forward joining an already intense and emotional battle that has already unspooled over the supreme court vacancy left open in the passing of an american giant, ruth bader ginsburg, who died friday night. the collective grief of the nation and the reverence with which we honor ore groundbreaking achievements in law and in the fight for gender equality erupting into the fierce political scramble that justice ginsburg herself foresaw and gave voice to in her final days, and in her dying wish, which was this, quote, that i will not be replaced until a new president is installed. it is in that spirit that joe biden this weekend issued a plea for civility and for a cooling of tensions, one described by "the washington post" as both extraordinary and unusually personally, asking republicans to consider state of the country amid a pandemic, with the death toll surpassing 200,000, with unrest across the country stoked

by this president, whose political strategy rests on division, with the very foundation of democracy, the vote under daily assault from the commander in chief. according to joe biden, we can't afford to drag the country down any lower. >> we need to de-escalate. not escalate. that's why i appeal to those few senate republicans, the handful who really will decide what happens. please, follow your conscience. this appointment isn't about the past. it's about the future. and the people of this nation and the people of this nation are choosing their future right now, as they vote. to jam this nomination through the senate is just an exercise in raw political power. and i don't believe the people of this nation will stand for it. >> it should be noted that the vast majority of senate republicans are so far not at

all moved by joe biden's plea, nor by justice ginsburg's dying wish. nor do top republicans own purported principles, which they laid out when they rejected president obama's supreme court pick because it was, quote, too close to an election. in this case, it was nearly eight months before election day in 2016. donald trump saying now that he'll name his pick to fill the vacancy, a woman, he says, by the end of the week. and senate majority leader mitch mcconnell vowing to put it to a vote. but like the other crises facing the country in the run-up to election day, donald trump and his party now appear once again out of step with the vast majority of american people when it comes to the supreme court fight. an overwhelming 62% of americans want this supreme court vacancy filled by whoever wins on november 3rd. that includes eight in ten democrats and a significant five in ten republicans. splitting republicans right down

the middle, this according to rutgers. the supreme court fight that ended the political landscape of the next 43 days before election day is where we start today. senior opinion writer for the "boston globe," kimberly atkins is here. plus, associated press white house reporter, jonathan lamir is back. and matt miller with the justice department sheer. matt miller, i start with you. because you and i and jonathan was with us, too, were together friday night. and we started this conversation, matt miller, about just how much republicans can try to ram through in their absence of shame, in their absence of a conscience, in their absence of any accountability for their own prior standards set forth and uttered over and over again on tape and in interviews. but maybe what they didn't see coming, matt miller, was that an overwhelming majority of americans, 62%, 8 in 10 democrats and 5 in 10 republicans are against ramming this through.

>> yeah, and the question, of course, is whether they're going to care about that or not. i thought joe biden in his comments yesterday really hit tone right in being both realistic and idealistic in the same time. realistic in recognizing that even in spite of that type of public opposition and even in spite of what they said four years ago, how clear the republicans were about the supposed principle they invented, that they were going to live by. that donald trump and mitch mcconnell don't care. that they live by a rule of might makes right and if they can jam this through, they'll still try to jam it through. biden was dialistic in -- he wasn't talking just to lisa murkowski and susan collins and maybe mitt romney and maybe some other republicans that might be on the fence. he was talking to voters and talking to the american people. >> right. >> and i think framing the stakes here about how far republicans are willing to go to abuse power, number one, and number two, what's at stake if they are able to get this entrenched super majority on the supreme court in terms of access

to health care, access to abortion, climate change, so many other issues. i think what he's doing is making a clear argument to voters that, look, republicans may do this. they may power this through either before the election or in a lame-duck session, but if they do, you should pay attention and you should act accordingly and you should vote accordingly and there will be consequences. >> and, you know, jonathan lamir, i think what is surprising to political types like myself on both sides is how the reversal of this issue and some of it seems to be rooted in the fact that if you're animated by the courts, that's what lets you hold your nose and stick with trump's, you know, repugnant personal conduct and unpresidential behavior, because you feel like you got what you signed up for, you got your judicial picks. but let me read this from nbc news. for decades, republicans have galvanized voters around reshaping the supreme court. and they've benefited from it at

the ballot box. but in a stark reversal, polls indicate that democrats have the edge this year on the issue. national and battleground state surveys taken before justice ruth bader ginsburg died friday, shows that voters trust joe biden more than president donald trump to pick a supreme court nominee that the democrats rate the court as more important to their votes than the republicans d do. >> well, let's remember, nicole that though right now, of course, evangelicals and conservative christians, for the most part, march in lockstep with donald trump, that was not the case in 2015, 2016, and that's why he put out that list of potential supreme court nominees, to try to reassure them, who may have their doubts about a new york billionaire with a tawdry personal life. and we saw him, of course, update that list just a week or so ago. he knows and mitch mcconnell, as well, this is a huge part of their legacy, remaking the federal judiciary. and the president, of course,

has had two supreme court picks already. the last one, justice kavanaugh, led to a contentious confirmation hearing battle that really, right before the 2018 midterms, and we're staring now at perhaps one even more consequential. you're right, certainly, in recent decades, republicans have been more animated by a fight to reshape the judiciary, to put someone on the supreme court, but i think it's telling that this may cut differently this time. yes, the president on saturday night in his rally in north carolina, according to our reporting, he has told people he was absolutely delighted at the "fill that seat" chants who went up from the crowd, who of course wanted him to forge forward with replacing justice ginsburg this year, to nominate someone and move forward. and they intend to. we expect the white house to do so in the coming days. but that's not the only party that has reacted with incredible enthusiasm and energy to the fight about this vacant seat. act blue, which is the democrats' fund-raising organization, posted record

highs in terms of money raised in recent days after ginsburg died. and certainly polling suggests that the democrats are going to matter -- this matters, too, for a variety of reasons. for some seminole cases that could be on the dockets that could change the future of the nation for generations. the former care act, certainly now, on the ballot. the idea of rights to an abortion, roe v. wade, certainly on the ballot. and indeed, any potential legal challenge to this election, to 2020 election, and we certainly expect that to happen, would also go before the supreme court. so there is extraordinary energy here on both sides. and i think the early analysis that this was certainly going to be good for president trump, that he would come out ahead in this, you know, with the vacant seat, that may be premature. it's hard to know exactly how to cut. >> kim atkins, i think jonathan lamir is right there and let me just put up what he just cited. "the new york times" reports that cash is flowing over

confirmation battle for supreme court vacancy. the passion for liberals was shown when donations were shattered. 6.2 million in the hour after justice ginsburg died. by noon saturday, donations had topped $45 million. my experience, kim, that voters like equilibrium. there's a reason why a president's party loses in the midterms. voters like balance. and i don't think this isn't just about trump replacing scalia or kennedy, this is about trump, who has run on lawlessness. it's as associated with his brand as anything else. maybe failing on covid and not wearing a mask and being a covid truther is the only sort of, you

know, bad boy brand that he hugs more tightly these days. but the notion that the kinds of voters that the trump campaign would acknowledge that they're talking to by all of donald trump's tweets, where he tweets to suburban housewives, would suggest that this is not a politically advantageous move for him. and that the lists that they've put out, these are hard right-wing conservatives who have spoken, not just in their writings, but in their public utterances, about issues like life. this is at minimum double-edged for donald trump. and we may look back after this and this may be the thing that really cost him the suburbs. >> yes, i think for all the reasons you just laid out, that this could, in the long run, but politically disadvantageous to president trump. look, i think that these donations that we saw skyrocket over the weekend point to two things. it's one, as you pointed out,

the voters understand very well what is at stake. health care, abortion rights, gun control, the environment. so much is at stake with the u.s. supreme court. and while in the past, i mean, i have told you on this show many times, that the democrats had not made the supreme court of urgent an issue as they should have, the events of the weekend and the loss of justice ruth bader ginsburg made it crystal clear to voters just how important it is. and keep in mind, a lot of these donations weren't just for the presidential race, they were for senate races. so i think this is particularly a perilous move, potentially perilous move for mitch mcconnell. of course, the judiciary has been mitch mcconnell's top issue, and getting as many conservatives, not just on the supreme court, but throughout the federal judiciary has been crucial to him. and he and donald trump together have been extraordinarily successful in doing that. but in this moment, seeing --

there was a time, nicole, that being hypocritical would be a big blow to a politician, being a flip-flopper, especially on something as crucial as this. and seeing mitch mcconnell turn around and create essentially a different constitutional standard when it comes to appointments for donald trump than he did for barack obama, who he stopped -- whose nomination he stopped in the exact same circumstances, do not look good to voters. this is a time where the senate is in play. mitch mcconnell, this move might cost him his job as senate majority leader if the votes follow through with what we saw in fund-raising this weekend. >> matt miller, kim brought up the senate. let me just put up where we stand. not supporting any nomination being any hearings before an election, are susan collins and lisa murkowski, who donald trump maligned for that position this morning on his favorite program, in the category of undecided, chuck grassley, mitt romney, and cory gardner.

