♪ hi, everyone. it's 4:00 in new york, and it is debate night in america. the first presidential debate of the 2020 presidential election is just hours away. tens of millions of americans expected to watch tonight's debate, and that is as poll shows that 86% of americans have already made up their minds. so, both candidates will be making their cases to their supporters to turn out their votes. more important in a year when donald trump has waged a war against mail-in ballots. and both candidates will be speaking to a sliver of the public that's undecided about

who to vote for and whether to vote at all. it's against that backdrop that joe biden and donald trump are set to face off. but tonight's debate also comes at a moment when the country is learning more than it has ever known before about the charade that donald trump's persona as a successful businessman really is. sure, he is rich, by any standard, but he has more debt and more loans soon coming due than previously understood at a time when u.s. national security is threatened by emboldened adversaries who see the united states under donald trump as having failed to contain the coronavirus and as rife with divisions internally and among partisan and cultural lines. there's new reporting in "the times" that builds on their blockbuster reporting yesterday that said that trump basically paid no taxes. today's reporting lays out more of the scam of the reality tv version of donald trump's biography. when it comes to trump's attempts throughout his political career to paint himself as someone who was a

billionaire who had overcome hardships, today's new piece in "the times" simply concludes, quote, it was all a hoax. "the times" also reports on the political fall out with this, quote. there was quiet concern within the campaign where aides took note of daily tracking numbers from rasmussen reports and rosy assessment of how the president is faring that showed support falling after the tax story. those polls suggest cheating on one's taxes doesn't play as well as trump thinks. trump has boasted about being so smart that he can outfox the irs. but if the early polls are any indication, trump as an outsider who can avoid paying taxes doesn't play quite as well as trump avoiding taxes owed to an ailing nation that he leads. but polls, the president as a tax cheat and tonight's debate are where we start. joining our conversation, "washington post" white house reporter and msnbc political analyst ashley parker is back.

democratic strategist basel is here. and politics editor at the daily beast and msnbc contributor sam stein and branding and marketing expert, donny deutsch is here. ashley, let me start with you. take me inside what's going on behind two days of front page stories and the kind of cable coverage that donald trump just can't avoid, even when it's bad stuff about him. >> in talking to people in his orbit, it's obviously not a story they want, and it's a story line that he is incredibly sensitive to. right? it cuts at the core of the things he cares about. sort of the illegitimacy of his claim as a true billionaire and, as you said, he is wealthy by any measure, but he does owe a tremendous amount of money coming due, and there are many years where his losses ultimately were larger than his gains. and that is how he sold himself

to the american public. as a businessman, as a dealmaker. if you read the piece, one of the most damning things was the more involved the president than just the citizen donald trump was in a business, the less well it did. in the piece that came out today, it revealed some of these licensing deals where he just gave his name but actually put the business savvy in the hands of someone else actually did fairly well. it was when the president himself was making the decisions that it really flounders. so it undercuts that core argument for voters and that's also -- it remains unclear how much his taxes will persuade people but in talking to people on both sides there's something about the specificity of $750 that in some ways is more devastating that even just saying the president simply pays nothing because that allowed biden to go out and do what he did where he showed firefighters paid more, nurses paid more, doctors paid more, construction

workers paid more. so that's where things are as we enter into the debate tonight. >> you know, donny, i think there's something intuitive about the revelations that even if you don't hang on every detail of what is by investigative journalism standards spectacular reporting, a really important piece of the trump story, there is this really clear picture of a person for whom everything is for sale. and it is now fair, four years in, that that's how he's run the country. whether it's the million we learned in the first report he got from erdogan, you can connect the dots to bizarre pro-turkish policies as it regarded the policy that led to the slaughter of our allies, the kurds there. you can connect the dots to where he got something, and i guess the work of investigative journalism in the coming months is to figure out what we lost as

a country. >> i think the important dots to connect is back to the voter. and you know, there's so much to go with there. your head can spin. it's one simple message and attached to broader messages. he expects you to pay taxes, and he doesn't. you're a sucker in his mind. you're a sucker if you go to war to fight for your country, you're a sucker if you believe in the coronavirus. guess what, ha, ha, i know what's going on, but i'm not going to tell you. and you are a sucker if you think you're going to keep your health care because he's going to take pre-existing conditions away. that's what joe biden has to serve up. he's the protector in chief versus the con in chief. keep it simple. if we get mired in, who does he owe money to? we've seen with mueller and ukraine that voters don't bring it back to them. when it comes to their pay stubs and the taxes they pay every week, boy, you find out the guy

next door, the billionaire next door is not paying taxes, that hits you in the gut. that's that one takeaway from the incredible reporting in "the times." >> i have no evidence that donny has had this conversation with the biden campaign. i spoke to the biden campaign this afternoon and joe biden does not plan to follow the glanular threads of the times reporting if this comes up and chris wallace's questioning as, i guess, it's fair to assume that it might. most debate moderators take a hard look at things that are in the news and often address them. what do you make of what -- not just what we learned for the first time but how it might figure into these final determinations in these, i think we're at 34 days to go before election day. >> so, yeah, the biden campaign has been sort of focused on its core messaging which is health care, pre-existing conditions, now roe v. wade and most

recently this whole scranton versus fifth avenue to which this tax story does contribute and allows us to throw a punch. so i imagine they're going to mention it. the visceral reaction to the $750 figure is true. i think there's something to the idea that this guy was, you know, gifted so much money and squandered a lot of it and only made it on reputation and not business acumen that he can use as well. i get why people say this may not change votes but that's sort of the wrong way to look at this. >> me, too. >> we have 36 days left. trump is down. everyone day that is lost for him to gain back votes is bad. and this story being in the news prohibits him from gaining more votes. and that's the name of the game. he's got to make up a deficit and now he can't because he's dealing with this story. that's not going to last forever but we're out of a time crunch. the voting is happening right now. it's no longer out in the distance. this is really a race against

time. >> sam, i want to follow up with you. i agree. i actually think it's very dismissive of the voter to say this is too complicated, they won't care. that's not what donny is saying. he's just saying it has to matter in their real lives. i know what you're talking about. i see that on social media. this won't move a single vote. i think that's missing the point. trump's entire bond to his base is about this brand. listen to how he described himself as a businessman. >> i built a massive company. a great company. some of the greatest assets anywhere in the world. worth many, many billions of dollars. i started with a $1 billion loan. i agree with that. it's a $1 billion loan but i built a phenomenal company. and if we could run our country the way i've run my company, we would have a country that you would be so proud of. you would even be proud of it. >> so, sam, if the country has been run for the last four years the way he's run his businesses

there woubld be an audit due an the possibility of hundreds of millions of dollars due. millions of dollars coming in from foreign governments and a giant question mark about whether we traded policies for any of that money that came in to trump properties or trump businesses. that's the nightmare, right? that he may have run the country the way we now know he's run his businesses. that seems like a pretty big, you know, balloon to pop, 35 days before an election. sam stein. oh, we lost sam stein. basel, i wanted to bring you in on some of the polls. you are perfectly, perfect person to come to with this point about how voters, even his own voters, may feel betrayed by what we now know, not from any partisan attack but just from his own tax return data. it was a lie.

