that wraps up this hour of msnbc live. i'll see you tomorrow, later, from the caucuses. "andrea mitchell reports" now from las vegas. hey, andrea. >> thanks so much. and right now on a special edition of "andrea mitchell reports," live from las vegas. long-distance runner bernie sanders with the wind at his back, gaining ground with black voters, banking a big war chest and threatening to demand the nomination if he's ahead in delegates even if he does not have the required number of delegates at the convention. >> would be the first time ever we've ever done anything like that. i think that is -- i guess if i were he, i would make that argument. but i don't think it's a rational argument. >> meltdown, intelligence officials sound the alarm after the president ousts his acting director of national intelligence, outraged by an intel briefing to congress about

russian efforts to boosts president trump's re-election efforts. >> so i think they see this as portending greater efforts on the part of trump to put his loyalists in these positions so they can stop the intelligence for national security. that's why i said this is a crisis. >> president trump touting his lead in the polling during a rally in colorado last night. the only problem, those were polls from four years ago against his then republican primary opponents. >> the next one was 5%, 4%, 3%, 2%, 2%, 2%, 1%, and 0. 11%, 14, 4, 3, 2, 2.8, 1.9. 3, 3, 3, 2, 1, 1, 1.

okay. let's get back to business. now i feel good. now i feel good. and good day, everyone. i'm andrea mitchell in las vegas. we are less than 24 hours away from the critical nevada caucus where bernie sanders could grab a delegate lead and never look back. the vermont's senator polling strength is growing, especially among african-american democrats, a key voting bloc and until now dedicated to joe biden. our new nbc news "wall street journal" poll shows sanders now just barely behind biden nationally with african-americans. sanders also has raised more money in january than the rest of the field and has more in the bank to spend for the contest ahead than any of his competitors expect for those

billionaires, tom steyer and michael bloomberg. joining me now, mike memoli, garrett haake, ya meech alcindor. you were out last night with volunteers who were training forever the caucus. talk to me about how important nevada is and how bernie sanders is at least in the polls looking like a front-runner here. >> it's crucial. nevada democrats know they're in the spotlight here. they want to make sure their caucus goes off without a hitch. they do not want to be iowa 2.0. they want there to be a result that people have confidence in. that's why you've seen the party roll out this new tool for calculating votes on caucus day, holding hours and hours and hours of training for volunteers who are caucus chairs and things of that nature. i was at one last night. i heard from some of the

volunteers there feeling confident about the way that this will be handled come saturday. as to the state of play here, it feels fairly wide open. bernie sanders has had the most robust organization here on the ground. he has, as you said in the open, been making inroads with voters of color which has been a weakness of his. we've seen better appearances, at least, folks who have been fired up about sanders at some of the rallies. obviously the polling in nevada is always a little bit dicey. it's very hard to poll a caucus properly, particularly in a state as unique as this one with so much focus on clarke county. all eyes on the state right now. democrats feeling the pressure. all the indications from the campaigns i've talked to this morning, they're feeling more confident by the day that this will work. that iowa -- excuse me, the nevada democrats will land the plane come saturday and not have the same problems they saw in iowa. >> they certainly hope so.

and they're putting in a lot of work to try to get around the faulty app that they were originally going to use and that obviously doomed the caucus in iowa. meanwhile, bernie sanders, he did an interview with anderson cooper and take a look at what he had to say about mike bloomberg. >> were you surprised by how unprepared he seemed for some very basic obvious questions at the debate? >> yes, i was. i was. and, you know, if that's what happened in a democratic debate, you know, i think it's quite likely that trump will chew him up and spit him out. >> and mike memoli, what about the bloomberg effect in some ways his failure to shine in that debate has had an interesting backlash on the democratic ticket because the democratic field, i should say, because some of the moderates

