me. not done though. i'm going to see you again tonight 9:00 p.m. eastern. stay with me. let's end the week out together. "deadline: white house" with alicia mendez in for nicolle wallace begins right now. ♪ hi, everyone. it's 4:00 in new york. i'm alicia menendez in for nicolle wallace with some friendly advice. take a breath now because this may be your last chance for a while. we're on the verge of an historic and historically busy political season. there are only 38 days until the iowa caucuses, afterall, and already some of the democrats are back on the trail. there are more than a dozen events across early voting states. and here's where we stand in the polling averages. joe biden still leads the field at 28% followed by bernie sanders at 19% and elizabeth warren at 15%. buttigieg, bloomberg, klobuchar and yang are all still fighting to break 10%. but lurking beneath those numbers are concerns for people in that top tier.

warren, for instance, her support exploded two months ago. but today her campaign sent an email to supporters revealing they have raised just over $17 million so far in the fourth quarter. that may sound like a lot of money, but it's a significant drop from the $24.6 million they raised in the fall. then there's pete buttigieg who enjoyed a polling month of his own over the past few weeks, but questions about his ability to attract nonwhite voters persist. among hispanics who identify as democrat or independent, 3% support buttigieg over other candidates for the democratic 2020 nomination. another 20% support vermont senator bernie sanders. and 7% support massachusetts senator elizabeth warren. with these questions about viability still unanswered, the democratic primary rages on. one democratic strategist telling "the hill" it's going to be a bloody slugfest. and the thing that a lot of us fear is that trump will benefit

all of us. here at the table with me alexi mccammond, reverend al sharpton, host of "politicsnation" here on msnbc, and president of the national action network. plus, the executive director of the latina victory fund, a group that's backing julian castro for president, and an adviser to the biden campaign, ron. alexi, let's just start with 2020. where are we and what are you looking at as we head into january? >> well, as you mentioned, we are just 38 days away from the iowa caucuses. so we are seeing the ways in which candidates are not only spending more time in iowa, but they are really fine-tuning their electability pitch to these mostly white voters throughout the state. we have seen biden do that with a pitch about how he can appeal to moderate republicans and sort of pull these to his side. and amy klobuchar spending time

in new hampshire that hasn't gotten as much attention as iowa has. and she is spending a lot of time there trying to boost her chances for that primary when that happens. where we're really seeing democrats focus on this electability argument, which we have talked about forever and ever, but we are hearing them talk about it in a way that they are uniquely qualified to beat donald trump. because at the end of the day they are fighting against each other, but they know that the general election argument is beating donald trump. >> rev, do you think that democratic strategists is being hyperbolic that this is going to be a slugfest? >> i hope not. i think that it is possible when you see people that look as though they're almost desperate to get to the top of the poll and get the fundraising that they need, but i think it also raises the question of what -- how do we define electability? if the base of the democratic party is more black and brown than iowa or new hampshire, then

we should not be starting in iowa and new hampshire, which some of us has raised. and the fact of the matter is the strategy has been, oh, if i do well in iowa and new hampshire, i look electable and blacks and browns will just go along. playing us stupid saying, oh, see, i won in iowa and new hampshire, there wasn't a lot of y'all there so therefore get on my band wagon will backfire this time. because people have real needs and i think people are going to make them addressed. i hope they don't think they can just start fighting with each other and propagating and really representing what people need rather than their own interest and their own little picadillos with each other. >> that's part of the reason nevada moved up the dnc caucuses so that latinos would have a seat they table. >> i agree with everything the reverend said.

we have the first state in the west, nevada, that rarely gets the attention that iowa and new hampshire does, even though the nevada electorate is much more representative of the democratic party in our country as a whole. and so it's almost like a chicken or an egg situation as far as we see it because there are many candidates that have been focusing on nevada. the party is doing great work in ensuring that spanish-speaking voters are able to participate in the caucus. and yet we are not seeing that media coverage as much as we see media coverage in stops all over iowa and new hampshire. and so, again, we can't fully expect candidates to be visiting these states as they should if the media's also not giving them the fair coverage. and the upliftment that they deserve for acting on their values and actually engaging the base and voters of color, which are going to be critical to take back the white house. >> all right, let's talk about mayor pete because we have

talked a lot about his support for african-americans or his lack of support among african-american voters. but he also seems to have a latino challenge. there was a piece in "nbc think." it says as for the buttigieg latino policy plan, it felt to many latinos like just another. candidate like sanders have made winning new latino support an essential part of their overall primary strategy. the same can be said for elizabeth warren. waking up to the fact that primaries such as nevada, california, and even puerto rico are just as important as states like iowa and new hampshire. he's got a plan, everybody seems to have a plan. is that enough to actually support the electorate? >> i think that you have to have a plan that deals directly with the issues and a track record to make people believe that you just didn't go and make a plan up in the back room when you decided to run for president.