now, donald trump doesn't play che chess, but if he did, he would pick merrick garland, because hep doesn't give a hoot about mitch mcconnell. he really doesn't care. he doesn't legislate. the idea that it would be harder to get things done -- i don't think that crosses his mind. and this is not something that came out of my working mom at home teaching school all day mushy brain, this is something john bolton warned about, in one of his first public speeches that he gave. my colleague, steph rhul actually and carol lee reported on it and he was warning about what a second donald trump term could bring. and this idea that picki ining right-wing person from mitch mcconnell's list and all of these conservatives that made the list, and i'm going to go out on a limb and say donald trump doesn't know when any of these people are, is so politically fraught, not just for the senate majority, but for donald trump. what do you think about the possibility that it's not anyone that we're talking about?

because if he's still sewing up his base, he's in deeper trouble than he ever lets on, politically. >> yeah, expect i think the only play that donald trump has ever had is to try to mobilize his base. he's never had to reach out to the motors play, at least since he got elected president. there were things he ran on in 2016, protecting medicare and others, but really not since he got elected. and the reason -- i sort of don't agree with that john bolton theory. the reason he'll never pick someone from the political mainstream, the reason he'll always pick someone from the hard right is that's that the bargain he has with mitch mcconnell and senate republicans. it's the reason why he can govern however he wants. it's the reason why he can run his administration in the lawless fashion he can. the reason why he can pressure foreign governments to retaliate against his political opponents and get away with it in the senate, because the bargain he made with mitch mcconnell is that he will deliver nominees that mcconnell wants. and those nominees are the nominees who will serve on the

supreme court long after donald trump is gone, maybe long after republicans have lost their majority in the senate and help republicans hang on to political power, so if there is a democratic administration, any progressive legislation they pass can be struck down by a super majority. that is basically the agreement between mitch mcconnell and donald trump that helps trump sustain his support in the senate and i don't ever see him breaking that agreement for anything. >> jonathan lamir, it's a deal with the devil and people have to decide, which one's the devil and which the dealmaker is. i want to bring our viewers up to speed with some breaking news. joe manchin, who i think was the only democrat to vote for brett kavanaugh's confirmation has come out and said no nominee should be confirmed before the election. i think he's viewed as a swing vote on these issues and he's a "no." but i want to ask you more about the political landscape on which this is all playing out,

jonathan. our poll that i've been quoting from, the nbc news/"wall street journal" poll shows that 90% of voters have absolutely made up their minds and say there's no way they would vote for the other candidate. nearly 50% are supporting biden, 10% are supporting trump. this really is about two things. one, turning out your 50 if you're biden, your 40 if you're trump, but also reaching the 11. and those are people following the news. and what they'll see in the news is the third book in three weeks to suggest that robert mueller never really sussed out donald trump's ties to russia and that he was never really fully vetted. you'll see this tragedy pick milestone of 200,000 americans have been lost in a pandemic that donald trump acknowledged to bob woodward was deadly and that he was intentionally downplaying. and everywhere you look, get in your car, go to the mailbox, to the grocery store, everywhere you look, businesses have the lights off and the doors closed. so just talk about how desperate

donald trump is for something else to talk about? >> well, nicole, you and and i discussed on this show the theory that any day in which the coronavirus pandemic is not the day's top story is a day that they feel like they have a chance or that they can win or fight to win. and yes, certainly, the supreme court vacancy here has for the moment drowned out everything else. but i'm glad you brought up the grim milestone the nation has hit here. it's 200,000 deaths and that number is still climbing and american society completely reshaped because of the pandemic. and to this point, this election has simply been, frankly, a referendum on how president trump has handled that. as much as the trump campaign has tried to make it a choice election, that really hasn't happened. and certainly, this supreme court vacancy will electrify both sides here, but i think the pandemic will still be the dominant story line going forward. in terms of where this will

play, both sides, the partisans, the bases of each will be fired up. and we know that the trump campaign says they acknowledge, the number of people in this country who like donald trump is smaller than the number of people in this country who like joe biden or perhaps dislike donald trump, but they feel like the people who like trump are passionate about it. and that's their theory, and therefore they will turn out in a higher rate than the people who backwi biden. fundamental rights in this country are at stake because of the supreme court. and in terms of this middle section, that relatively small group that's still up for grabs, small compared to most elections at this point, it remains to be seen how that cuts. certainly the trump campaign who thinks that some have fallen out of love could come back. suburban women may find themselves breaking hard for joe biden. >> and kim atkins, i want to give you the last word on what the notorious ruth bader

ginsburg, rbg, she became known later in her life, meant for every woman, especially every woman with a job and she wrote and spoke about trying to find her first job out of law school when she had a couple of strikes against her, one of them being a mom. she was .just a reliable liberal vote on the supreme court that is energizing and animating both partisan sides. she was a moral leader, robert costa used that word friday night and i liked it. she was an icon. and she reminded women why we sort of juggle it all, right? and i think that if you look at the way women have reacted to every moment of trump's presidency, from the women's march, right after he was elected, to women's turnout in 2018, where they turned so many of those congressional races towards democrats, i think there's something about the fact

that it was her and her legacy that just ignites women's desire to get out and go vote, even if it's challenging and even if they are underwater between work and remote school and everything else they're juggling. >> yes, i mean, ruth bader ginsburg described herself as a feminist. and talked about the need to have feminists on the bench. you know, there's a knock against people who are potential activists. well, ruth bader ginsburg made no apology for the fact that she was using her interpretations of the constitution and of statutes to ensure that women had rights. you know, i covered the court for almost a decade. and the very first day i went there to cover an argument, and she handed down the first bench dissent she had given in years, but it became the first of many that she would give. and it was on the case upholding the partial birth abortion ban. the federal partial birth abortion ban, with the majority

held in part that women are so fragile and they have to be protected against making this decision at such a tender moment. ruth bader ginsburg said that was nonsense. she said what the court was really doing was chipping away at roe v. wade roe v. waand tha time was the only woman on the bench and the only thing that had changed was the makeup of the court, which had swung more to the right. she called it out right away. a few weeks later, she did the same thing on women's equal pay. later she would do the same thing on voting rights is and a number of issues and using that famous dissent collar that she would wear when she would give this voice. she was such a presence in the court. i cannot imagine what the court will be like when it reopens and she is not there. >> hmm. what a thought. beautifully put. thank you, kim atkins, for leaving it there. kim and jonathan, thank you both for starting us off. matt is sticking with us for a little longer. when we come back, the passing of ruth bader ginsburg, as we've been discussing, galvanizing democrats who are seeking to turn the opening of

the supreme court to their advantage come november. and yet another former senior trump official speaking out about another set of indictments about this president and this white house. there are now close to two dozen and counting. is the message getting through? and will all of this friendly fire have an impact? plus, trump and his allies can talk all they want about the supreme court, but there's no denying he spent his fourth year in office doing little to stop the 200,000 americans who have lost their lives in this pandemic from suffering the consequences of his failed leadership. we'll talk about all of those stories, coming up. ories, cominp >> tech: when you've got auto glass damage... ...safelite can come to you. >> tech: and you'll get a text when we're on our way. >> tech: just leave your keys on the dash