it's not a success. >> that's exactly right. my mentor early in this business said to me that voters might forgive a liar but they would not forgive a hypocrite. he's done both, right? throughout the course of his campaign and into his presidency. there are people -- look. in one fell swoop, everything that hillary clinton, bernie sanders, elizabeth warren and even mike bloomberg have said have a tremendous amount of saliance. and with a little caveat, there are going to be voters that are going to say you know, the metrics of the stock market are doing well so my 401(k) is good. so i'm good. he's getting the judges that i want appointed so i'm good. but it takes someone like a bernie sanders and elizabeth warren who i would love to see back out on the trail right now in earnest. remind voters that donald trump wasn't walking with them arm in arm. he was standing on their backs while cutting all these deals. while making all of these promises. and going to donny's earlier point, if you think your health

care is safe, guess again. so it's not just what biden is calling out in terms of firefighters and teachers paying more. it's the fact that people got locked up for doing less and just consistently reminding voters of that. i do think will start to move even folks still on the fence as of today. >> basil, i am still going to put up these polls because i want to show them to you. i am glad you said that. people also have this -- i think false sense that the bucket of places where donald trump has seemed to commute the sentences of his friends of roger stone and to see an uneven distribution of justice doesn't bother people. i dont know that it's that they hone in on a single one of those cases but what you're saying, and i agree that bernie sanders and elizabeth warren are extremely effective messengers. but how does biden turn that into what donny is describing, messages that land in the gut?

>> well, i think to that point, you know, it's not just talking about the 1% versus the 99%. it's talking about what's happened to the 99% in this time. as i said, people have gotten locked up for worse. i mean, for doing less. people have lost their jobs, particularly in this pandemic. what does it mean when you don't have money to pay rent and your president of the united states is moving money around so he doesn't have to pay a thing to contribute to the tax base that's going to help you in a time of need when he and other republicans are saying, no, we're not going to give you any more money. it's that hypocrisy. it's that sort of turning a blind eye to the people who you say you represent and who you promised would drain the swamp. i think just calling out examples like that are enough to persuade those voters. >> ashley, the arguments that biden's making and his surrogates are making have to be doing some good. he's got pretty durable leads in wisconsin, michigan and

pennsylvania. these are all polls among likely voters which is usually the harder terrain than all registered voters. even georgia is close enough to talk about for at least a few more days unless trump flips that around and opens up at least a five-point lead. what do you think the white house thinks, the actual state of the race is? >> it's a great question because sometimes the white house is not even -- and the white house and the campaign is not even able to accurately brief the president on the actual state of the race because he is so frustrated and furious and so you hear these stories from people in his orbit sort of giving him good news polls and good news stories that don't quite comport with the truth. but when you mention biden's message, the one thing that biden has done laser-like, not just against president trump but really since the campaign, in

the primary, is run on a very consistent message. and you are seeing that now against president trump. and it is the message of his failed leadership, right? no matter what it is, they turn it back to his failed leadership of the economy. his failed leadership in handling of the coronavirus pandemic. his failed leadership and handling of the racial injustice protests and the shooting and other killing of unarmed black men and women by police. and they always bring that back to his failed leadership. and the president has struggled with much the same thing in coming up with a consistent message against joe biden. he's tried to tie him as the tool to the radical left. he's sleepy and, you know, sort of not up to the job and that he's an expert debater and so you have two people coming into this debate tonight, one, with a very clear, consistent message, and one who has been all over the place. now could that work for the president? potentially. but again, just a very different

approach to the campaign. and potentially this evening. >> you know, it's a very good point, donny deutsch. but instead of being reassuring, it should be frightening. i mean, donald trump, ten points down, will do -- fill in the blank -- tonight. >> yeah, you know what's interesting, i -- donald trump has never played behind in his life. even when running against hillary and a couple points behind. he was playing with house money. he was a winner, even if he lost that election from where he came. now he is really playing from a touchdown behind. we've never seen that -- we've never seen donald trump as a caged animal this way. i think it's going to play to his deficit tonight. i think he's going to come out angry. he's going to come out punching and it allows biden to be statesman like. you guys have talked a lot over the last few weeks about the comparisons to 1980 where basically jimmy carter was in the 30s but approval rating, but up until the week before the election when the reagan debate

was, it was still close. they decided they were going to fire carter but hadn't decided they were going to hire biden. what biden has to do is become hirable. and really let trump unravel tonight because i know that guy. and i know right now he's pacing. he's going back and forth. he is not used to playing as a loser. and i think you're going to see that, smell it, feel it for him tonight. >> i've got ten follow-up questions for you. i'm going to ask everybody to stay put. we're going to keep this going. when we come back, we're going to talk more about donald trump as an unconventional debater and debate preparer, if that's a word, focusing more on gimmicks and special guests that he brings along to make seedy attacks. but the country is facing multiple crises and just five weeks left to go, are voters really into that or hoping for more substance out of tonight's debate? as we learn more about the president's years long efforts and schemes to keep his financial situation hidden, a member of robert mueller's team is speaking out about how the

white house played that game successfully killing any investigation that would reveal their financial ties. andrew weissmann joins us on this and a very rare public response to weissmann's book from robert mueller himself. we've got a jam-packed two hours. stay with us. us hey. you fell asleep with your sign again. "you fell asleep with your sign again." no, i didn't. okay. switch to progressive and you can save hundreds. you know, like the sign says. ♪ i feel good ♪ i knew that i would, now ♪ i feel good ♪

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well, that's because he'd rather have a puppet as president of the united states. >> you're the puppet. >> by the end of this evening, i'm going to be blamed for everything that's ever happened. >> why not. such a nasty woman.

>> it's just awfully good that someone with the temperament of donald trump is not in charge of the law in our country. >> because you'd be in jail. >> well, he is working on it. all bets are off the donald trump debate. in an attempt to indim tate hillary clinton four years ago, he invited women who accused her husband, the former president, of sexual misconduct to one of the debates. now just hours before the two 2020 candidates face off for the first time on the same stage, it looks like trump will deploy many of the same tactics. he's demanded bien take a drug test. he's quibbled about taking breaks and ear pieces while the nation is tuning in tonight is still reeling from a pandemic that's killed more than 200,000 americans, left millions without jobs, left the whole country on edge. we're back with ashley parker, basil smikle and donny deutsch.

this is about which person plugs in, i think, more successfully to the country. and plugging into trump's base is not worth talking about. i think he's been right about exactly one thing that he could do whatever he wanted on fifth avenue and they'd still be with him. we talk about donald trump's base and we should talk about his coalition. the fact is his coalition is still not intact or he wouldn't be tweeting as the suburbs all day, every day. talk about each candidate's limitations for sort of plugging in to the country with their past performances as debaters, sam stein. >> we'll start with trump. i think your synopsis is right. he's remarkable he's just resorting to the same exact playbook he had in 2016. the shenanigans, the ear piece stuff, the drug test. all the same thing he did with hillary clinton in 2016. obviously, they felt it worked then. let's try now. but, of course, the contexts are so different.