why should we believe you? and what have you done to demonstrate that this plan is something that you in fact have been committed to all of your life, or at least your political life? i think that's the problem. and i think that advocates in the black and brown community that have been fighting these issues for a long time know who has been there, who has not been there. and that is why they put their feet to the fire. that's their job to put their feet to the fire. >> ron, the biden campaign has enjoyed support from latino voters, specifically from older latino voters. what do they need to do in order to engage the younger element of this vote? when you talk about the latino vote, you are in actuality talking about the youth vote. >> yeah, no question about it. we need to keep on working harder to get our message out there and to engage these voters. as with the vice president recently in nevada, we met with a lot of the latino voters and in california as well. we need to get across our

hundred-day plan that the vice president released early last week. and his his record for fighting for social and economic justice for both the black and the brown community and all people of color. i agree with the reverend. it's both about your plan and your record. and vice president biden has both. that's why i think as you look at the polls, he is the one candidate that's doing well in all four of the early states, not just iowa and new hampshire, but also nevada and south carolina. i think our nominee magazihas t that they can do well in all four of those states that represent the full diversity of our party. and right now i think vice president biden is running strong across all of those four states. >> you also see bernie sanders because it is a very young voting bloc and there is an appeal to younger voters that sanders is able to make. >> that's exactly right. and he got the coveted endorsement from alexandria ocasio-cortez at a time when his campaign was sort of struggling

or stumbling. and that revived not just his standing overall but especially with younger latino voters. she is do keynote events in spanish. that's not something you see with other 2020 democratic campaigns. and, oh, we had a spanish language put out when we launched or we had our website translated into spanish. that's not the same as having a representative there with you who can vouch for you and speak the same language as these voters who are there to figure out whether or not they want to support you. but, you know, we think about the 201 midterms as a big sort of playbook for democrats. but in 2018 during the midterms, 49% of latinos were not contacted by any political party or any political campaign. yet, 79% of them still went out to vote. so i don't think democrats can just hope that they will turn out to vote in an election like this if they are feeling ignored from the very start while iowa is happening, new hampshire is happening and they are waiting to see what candidates will do and say to them. >> especially, because the trump campaign is actively going after

these voters. there was a point in the cycle where they had aired more spanish language ads than all of the democratic candidates combined. and they're not just going after latino voters in florida or in arizona. they're going after latino voters in states like pennsylvania, minnesota. where does the trump campaign have room to peel off democratic support? >> look, as you were saying, alicia, many of these candidates have created a plan, and that is great, it's encouraging, and many of these plans are more in depth than we've seen previous candidates in terms of immigration, saying immigration reform is not enough, right? we want specific examples of what that looks like. what's your plan? but beyond plans, we have to remember that 47% of latinos in this country are eligible to vote and not registered. so beyond plans, it's so important that campaigns are building infrastructure, not just in these early state but in states like texas where almost half the electorate is not

registered to vote. what that means is the campaigns who are doing the best with outreach are creating infrastructures and entry points for latino voters to engage. >> i understand that there is the infrastructure piece of it, but there is also the trump campaign actually trying to make an argument to latino voters about why they should consider voting for trump, the president gave a speech recently at turning point. take a listen. >> throughout the western hemisphere, we are facing down the evil forces of communism and socialism. i've taken historic actions to confront the brutal regimes in cuba, venezuela, and nicaragua, and we stand with the people of those nations and their righteous struggle for freedom. to those who were trying to impose the horrors of socialism on our country, i say to you again tonight america will never

be a socialist country. >> mayra, cuba, venezuela, nicaragua, i hear that and i think that is a play for florida latino voters. you have worked in the sunshine state. is socialism the boogeyman that president trump wants it to be in the latino community? >> if democratic candidates don't address it, then yes. and part of it is that trump doesn't need to convince these voters to vote for him. he just has to say enough, he just has to make latino voters believe that their traumas in their latin american countries are not relevant to these democratic presidential candidates. we've seen that some democratic presidential candidates are addressing it head on. and, again, like, he doesn't need to persuade these voters. he just needs to convince them that democrats don't care and then they don't turn out to vote. so we need to make sure we are addressing this head on and acknowledging that the traumas and pains of people coming from latin america under corrupt governments are real, and making distinctions between that and