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187 judges in less than three years, bob. and two supreme court judges. never been done before. the only one that has a better percentage is george washington, because he appointed 100%. but my percentage is, you know, like ridiculous. >> that was donald trump bragging about a topic that's always on his mind, his judicial appointments. "the washington post" reports this, quote, when president trump sat down in the oval office with author bob woodward for the first of 18 eventual interviews, the president brought up judicial appointments four times and even had a list of judicial appointment orders displayed. prop-like on the resolute desk. quote, kind of like he was cherishing with it, woodward accounted. judicial appointments have engaged trump more than many other policy-making topics, in part because he appears to understand the political ramifications for him. as much as the power of reshaping our federal judiciary

has excited trump, it's also energized those on the other side. like we saw just one day after trump was inaugurated, and as we've been discussing, millions took to the streets, protesting for women's rights and reproductive freedoms, which they worried would soon become under attack. and as we've also been discussing, the 2018 election saw a level of voter turnout not recorded in a midterm election for more than a hundred years. it resulted in democrats taking back control of the house and a record number of women now serving in congress. joining our conversation, nbc news correspondent, heidi przybyla, matt miller is still with us. heidi, joining this conversation in progress, i was among those friday night who -- and some of this is my ptsd for having worked in republican politics. but my first thought was, everyone who's only with trump for the judicial picks will come

back to him. but i talked to enough people over the weekend and i looked inside some of the new polls, including ours. those people are still there, because trump held up his end of the deal with those -- they largely make up trump's base. the people who were there if the gorsuch pick, the kavanaugh pick and the other kind of legal appointments that don't get as much press, but are significant to that part of the republican base. the part of the electorate that's going to be jolted is the joer voters who have been taking to the streets since the day he was elected. women. >> let's talk about both of those. let's start with the voters on each side and the energy levels. according to the most recent polling, nicole, we're seeing that biden voters, even before ginsburg's passing, were more enthusiastic about voting on this issue, had more concern about this. that is a big paradigm shift from the mast, when it was always krves who were more enthusiastic about the supreme court issues. but then you talk about the

suburban women, who you've been talking about so much. we actually already know what effect this is going to have on them, nicole, from the kavanaugh nomination, because, remember, that took place about a month before the 2018 midterms that you cite. so inwe went back and looked at some of that dad. we're not even talk about energized republicans or democrats. we're talking about women who identify as independents, by a margin of 37% to 12%, they said that the kavanaugh confirmation process inspired them to vote democratic. so we already have a good idea here of what kind of an impact this is going to have, one on the base, and two on those women who are to say, in the middle. because what we know is that there are a lot of issues that women vote on, but on the issue of a woman's right to choose, overall, in terms of the overall general electorate, two-thirds of american voters do not want to see that overturned. they are going to see this as

definitely a call to, you know, make their voices known on this. >> and let's not leave men out of it. matt miller, i think a plurality of male voters view roe as settled law. so, i just think it's a moment where this idea that if we're talking about abortion, it helps republicans and hurts democrats, sort of one of those false things that has seeped in. and i know from working with republicans, you do not want to be talking about these things in the final weeks, when there are issues that come up in the final weeks, you want them to be about the economy or national security, not these issues, because they can repel the very voters that heidi is talking about, the 60 -- i think it's 64% of all women who view roe as law and don't want to see it threatened or change. >> i think abortion in the past, and the supreme court in the general have often helped republicans more than democrats. democrats, to a large extent,

took it for granted. took it for granted that roe was settled law. and too many democratic voters thought that it's not going to be overturned. i think the close calls of the court of the last few years, the affordable care act only being upheld by one vote. roe barely surviving and abortion restrictions being tightened at various stages have shown a lot of democratic voters how real the threat is. and i think when you look at the events -- you know, you started with the women's march and you talked about the kavanaugh hearings. the things you hear over and over from -- i remember when the story broke about brett kavanaugh, the accusations against him by christine blasey ford, looking at my wife and saying, well, that's it, he's done. and her saying to me, i'll believe it when it happens. because we've seen this too many times. and i think there are so many women who saw the 2018 election through the prism of trump being able to brag on tape about sexually harassing women and get away with it. they saw brett kavanaugh to be able to come up and attack amy

klobuchar, the daughter of an alcoholic and ask her, have you ever blacked out? they feel like they're not getting a fair shake. and you put that in terms of the court and put that in terms of what's at stake with this nomination, i don't see how it doesn't play against republicans at least with women going to the poll polls. >> i want to show you one of the starkest examples yet of donald trump revealing in another administration might have been part of a secret plot, but that he plans -- his strategy for winning the expectation election is to have it thrown to the federal courts. here he is. let's watch. >> if people had any idea what i do. now, if you just look at the list, hey, bob, i'm going to be up to 280 judges very soon. nobody's ever had that. 280. you know? >> i know. >> nobody's ever done that.

you know what i did? you have the judges, a lot of them are older, and they go on senior leave, and we convince many of them to go on senior leave, and more importantly, obama gave us 142 judges. >> yeah. >> when i came here. >> yeah. >> this never happened. you never had one. if you were a president, you would never have had any federal -- they're like golden nuggets, right? >> now we're counting on the federal court system to make it so that we can actually have an evening where we we know who wins, okay? not where the votes are going to be counted a week later or two weeks later. >> so we -- we went into our archives and played you all of our tapes for our viewing pleasure. the first one is donald trump bragging about judicial appointments. the second shorter one is the one i was talking about, where trump makes clear to the public at an event, from the podium, that he's counting on the federal courts to declare him the winner. that's his plan. >> and it's hand in glove with his comments that you can't

trust our electoral system. for the first time in the history of our voting system in the united states, we can't trust the results, because there's going to be massive, massive fraud. you know, he's talking about sending law enforcement to the polls, which, by the way, he has very limited ability to actually do that. there's pretty strict laws in place about activity that can take place around polling stations. however, this is all part of the same strategy, nicole, for folks to basically not trust the results that are coming in, even though he's saying that he wants this to be decided swiftly, he is the one who's planting that seed. just as he did, it's the same thing that he did in 2016, not just in the general election, nicole, but in the primaries. if you remember when he was trailing ted cruz, when ted cruz started to get an advantage over him, immediately his rhetoric pivoted to it being a rigged election and the whole system of

delegate apoportionment was rigged against him. it's really part of his strategy, because he's looking at this map and it's looking increasingly difficult for him. these numbers were not as solidified in the 2016 election. and states like pennsylvania are looking like they're going to stay blue. that blue wall will come back, it might just take some time. but if he can use that period to sew distrust and shrlug it out the court system and have that be the expectation of his voters, it's much better for him. >> heidi przybyla, matt miller, thank you both for spending some time with us on these big headlines. up next, more friendly fire from former trump officials, directed at the president and his presidency. we'll bring you the latest comments from a former insider and talk about that strategy with the former senior member of donald trump's department of homeland security. stay with us. rump's department f homeland security. stay with us

the rest of us are sitting in the room. i saw people looking down at the floor, looking down at the desk or the table in front of them or their shoes, thinking, we have actual items on this agenda that we really need to discuss and time matters right now. but instead, we're going to go resolve your concern about whatever some news anchor said off the cuff that upset you. that is who president trump is. that's what he cares about. and that is a factual story, by

the way. 45 minutes of going off on tucker carlson about how he treated kellyanne conway and hope, are you going to call him? who's going to call him? i mean, seriously, this went for 45 minutes. >> it explains a lot. and it's easy to deny those kinds of stories, those kind of characterizations of donald trump, when they're from unnamed sources or observations from reporters that cover them. but as the election draws closer, an increasing number of former trump officials are going on the record, on camera, with what they saw, when they saw it, and what people did about it, which amounts to not much, except for these folks speaking out. one of them is elizabeth newman, who joins our conversation now. she's a former assistant secretary for threat prevention and security policy at dhs. i have wanted to talk to you since this latest member of this effort to really tell the story to fill in the blank spaces and we've been talking so far this hour about all the things that trump says out loud, but no