pulling that stuff worked when you're an outsider trying to shake up the system. but you're the president now and have a pandemic that's killed over 200,000 americans. continuing economic devastation. wildfires raging in california. and it's clearly from the evidence so far that this has not helped him expand his coalition. his coalition has stayed stable. and he needs to expand it. he's done little to try to expand it and any substantive way. so i don't expect him to do anything different than what donny described which is his visceral attack mode politics and it's baffling because they have to shake things up. i don't know why they don't try shaking things up. that's my expectation. for biden, it's a far different situation. you know, he could be fine doing no harm to himself tonight but just getting out unscathed because you're talking about three or four remaining events that could reshape the race minus a huge break. he needs to get through those events. there are some things on the

margins where he does need to improve. democratic enthusiasm is there for removing trump, maybe not for electing biden. minority votes, hispanics and african-americans, the margins are improving for him but not quite where they were for hillary. so you know, he needs to use this tonight to increase his favorability rating like he did during the convention and make those overtures to hispanic, african-american voters and keep hitting that frame he's used to solidify his suburban vote margins he's enjoyed. >> basil, i want to put a different version of the same question to you. trump's strategy has been to push out a caricature of joe biden. i was part of a somewhat failed effort to do this with john kerry after in 2004, we depicted him as a flip-flopper. we played the music from flipper, the tv show, and we really drove it, probably too hard because when the john kerry that came out certainly bested

the incumbent president in the first debaste of '04. trump has created a caricature of joe biden with his coffee, man, woman, mocha test, that's given way to a drug test i guess because he's good now, not needing -- it's never on the substance. trump never wants to find the substance. on the other side, i think there's an expectation. donny has given voice to it. and he'll come out there and unravel and spit on himself if he does anything less outrageous than that it may be viewed in the eyes of some as, hey, wasn't so bad. so talk about each campaign's battle with the caricatures. >> sure, i want to start by addressing a point sam made because it's an important point. in addition to a lot of what donald trump said and about hillary in 2016, you did talk about the nasty woman comment but you also remember the moments in the debate where he was walking toward her and

standing behind her, sort of that looming figure. there was an element of misogyny there that i think, you know, since then, even if people didn't want to sort of give hillary that benefit or support hillary in that moment, i think subsequent to that, there are a lot of voters that have now had a history of donald trump making those kinds of comments or acting in that way, being insensitive to the issues of racial unrest in our country. and as we talked in the earlier segment, the notion that he can run the country like he runs his business or maybe he didn't do that, that narrative of his is all of a sudden gone. he can't go back to that. and there's no substance there. so i do expect he's going to try to find a way, probably not very well, to inject some very -- do some adhomonym attacks to go on the attack in a way that will look like -- he may look like the person he's painting joe biden to be, someone that's unhinged, doesn't have the

mental acuity to be in the office. and someone who you can't count on. and to everybody else's point, you know, all joe biden has to do is look and sound presidential. and he's been very good at that. >> ashley, are they still doing this man, woman, tomato, tamale thing. is that still one of their lines of attack or have they moved on to what trump tweeted this weekend which is an injection and a urine test? i forget where trump is with the smears. >> he's all over the place with the smears but i think that gets an important point which is one of the things that is going to be a dynamic tonight is something that has long been a dynamic with trump which is asi assymmetrical warfare. when trump gets on stage, the impression voters have of him is very much baked in. so if, as donny says, he does unravel, if he says something misogynistic, if he says

something sexist, something racist, if he says something that is inaccurate or if he lies, voters already know that about him. they have already made their decision about him. and it is either acceptable to them or unacceptable to them, but he -- it is going to be much harder for donald trump to fundamentally do something on the debate stage that will change what voters think about him, good or bad. on the other hand, biden is more of an unknown and has a different set of potentially unfair standards from voters. the flip side is something that we've seen but we haven't really seen the two men together. it's one thing voters always talk about whether they agree with him or not is joe biden's fundamental decency and his empathy. and that is a contrast that, for the first time in this campaign, we might really be able to see the head-to-head on one stage in a single split screen in a way we haven't, especially with coronavirus. just keeping the candidates at

home. >> donny, that is such a good point and sometimes the best contrasts are the ones that don't need any words at all. and just standing there joe biden is someone who has been grieving with people who have lost people in the pandemic almost since it started. and certainly since he's been back out on the campaign trail. we have no known reports of donald trump reaching out to any families, any ordinary americans who were first responders or nurses or doctors who lost their battles with covid. i want to read you something on this character sort of concept, and i think you'll agree. but i'm curious. "the new york times" writes today, mr. biden has been clear that he believes hillary clinton erred four years ago in her debates with president trump by getting into a back and forth argument about character. she did what every other candidate would have done. the resulting debate was an ugly spectacle and it all went down the drain. biden wants to avoid that and has been stress tested by advisers not to respond to

trump's obvious provocations if they aren't central to his own message. talk about that as a strategy, donny. do you co-sign that? >> a perfect example. let's say we know trump will bring up hunter biden. and the biden response is, trump, mr. trump, the voters care about their own children and sending them to school and can they be safe. and there is -- to not get into -- your children do this and i think once again, talks to him about testing. trump, mr. trump, what people care about is the testing for corona and why there hasn't been more of it. continually pivot back to the voter and your care for the voter. the other thing i want to see happen, the one attribute donald trump has had, and it's all fake, but strength. and you know, when he debated against all the other republican candidates, you didn't have that gravitas and strength up there. didn't necessarily have it with hillary because trump was able to play the guy in the corner shooting spitballs at the

establishment. i want to see a punch back, a dignified way from biden. and the best example i've seen, and it sticks with me was when he's talked about his son, his late son who was a war hero and referred to trump and said you said people like my son are suckers for going over, oh, and by the way, what the health care he had at the end of his life, you want to take away from him? you saw him getting emotion but strong in that punch in the face back. that's got to be in there also. it's decency plus strength. >> i hope they're watching, donny. those are great pieces of advice. and i know from working on presidential campaigns, on debate day, there's oddly nothing to do. so if you are watching, listen to donny. ashley, basil, sam and donny deutsch, no better people to talk to on a day like this. >> thanks, nicolle. after the break, former lead prosecutor for robert mueller on the latest reporting over trump's wealth and what he and

his team could have should have, might have done differently. andrew weissmann is our guest after a short break. don't go anywhere. tonight, i'll be eating a veggie cheeseburger on ciabatta, no tomatoes.. [hard a] tonight... i'll be eating four cheese tortellini with extra tomatoes. [full emphasis on the soft a] so its come to this? [doorbell chimes] thank you. [doorbell chimes] bravo. careful, hamill. daddy's not here to save you. oh i am my daddy. wait, what? what are you talking about? want conservative judges on i'the court.vative, this may make you feel better, but i really don't care. if an opening comes in the last year of president trump's term