who might have dropped out if bloomberg had emerged in that debate as the new star with obviously deep pockets and as a dominant figure, now they are perhaps more reluctant to drop out before super tuesday and that in a funny way could help bernie sanders because they're dividing up the moderate vote potentially. what's your take on that? >> yeah, that's absolutely right. increasingly, as i'm talking to the biden campaign, you get the sense that the best-case scenario for them is a worst-case scenario for the party, guaranteeing that this moderate vote continues to fracture heading into the convention leaving bernie sanders with the opportunity to accumulate the most delegates but in some cases be the only candidate accumulating delegates. but it is important for joe biden's campaign in this respect, the bloomberg stumbled. remember, you talked about that

poll, the specific subset of african-american voters showing most of the attrition for joe biden and his support among african-americans has gone to michael bloomberg and they see that as largely having to do with his television blitz across all these super tuesday states, making it look like he was arm in arm with barack obama for eight years when in fact it was joe biden with him in the trenches in the white house. if bloomberg has some post debate, potentially it could be among african-americans coming back to joe biden. they sure hope so. that's important for him heading into south carolina, especially. >> in the same poll, it was an oversample, when you look at the spread between biden and sanders among african-americans that has to be worrying. tom steyer has been there in south carolina courting african-americans and bernie sanders has really narrowed the gap which could potentially rob biden of the victory he so

sorely needs in south carolina. as you look at that, as we know in south carolina, african-americans are 60% of the vote. they are not a major factor in nevada. the latino community clearly is at 30% of the vote here. but the most diverse state so far is going to be south carolina next week. and that is a state that joe biden has to win. >> it is feeling like joe biden has to win south carolina. he said that that's his fire wall, his allies have said this is where he's going to be able to gain the momentum to go into super tuesday. there's something happening in south carolina. i've been talking to a lot of voters ahead of a trip i'm going to be taking there and they've been telling me that there are a lot of people wavering on joe biden because they see this march of bernie sanders and feel as though bernie sanders is continuing to gain momentum. for some people, it feels like it's 2016 all over again and you have in bernie sanders a simple trump feel to him which is that there were a lot of people who are thinking, okay, maybe he's a little bit too progressive, but he's the one who has the

momentum and what we're seeing and what i'm hearing from voters is they're now very worried about whether or not joe biden can beat bernie sanders. the other thing i'm hearing when i talk about michael bloomberg is there are a lot of people who feel like he's a man from a different era. at the debate, he was talking about nondisclosure agreements as if the me too movement hadn't happened, he was talking about stop-and-frisk. it was as if the black lives matter movement hadn't happened. and they felt he was talking about his wealth in a way that there hadn't been a big conversation about income equality. they feel he's not up to date and in touch with their electorate. >> and, in fact, on that very subject of the nondisclosure agreements and his reactions on those -- on that issue, to elizabeth warren in particular, warren has been boosted by that debate performance. the campaign claims they've raised $5 million in the last

couple of days. she was on a cnn town hall last night and had this rather tart response to michael bloomberg on his refusal to release those women who have legal claims settled against his company from their nondisclosure agreements. >> i used to teach contract law and i thought i would make this easy. [ cheers and applause ] >> i wrote up a release in covenant not to sue and all that mayor bloomberg has to do is download it, i'll text it, sign it and then the women or men will be free to speak. >> let's talk about warren's rise and how fragmented this field is. the democratic party make a big mistake in moving california and

texas up so they're both on the same day, the other big states? bernie sanders could come out of california now with a lead in delegates that basically sews it up for him very early in the game? >> yeah, andrea, you're right. super tuesday has become even more important because california and texas got moved up. bernie sanders could get to a lead in super tuesday that no one could catch him much like barack obama did in 2008 on super tuesday against hillary clinton. so this is a very big moment and moving california and texas up makes it even more important to have the kind of resources and the money that only a couple candidates are going to have. the interesting thing about that debate the other night is it really was elizabeth warren's moment that she absolutely had to have. the reports that came out yesterday showed she's running

out of money, she was sliding in the polls and yet this has been a bunch of fresh air for her in a way that she had to have it. my question is, is it going to affect the numbers in the nevada caucus? the democratic party has done an amazing job getting ready for this caucus. and they instituted an early vote period that has already had 75,000 people vote early. three-fourths of the people who are likely going to vote have already voted before the debate happens. if they can get the bounce they need is the question we're going to find out tomorrow night. >> thanks so much to all of you. and coming up, russian to judgment. president trump kicking out his acting director of national intelligence after an intelligence briefing to congress that russia was back interfering this time in the 2020 elections. plus, staying alive, how joe biden plans to keep his campaign going past super tuesday. my exclusive interview with the