politician shows all of their ugliness to the public. so what do you make of this new account? i mean, olivia talked about donald trump being disgusted by his own supporters and relieved that because of the pandemic protocols, he wouldn't have to shake their hands anymore. he's telling the story of his media obsession, which bears out on his twitter feed most days of the week. what is the -- what is the sort of hope behind sharing some of these things? >> you know, i think you've. itted oi think you've pinpointe one item which is she's confirming, a confirming voice of what we've all suspected from watching on the outside. but having her speak out, specifically around her experience with the covid task force, that she was at those meetings, and saw firsthand the debates that were happening, and realizing that the reason that we've seen such a failed response is not because of incompeten

incompetence. it's not because they tried something and they just happened to be wrong. it's because they decided not try at all. that it was about his re-election and his re-election only. when you put it all together. when you put together the fact that you had brookings institute come out last week with an updated survey or study of the impact of our covid response compared to other countries, they assess that we have 9 million more people unemployed and we have over 100,000 dead, more than -- so that's 50%. what they're saying is that we had 50% more people die than had to, because of our failed response. so now we have numbers for that and then you hear olivia's voice explaining what was happening inside the task force. and you have bob woodward's stories coming out, an audiotape of the president himself acknowledging that he knew that this virus, as early as early

february, this virus was five times more lethal than flu. and that he was intentionally downplaying it. you put all of that together, which comes out in the last two weeks, and you have a very damning county damn ing account of this president, that he is complicit 19 deaths of a hundred thousand americans. and it was preventable and it was not -- they didn't do what they needed to do for political purposes. because the people that were dying were in blue states at that time. or that they were concerned if it would hurt the stock market or the economy and then that would hurt his re-election. this man is only about himself. and lives have paid the price of that. >> i want to ask you something that is going to get lost on twitter as sounding unnecessarily harsh, so i want to give it this frame. i feel remorse for my role in the final weeks of the mccain/palin effort, that i was part of an effort to suggest in interviews and otherwise that she was ready to be president if she had to step in to that role.

and i've tried to live a life to sort of make good with the universe. do you feel remorse, does olivia feel remorse for what you just articulated, which is that donald trump is complicit in the deaths of 200,000 people dying, which didn't have to be the case? >> i can't speak on behalf of olivia, but i know that she's already publicly attested that she did not vote for him. in fact, in her role, she was a career civil servant that was detailed to the white house. and in that context, i think she was doing the best she could, given her role skponlt. and i don't know. maybe, nicole, we have to have time and space to be able to process that. i know when we were -- when i was on the inside and constantly assessing, is it time to leave? it really came down to, can i do more good by staying? or is it time for me to leave because i'm just so disgusted by

some of the activities that i'm seeing? and depending on the work that you do or the role that you had, i think the answer might be different for everybody. but i'm sure, it will be the type of thing that we spend time thinking about over the next few years. >> i'm 12 years in and i still spend time thinking about it, so i assure you, it will hit you at the strangest moments. in that vein, hr mcmaster, i think, delivers one of the most sort of cautious minimum war me time, but he does indict the covid response and he says -- let me put it up if i have it. he basically describes the covid response -- here it is. mcmaster said, trump's distinct to downplay the virus did not make sense. quote, in my experiences as a military commander, the more you tell your soldiers, even about the most dangerous mission, it's

going to allay their concerns and it's going to encourage them to take initiative, he said. the covid-19 response is, quote, probably one of the biggest shortcomings of the trump administration. let me ask you if the opposite is true. the could anybody other than a kushner or a trump come out of this administration, speak out publicly in the final days, and say anything positive about the president's performance or response to the pandemic? >> well, they keep trying, right? and it's laughable. and i think it's disrespectful of the people that have suffered. and the suffering is not just those that have been sick or those that have lost someone that they love, it's the economic suffering. it's the fact that i had phone calls with multiple friends last week who are two weeks into home learning and they're at their pra breaking point. they can't juggle it all. and what's aggravating about it is that it was preventable. we didn't have to be destined to most of our school systems being

shut down again. if we had done the proper planning and implementing strategies and plans that have been designed for 15 years. if we had implemented them as planned last spring, we would be in a different place today. and as far as i can tell, they're still not doing the planning and the responsibility activities that are needed to test and trace to be able to carry us through this winter. all i see them talk about is the vaccine. and while i'm glad we're making progress on a vaccine, we need to have a full-throated approach. there's no guarantee that the vaccine is going to work. there's no guarantee that it's going to come quickly. so what about all of the other plans that we -- you know, that -- objectives that are written down that tell us that would help mitigate this and we're moving into the winter. i don't understand -- you see me struggling with the words. it is, for 20 years, working in the security industry, do you come up with, here's what we

need to do if we have this kind of bad day or that kind of bad day. it just defies my sense of what it means to be in public service and to do national security planning if you aren't doing everything within your power to try to protect americans. and right now i see a half-hearted effort, very focused on vaccines, because that's what the president wants it to be. >> i want to ask you about something you said to me once, when i asked you, you know, what was your process and why did it take you the time that it took you. and you talked about sort of buying some of the talking points, especially around the president's language towards christian voters and evangelical voters. and he's got sort of an open runway to tell those sorts of lies, if you will, to those parts of the coalition he assembled four years ago around the supreme court fight. what would you say to push back on those things that he's likely

to say in the coming days to the kinds of voters that might be open to them? >> i would say, if you're a christian, please go read scripture and look at what god calls us to do for our neighbor and how we're supposed to love our neighbor. in the old testament, there are over 92 references to foreigners and strangers and sojourners. what this country has done to refugees, dropping the refugee ceiling to 18,000 this last year, when we had the capacity and we had enhanced security and vetting, so there wasn't really a security argument to be made anymore, it became clear that this was much more about preventing somebody that looks different than us for coming into our country. what we've seen happen on the southern border, instead of what the law requires, when somebody presents for asylum, returning people immediately, using covid as a justification for it and

don't get me wrong, this is very complicated and we do have to do public health measures, but the way that that was carried out is just another example of trying to implement what is not a pro-life ethic in their agenda. so when i now look at i'm looking at conception to grave. and that means everything from how you treat people, immigrants and refugees, as well as how you deal with issues around racial injustice, and that's what scripture has eliminated to me, what it really means to have a pro-life ethic, and i do not think this president has that, so therefore, i cannot vote for him. >> elizabeth neumann, you expand my way of looking at all of this in ways that i'm always grateful to get to talk to you. thank you so much for spending some time with us today. >> thank you, nicolle. >> up next for us, new today, the cdc retracting guidance they had just put out on the topic of

airborne transmission of coronavirus. it's a legitimate question in the era of trump. what is driving decisions over there at cdc? science or politics? that's next. t.

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transmission were wrong. here's how "the washington post" writes it up. quote, a draft version of proposed changes to these recommendations was posted in error to the agency's official website. cdc is currently updating its recommendations regarding airborne transmission of sars/covid-2, the virus that caused covid-19. once this process is completed, the update language will be completed. joining us is medical crypting dr. vin gupta. this is the second business day where there's been some language change on the cdc website. one, what is the truth, and two, do you still have confidence in the information posted on the c dlrx c website? >> the answer to the first question, good to see you, is no. and the answer to the second question was no, they were correct by stating that covid-19 is likely airborne driven. my colleagues and i have been outraged by this whole thing

ever since this happened this morning. you know why, nicolle, because i get asked all the time from teachers, from parents, concerned about their health or their grandparents' health, what do we do with smog and covid-19? and the answer, nicolle, here, and this is why the cdc is massaging their messaging to accompany and provide coffer for the existing failure and reality of the response to covid-19. they don't have enough of these guys, nicolle. n-95 masks. it should not be hard for us to scale n-95 mask production. it shouldn't be hard, a dollar a pop. we should be able to figure outfit testing for teachers and other high-risk individuals at minimum, and the fact we can't, one, is an embarrassment. and number two, this is what the cdc is doing. they're removing reference to airborne transmission because they know they don't have enough of these guys. that's the only reason. let's be clear on what's happening here. that's what's happening. >> tell everybody what the risks