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"the new york times" talks not just about russia but turkey, the philippines, azerbaijan, dubai. the list goes on and on and on. and the concerning thing is that, until yesterday, none of those transactions were known so each and every one of those hidden transactions, those

hidden payments provide a leverage point for those foreign nations to use over the president and really go a long way to explaining, as you said, some of these absolutely nonsensical decisions that don't have any benefit to u.s. national security. >> that was former fbi agent peter strzok yesterday on this program on the urgent need for a counterintelligence investigation to help answer all the remaining questions regarding donald trump's finances. an unfinished task that's even more alarming now given what we've learned just this week from "the new york times" about trump's outstanding loans and the compromising position that could put him in and with whom, we don't know. now a member of robert mueller's special counsel team, our colleague and next guest, is speaking out about all the reasons they were interested in looking into trump's finances that were ultimately killed by now-explainable extreme pressures and threats from the white house. in his new book andrew weissmann, one of mueller's top lawyers in that investigation writes this. our office was put on notice by

the white house early on that engaging in such a broad-based financial investigation might lead to our firing. asked by a reporter about the possibility of us looking into his finances, trump had characterized such a move as crossing a red line. a threat that ironically suggested he might have something to hide. in the end, the wrongdoing we found in the areas in which we chose to look, particularly in the one russian financial deal we examined as a result of cohen's cooperation, left me with a deeply unsatisfying feeling about what else was out there that we did not examine. the inability to chase down all financial leads or to examine all crimes, gnawed at me and still does. joining us now is the author of that book, where law ends, andrew weissmann, former general counsel at the fbi, a senior member of the mueller investigation. andrew, i have been reading this and i know we have some business to do and some news to cover because robert mueller has

responded to the book, but i want to start with the book because we have worked together, you have covered the impeachment of donald trump. you have talked us through so many of these other huge things, and you never uttered a peep about your misgivings about the work you were part of. just take me inside the central critiques of your own investigation into donald trump. >> nicolle, in that sense, it's great to be here because i was not able to talk about this until i went through the prepublication review process. we all can see what's happening with john bolton who is apparently under criminal investigation. so i didn't get through the prepublication review process until mid-july. and so i did sit with you and lots of friends and i had to be completely silent. in fact, i had to be very careful about even vetting my

book with friends or colleagues because of that prepublication review process. so on to the substance, what you are asking. so i think one of the key things that people need to understand is when you're investigating the president of the united states for 22 months, what differentiates that investigation from investigating executives at enron or organized crime figures in new york city, both of which i've done is that the person who you're investigating has the power to fire you. and at least initially in the part that you just read, at least in the initial part of the investigation, special counsel mueller had a difficult decision to make which is, do you risk being fired or do you go forward with a full investigation knowing that you may not then have the two russian indictments

we had. or that rick gates will be a cooperator and tell you about sharing polling data with a russian operative. all of the things that the investigation uncovered through, you know, terrific work by agents and analysts. my disagreement with the special counsel is not so much that initial decision. it's that that decision, in my view, and it's respectfully because i certainly admire and respect special counsel mueller is that i thought that decision needed to be revisited. and it was not sufficient to leave it in the position that we left it. i thought at some point you go into the finances, you do the investigation, and if you are fired, you're fired. >> you know, to prepare for this, i also went back and reread the mueller report and i want to get into some of your criticisms about the final

conclusions and the way barr just hijacked the product and how it was communicated. i mean if you read volume 1, it is devastating. it is an indictment of both trump's benefiting from russia's attack on our democracy and accepting that attack on our democracy, and we've seen laid bare because it's been done public four years of him, come hither with vladimir putin. the headline given on volume 1 was no collusion. in volume 2, you describe it as mealy mouth. i talked about it on tv as -- i never knew how to talk about it. i still can't make perfect sense of it but it seems like six acts of criminal obstruction that could send you or me to prison or investigated in detail. if you look at the dates and footnote, that investigation went on three days before robert mueller quit. why did it end up with the headline, no collusion, no obstruction? >> so as you know from reading the introduction, i start the

book on march 24th, 2019, and that day is one that i will not forget because i was in my car, and i heard a report about the attorney general barr's purported summary of our report. and i say purported because it was so misleading or outright false with respect to what we found. and that was a moment where we knew that we were dealing with an attorney general who is not going to uphold the rule of law, that was not the institutionalized that people hoped he was, but that we knew the rest of america did not know that yet. and, of course, now we've all lived through many, many other examples of the attorney general really denigrating the rule of law. but to take some examples, the attorney general described our report by saying, one, that the white house fully cooperated with us, but just to give one

example of how that's not so, the president of the united states was asked to come in and give an interview and he said no. he has every right to say no, but i wouldn't describe that as fully cooperating. also, the attorney general said that there was no obstruction of justice. first, that wasn't his call to make in the sense that there was a special counsel who had been appointed, and the precise -- the reason for that was because of the inherent conflict of having the attorney general, who is appointed by the president, making that call. but in making that assessment, you don't see any facts whatsoever discussed by the attorney general, and that's because they would have been horrible. i mean, if he had to outline why don mcgahn being told to lie by the president of the united states y that's not obstruction, that would have been a pretty -- he's a good lawyer, but i don't know that he's that good a

lawyer. >> so why not call that a crime? i mean, are you agreeing with the critics who said it was too hard to articulate, as crimes? mueller, i think in his press conference came out and said if we could say that crimes hadn't been committed, we would have but there was never anything in the affirmative that said six acts of criminal obstruction occurred. here they are. >> so let me first give you robert mueller's reasoning because it's really worth understanding it because it came from a very noble place. it's not that he was scared and it's not that he was just in the pocket of the attorney general or, you know, republican operators. what his concern was is that if you are going to say that somebody committed a crime, but under doj policy, the person could not be indicted, and we had to follow doj policy, because we're members of the department of justice, it would not be fair because that person wouldn't have their day in

court. my counterargument to that is that that is not what was called for by the special counsel rules. under the special counsel regulations, we were being asked to provide a recommendation to the attorney general with our factual findings. it was up to the attorney general to decide whether he was going to make that public or not and to weigh that decision that mueller was weighing. so i thought that our report that went to the attorney general should have made a finding with respect to whether we thought this constituted obstruction of justice. and just to put a fine point on it, nicolle, my personal view is that any reasonable prosecutor would have concluded, as you mentioned at the outset, that this constituted obstruction. >> i have so many more questions for you. i also want to talk about the excruciating experience of coming out and talking about something that you were a part

of that was scrutinized by the whole country, but you were on the inside. robert mueller has responded to the book. i'm going to share that with our viewers on the other side of the break. don't go anywhere. frustrated that your clothes get damaged