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a major housecleaning in the intelligence community by the president raising alarms about political interference in what had been off limits since -- to the white house interference since watergate. this all started with a secret briefing to congress last week that russia was once again trying to interfere in the u.s. election, possibly to help donald trump. when devin nunes told mr. trump, the president was outraged. so outraged that he ousted the acting head of all the 17 agencies, joseph maguire, even though his temporary term was set to expire march 12th. also departing is andrew hallman and they're being replaced by trump loyalists, rick grenell

and according to reports, a former devin nunes aide who had been working at the nsc. one official saying the office of the director of the dni who oversees all of the intelligence community is nearing a meltdown. joining me now is a former u.s. ambassador to russia, jeremy bash, and ken dilanian whose done all this reporting. ken, there's some confusion about exactly how precise that analysis was, was it the russians interfering, was it to help donald trump, was it possibly to help donald trump. but the bottom line is, it infuriated the president and the analysts in charge was doing her job, which is to tell the house and senate committees in secret what their best thinking is based on what they're reading on

russia's intentions. >> that's the key point, andrea. this official shelby pearson is the czar of the intelligence community and she went over to brief congress last week to update them on the latest election threats and foreign interference threats and as we do further reporting on this, we're hearing differing accounts of what was said in that briefing. one official is pushing back and saying perhaps the intelligence wasn't clear on the notion that russia clearly preferred donald trump but shelby pearson told lawmakers, we have that confirmed, that russia had developed a performance for donald trump and republicans in the meeting were pushing back on that and devin nunes, the ranking republican, called donald trump and told him about this and the next day he had a meeting, including joseph maguire, the acting dna, where he berated maguire, was upset this briefing occurred, was wondering why the dni was sharing this information about russian threats with adam schiff

and that led to maguire being pushed out and not considered for the permanent dni job and that is having an incredibly chilling affect over the intelligence community. my sources are really upset about this because as you said, their fundamental job is to speak truth to power, not to shade the intelligence, to present it unvarnished and let the policymakers do what they will with it. if you have a president who's going to fire career officials over briefings, we're in a place we've never been before. >> jeremy, you of course were chief of staff at the cia and at the pentagon dealing with intelligence every day and a former legal counsel to the house intelligence committee. what is your reaction based on all the players involved and what you know about what's going on? >> well, this is the first time, andrea, in our history that an intelligence leader has been fired for providing warning about an imminent or potentially

ongoing attack on our country. the role and responsibility of our intelligence leadership is to provocations and warnings, to provide the best assessments based on the facts and information available about the threats to our country. clearly that was the reason why the office of the director of national intelligence dispatched a very senior briefer to the congressional intelligence committees. you should the 1947 national security act, the executive branch is required to brief congress on these threats and she apparently was doing her job. i didn't comport with the president's view and it obviously undermined something he's been trying to articulate from a political perspective. but that doesn't change the facts that russia was looking to conduct a cyberattack on our election and that attack is probably under way. >> and, ambassador, your study of vladimir putin, you know him well, you know all the players involved. it was pretty obvious that russia would try again and use

some of the same tactics that they had used in terms of creating more divisiveness in american society, using social media, using bots. when you look at this, what is the problem here with this white house, this president gets so upset at any suggestion that putin is doing what he does naturally? >> yeah, andrea, there are so many things that are problematic about this story. the most important one that you just have been discussing is we cannot have the politicalization of intelligence. that is really, really dangerous well beyond what the russians might do in our election. if we now have all evidence and all intelligence coming from the cia and the intelligence community and odni, filtered through partisan politics, that means that the president is not getting an accurate picture of the threats out there whether it's pandemics or nuclear weapons or terrorist attacks or china, iran, russia, this is dangerous. that's number one. number two, the idea that is