are. i mean, even donald trump seemed to acknowledge all the way back in february to bob woodward that the virus was airborne. so, i mean, because we can't protect ourselves from the virus, we're lying about something that donald trump saw on tape acknowledging. i'm confused. >> i'll tell you as clearly as i can. nicolle, when myself or my respiratory therapist or my, cu nurses are in a room with a patient with covid-19, we have these guys and face shields. sometimes we have something even better than an n-95 mask. because we're in close proximity to somebody who is critically ill with covid. frankly, it's not a lot different for teachers, for custodial staff, for other people who are vulnerable, essential front line workers who are not doctors or nurses. it's not different for them. in poorly ventilated indoor settings they're at risk. people will die, very much, number one. and number two, clearly, i hate

venturing into the political if i can avoid it, but this is ridiculous. basically, this administration has consigned americans to die because they don't have enough of these guys, plain and simple. no other way to tell that story. >> dr. gupta, we need to spend more time together next time. so many people have so many questions, and you're right. it's really a travesty that people like yourself and your colleagues can't trust the information on the cdc website. thank you, my friend, for spending some time with us and giving us that straight in our minds. don't go anywhere. the next hour of deadline white house starts after a very, very short break. we'll be right back. back. but now a friend. still an electric car. just more electrifying. still a night out. but everything fits in. still hard work. just a little easier. still a legend. just more legendary. chevrolet. making life's journey, just better.

the american people are perfectly capable of having

their say, their say, on this issue. so let's give them a voice. let's let the american people decide. >> if there's a republican president in 2016 in a vacant seat occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say lindsey graham said let's let the next president whoever it might be make that nomination, and you could use my words against me, and you would be absolutely right. >> if an opening comes in the last year of president trump's term, and the primary process has started, we'll wait until the next election. and i've got a pretty good chance of being the judiciary -- >> you're on the record. >> yeah. hold the tape. >> hold the tape. hi again, everyone. the gop is now willing to stand before voters on election day as the party of liars when it comes to the principles that determine whether and when to consider a supreme court nominee, and

that's not the only water vulnerable republican senators are being asked to carry today. donald trump today accused the granddaughter of justice ruth bader ginsburg of being a liar herself when it comes to her grandmother's dying wish to be replaced by the next president. >> i don't know that she said that or was that written out by adam schiff and schumer and pelosi? i would be more inclined to the second. okay, you know, that came out of the wind, it sounds so beautiful. but that sounds like a schumer deal or maybe a pelosi or shifty shi schiff. that came out of the wind. maybe she did and maybe she didn't. >> that was then, this is now gop is vowing to ram through a nominee in violation of every objection they made when the shoe was on the other foot during president obama's selection of merrick garland to fill the seat vacated by justice scalia nearly eight months before the 2016 election. "washington post" reports republicans prepared to move

quickly on supreme court openings as trump weighs top contenders, quote, as president trump prepares to nominate a successor to supreme court justice ruth bader ginsburg this week, republican leaders moved urgently sunday to make the political and procedural case for bucking recent precedent and filling the vacancy before the next presidential term. and in addition to trump's complete dependence on judicial picks to bridge the distance between his repugnant personal conduct and tether him to his base, there's the other publicly stated rationale for stacking the court. donald trump's admission that he believes the federal courts will determine the outcome of the presidential election. >> we're going to have a victory on november 3rd the likes of which you have never seen. now, we're counting on the federal court system to make it so that we can actually have an evening where we know who wins. okay. not where the votes are going to

be counted a week later or two weeks later. >> that's taking the whole saying the quiet part out loud thing to a new level. donald trump revealing there he plans to litigate a victory, not actually win one. >> the president, the lying gop, and his publicly declared plan to use the federal courts on election day are where we start this hour. with us from "the washington post," phil rucker. also joining us, former democratic senator claire mccaskill is here, and former rnc chairman and senior adviser to the lincoln project, michael steele, is back. claire mccaskill, i must start with you, my friend. you have been unloading, and i think speaking for a lot of people about the outrage of the hypocrisy, but where do you stand on the reality of what the republicans seem ready to do? >> well, i don't believe that this works to their benefit. i know what it felt like in 2018

when this was an ongoing circus and i was on the ballot in a state that trump had won by almost 20 points. and that's the way these republican senators are feeling that are on the ballot in places like colorado and maine and north carolina and arizona. this is not good for the republican party. you know what i think? i think one of the biggest reasons it's not good for the republican party, guess whose face we're going to see over and over again between now and november 3rd? none other than turtle mcturtle, mitch mcconnell. i mean, mitch mcconnell is going to be the face of the republican party, and that is not a good face for the republican party. especially for these senate races. so i mean, there's a lot of reasons i can go into why i think it's better for democrats, you know, they're lying about what they believe in, they are sacrificing principle for power. all of the things that americans

hate about politicians who put politics before policy. >> claire, i want to give you a chance to keep going, but i would add i agree with you. i actually think there has been this tectonic shift, and i think that when it is a change in the balance of power, voters reflexively like equilibrium. people fill they will balance out. voters like things to balance out. when it's a seat that's going to change the balance of power and you have mitch mcconnell making vulnerable senators walk the plank, i think the politics are terrible for republicans. but i just want you to give voice to that, because i don't think that -- i think it's borne out in the polls. the polls show this issue animates democrats more than republicans. i think for the first time in a long time. but i think there's still a lot of jitters that the kinds of voters who are repelled by trump

may be re-energized or reattracted to him by a supreme court fight. >> the voters that are very committed to overturning roe v. wade and the voters who are very committed to getting rid of protection for pre-existing conditions in the affordable care act, they're already voting for trump. i'll tell you who is like where there was room to grow in this election. where there's room to glow in this election is where young people. and you know, i was taken aback when i called my daughter who is in her late 20s to tell her that justice ginsburg had died. there was this long silence on the phone, and then there was a sob. young people had an affinity for rbg. they saw who she was. they got what she was standing for, and that she was the one that was in the breach for them, for gay marriage, for women's health rights. and those young people, i think now, i mean, we have -- there's

room to grow there in the cross tabs. i have looked at it carefully. women, grandmothers who heard this jerk call this granddaughter a liar this morning on national tv, i think there is more motivation on our side, and frankly, 90% of the people have made up their mind already, and they favor donald trump, they favor joe biden right now, so the same numbers think what the senate is doing is wrong. >> you know, i also think, michael steele, this is a really precarious moment for people who actually care about pro-life issues. because the republican party right now is for screw you if your life is at risk from covid. they're the party of letting people die on their watch from covid. they're the party now of doing nothing for people who have lost their businesses and their livelihood, and this is the most anti-life moment for the republican party in the history of the party's existence.

>> i think that's an important point, nicolle, because a lot of -- one of the things that's been very difficult and disappointing for me, not just in this moment, because that's a lot, but for a while in the pro-life space is how we have so narrowed the reflection of the argument. that it is just down to this one case of this one time. and there's so many other for those of us who follow the gospel, or at least try as best we can. there's so much more about that life question that gets lost. and i think the point you just made is an important one because life isn't just about what's in the womb. that moment in the womb. it's also, as the gospels and particularly christ calls us to deal with that life outside the womb. so we tend to sort of, you know, parse these things, why i'm against the death penalty,

because i'm pro-life. so there's a level of inconsistency at times that people bring to this. and that gets befuddled and confused and dumbed down by incompetent leadership, that you know, look, i'll just put it out here, folks. donald trump is not pro life. stop fooling yourselves. when did that occur? when you check the box in 2015. so the reality of it is if this is a value set for you, then it's more than just the roe v. wade case. it's more than just, you know, the politics of it. i think there's a broader argument that can be made that the party at one time tried to make, but that's now been lost, and i agree with you. i don't think it helps longer term in sort of clarifying, you know, whether on the supreme court or otherwise, where republicans stand. >> michael steele, i also think

that donald trump's low points, and it's hard to find them because the whole presidency is so low, but if you go subterranean, it's always around the loss of an american treasure. barbara bush, john mccain, george h.w. bush. he always acts like the kind of person that wouldn't get invited to the funerals of the aforementioned american treasures who have died during this presidency. and he was at it again. i mean, just couldn't resist the temptation to attack the granddaughter of justice ginsburg and say that's a lie -- like everyone lies like he does. he's a pathological liar, so it just rolled off the tongue, but this is a moment where people are wanting to wall off her legacy and her death and the loss of not just a liberal icon but a feminist icon and a trail blazer, and any woman that has a job in some way or another stands on her shoulders, and that he had to dismiss and treat

with disdain the story from her granddaughter, i think, is just repelling the very voters he seems to tweet toward every day. suburban women. >> i would agree. it's a very repellent moment to have the president of the united states on the heels of the passing of a woman, whether you agree with her jurisprudence or not, whether you agree with her politics or not, you have to acknowledge what she meant to so many, particularly young women, daughters out there, young girls who are looking for role models, you know, along with their mothers and grandmothers, to know her story and understand what it took for her to just do the everyday thing, let alone the extraordinary thing of getting to the supreme court. so trump comes on and in that very solemn moment, where he could share in the empathy and the pain of the country, he's like, well, her granddaughter is probably lying. sounds like something that chuck schumer would have said.