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the amount of people we indicted, i know the hard answer to the simple question, we could have done more. to which robert s. mueller responded today. it is not surprising that members of the special counsel's office did not always agree, but it is disappointing to hear criticism of our team based on incomplete information. the officer's mission washington was for follow the facts. that is what we did knowing that our work would be krscrutinized from all sides. i made the decisions. without fear of the consequences. i stand by the conclusions of our investigation. i'm grateful to the men and women with who work for the spk office a special counsel office and serve the nation. your response. >> so i agree with most of what special counsel mueller wrote there. i too think that he operated completely out of integrity and

i'm grateful to the colleagues i had there. that being said, i think that it is important to remember why i wrote this book. it could have been easy to write a book that said everything we did was right and everything we did responded to the onslaught coming from the white house or the attorney general. but i was trying to write something for the american public and frankly for the historical record and to try to be as can did as possible about what we did right and what we could have done better. and i tried to hold up a mirror to my own conduct and that of our colleagues so that there would be someone from the inside recording what happened as opposed to people from the outside speculating. and i do have my own personal views as to decisions we made, whether it is the financial investigation that we didn't do

a complete investigation of, whether it is subpoenaing the president which i think we set a precedence that iscedent that i about. god forbid that they look back and say see, don't need to do it. or whether it is making a conclusion as tostructed justic. those are ones where i respectfully disagree and i set out the pros and cons and what happened on those issues. >> the topic of finances, did you have donald trump's tax return data that is reported in the "new york times" this week ? >> we did not. one of the things that i recount in the book is when we issued a grand jury subpoena for toideute bank, we got a call in the white house saying are you doing an investigation into the president's finances. we of course at that point, weapon not. that grand jury investigation

was into paul manafort as to whom we did do a full financial investigation ironically. and that is whereas i mentioned the special counsel had a hard decision to make. so we never did that full financial investigation. and one. thi of the things that is important next time around is that for the special counsel rules to be clearer that there is a public education function of the special cumbent to talk and be broke wh about what was looked at and what was not. one of the ways that the zg is able to spin the report was to give the impression that we had looked at everything. so if we didn't find any wrongdoing, there wasn't anything to be found. but our report didn't actually cover a full financial workup of the president of the united states. and as you noted at the outset

from a counterintelligence perspective, that leaves a lot to be desired. >> and you aired the clip of peter strzok, said that would be of the most classic ways to compromise somebody is to leverage their debt. does donald trump today represent a counter intelligence threat to tunited states of ame in. >> what i would say to that is that we don't know because one of the things that has not been looked at is who does he owe the 420 odd million dollars to assuming the "new york times" report is correct that it is important to know who has that kind of leverage. >> so you never tried to answer that question? >> absolutely. my view is that that is something that our office and the fbi were tasked with doing.

i go through in the book sort of the pros and cons about why it wasn't done initially, but i wanted people to understand that, a, that wasn't even ultimately done. and that the thinking behind not doing it initially to my mind doesn't hold up in terms of carrying you through to the end of the investigation as to why either the special counsel or the fbi didn't conduct that kind of investigation. and to put it very simple point on it, which is you know if i personally had $420 million in debt, there is no way that i would be given clearance and working at the department of justice until there was a full workup of exactly what that debt meant. >> such an important point and we'll have that conversation because the clearances that were not granted bring the fbi or the cia for ivanka and jared look different now with some of this

new information. i know how hard it is to speak up either against your party or against someone you've worked for. and to your desire to write something for the record, i'm grateful and we welcome anyone else that wants to add to that record and push back. but today, andrew weissmann, really doing an important service filling in a lot of things we didn't know about the mueller investigation. the new book is available now if you care about the investigation and this moment in history, i highly record it. istory, i highly record it (♪ )

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the age of 18 like nobody, they have a strong immune system, who knows. take your hat off to the young because they have a hell of an immune system. if you look at children, children are almost -- and i would almost say definitely -- but almost immune from this disease. they don't catch it easily, they don't bring it home easily, and if they do catch it, they get better fast. schools should be opened. these kids want to go to school. you are losing a lot of lives by keeping thing closs closed. >> and it was all a lie and we're learning today from former white house coronavirus adviser olivia troy that the lies were sxwen intentional to serve donald trump's political objectives. "new york times" says that top white house officials played down the risk of sending children back to school, a striking politically intervention in one of the most

sensitive public health debates of the pandemic. according to documents and interviews with current and former government officials. white house officials also tried to circumvent the 150ed in a search for alternate data showing that the pandemic was weakening and posed little danger to chain. t children. the president's failure is a center piece of joe biden's campaign against him, the topic among several expected to be questioned in-depth tonight at the debate. while the president's failures on coronavirus have deadly consequences, they may lgalso political implications for the president which new polls showing donald trump far behind joe biden in wisconsin, pennsylvania and michigan and even trailing by three in georgia that has been hard hit

by the pandemic. of course all of those polls taken after donald trump says in the tapes revealed by bob woodward that he knowingly downplayed the pandemic as early as february which has a haunting echo to today's news that the president he knowingly downplayed and lied about the health risks to children. the president's covid lies ahead of the first debate expected to focus on the trump's response to coronavirus is where we start hour with our most favorite reporters and friends. phil rucker and also liz beelil neumankimberly atkins. phil, i want to start with you. on this crush of reporting about just how manipulated all of the information coming out of the white house has been about the pandemic itself. it seems that now the

preliminary price he's paying is for the failures which put us in a category of our own in terms of failing to stop, failing to test, failing to contain, failing to contact trace the disease, but also failing to level with the country about something as sacred as the health risks to our ekids. >> yeah, the "new york times" story that you cited from last night about the pressure campaign from the white house on the centers for disease control and prevention regarding school he reopening is important and it fits the pattern of all of the reporting really from the beginning of this pandemic that has shown that the priority for the president, the priority for his advisers in the white house, has always been and continues to be public relations. it is about trying to convince the american people that the pandemic is not as bad as the data would suggest that it is, trying to convince the american people that it is safe to go out and about, that they can return to their places of work, that

they can go back to church, that the economy can become reinvigorated. and all of that is in service to the president's political goals because he knows that he will stand re-election now you in about a month and he wants to see a more sort of optimistic -- [ inaudible ] >> we're going to let his wi-fi catch up. and kim, let me read a little brits of this to you. sooed scientists pointed out 23450u78rous errors in the document and raised concerns that it appeared to minimize the risk of the coronavirus to school age children. this is according to an edited version of the document obtained by the "new york times." i'm sort of dumbfounded and thinking of all these sort of political clichés like have you no decency and is there no bottom, but i guess we know the answer to all those questions.

>> we do. and phil is absolutely right, it seemed that the overriding goal of agencies like the cdc, which we're supposed to trust for information, straight factual information about health, was in service to the desire by president trump to downplay the coronavirus. he wants schools open and full of students and businesses open because that makes things look normal, that will fit his narrative that the coronavirus is under control, that it is not a threat when all of the data are from the testing that we know of shows the exact opposite. it is particularly dangerous given the fact that while there is less data about small children, i mean for a lot of reasons, small children aren't con gla ga congregating together, they have been largely in their homes over the summer, so the numbers may be lower, but it is because they

haven't really been exposed as much. but it only takes one child to be in a classroom and if he or she is a asymptomatic carrier, the data shows that they can still spread the virus to their classmates who will in turn take it into their homes and cause outbreaks. so it is no reason for the president and the cdc to be backing these inaccuracies other than just to push a political narrative and that is very dangerous. >> you know, elizabeth, i feel like you must sit there and feel like i tomd you so. i mean, i ask some of these questions like how could it be that threat data gets distorted or doesn't make it to the white house when it is about terror threat, when it is about the