some kind of of insight -- let's say vladimir putin wants president trump to win, lots of people study vladimir putin, including me, there's a lot of open-source material that you can reach that conclusion without any classified material. but number three, another part that really bothers me is what ken knows. ken, you're doing a great job. but why is all this being leaked all the time? if this is classified material, why are we having different sides of what's going on in this briefing leaking it out to us? that also is not right and i just think it underscores how broken this system is right now and it really, really concerns me about the future of american security. >> let me ask you this, mike, because as a former ambassador, you know relationships with our allies, they were already concerned about things that the president has done and said and classified information that he

himself blurted out, for instance, when the russian ambassador was in the oval office. but there were the professionals in the intelligence community that they were dealing and there was not an interruption, as far as my reporting, when i talk to people overseas, within the basic relationships, with london, with berlin, with paris, with our key allies, australia, new zealand, you know, the key members -- with israel. they trusted us. with this kind of change, with rick grenell, someone who has exacerbated tensions with europe, who's criticized angela merkel and other leaders through his social media accounts, how are they going to react if there's basically a house-cleaning at dni? >> nobody is going to like this. of course not. ambassador grenell is, first of all, not qualified to be the head of odni. nobody is qualified to have that job and be the ambassador to

germany, by the way. i don't care who it is. you can't do both of those jobs at the same time. that's silly. and i hope it's temporary. but i think it sends a signal of the politicalization of intelligence and that is deeply disturbing to our allies and disturbing to policy people like me. remember, you know, when i worked at the nsc for president obama, we had the pdb every day. that was prepared by odni so that they could present directly to the president intelligence not filtered by policymakers, people like me. we then provided comments to the president, to the vice president, national security adviser, on that intelligence. but it had to be in a separate channel. and if you blur those channels, especially with the president that is distrustful of all intelligence already, that's just really, really dangerous, well beyond the russia threat. >> jeremy, what's the fix to this? i understand that the intelligence oversight

committees in congress are very concerned. obviously, the republicans lead the senate housside. but what had the president enraged is that adam schiff would be briefed on this. >> the fix is to declassify the essential findings and to publish them so the american people can judge for themselves. and there's precedent for this. in january 2017, the intelligence community published an ica, an intelligence community assessment, that was the document that we all reviewed that showed that putin had attacked the 2016 election and had a clear preference for donald trump. i think the same should happen here. i think also maybe they ought to appoint three senior analysts, former analysts, who don't have a political bent to review the information, review the intelligence and provide their assessment of exactly what's going on. the entire government -- the entire nation needs to know what russia is planning for the 2020 election so we can prepare.

>> thanks to all of you. we will be continuing all of our reporting on this essential story. and coming up, declaring warren. elizabeth warren coming out swinging at bernie sanders saying her temperament would make her a better president.

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get our special tv offer a 4-week trial plus postage and a digital scale go to stamps.com/try and never go to the post office again! here in nevada, democrats are trying to avoid a repeat of the iowa caucus debacle as they train volunteers on software to calculate the votes when the caucuses begin tomorrow. the challenge is going to be combining first-time early voting, first time they've done that here, with decisions made at the caucuses themselves. it's a complicated process. the state party did abandon the defective app that caused all the trouble in iowa. they were originally going to use the same one. polls show bernie sanders leading here in nevada with his rivals now escalating their attacks. last night my colleague lawrence o'donnell asked elizabeth warren

for her message to voters who are torn between her and bernie sanders. >> i have rock-solid values and i get stuff done. i get hard stuff done. i fought for the consumer protection financial bureau, got that thing enacted and set it up over the space of a year. i don't want to be president just to yell at people. i want to be president to change things. >> and joining me now, assistant dean at the university of texas school of public affairs, political analyst for the cook political report, and here in nevada, former deputy chief of staff to harry reid. welcome all of you. these caucuses, it's complicated. i started going through it, again, last night, the early voting was impressive. 77,000-plus showing up, more than half were first time-time voters. hard to read whether that's just