our democratic process here in this country. >> ron, there are demographics, there is fundraising, and then there are policies and ideas. bret stephens making the argument that democrats just need modest ideas. what would work? smart infrastructure spending? new taxes on carbon offset by tax cuts on income and saving? modest increases on taxes on the wealthy? match to the promise of a balanced budget. what these proposals lack in progressive ambition, they make up in political plausibility and the inherent appeal of modesty. he is running against the crazy left. when your goal is to wash your hands of something bad, you don't need a sword, soap will do. ron, do you agree? >> uh, no, i don't. i think we need more than soap. we need a real thorough cleansing here. and that includes every democrat running for president has to explain how they will beat donald trump. because no bold idea will become a reality unless donald trump is

defeated. so that is definitely step one. but it doesn't stop there. for the reasons that mayra has said and reverend al has said, we need to inspire our voters and get them out. once you get trump out, what you will do once you get in, can you bring in democrats up and down the ballot to help you pass progressive policies? do you have progressive ideas on health care, on immigration, on climate change, on the whole ray of issues democrats care about? and so i think our candidates on the stump need to do bode theth things, because you can't really change this country unless you get rid of donald trump, and have the bold ideas to execute. i think joe biden is doing that, but i think that's the burden on all of our democratic candidates this time to make that case. >> alexi, earlier we talked about that fundraising email from the warren campaign that they sent out to their supporters. this is the thing before we've seen, the help, help, i'm getting close to the deadline. but i have to say it is rare for

a candidate to tell you exactly where they are before the filing deadline. is the warren campaign legitimately worried about their fundraising numbers? >> i think it's a little bit of both. we've seen this with senator cory booker. the fact that they sent out that email that was a plea for help that they didn't have enough money and then suddenly they had raised enough to qualify for the debates after they had sent that out. now we see warren's team doing that. but it's coming at a time where she has had a slight decrease in the polls after sanders. and now she just had that sort of skirmish with pete buttigieg on the debate stage this month in l.a. talking about, you know, his strategies for fundraising with big donors and how it's a bad way to fundraise as a democrat, and she's been getting hit for the ways in which she had similar fundraising practices when she was running her senate campaign. so she's sort of facing a little bit of criticism over this issue of money that i wouldn't be surprise fire department that led to fewer donations to her campaign right now and more donations to someone else's campaign. i think it's a legitimate cry

for help, but i also think that she's doing just fine on the money front. >> i want the two of you to game something out for me, because there is hypothetical scenario where you come out of the first four states with someone different winning in each state. where then does the democratic primary go from there? >> i think that's the strategy that michael bloomberg is looking for. if there is no decisive winner of two or three of the first four, then you are running into super tuesday, and super tuesday is going to be about a, not a ground game, but coming in from the top, a frontal attack in terms of media. because you can't knock on enough doors in texas and california. and that's where a media blitz could turn this whole thing a different way because he could say how are they electable when they can't beat each other? i can do this, i can do that, and comes in with this big media blitz that could at least make

the thing destabilize in terms of where someone's going. so i think that the reality is if you don't have a decisive person that seems like they're ahead after the first four, this becomes open season in terms of who the nominee could be. >> all right, 38 days. thank you both for coming on today. when we come back, trump on trial. our next guest says it will be a fundamentally deficient senate trial, one that will acquit the president and will exonerate him. and donald trump earlier this year championed and cleared a former navy seal for war crimes. that navy seal being described by some of his peers as evil and toxic and willing to kill anything that moves. plus, health care remains a top issue out there for voters. but are the candidates getting lost in the weeds? all those stories coming up. ori.