russia threat, the threat of white supremacy. and shame on me that i thought maybe the health of our children would be different. and so i feel like i already know what you will say, that everything is in service of his political goals. but it is still shocking to hear, olivia troy, another person who worked in the trump administration, who has come out like yourself and bravely talking about what it is really like, i want to hear you on both how this is -- how there is nothing that is beyonds reach of his political contamination. but i want to play some of her interview today with an degredr mitchell. >> this is just one example of where we were tasked internally to find additional data that played more in favor of the narrative of what the senior politicals in the white house and president wanted to relay. and this specific instance, it had to do with finding data that

was displayed in a certain way that showed that perhaps people under the age of 18 were less susceptible to covid and less likely at risk. it is something that has weighed on me until today because you this is one of the most egreenlg yus things that i saw firsthand. and just something that crosses the line. this is people's children, families, this is impacting people still today. >> elizabeth. >> you're right, this is just more of the same. but if you go back and you remember that when he was sworn into office, it is abundantly clear that he came in with the purpose of pretending or playing the role of president. and anytime he has to make tough decisions that are not things that he actually wants to work on or he doesn't want to do, he either in a good scenario might

pass it off to a competent cabinet member or deputy and let them run with it, and there are some places in his administration where he has had successes largely because he and his inner sanctum don't touch it, where for optics pups he had to appear like he was in charge. and the moment they set up that task force and mandated that public affairs all ran through that task force, it was not according to the way that the response plans are written. there is an emergency support function that is supposed to handle public affairs. and that was kind of set aside and ran out of the white house. and the moment you put the white house in charge of this task force, because their goal is to play the role of the president, not to actually do any of the work of the presidency, the way they evaluate problems is entirely through the lens of public affairs, not through the

lens of the oath that he swore to protect and defend this country. >> you know, elizabeth, the "new york times" report we've been talking about implicates i think one of the most senior members of the vice president's staff, a man named mr. short. i guess my question to you is more personal. what propels people into service of the big lie that children aren't at risk? i don't know if mr. short has kids of his own or not, but what gets everyone sort of in the white water raft tumbling down toward a big lie? and i want to play -- don't take my word for it. here is donald trump telling bob woodward that it is a big lie, that kids are certainly at risk. >> now it's turning out it is not just old people, bob, just today and yesterday some start link facts came out, it is not just old, older -- >> yeah, exactly. >> it's plenty of young people. >> so donald trump told bob woodward that there are plechbts young peop plenty of young people but mr. short pushing the big lie that

children are not at risk. >> i can't speak specifically to mr. short, but from working with people in that environment, you might start out strong with a either is of morals and know what your red line is and through a combination of getting beat down because maybe you spoke up in the past and you were beat into submission or threatened with either, you know, you will lose your job maybe on the best case scenario or are maybe they have blackmail on somebody, they are very intimidating crew in the way that they demand loyalty. so you have that factor going on. and then you just have the factor that group think sets in especially in year four of his administration. they start to actually believe the lies. so i don't know that anybody woke up that day and said i'm going to decide not to protect children so that i can get donald trump reelected. but they kind of lost sites of

what truth is. and so i think it is a combination of factors. i'm sure psychologists will have heyday trying to figure out the stockholm syndrome that set in that compromised values in the process. >> and i phil, i want to push on this. we know that donald trump knew it was a lie because he says to bob woodward on march 19th that it doesn't just affect older people. young people can get. so he surely had to have been aware of that behind the scenes. and that redatpredates the poli push that he was threatening for cut federal funding for schools that didn't key hand in-person learning. and now we are seeing upticks of infections almost everywhere. even in new york city, it is happening right now. so tell me how the they

operationalize a lie that even trump knows is a lie. >> well, nicolle, it is about fryi trying to present certain data elements. one flts reasof the reasons tha recruited dr. atlas for this task force now. we see him because he is taking the data, taking the facts and sort of twisting it in a way that suits what the president wants to hear and what the president wants communicated to the public. but one other thing we should keep in mind with this discussion of whether young people get the virus, and it is not only young people at schools. if it were, you'd have a whole lot of disciplinary problems, right? there are plenty of adults at schools, teachers in the classroom, janitors cleaning the classroom, the people making lunches, the principals, sports coaches, parents, there are so many adults who interact with these kids who are there for a

danger when the schools are open and when the virus might be spreading. and that is important. and it is something that the administration has not really at all focused on in their public messaging during this debate. >> in fact they have a mask shortage. a perfect place to turn to joe biden who put out an ad the night that we learned that donald trump paid $750 in taxes showing the amount in taxes that most of the people you just named, teachers, nurses, bus drivers pay a whole lot more. talk about what should we expect to hear from donald trump tonight? joe biden has made donald trump's failures on coronavirus a center piece of his campaign. what does the white house plan do in response, just shout hunter biden. >> what will he say? >> well, i'm sure we'll hear about hunter biden, but the trump team has signaled that is key to the president's strategy in this debate. but look, biden wants to frame this election as a referendum on

the practicedesident's handling pandemic and other matters and the president will have to answer for some of the questions that he has been dodging in recent weeks including why did he manipulate the public, why did he sort of intentionally mislead and lie to the american people about the severity of this virus. he has not to date given a clear and sufficient answer to that question. and it is something that i know that the biden campaign has been working with president biden -- excuse me, with vice president biden to prepare for in the debate. >> all right. we have so many more things to cover. when we come back, donald trump called members of the military suckers and losers. he said coronavirus might be a good thing because it meant that he didn't have to shake hands with his own supporters who he called, quote, disgusting. now a new report reveals that trump secretly mocked some of his most fervent supporters, christians.

plus trump is heading into his first debate with joe biden and he is trailing in the polls. david plouffe will tell us what joe biden needs to do to keep it that way. joe biden needs to do to keep it that way the different positions i've had taught me how to be there for others. ♪ i started out as a cashier. i mean, the sky's the limit with walmart. it's all up to you. ♪ ♪

to me that is very personal. when i talk about the bhibl, it is very personal. so i don't want to -- >> it means a lot to you that you think about or cloobroke or? >> the bible means a lot to me. >> old testament or new testament? >> probably equal. the bible is incredible.

i say it is my second favorite book of all times, joking about it bullpen i thit the bible is special. >> i don't even know what to say. when candidate trump there couldn't or wouldn't cite his favorite bible verse. but he knows just how support evangelical is to his political survival. trump has maintained strong backing somehow from religious voters by enacting conservative policies i suppose and publicly showing support like when he held up a bible in front of a church. not sure if that works though. a new piece in the atlantic finds that behind the scenes, trump is not as kind to his christian supporters. quote, in private many of trump's comments about religion are marked by cynicism and con tent. according to people who have worked for him. former aides told me they heard trump ridicule conservative religious leaders, and deride certain rights and doctrines

held sacred by many of the americans who constitute his base. kim, if you take this really remarkable and sad piece of reporting, you put it up next to the reporting that what he really thinks of men and women who serve in the united states military as if they are suckers and loser, and you take olivia troye's description of donald trump seeing a silver lining in the pandemic because it meant he didn't have to touch or shake hands with his supporters who he found, quote, disgusting. this is a man who loathes his supporters, his own base. and do you know who told us that was the case? howard stern did. he told trump supporter, you know what, he hates you. and it would seem from his twitter feed that he cares a lot more about what phil rucker and you and other people in the media think when him than his own base. it is almost sad, kim. >> yes, but it is consistent in