taking away from people showing up tomorrow. so we don't know turnout per se. but it could be a big turnout. bernie sanders looks like he's ahead. when they have these paper ballots, they were supposed to mark preference one, two and three, and that gets calculated and added to the preferences at the caucuses themselves and then there's generally a 15% viability threshold in some precincts. how is it going to work? >> it's a little bit complicated for sure. this is not their first rodeo here. and the nevada democratic party is the strongest state democratic party in the country. this is the same state that has taken nevada, which was a blue -- a red state under president bush and turned it into a blue state with a democratic governor, two democratic senators and a democratic legislature. if anybody can pull it off, the nevada democratic party can. i have a lot of confidence in them. >> to victoria, you have 30% of

the population of the democratic vote here to be latino. it's the first diverse state in this lineup. how do you expect people to be splitting and is there a generation gap? who is going for bernie from your read? bernie sanders and hillary clinton split the vote very evenly in a very hotly contested nevada caucus four years ago. >> indeed, andrea. so it's complicated here too. what we see with the latino electorate is in nevada a big chunk of the culinary union is made up by latinos and many of these union members don't necessarily like the medicare for all option that bernie sanders brings. i can't say if they're going for biden or warren or who else in terms of that. but it's not a lock for bernie sanders because of that. but at the same time we know that younger latinos very much support bernie sanders. so he has the support among the

millennials and those younger voters. what we saw in the latest latino decisions poll that just came out for registered latino voters in nevada is that bernie sanders does have the lead and then we see biden, and interestingly enough, michael bloomberg who is not even on the ballot coming in a close third to joe biden. what we didn't see, what we do see in terms of the more general electorate, andrea, was that elizabeth warren and pete buttigieg were a distant fourth and fifth. my question for tomorrow is, did latinos change their mind when they saw elizabeth warren on the debate stage and are we going to see that perhaps eat into biden's 22% with the latino population. but the short answer is, it's really a tossup and we're not going to know until tomorrow. >> it's going to be very exciting, indeed. david, of course, the people who saw elizabeth warren who had a very strong debate performance do not include the early voters because those 77,000 people

voted before the debate and they stopped early voting at that point. this gets complicated and now we proceed to south carolina where we see of course 60% of the democratic primary voters are african-american. we see bernie sanders now picking up a lot of black support in our -- today's nbc news/"wall street journal" oversample. what's the impact of that? >> over a million voters have cast ballots in the democratic primary. a lot of this is baked in already. super tuesday is going to be a supernova in this race and bernie sanders is 11 days away from becoming the democratic nominee. the reason, you look at these early contests that he's winning and, for example, in nevada, the culinary union had an opportunity to endorse a candidate that was not bernie sanders and they don't like his health plan. they did not. you have pete buttigieg and amy klobuchar who were engaged in a

mutual destruction pack and either who are likely to be viable. you have michael bloomberg who took some licks in that debate and elizabeth warren who came back up. and so viable everywhere except bernie sanders. and that's the reality of the map on the democratic side whether most of the party likes it or not. >> and, adam, here in nevada, harry reid, the man you worked for, he's very powerful. he has not endorsed, hasn't said whom he's going to endorse. are there signaling being sent? >> i think senator reid's top priority in this process is to ensure a fair caucus. the biggest part of his legacy here is the fact that the nevada caucus got moved up early on the calendar. i think folks here think there's an opportunity for nevada to maybe move up even earlier if -- >> in other words, if iowa loses its starting -- >> it could happen. i've talked to a lot journalists

who think it might be nicer to spend a year here than in iowa. his number one priority is to ensure a successful caucus and he's trying to defend all of the candidates and i think that's what you'll see from him as we come into saturday. >> having spent a number of new year's eves in des moines in the snow, the idea of being in las vegas on new year's eve instead -- >> let's give it a try. >> so great to see you. thank you to all of you. and coming up, my conversation with former vice president joe biden. why he thinks the next few rounds of the election cycle will lift him to the top of the democratic pack. you're watching "andrea mitchell reports" live in las vegas, only on msnbc. at fidelity, we'll help you build a clear plan for retirement. one that covers health care costs, taxes,