i do hope though that once this process is done, if the speaker ever sends us the articles, that people will walk away saying, well, the senate did it correctly, they treated both sides fairly, and it wasn't a rigged game, and the president and the prosecution was given their day in court. >> an interesting sentiment coming from a senate republican, given that many in his party are already admitting they won't be fair jurors in the upcoming senate trial. >> this thing will come to the senate and it will die quickly, and i will do everything i can do make it die quickly. i am trying to give a pretty clear signal i have made up my mind -- [ laughter ] >> i wasn't in any doubt at this

point. >> senators are not required like jurors in a criminal trial to be sequestered, not to talk to anyone. >> everything i do during this, i'm coordinating with white house counsel. there will be no difference between the president's position and our position. there is no chance the president's going to be removed from office. >> the republicans' coordination with the white house along with the trump administration's stonewalling of first-hand witnesses has set the stage for a unique impeachment trial, which one of my next guest calls out in a former magazine. if a defendant is acquitted in a proceeding against him where vital witnesses can't testify and where some members of the jury declare their allegiance to the defendant instead of to a fair process it's hardly justice. trump may be acquitted by the senate, but if the process is fundamentally deficient, a mockery of a system designed to seek the truth, that acquittal alone exonerate him.

joyce vance joins us now along with glenn kirschner. both are msnbc contributors. joyce, i want to start with you. is there still a fairway for this to be a fair trial? >> we all understand as americans in the context of criminal trial what a fair process looks like. it doesn't mean that we do it in every case, but our system works because people believe that in most cases it functions with integrity. the senate takes an enormous risk, particularly these republican senators if they don't agree to fundamental basic processes that conform to americans' expectations of how trials should work including making important relevant fact witnesses available and allowing the evidence to be considered in a way that conforms with our sense of justice.

>> glenn, i want to focus on this question of witnesses, there was sound early this morni morning. take a listen. >> every time donald trump refused to have witnesses come before the house, we still were able to find all this information so that we could get to the buoyant point. but all the people that donald trump has said that can profess his innocence, he hasn't let come before congress. what's interesting, ryan, is we are seeing back home is i am back in wisconsin for the last week, what people are talking about is things that pass the smell test. if you proclaim your innocence, but you're not going to let any of them actually go ahead and say that, it just doesn't pass the smell test i think that we really look for. >> what do you make of that point? >> you know, i find it inexplicable that people will argue there's insufficient evidence to prove donald trump abused his office.

and yet we all know donald trump has prohibited the witnesses with relevant and incriminating information from providing testimony that could sink him. there's a mechanism in the criminal law to address this exact scenario. it's called forfeiture by wrongdoing. unfortunately when i was a prosecutor, from time to time, we would have a witness killed, killed because they could provide incriminating information. if we could prove by a fairly low standard, a preponderance of the evidence, 51%, that the defendant arranged to have the witness killed or go missing, we could introduce everything that witness ever said to anybody against the defendant at trial on cross-examine. why? because you can't benefit from an evidentiary standpoint from your own wrongdoing. this is just like if donald trump had kidnapped all of the witnesses and held them in a van down by the river and then said,

listen, you can't prove the case against me because there are no witnesses to testify. that is the doctrine of forfeiture by wrongdoing, and the supreme court said you can't get away with that. that's exactly what donald trump is trying to do. so these witnesses, the boltons, the mulvaneys, the pompeos, need to be subpoenaed. the motions that are going to be made by the house managers, the prosecutors, to chief justice roberts for subpoenas for these witnesses, those motions must be granted. then the question becomes do 51 senators override chief justice robert's decision to subpoena those witnesses to testify? >> if you look at the polling on this, voters seem to have questions about why these witnesses are not being called. we have a poll showing that 71% of americans think that they

should testify. the thing we kept hearing at the beginning of the story is this story is so much more simple than the mueller report. i am not sure we are still there, if you have not been following this minute to minute. but i do think this question of whether or not people should be allowed to testify is simple and is much easier to put to a voter. >> very few things are simple in the trump era. and that's because he likes to have control over situations like this which are especially hitting close to home for him. but those numbers you just read off do not lie. the american people are clamoring for more information so that they can possibly make a more informationed decision about what all of this means. they want to have all of the facts so that they can make a more informed decision. if president trump and his allies think that the call was perfect and think that he has done nothing wrong, they should send all of their men to testify and support these claims that he did nothing wrong and that everything he did was perfect. but clearly he doesn't think that they would corroborate his story because he's refusing to

allow them to testify and even going so far as to intimidate witnesses who have testified on mediums like twitter. if you're part of this administration and you are thinking to yourself if i cross the president, what does that mean for me personally and professionally and he's asking you not to go, then you're really stuck in a hard place. but those facts are real. the american people want to hear more. >> i also think the democrats need to message better beyond the legal points that he so, i think, very adequately laid out. i think you need to raise that we are looking at the fact that they are challenging the balance of power in the government. we are talking about whether the executive branch can say i do not have to submit or be held accountable by the legislative branch, which is the fundamental basis of the country of the judicial legislative and executive. because what he's saying is i'm not providing documents, i'm not