a way that he sees the support from folks like the religious, white evangelicals who have largely stuck with him, although some of that support has eroded. he sees it as transactional. as long as he gives them conservative judges and talks about bringing christmas back and god back into the school, he can count on their support. and by and large that has worked with white evangelicals. but recent polling has shown that his support among the most faithful is waning for a lot of reasons that were cited including his basic unkindness. i think that it is particularly stark when he is running against somebody who is a practicing catholic and someone who has spoken about his own faith, the former vice president, talked about how faith got him through some of the most tragic times in his life, when he lost his first wife and his daughter and later

lost his son. and has been the reason for some of his greatest triumphs of. he sees like a genuine person and polling bears that out that people even those who didn't support joe biden think that he is a good and moral person. and so we're seeing that sort of play out now and that is a big vulnerability for donald trump in a race where it could be close and margins like that could make a big difference. >> kim, i'm glad you made the turn from the preliminary oliti personal you because i think that this is deeply personal to a lot of people. and i'd like to add one additional point from what kim is saying about joe biden, at the beginning of the pandemic when the death toll in my city in new york was staggering and i interviewed joe biden, i think it was a saturday night, and i said you know, i cry when i run so my little boy doesn't see me and feel scared. and i said sometimes i wonder

how you can keep the faith. what kind of god lets this happen. and he gave the most thoughtful answer. he said here is why i believe. and i just wonder, do we miss this in the media? how is this playing out kind of outside of a newscast that really can't get into some of these really deeply personal topics the way people are living them in their lives? >> such a great question. look, this is a challenging topic on many levels. there is no doubt that large percentage of the president's base is made up of white christian evangelicals. and it was very obvious to many of us in 2015 and 2016 that he is clearly not a christian or maybe a baby christian, just

starti hiing his journey and as learns more about how to be a christian. and of course you hope for that. you hope that he would confess his sin and brepent and turn frm his ways. but we have not seen evidence of that. so most serious thoughtful leaders look at him and recognize this is a game of political -- that he is just looking for the vote and you've seen quite a few leaders, some of whom i would put in the category of as they were described in the article that, you know, hustlers. so there are a few of those. but there are several serious names of people that are still supporting the president. and when you examine their logic, it is because of issues like religious liberty and

concerns about blpro-life. but i think christians is way more important than the party. and from a biblical world true, what we believe and belonging to christ, that is our first and primary identity. and when that is your first and primary identity, how the lord speaks to you through scripture about things like voting, yes, you should examine that. but that does not mean that if you are a christian you must be republican or if you are a christian you must be a democrat. for me personally, i had probably not examined that seriously enough until the last few years. and once i started going down that path, i was delighted to find that there are any number of christians that are speaking out and recognizing that donald trump does not reflect what godly leadership looks like. and for all of those reasons, that is why i have made a

decision to vote for joe biden. but i want to be really clear, i don't think that scripture says you must vote for joe biden are. i think that that is a decision that you wrestle with the lord because there are many factors to weigh in. but what i cannot stand for is this idea that because you are a christian you must vote for trump because emdefend ohe willr religious liberties. that is really damaging to our faith and really hurting our witness to so many people. and i think that that is the thing that many believers are struggling with now, that our witness has been damaged by trump. >> wow. phil rucker, i want to give you the last word. and it is also a generational calculation from the trump campaign standpoint. because the message is not really available to younger he haves whose mission makeup is about reserving the environment, about a more generous and kind

immigration and treatment of grant grants, the anti-poverty efforts. i mean, it is just -- even this pitch that they are making is to a very small segment. they are always sort of speaking to a segment of a segment of a segment it would seem. >> elizabeth said was so profound. and the president sort of talks about it as a paint by numbers political outreach game where they are trying to check a lot of boxes and layout deliverables to different faith communities in order to earn their vote in a transactional way. yet the president almost never has spoken from the heart about his faith which makes you question what it is that he believes necessarily. he also, you know, very rarely

goes to church. you dobtn't hear him about whene prays or he has difficult decisions and he found skfrt in t comfort in the lord or the way faith shapesly family lys his he treats his children. that is almost completely devoid from the president's public presentation which is highly unusual compared to other presidents of course who have been much more open in keblg connecting with the american people about the way that they live their faith and live their life. and it speaks to the idea that trump is using faith as political currency in order to win votes without making it authentic and real and personal. >> wow, you have all blown my mind. thank you all so much for starting us off and spending time with us today. when we run, former ballistic missile campaign manager david plouffe on tonight's debate and what joe biden are needs to do to slam

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qulaewhatever happens tomor joe biden will leave cleveland on a whistle stop tour of ohio and pennsylvania. pennsylvania could be one of if not the most crucial state in the election as of now. in the last few days, the associated press reported that the trump campaign was shifting its focus in order to bump up

support there. they have a lot of work to do. two new polls have trump down by nine points. and joining our conversation is former obama campaign manager david plouffe. david, you and i had the pleasure of chatting on friday about all facets of the campaign. i didn't realize that you were recording that conversation. but take me back to sort of your-just your basic frame on where the race stands and what biden has to do to make these leads in the polls electoral victories and make them last. >> well, i think that that is the right question, but i might flip it around. donald trump is the one who is losing. so he is the one that has to change the race. so tonight or tomorrow morning when we reflect on the debate and we see reaction, if the race is stable, donald trump has probably lost his one prime opportunity to change the race. now, that doesn't mean that joe biden should play it safe.

i think sports teams who get a lead that begin to play conservative often regret that. so whether on the coronavirus, on tax fairness, on foreign policy, on joe biden believes in our democracy, he needs to press these advantages and be tough, punish trump when he can. but donald trump is the one that has to change the race. i don't think that biden is really up nine, but he has a lead of some significance. he is polling 49, 51, 52. when hillary clinton had leads four years ago, she had small leads in the battle ground states. and a lot of the people who were undecided broke to trump. so trump can turn all his base out that he wants, and i think he will, he has to pull people away from joe biden who is currently with joe biden. and tonight is his best

opportunity. the rest of the debates will matter less than this one. >> and i think what you said is helping the people who think that there is some moment that could change the structure of the raise. i mea -- race. i'm sure you get the calls why won't obama do more, why won't george w. bush endorse biden. i understand the sentiment, but there isn't going to be some watershed thing where suddenly trump is at 30. you view his base as solid, biden's lead as sizable, bruh talk about what sorts of things can hard en these numbers. >> so on the biden side of the equation, the reason he is doing so well in states like pennsylvania and florida, he is overperforming the average democrat with senior citizens, he is doing exceedingly well with suburban democratic women, and quite well with male college educated white voters. and he has won back some of the

famous trump voters. i think a really strong performance tonight moves people from kind of i'm more excited about biden, maybe i'll vote tomorrow because i can do that. i think the bigger challenge for biden is on the turnout side. how can this race go sideways is if trump dominates turnout, he gets almost historic turnouts like in ohio in george w. bush's re-election and biden just misses his marks. and tonight if he has a strong debates performance, it can help there, although a lot of those voters may not be tuning into the whole debate. you will have to fight to reach them the next few weeks, but i think that he can solidify gains with swing voters. and so the question, you're evet this endorsement, but it is really on these two individuals and how they perform. which really probably most get 40 hint minutes.