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new figures just out today show that senator bernie sanders now has a big campaign war chest, outpacing joe biden who is at a critical point in his run. i spoke with the former vice president yesterday and asked him about how he thinks he can overtake bernie sanders who's replaced him as the front-runner. >> he doesn't have a double-digit lead that i'm aware of across the board. but, look, bernie is also -- look, i've been the front-runner for so long. i've gone through all of the vetting that could be vetted. and i'm still standing. now they're going to start to vet bernie and they're going to vet bernie on things that he hadn't been challenged on very much before. like, for example, his support of making sure that gun manufacturers are held to be not liable for anything they do. i think he's now said that was a

mistake. but he voted for that and made the case that why should they be sued? or the fact that he voted five times against the effort i finally got done of getting background checks and waiting periods. but i think that there's a lot of things that -- and the biggest thing, though, is i don't think bernie -- i know he's not level with the american people about his health care proposal. it's going to cost well over $35 trillion. he's saying, we'll see how much it's going to cost. at least before he was talking about something that was rational and saying taxes are going to go up, income taxes. so i think -- i hope at the end of the day the american people are going to look at who's being authentic, who is telling the truth about what they're going to do and whether they can do it. >> what is your reaction to him saying last night that if he's ahead in the delegates going into the convention, he should get the nomination even if he doesn't have 1991?

>> if he has 1900 and he doesn't have the 91 he may have an argument. but if this gets split a number of ways and he's distant from the 1991 needed, that's the first time we've done anything like that. if i were he, i would make that argument, but i don't think it's a rational argument. >> finally, here in nevada, it's a caucus. we've seen what happened in iowa. how confident are you that they can do it better? >> i'm hoping, i'm hoping they can do it better. for example, there's been a lot of early voting. people waiting in lines and i'm told up to four hours in some cases to vote. and you walk in, i don't think people know how it works, you get a ballot and you say this is my first choice, second choice and third choice. if your first choice doesn't meet the minimum, who is counting all of those? >> it's complicated. >> it's complicated. that's why i'm not crazy about the whole notion of caucuses. they should be primaries. >> how do you have to place here

to have good momentum going into south carolina and beyond? >> i think if i place one or two, i have good momentum and i think we're going to be in good shape in south carolina. >> but how joe biden places right here in nevada is going to set the stage for south carolina next week which the biden campaign admits he needs to win. coming up next, two thumbs down, president trump's rant about the academy awards best picture. the winner "parasite" and best supporting actor, brat pit. you're watching "andrea mitchell reports" only on msnbc. ique. that's why i like liberty mutual. they get that no two people are alike and customize your car insurance so you only pay for what you need. almost done. what do you think? i don't see it. only pay for what you need.

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and help reverse early gum damage. gum detoxify, from crest. by the way, how bad were the academy awards this year? did you see it? and the winner is a movie from south korea. what the hell was that all about? we got enough problems with south korea with trade on top of it they give them the best movie of the year. was it good? i don't know. i'm looking for, like let's get "gone with the wind" back. >> and then you have brad pitt. i was never a fan of his. he got up, little wise guy.