going to let people testify, i don't have to listen to you. they need to put that in front of the voters, the democrats. we are talking about if he gets away with this, there is no longer a balance of power. and we are talking about for those of us that come out of communities that have been denied voting rights that we are now going to make it normal that foreign powers can influence the vote, we are going to rob you of your right to vote because now any president can do whatever they want. and by not convicting donald trump, you can quote the trump precedent to say i can go and get anybody to enforce an american election. just refer back to 2020 donald trump and i'm allowed to do that. that is dangerous. >> joyce, i want to give you the last word, but i also want to underscore a part of your piece where you say that akw ittal will not exonerate him no matter what he says everyone will know it's not true. is that the case? with the disinformation coming out of that administration, is it possible to say everyone will know it's not true?

>> so i think this is a breakthrough moment possibly, and rev makes this great point that democrats need to do a good job of messaging. it's hard to message here because some of these concepts are complicated. as you point out, this is maybe not as simple that the ukrainian matter as it was initially presented as being. but one thing that everybody can understand is letting witnesses testify. if the witnesses don't testify, democrats need to hammer home the point that the proceeding is fundamentally unfair and that a president can't be exonerated if he's the one who makes sure that witnesses against him don't testify. >> joyce vance, thank you. up next never before seen videos of some navy seals talking about the horrors of what they say was committed by their platoon chief, which was shielded by president trump. the reporter who helped uncover it, coming up. ver it, coming up.

they had one young man in jail for six years. he had many years to go. and a lot of people think he shouldn't have been there, and i gave him a pardon. with eddie gal guess, you know that story very well. they wanted to take his pin away. i said you're not going to take it away. he was one of the ultimate fighters, tough guy. these are not weak people. these are tough people. and we are going to protect our war fighters. >> it was a case the president had been watching closely. chief petty officer eddie gallagher who was charged with committing war crimes was set to be expelled from the navy seals. but trump intervened and reversed the navy's decision. chief gallagher was able to keep his rank and pin. this past weekend officer gallagher visited the president at mar-a-lago. footage obtained exclusively by the "new york times" for their

tv series "the weekly" shows interview with the navy seals who accused gallagher of misconduct. the interviews are part of a larger body of material including video. i must warn you what you're about to see and hear can be disturbing. >> i saw eddie take a shot at a 12-year-old kid. >> what was his official vision? >> he was the platoon chief. >> this massive leak gives us insight into a very secretive brotherhood of commandos that otherwise we would never get to see. >> the guy got crazier. >> he was firmly okay with killing anyone. >> this is a case where some seals who are not supposed to take things outside the family turned in their own chief. >> the guy was toxic. >> we can't let this continue. >> these guys who believe in

doing good and had the courage to act, it's just that things didn't turn out how they thought. >> there were civilians everywhere. he's a psychopath. ♪ >> the guy's fricken evil. >> gallagher, through his attorney, pushed back on the interviews saying the other seals had personal animosity with him because they could not meet his high standards. the paper has also reached out to the specific seals for comment, but they have not responded. we should also note nbc news has not seen all of the material. i am joined now by pulitzer prize-winning journalist dave phillips. >> this is some stuff that came out on trial, but no one was able to see in the public because the trial was closed to almost everyone and no recording was allowed. but what we saw was for the

first time members of this platoon elite seal commandos saying what they saw in iraq and what they saw, what they told investigators is that their chief totally went off the rails. he's completely became fixated on killing people, and what they say is it didn't necessarily matter whether those people were combatants or not. >> how do you square with what gallagher says about these navy seals having personal animosity against him, with what you saw in your reporting? >> well, in these interviews, certainly animosity was talked about over and over. but the bottom line of that disagreement was always the platoon and how they saw their chief's behavior. what they say is they tried to confront him over and over about dangerous tactics or pointless missions, hurting or killing civilians. now what he says is that they're