and you just sit there and you go, oh, yeah, that's that guy. oh, yeah, now i remember. that's him. that's why i'm voting him out in november. because he doesn't care. he doesn't care about me. he doesn't understand even in a moment as solemn and as quiet as this, he's got to bring a loud ugly noise into the room. and at some point america has to say i've got a headache and it's you. >> i love that. i'm going to borrow that and make a t-shirt. phil rucker, i want to show you where this has moved to today with donald trump announcing that he'll announce his pick by the end of the week if he can keep it to himself that long. here's mitch mcconnell on chuck schumer. >> as of today, there are 43 days until november 3rd and 104 days until the end of this congress. the senate has more than sufficient time to process a nomination. there was clear precedent behind

the predictable outcome that came out of 2016. and there's even more overwhelming precedent behind the fact that this senate will vote on this nomination this year. we're going to keep our word. once again. we're going to vote on this nomination on this floor. >> the senate has never confirmed a nominee to the supreme court this close to a presidential election. if that was how leader mcconnell and senate republicans justified their mindless obstruction of president obama's nominee, surely they must abide by their own standard. what's fair is fair. what's fair is fair. a senator's word must count for something. >> so, phil rucker, i think it's clear that all of the republicans who were against doing this four years ago are for doing it now. but what are you hearing about

the politically fraught nature of that? polls don't bear out that is at all where the american people are. 62% of all americans are for waiting until after the election. 8 in 10 democrats are for letting the next president pick the person, the justice who will replace justice ginsburg. and republicans are split right down the middle, 5 in 10 republicans are for waiting to fill this seat. politics are brutal for republicans. >> the politics are, nicolle. the republicans also realize that the politics were brutal for them before ruth bader ginsburg died. you know, the republicans are have been very much at risk of losing their senate majority. susan collins has been down in maine. cory gardner down in kauld. martha mcsally down in arizona. and so what is going on right now is an opportunist iic power grab. mcconnell and the other republican senators have

prioritized judicial appointm t appointments for a few years now. it's one of the reasons they have stood behind donald trump and put up with him as president for so many years, because he delivers him these judicial appointments. these opportunities to reshape the judiciary in a rightward direction, and there's no greater opportunity for republican senators than to replace a liberal icon on the high court with the conservative jurist who is going to be anti-abortion rights and in support of all of the sort of pro-business positions and otherwise that the right has longed for on the supreme court, and so mcconnell is clearly making a political calculation that so what if they are punished for it at the polls. they're going to go ahead and ram this through. >> and phil rucker, what is the latest reporting on who at this moment is on donald trump's short list? >> well, he said -- trump said this morning he was considered four to five women, but our reporting suggests there are really two who are the leading

contenders right now. amy comey barrett, out of indiana, a federal appeals court judge who is very well known among the political establishment, very well liked among social conservatives, religious conservatives, in part because of her anti-abortion stance. she's been the early favorite, but there's a lot of momentum behind a judge out of florida, barbara lagoa, who is a daughter of cuban exiles, was nominated to the federal bench just a year ago by trunch, and there's a feeling inside the white house and outside allies are making this case directly to the president that picking her could help shore up the cuban american vote in south florida and deliver for trump a win in that battleground state. >> phil rucker, i saw some reporting over the weekend, in your paper and others, and some commentary on social media about something i wanted to ask you about. i don't mean to put you on the spot, but it was reported that friday night went like this.

ruth bader ginsburg lost her fight against cancer while donald trump was speaking. he was met by aides including hope hicks, a press aide, and others on a walk to a press scrum where he then feigned surprise. i was a press aide. there's no situation where i wouldn't see president bush or then senator mccain and tell them before they walk up to the press about what wanes the news. does anyone really think donald trump was actually hearing for the first time from reporters? >> you know, i'll preface this by saying i wasn't there covering that trip, and i don't think any of us in the press corps know the real truth here. but knowing donald trump, as i do covering him all these years, it's very hard to imagine that he would have gone in front of reporters not knowing that ruth bader ginsburg had passed. especially after he consulted with his aides. i did find it striking that he continued to speak at that rally for about an hour after the news came out and nobody slipped him a note on stage or told him what

had happened. and you have to wonder if that's because they didn't trust what the president might say about ruth bader ginsburg at his rally or perhaps not trust how the audience might react that of course would have been a horrible moment had people cheered or booed or reacted in some sort of inappropriate way. and so the president continued his normal rally without knowing that information. then of course pretended like he had just learned it from reporters, but you know, i would bet knowing trump and how that world operates that somebody told him in between. >> and for anyone who is monitoring that event, he was just sort of in the part between hillary clinton's servers and scrubbed emails and blackberries when the country lost a giant, justice ruth bader ginsburg. phil rucker, thank you for spending some time with us. claire and michael are staying put. they'll be back later in the hour. when we come back, the unbelievable and disturbing insider account from robert

mueller's russia investigation. andrew weissmann, one of mueller's top prosecutors said the investigation failed to do everything it could to find out what happened during that 2016 presidential campaign, and that it never answered the biggest question of all -- was donald trump a threat to the national security of this country? that's next. and later, with six weeks to go, joe biden's closing argument links the supreme court, obamacare, and the staggering number of americans who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. deadline white house continues after a very short break. don't go anywhere. eliminate who you are not first, and you're going to find yourself where you need to be. ♪ the race is never over. the journey has no port. the adventure never ends, because we are always on the way. ♪ ♪

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investigation have long been mostly a mystery. but in recent weeks, a number of reports and books have detailed what it was like, including the subtle yet significant failures of mueller's team. the latest is from someone who was actually there in the room. andrew weissmann's new book "where law ends, inside the mueller investigation" isn't out yet, but it's already filling in some of those blanks. wiseman, who is also a colleague of ours here at msnbc, spoke to the atlantic and suggested that the special counsel's office essentially left meat on the bone. he said this, quote, had we given it our all, had we used all available tools to uncover the truth, undeterred by the onslaught of the president's unique powers to undermine our efforts, he writes in the introduction, i know the hard swb to that simple question. we could have done more. elsewhere, he admits that, quote, like congress, we were guilty of not pressing as hard as we could for evidence. he calls a crucial passage of

the mueller report, quote, mealy-mouthed, an easy mark for barr's treachery. part of the reason the president and his enablers were able to spin the report is we had left the playing field open for them to do so. joining us now, the writer at the atlantic who wrote that incredible piece with the early look at andrew weissmann's new book, george packer. you're the author of my favorite book of all time "the unwinding." it's a pleasure to get to talk to you. >> thank you, nicolle. >> i have to ask you -- thank you. thank you for writing it. i look at it still, it's the best explanation of how we got here that i have ever read. we'll have that conversation another day, but tell me what you thought. i assume you read the book and talked to andrew about it. what do you think about this account? it's just a blockbuster revelation that people inside what seemed like, and look, this is never the case, but they seemed so tightly knit together. someone on the inside at a very