he's a little wise guy. >> president trump turned movie critic. who knew he was a movie critic? a bizarre turn during the rally last night. the president attacking best picture "parasite" and hollywood royalty brad pitt who brought up impeachment during his acceptance speech. the company behind "parasite" fired back writing understandable, he can't read. well, joining me now, bill kristol, founder of defending democracy together, and phil rucker, co-author of "the new york times" best seller, "a very stable genius". phil, first to you. the president going wild on "parasite" is just one indication of just how crazy the rallies have become. what about the president's performance here on the campaign? we'll have another rally

momentarily right here in las vegas. >> yeah. that would make it three rallies in the course of three days. he's going to be i believe in south carolina next week. so clearly his campaign schedule is picking up. and he loves the rallies. he lives for them. it's his oxygen, and when he gets on that stage, he has prepared remarks his staff write for them. he veers way off script usually as he did last night when he was talking about the oscars and the committee awards. it's worth keeping in mind how sensitive president trump is to criticism he receives from those in hollywood. you'll remember early in the presidency he lashed out at meryl streep over her comments at one of the award shows and last night it was brad pitt. >> and bill kristol, i want to share your tweet with anyone who didn't see it about donald trump and his whole affect right now. what he's doing is going from democratic primary and caucus states, the night before the

voting, and really trying to preempt a lot of attention. he did it in new hampshire with an enormous crowd when we were in manchester. you wrote trump brought a different set of rules. the rules of celebrity gossip, reality tv and twitter, not to mention professional wrestling with constant conflict is necessary to keep your fans enganled. in fact, he does a good job of this. >> i think it's a quote from my colleague. i think it's worth reading the whole piece. it's one of the many ways which donald trump redefined the rules and norms of presidential behavior, not in a good way, i would say. the "parasite" thing, i vice president seen the movie, but i hear good things about it. but that's nativism. we shouldn't let him say isn't it funny he's playing movie critic? he's playing on the sentiment that movies not made in america are not movies in a far away place could be the best movie of the year. it's not the worst kind of

nativi nativism. it's not like putting kids in camps when they are taken across the border or like a muslim ban, but it is something, and it's striking. i mean, more probably and we were talking about this and you did in the earlier segment, the degree to which trump is breaking norms right and left is a -- each one of them, you can sort of way well, he has the right to have political appointees that agree with him. maybe the dni person was overbeefed, but the pattern of a long train of abuses and usurpations all going in the same direction toward an increasingly authoritarian presidency with appeals to the public. that is really where we're seeing in full flood, i guess, here in 2020. >> and just to say, going after south korea slamming them on trade, for instance, has implications. we rely on south korea.

a key ally against north korea. they've already been criticized by the president who has been demanding more money for the u.s. troops housed there. he's cancelled without informing jim mattis's defense secretary at the time, the joint exercises with south korea which does impact readiness. there's bigger implications for the nativism. what about the dmi. from all the reporting, this is enormous. no matter what the briefing was, the way it was interpreted, the way it was presented to the president by his ally, devin nunes, so enraged him that as e we -- this is the first time a top intelligence official has been removed for doing his job. >> it's a hugely significant development. it shows the extent to which president trump is trying to politicize the nation's intelligence apparatus and community, but we should keep in mind that the briefing that took place on capitol hill as we

understand it, was entirely proper. it followed protocol. of course the intelligence committee members of congress should be presented with this sort of information. and the information they were shown is not surprising, because we've known for some time russia would try to interfere again. >> will crystal and phil rucker, thank you to both of you and we'll be right back. i thought i was managing my moderate to severe crohn's disease. until i realized something was missing... me. you ok, sis? my symptoms were keeping me from really being there for my sisters. (announcement) "final boarding for flight 2007 to chicago" so i talked to my doctor and learned humira is for people who still have symptoms of crohn's disease after trying other medications. and the majority of people on humira saw significant symptom relief and many achieved remission in as little as 4 weeks. humira can lower your ability to fight infections. serious and sometimes fatal infections, including tuberculosis, and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened, as have blood, liver,

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thanks for being with us and thanks to the msnbc crew members who have come from all over. there will be more live from las vegas throughout the day. starting at 2:00 we'll have live coverage of the caucuses hosted by brian williams and nicole wallace. remember to join us and follow our show online and on facebook. here is ari melbourne? new york. >> hello. this is an hour of special election coverage. voting beginning tomorrow in nevada. this race has several firsts. the first time the candidates are facing voters in a diverse state. a more like the general election. another first, democratic voters going to the polls for the first time since michael bloomberg