold, julia, thank you both so much for joinings us. up next, ad spending like we have never seen before. next, ae have never seen before

ironies of the 2020 democratic

primary. on one hand, there are two candidates who have made it their mission to turn up the heat on billionaires. on the other hand, there are two candidates who are billionaires and they're spending a lot of money. new reporting from "politico," quote, together tom steyer and mike bloomberg have poured nearly $200 million into television and digital advertising alone. with the former new york mayor spending an unprecedented $120 million in the roughly three weeks since he joined the presidential race. that's more than double the combined ad spending of every single non-billionaire in the democratic field this year. it's a lot of money. >> daddy war chest. that's what you get when you've got billions and billions of dollars i guess. but i don't know if that's really going to make him loved by the american people. seeing commercials of the same thing. yeah. and steyer, too. you know, everybody's tired of the 1-800-cars for kids commercial. become as easily as annoyed by the bloomberg and steyer commercials. this isn't really helping them in the polls. and i will remind you all that

jeb bush raised $100 million and he might as well have lit that on fire for all it got him. >> well, tom starr got into the debate debate. he's focusing all his advertising into the super-tuesday states where no other democrat right now, with the exception of one or two are spending resources. so that's his -- that's what he sees his pathway to forget about the four early states and then focus on super-tuesday. >> money is always helpful in political campaigns. but in the end, it's not the determining factor. and there is such a thing as you can overspend. i mean, you can saturate a market. you have to -- you have to hit it at the right message at the right time in the right amount. and both of these billionaires, i just don't see -- i've studied them both. they just don't have voter appeal. >> so forget about what it means for the two of them. what does it mean for the field and for the race overall to just have this much ad -- this many ads running, this much money being spent? >> more expensive, right?

>> well, it's just going to make it hard when we get to super-tuesday. and all these campaigns are depleted because they spent all of their money in new hampshire, iowa, nevada, and south carolina. then it's going to be a problem to break through in some of these states because you have michael bloomberg, you have tom steyer up with, you know, a thousand, 1500 points of ads in these super-tuesday states. it's just going to be hard to break through. >> all right. stick with us. we'll be right back. 'll be righ. it was kind of a shock after i started cosentyx. four years clear. real people with psoriasis look and feel better with cosentyx. don't use if you're allergic to cosentyx. before starting, get checked for tuberculosis. an increased risk of infections and lowered ability to fight them may occur. tell your doctor about an infection or symptoms, if your inflammatory bowel disease symptoms develop or worsen, or if you've had a vaccine or plan to. serious allergic reactions may occur. ask your dermatologist about cosentyx.

itreat them all as if, they are hot and energized. stay away from any downed wire, call 911 and call pg&e right after so we can both respond out and keep the public safe.

and rick. that does it for this hour. "mtp daily" with chris jansing in for chuck todd starts right now.

welcome to thursday. it is "meet the press daily." i'm chris jansing in new york in for chuck todd. while washington is on the holiday break, president trump isn't taking a break from attacking nancy pelosi and the democrats over impeachment. the president took to twitter to call house speaker nancy pelosi crazy and her fellow house democrats hypocrites. and continued to rail about the do-nothing democrats and their bogus impeachment scam today. all of it happening as the senate trial remains in limbo. and as a possible crack is emerging in republican support for the president. and as house judiciary committee lawyers say president trump could be impeached again. it was senator lisa murkowski, a republican from alaska, who called out majority leader mitch mcconnell for vowing to coordinate with the white house