liars, that he set such a high standard and that they were afraid of the combat missions that he wanted to take. and so because they were afraid that he was going to call them cowards publicly, they decided to concoct a story to take him down. when i looked at the evidence, we are talking about hundreds and hundreds of private text messages that these seals never thought anyone would see. i didn't see any of that. if they were concocting a story, we didn't see any evidence of it. >> president trump's interference in this was unprecedented. can you tell me a little bit about his interest in this story? >> uh, it's really sort of a fox news story. eddie gallagher's family took his case to fox news where it was presented repeatedly especially on fox and friends, and the family, they appealed directly to the president, and the president intervened. first he let eddie gallagher out

of pretrial confinement against the navy's wishes. and when the trial was done he congratulated him on twitter saying glad i could help. after that he basically blocked every type of punishment that the navy tried to give this seal. the navy really thought that chief gallagher had no business being a seal, that he was a discredit to the service, and they wanted to essentially fire him. but as the commander in chief, mr. trump said, no, you can't do that. and he allowed chief gallagher to retire with full honors. >> glenn, trump's pardoning of gallagher resulted in the firing of navy secretary richard spencer. spencer went on to write this in "the washington post." i received a second call from white house counsel pat cipollone who said the president would order me to restore gallagher to rank of chief. >> it was also a reminder that the president has very little understanding of what it means to be in the military to fight ethically, or to be governed by

a uniform set of rules and practices. >> you know, what president trump did by granting this pardon was so demoralizing and disrespectful of the military members that we ask to do impossibly difficult things, put their lives on the line, leave their families for extended periods of time. and when they see a fellow soldier committing a crime, speak up and tell the truth about what they saw. now, i was an active duty army prosecuting at jag before becoming a federal prosecutor in washington, d.c., and i can tell you how difficult it is to build court martial prosecutions by having to use soldiers as witnesses against the soldier who's on trial. extraordinarily difficult. >> because it goes against their code of conduct? >> it actually is in keeping with their code of conduct. because before we enter active

duty, we are taught that, as important as it is to obey a lawful order, it's even more important to disobey an unlawful order. seven of the 12 team members under gallagher testified against him. a few didn't testify, and one it's reported, lied. and they had gallagher according to dave's reporting in "new york times" do so much that they called him evil, toxic and said he would shoot any man, woman, or child who moves, civilians. and they did the extremely hard thing of telling the truth about the crimes of a fellow soldier. we need to support our war fighters, as president trump said. we don't need to support war criminals. >> rev, let's be clear. the president knew the message he was sending. >> he knew the message he was sending. he was responding to this case that fox news had been promoting. and i think it really adds to

the danger level of this country when you can have a president of the united states go by a fox news story rather than deal with the evidence that investigators and people in the navy and people that have done this as he has has said there's contrary evidence, there's conflicting reports, and you are playing to a media outlet that is in your political favor and have supported you more than you are to the basic facts of a military officer. we are talking about somebody that is in a position to defend and stand up for the country. that is frightening. >> glenn, thank you so much for joining us. dave phillips, thank you. it may feel like it's all impeachment all the time, but there's another issue democrats say they'd prefer to talk about. we'll tell you what it is when we come back. we come back

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will be in one of the most memorable election years in history. while impeachment will undoubtedly be a centerpiece against trump, many claim they would prefer to focus on something else. alexi mccammond writes democrats are playing up a few impeachment villains. what seems to be the most important issue for voters is msnbc's new special "red, white, and who," which delves into the messy topic of health care. >> health care in america, it's a bit like a bad ex. you know the one who never treated you right but who you'll still call in an emergency? even with obamacare about 30 million americans still don't have health insurance. and many of those who do are struggling to pay for it. did we not do this right? what kind of nation claims to keep its citizens safe with the most powerful military on earth, but has no plan for them if

they, say, fall off a horse? steady girl, or boy, or you. i'm francesca, and i'm not your typical journalist. i've got opinions and i'm not afraid to share them. this is my journey across america to ask the nation one simple question, who are we and what do we want? okay, two questions. neither of which is simple. this is red, white, and who?" >> francesca joins us now. you are so brave to get up on a horse on camera. >> oh, yeah. i'm a natural. that was not scary at all. i had ponies as a child. oh, wow. yeah, as someone who has freelanced and actually doesn't have steady health care all the time, that was particularly scary. >> i can imagine. when you were out there talking to voters, what surprised you most? >> specifically we are talking about democrats that, yes, this