senior level had serious misgivings. >> there was a lot of camaraderie in the special counsel's office. a lot of mutual respect, but there also turns out to have been a lot of disagreements over how hard to push, how far to push at crucial moments. there were people close to mueller, in particular wisemen names a lawyer named aaron zebley who were hesitant to go too far because they were afraid the white house would explode, perhaps mueller would be fired, the whole investigation would be shut down. and in other cases, trump's pardon power allowed witnesses and suspects to stonewall the office and there wasn't much they could do about that because the pardon power is presidential. but basically, throughout those two years and increasingly toward the end, weissmann and a couple of his colleagues were

frustrated that the special counsel was allowing some moves to go unmade. and some tools to be unused. and in the end, the way the report was written and released allowed the administration, especially the attorney general william barr, to essentially exonerate trump. against all the evidence in the mueller report, because mueller in perhaps a fit of excessive fairness, decided that he could not say that trump had broken the law because a sitting president can't be indicted. so trump would not technically have the chance to defend himself in court. but weissmann has all sorts of arguments for while mueller didn't need to come to that decision and why it caused a tremendous amount of heartache in the special counsel's office. >> so you mentioned this personal attack on the decision making and management of the

cases by aaron zebley. he actual got dispensation in a really extraordinary turn of events to sit next to mueller when he testified, so there's no one more visibly associated with the decisions, but let me tick through what i deduced from your report about what he is criticizing. he's criticizing one, there's a line in your story saying they were hamstrung not to look at trump's financial dealings with russia, which might have established a source of russian leverage over trump but which the president declared a red line not to be crossed. they're saying they didn't get the financial records. he also criticized they didn't use their subpoena power to get an interview with the president, and then he calls out what you just described, the fact that witnesses for the collusion case, not the collusion cases, but the side of the investigation that was focused on the ties to russia, not the obstruction of the whole investigation itself, that their witnesses were lying because

donald trump had dangled pardons in front of them. what did they have going for them? >> you know, it seemed at the outset and from the outside that they had all the tools of internal justice department investigation. that they would be left alone by the attorney general to do their job, which was to subpoena, to talk to witnesses, to bring indictments, to charge, to try, to convict, and they did that in some cases. in fact, they got a lot of convictions. and a lot of indictments, including in weissmann's the most important was paul manafort, trump's former campaign chair, and who in everything except, you know, by the absolute letter of the law, was colluding with a russian intelligence officer, kilimnik in order -- in exchanging campaign information to kilimnik in exchange for favors from

kilimnik. as the report said in the appendix, this is what collusion looks like. but because they couldn't interview the president, since mueller decided it would not be worth the battle with the white house to go all the way up to the supreme court in order to subpoena him to appear, they couldn't ask the president what he knew about manafort's dealings. and what he knew about a whole host of things. and in the written questions that trump answered, the answers were as weissmann says, almost worthless. evasive, full of i don't recollect. but in an interview, a good interviewer would have been able to back him down, but mueller backed off that fight. >> i want to ask you so many things, but i want to ask you two more things on which you report. mueller, he was incapable of navigating the world remade by trump. he conducted himself with scrupulous integrity and allowed his team to be manipulated by people with no scruples at all.

the public badly needed clarity about the dense and at times unreadable report. to an administration that was at war with the facts. he trusted his friend barr to play it straight, not realizing barr had gone crooked. he had left the job of holding the president accountable to a congress that had shown itself to be trump's willing accomplice. he wanted above all to warn the american people about foreign subversion of our democracy, while the greater subversion gathered force here at home. >> i see mueller as a figure from the past, utterly honorable. great integrity, and this is how weissmann sees him too and portrays him. he reveres him, but that's from a point of reverence. mueller did not know how to operate in the world of donald trump. and it's been true in so many cases with so many individuals and institutions that trump has

undermined. checks and balances that trump has eroded, norms that he's destroyed. because trump is playing by hiown rules, which are unscrupulous, which are win at all cost, and mueller couldn't play by those rules, and perhaps didn't see that in order to do his job as a prosecutor, he had in some ways to bend the rules himself. for example, not to be so entirely scrupulous about not claiming that trump had broken the law in volume two of the mueller report. instead, weissmann said there were all sorts of reasons he could have said trump broke the law and trump could have had his chance to answer. he wasn't helpless, he wasn't mute. but mueller was literal about what that justice department policy forced him to do. and in a sense, he was playing by rules that are in washington today almost detrimental to finding the truth. and that's the heartbreaking,

hard truth that you get from reading andrew weissmann's really compelling book. >> i can't wait to read it. as i listen to you talk, i'm thinking of the mueller press conference which i think was about four minutes, and he said if i could say he hadn't broken the law, i would. there was just never an ability to just have a noun and a verb, and it did in the end hurt them. george packer, it is a pleasure to talk to you. it was great to see you have the first look at this story. thank you for spending some time with us to talk about it. >> thank you. when we return, more reaction to andrew weissmann's insider account of the mueller investigation from former fbi assistant director frank figliuzzi and dan goldman, the majority counsel for the house impeachment of donald trump. deadline white house after a short break will be right back. t when we're on our way. >> tech: just leave your keys on the dash and we'll replace your windshield with safe, no-contact service.

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here's another piece of that reporting from the atlanticweis about attorney general bill barr. on a bit of a tear these days. by abdicating the role of prosecutor, mueller cleared the way for barr to take it on himself. mueller and barr were old friends. several weeks before submitting the report, weissmann writes, mueller informed barr of his intent to admit any legal recommendation. without telling mueller, he saw a chance to disfigure the report

and exonerate the president and thereby make its damning truths disappear. barr, weissmann writes, had betrayed both friend and country. joining our conversation, former assistant director for counterintelligence at the fbi, frank figliuzzi, plus forming house impeachment majority counsel and former assistant attorney at sdny, dan goldman joins us. your thoughts on learning andrew wisepen's insider account inside the mueller probe, really pulling up and not using the tools available to them. >> there are some new details here and some invaluable insights, but none of them, particularly for those of us who worked for mueller, are surprising to us. look, we have said all along, nicolle, that essentially mueller was a boxer playing by the rules in the ring with two street brawlers who had a disdain for the rule of law, a disdain for all kinds of authority, and the fact that, as

you said in the previous segment, that mueller is somebody who despite having put away organized crime figures and murder murderers, still had met his match against barr and trump, tells us a whole lot more about barr and trump than it does about mueller. and i think it's important also to say even for those on social media right now who are responding to your last segment and saying, it's time for the left to play dirty, it's time for democrats to get down in the trenches, here's what i say to that. it's not the time to play dirty or have a disdain for the law. for it gets everyone right in the same situation and makes everyone an equal. rather, i harken back to my fbi days, when we were up against a bad actor who had a disdain for authority, was going sthoot to t out, had no care for life or sanctity of life, we just brought the s.w.a.t. team. we just overwhelmed them with the law and authority, and that's really where mueller fell

short. if mueller's team was a kind of s.w.a.t. team, then they were handcuffed. they weren't that elite s.w.a.t. team that was allowed to do what they needed to do. and that's how history is going to look back at the special counsel inquiry. >> well, dan goldman, let me follow up on that with you. i mean, andrew weissmann's book is the third account in so many weeks to point out all of the ground that was not covered by robert mueller, but that mueller's team and others allowed us to think was. and that's namely that his ties to russia were not investigated. mike schmidt's book points out that rod rosenstein narrow thd probe at its outset, telling mueller to focus on crimes. pete strzok reports he has no deal with a counterintelligence investigation went on after he left, he left early in the probe, and andrew weissmann saying they had lying witnesses in manafort, that they were afraid of right-wing media, which was being fueled day in and day out by rudy giuliani's

appearances. they had -- as frank just said, they handcuffed themselves by not using their powers to compel an interview with the president under oath, one with answers that were truthful, that he would be held account frbl, and it's not clear that they got their hands on his financial records. >> i think it is clear that they did not. and it is also now clear that they did not do a counterintelligence investigation. but even in a criminal investigation, you want the financials, you want the tax returns, you want to see whether an investigation into the trump campaign's contacts with russia includes any business or preceding contacts of donald trump, donald trump jr., the trump organization, paul manafort. all these other individuals who are affiliated with the campaign. if you're doing a proper investigation. there are two things that really struck me about what george packer reported about andrew's book, which i look forward to

reading in full. the first is, it is remarkable to me as a prosecutor for ten years that any decisions that they made were dictated at all by the potential reaction of the president or the right-wing media. that is not how investigations are done. and frankly, if bob mueller was going to get fired, then he should just say okay, i'm going to get fired but i'm going do do the job that i'm assigned to do and i'm not going to do it with any fear that i will be fired or with any concern or reservation. you have to do the job. and the second thing that i think andrew really puts a fine point on is this notion that bob mueller could not determine or declare that donald trump committed obstruction of justice. donald trump got to have the cake and eat it too.