and in joe biden's case, he has 20 minutes to cement his lead and in donald trump's case to try to come back somehow. >> you know, i spent a lot of time after the last election with the obama/obama trump voter, had voted for obama at least twice and some were clinton voters. and they were voting for change. i wonder who you think has the better mantle on change this time around. >> yeah, because trump administration -- >> trump is as to abnormal, it is hard to view him as establishment. >> so i think for trump's base, they still say he is the change guy. yeah, he is an incumbent, but he is not politically correct. i think for anybody who is a swing voter, trump is the incumbent figure. so joe biden is not out of central casting for the young fresh face but i think that he can credibly say what we've been

doing hasn't worked. do you really trust digging out of the pandemic, digging out of the recession, what happens when another pandemic comes, this guy literally wants to steal the election because he doesn't want to be investigation greated for all of his business and tax problems. i mean that is the other thing. biden should be able to drill trump in multiple answers tonight around the question of taxes. doesn't even have to swerve out of his lane to do it. so yeah, trump won -- '16 was the change candidate. i think that it is much harder this time. and what i will be interested in, halfway through the debate, i'm sure trump will come out really fired out. he is a political performer. i think that he will come out as a weird but happier warrior. halfway you through through the debates, what is his body language like. this is a very vulnerable incumbent who is leading all over the floor politically. and so it shouldn't be that hard to take advantage of those political headwinds you already have.

>> and we know how he faired with the moderator last time out. it was calling in the reinforcements right and left. david, we'll get to talk to you again tonight as part of our special coverage and i'll look forward to that. thank you to making some time to spend time with us today. and that special coverage starts tonight at 8:00. i'll be there. rachel leads our team. joy reid is there. and we'll be joined by the last human being to have gone toe to toe on a debate stage with donald trump. former secretary of state hillary clinton will join our coverage. when we come back, peter baker and his wife will join us to talk about their new book about someone i adore, the ultimate washington insider, and his reluctant acceptance of the man who now leads his party. [ thunder rumbles ]

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he has been called one of the architects of the more than republican party. from the end of watergate to the end of the cold war, james bark helped republicans get elected, he helped them govern and he made sure they stayed in office. and then in 2016 along came donald trump and a hostile takeover of the gop. same party baker dedicated his life to building. so what did baker do next? with us to answer that is our political analyst peter baker

and staff writer susan glasser. you are the authors of a new book, the man who ran washington, the life and times of james baker. i want to ask you why you decided to write a book about him. he is one of my most favorite humans i've met in my career of working for the bush family. >> and it is great to be with you today. if you want to understand washington and how it works, i can't think of anybody better than someone who literally managed to combine essentially the portfolios of henry kissinger and wuoff t over the of his career. sond this and this is a time when it worked by the way. and it was already clear that the dysfunctioning gridlock

here, trump only magnified that. and you know, remembering that there was a time when the incentives in washington were actually to get things done. baker was able to make deals with democrats and the soviet of course in an era that seems long ago now. >> and peter, i know that there is plenty to scrutinize about baker's record and about the men for whom he worked, but on a personal life, there was no one dearer to him than the 41st president and mrs. barbara bush. talk with that relationship. >> it is an incredible relationship, almost unique in american history. on the tennis court in houston, these two men who were hyper competitive and they really, you know, they became friends long before politics. in fact their friendship was really forged in the personal tragedy on the part of james

baker when his first wife died. the only person he told that she had a fatal diagnosis was george bush. so i guess that wasn't done in those days. but the only person that he confided this is george bush. and last people to see her before she passed away were george and barbara bushing. i think that was a foundation for a friendship and partnership from the reagan white house all the way through bush's white house, secretary of state and president working together in tandem at the end of tfof the c war. and the one person who visited him three times before bush passed away was jim baker, in his room when president bush passed away rubbing his feet the last hour of his life. so an extraordinary friendship that had a big impact 00 americ on american history. >> and out of respect to our

viewers who are critical of donald trump, i don't want to romanticize too much of a shine on the are not party. i also want to share your reporting that jim baker says that he will hold his nose and vote for donald trump. he is a devoted conservative. >> that's right. and i think that it is important to note that we tried do this book as a way to study power. you don't read lbj books in order to admire lbj as much as to understand how he wielded power and to what ends. and i think that is also the story of jim baker that we were looking at. for the last five years, we've been talking with baker about trump. baker really does like donald trump. he says that he is crazy, he is very disdainful of the incompetence in the white house

that we've seen. remember baker was sort of the gold standard white house chief of staff for ronald reagan. so he has a very concerned rue about the ideological changes in the republican party. baker is a nationalist, a trade. by the way, he is not a climate denialist. he is an environmentalist. so there's enormous differences and disdain. the problem is, he's not sure what to do about it. he sees himself as a builder of the modern republican party and hasn't been able to figure out trump. he said at one point he would consider voting for biden and then said no, no, please don't say that. now i suppose at 90 you're entitled to your silence. he has contracted the coronavirus and is recovering but doesn't want to talk any more about the election. >> is he okay?

is he recovering from coronavirus, susan? >> it appears that he has recovered. he has already gone back out on a hunting and fishing trip. >> then he's okay. he's hunting again. he's okay. he is someone that i really loved getting to know. he and vernon jordan negotiated the terms of the 2004 debate agreement in a swanky hotel bar with swanky daytime cocktails. he really was then -- he and vernon jordan reminded me even then of just another time when people in both parties collaborated and were generous and kind to one another and got things done. i'm really, really, really happy that you wrote this book. it's really wonderful. peter baker and susan glaser, thank you very much for spending time with us. "the man who ran washington: the life and times of james baker" is out now. an important piece of history of what the republican party once was. when we return, as we do every day, remembering lives well lived. day, remembering lives we lived. nutrition for strength and energy.

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valerie, in 1976 and a year after that, they moved to florida. so it was for some four decades, dr. silverman delivered thousands of babies. some of them are all grown up now. the current county mayor for palm beach county, you guessed it, delivered by dr. silverman. for him, it all came down to trust. something so vitally important between a doctor and a patient. he treated people with respect. dignity and love and he loved them back. he had a wicked sense of humor. and when the pandemic hit he never stopped serving his patients. this month he died of the coronavirus. that can't erase who he was, a loving husband, proud father, gifted and talented doctor, cycling enthusiast, photographer, traveler and a dear, dear friend. he will be missed. thank you for letting us into your homes for these

extraordinary times. the beat with ari melber starts after a quick break. lber starts after a quick break.

welcome to "the beat." i'm ari melber, broadcasting on a pivotal night in this 2020 race. this is all under way, nearly 1 million votes already cast 36 days out from election day. all eyes as both candidates face each other in person for the first time. you can see here all of it developing. and we know the debate topics include covid, the supreme court, race in america, election integrity. we don't know how the candidates will confront each other or disrupt any plans set by the moderator. it comes amidst a punishing of bad news bust bid his newly revealed tax returns as a tox-dodging con man who spent the decade paying no taxes. a free