poll is one of their top issue when's it comes to how they are going to be voting in 2020. but i spoke with republicans, i spoke with trump voters. that wasn't the first thing we talked about. we didn't say are you a trump voter? okay, i can't talk to you or i am going to talk to you. i sat with them and i said tell me about health care. and they said getting old was the best thing that ever happened to them. turning 65 was like winning the lottery. and that's what's happening all across this country because they qualify for medicare. these are folks who actually didn't know that medicare was even a thing. they didn't know it was possible. and they didn't learn until they had actually someone, i believe, in a hospital who was a healthcare advocate or a benefits adviser told them about it. so americans on such a critical issue are actually in the dark when it comes to what is available, how to get it, how to then, if they have it, how to use it, and how not to go bankrupt when they use it. >> so the real question is the

complexity of this system because that's something i'm sure you hear a lot about affordability, that's the other thing we hear so much when it comes to health care. you are a proponent of a medicare for all system? >> yeah, absolutely. hey, let's just be out with it. i absolutely think, especially after seeing folks in three different states all across this country and seeing the ways that the aca is being attacked from the right, the aca has done a great job, let's move beyond that. and you come to this moment where you realize that small fixes to the aca are not actually feasible, so long as the profit motive is still there. why? because that means that they are going -- someone's going to be making a buck, someone's going to be passing that buck, and that always comes back to the people i spoke to who were using their hard-earned life savings just to

survive cancer, just to survive a fall off a horse. so that's the thing is that, yeah, the aca is great. we can say the aca is good, say actually maybe it's time to move into, you know, the 20 what century? >> is that square with what you hear when you talk to voters? >> i think what i hear from voters that's reflected in your reporting, francesca, is they feel very confused about medicare for all. i think because they seen it thrown around on a debate stage. you're not going to hear about medicare for all. and even when you do, these voters are left with a lot of questions. how are we going to pay for it? what does that actually entail? are we going to get this in the first year or in four years? what does that mean for me and my family? i think there are a lot of questions about medicare for all that scares people and makes them want to retreat to what they know, which is hanging on to the aca. we've seen the ways which republicans attack it over and over again offered to repeal it,

tried to repeal it without a replacement. and are now talking about releasing some sort of healthcare plan ahead of 2020 for the trump re-elect campaign. i think voters are freaked out about all these changes because change is scary. but especially, with something like healthcare which is so personal and costly. >> francesca. thank you so much for joining us. be sure to catch all of red, white, and who right here on msnbc. trump likes to be number one in polls. we found one he might not like. coming up. one he might not like coming up.

a new poll shedding further light on how the world views president trump. this one's from you gov and a german media company. which one of them represents the greatest threat to world peace? trump tops the list at 41%. more than double the response rate for north korean dictator kim jong-un. >> it's -- that is amazing. when you look at the fact germany is an ally to the united states. if germans, and 2,000 is widespread, 2,000 respondents, see him as twice more and then some change a danger than kim jong-un. and even more danger than putin. then we have got to really come to the reality that the world is looking at what this president has represented in a way that is -- it affects us in how we deal with trade, how we deal with protecting ourselves in terms of national security.

this is not politics now. this becomes an overlapping kind of problem in many areas. from security to -- to the economy in terms of trade and other things. it is very alarming. and i think that we should not take that as that's just the germans because we need allies. and if they perceive us as dangerous, i think that that is something that should be troubling. >> lexie, a threat to world peace. >> right. let's not forget president trump launched his presidential campaign by claiming he was going to put america first, above all else. and that is exactly what he has tried to do by pushing out some of our allies. our long-standing allies. by, you know, embracing these dictators and strong men around the world that other presidents simply would not do. and he has no qualms about saying that he wants to put america first. and i think that's exactly what this is showing. that we've lost our standing in the world stage. >> we have to take one more quick break. we'll be right back. ne more quick break. we'll be right back. if you see wires down,

treat 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.

specials. reverend al sharpton has his ninth annual awards on "politics nation." a look back at the best and worst political moves of the year. this sunday at 5:00 p.m. my thanks to rev and to lexie. so good to spend this time with you. that does it for this hour. nicolle will be back next week. i know that you have all missed her very much. but not as much as i have. "mtp daily" with jeff bennet in for chuck todd starts right now. welcome to friday. it's "meet the press daily." i'm geoff bennet in washington in for chuck today. we begin tonight with the impeachment waiting game and nancy pelosi's gamble. how long can the house speaker withhold articles of impeachment from the senate? it's now been nine days since the house first voted to impeach president trump. and