he's the sitting president so he's the only person in america who could not be charged with a federal indictment, yet somehow, the other policy that applies where you don't allege wrongdoing to someone who is not indicted somehow also applies to him makes no sense. and the other thing is they didn't declare, and they should have, because it came out that it happened, that even though he never testified, he lied under oath in his written statements. that came out in the roger stone trial. that was clear to them. so there are two crimes that donald trump committed that bob mueller did not say he committed. and i think that -- they should have made that declaration. >> well, let me just follow up with you, because sdny named donald trump as an unindicted coconspirator in a criminal campaign violation scheme which is one of the crimes michael

cohen went to jail for. a lot of people at the justice department describe the mueller office as sort of a super u.s. attorney's office. why couldn't they do the same and name him as onunindicted coconspirator. >> they could, but they didn't charge him with any -- they didn't charge anyone with any crimes for which donald trump was an unindicted coconspirators because they didn't charge donald trump jr. with campaign finance fraud for his trump tower meeting. they didn't charge paul manafort with any of those criminal conspiracy related crimes. so donald trump wasn't actually an unindicted coconspirator to any of the charges that the special counsel levied. he was actually an unindicted conspirator. he didn't conspire with anyone to commit obstruction of justice or perjury. and the southern district is a different animal because the special counsel's office treated -- i think michael cohen is a great example.

the special counsel's office operated under different rules because there's no institutional precedent they had to follow. whereas in the southern district of new york, they did not sign michael cohen up as a cooperator. the special counsel's office used his information freely. but the southern district of new york would need michael cohen to testify in order to charge donald trump with campaign finance fraud. as of right now as we sit here, michael cohen is not an available witness to the southern district. >> frank figliuzzi, what i'm reminded of reading the reporting on andrew weissmann's book is we never got our answers. why did donald trump have four foreign policy advisers who had ties to russia, carter page had spent time there, mike flynn had given a speech to rt, george papadopoulos stat in a bar and bragged about getting all this dirt from the russians on hillary clinton, paul manafort was running a russian operation throughkilimnik,

giving him detail, and what is depressing is the mueller team didn't push as hard as they could have to get any of those answers. >> yeah, i also look forward to reading weissmann's book for this very reason, the counterintelligence aspect of this is something i'm passionate about and the nation cares deeply about because it goes toward whether we actually were able to pick our own president and will be able to do that again in november. so when you're trying to judge the various failures perhaps that occurred out of mueller's team, you have to look at the criminal side and you have to look at the counterintelligence side. and i would say the failure to totally dig into and resolve the counterintelligence question is one that will haunt the country for many years. >> frank figliuzzi, dan goldman, thank you both for spending some time with us. when we return, joe biden continues to prosecute the case against donald trump's botched handling of the coronavirus pandemic. the story trump doesn't want us

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what worries me now is we've been living with this pandemic for so long, i worry we're risking becoming numb to the toll that it has taken on us and our country and communities like this. we can't let that happen. we can't lose the ability to feel the sorrow and the loss and

the anger for so many lives lost. >> that was joe biden today in wisconsin. claire, he seems to be trying to pull this back to the soul of the country and seeing what it is and isn't. it isn't a country that forgets that 200,000 people have lost their lives, and this fight about the supreme court goes to the heart of who we are. do you think it's too much, or what do you think of this message? >> i think he's doing the right thing. i think joe biden is very dialled in right now. i have been very impressed with how focused he has been on message, beginning with his town hall last week when he handle sod many different policy issues so effectively. and what he is doing is very, very important. this election has to be about america's health. whether it is the protection against insurance companies taking your money and refusing to cover your medical bills, or

whether it's about a president who is too afraid and too incompetent and not up for the job in terms of handling a deadly pandemic. he's going to stay on that message and wrap that around with enmpathy with uniting the country, with character and integrity. he's right where he needs to be right now, and i thought the speech was a very effective speech. he's ngot to keep getting out there. the president will keep trying to distract with the supreme court nominee. in my state, the red part of my state are on fire with corona right now. there is an increase in cases that we've seen over the last few weeks, and it's all in the

red parts of the state. so people out there in these small communities are seeing their neighbors die. >> michael steele, i want to make just a small point as a former campaign staffer. joe biden is an incredibly disciplined messenger, and it strikes me that on a day when sort of the press could have yanked him off his economic message and we can do better in terms of 200,000 americans losing their lives, he wasn't pulled into that. he stayed focused on the health of the country and the health of the economy today. >> yeah. i think that discipline that comes from years of service, of being in the crucible and having the pressures of government and real life, which converge at moments like this, covid-19 and civil unrest, and so you want to show your capacity, your ability to stay level headed and to have a message that will bring people

into the space, not reluctantly, not with recrimination or frustration but with a sense of hope and openness. and it's not to put too fine a point on it, not to be all polly annish about it, but he understands what the country is looking for right now and trying to speak to that. >> i just want to follow quickly, michael steele, this idea of discipline is not always a compliment. i do mean it as one. i think joe biden in the last ten days started to open up a real sort of threatening evening out of the question of this economy. how important is it that he keeps touching the economy, the pandemic and sort of charting a better future? >> it's absolutely critical, and in particular, in light of what's going to be happening now on the supreme court front, to not let that become the distraction that president trump wants it to be.

he needs to stay focused on the idea that, yes, okay, we may or may not get a new supreme court justice, but you'll still have covid-19 to deal with tomorrow. we may or may not get a supreme court justice, but the economy still has issues. you may or may not get a supreme court justice, but guess what? black lives still matter. so i think that is the narrative for him going forward. >> michael steele, claire mccaskill, thank you so much for coming back and wrapping up the hour with us. i'm grateful. finally, as we do every single day here, remembering lives well lived. ed a li-- addlynn fagen was 5 wn he wanted to be a doctor. she had a super human desire to help people. so she grew up, graduated medical school and became a obgyn resident physician at a

texas hospital. delivering babies was her life's work. but in july, she had a rotation in the er where she was treating covid patients. and then she got sick. she died earlier this month from coronavirus complications. she was 28 years old. don't let her passing overshadow the way she overlived her life, with vigor, with kindness, and a natural charm. her sisters told the abc station in houston that she had a magnetic pull, and her memory, we'll sooef you with the advice her father shared after the passing. "if you can do one thing, be an adeline in the world. be passionate about helping others less fortunate. have a smile on your face, a laugh in your heart, and a zizny tune -- disney tune on your lips." we'll be right back. r lips." we'll be right back. hings than rheumatoid arthritis. when considering another treatment, ask about xeljanz...

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thank you for letting us into your homes during these extraordinary times. "the beat with ari melber" starts right now. hi, ari. >> hi, how are you doing? >> i'm good for a monday. just a little bit of news. >> a little bit of extra news. and now i guess from your campaign experience, this is why campaigns are unpredictable, because they are about whatever happens. >> yeah. and any experience is that voters will judge you based on how you react to whatever happens. and today, questioning the integrity of ruth bader ginsburg's account was not a good start for president trump. >> yeah, that was striking, and, again, it goes whether the truth and fact also bind this. we have a lot on tonight. always good to see you. >> we'll be watching. welcome to "the beat." i am ari melber, and sit a different political world from when we last signed off friday night. up ended by the death of supreme court justice ruth bader ginsburg.

tonit,