this sunday, sex, lies appear the russia investigation. federal prosecutors say michael cohen paid off women toai remn silent about their affairs with, in coordination and at the direction of individual 1, donald trump. enies it. ent >> sir, did you direct michael cohen to commit any violations of law? >> no, no. >> prosecut also say mr. trump's russia connections began sooner than we knew withia run offering his campaign political synergy andyngy on a government level. >> the last thing i want is help from russia on a campaign. >> and he insists things are going hi way i robert mueller's investigation. >> we're very happy with what we are reading because there was no collusion whatsoever. >> how much political and legal

peril is president trump actually facing? will republicans stick by him? and willemocrats feel obligated to take up impeachment? joining me this morning, independent senator angus king of maine who caucuses with the democrats and republicansenator nd paul of kentucky. plus, power grab. republican legislatures in michigan and wisconsin try to rollthack impact of november's election results by stripping power from newly elected democrats. >> we will not just lie down and accept this. >> my guest this morning, the incoming democratic governor of win, tony evers. joining me for insight and analysis are peggy noonan,ie e glaude, jr., of princeto university, kimberly atkins, and jonah goldberg, senior editor at "national review." welcome to sunday. it's "meet the press." >> announcerfrom nbc news in washington, the longest running show in television history, this is "meet the press."

. good sunday morning. shortly after the filings by special counsel robert mueller and special prosecutors in new york were releas friday evening, president trump tweeted in the third person. totally clears the president. thank you. well, not really. not even close. in fact this is how the usuay supportive "new york post" put it. donald and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. well, the court filings technically are aboutmichael cohen and paul manafort, the most consequential player in this drama is really the person identified as individual 1, donald trump. federal prosecutorsviay inal 1 directed cohen to make illegal payments to women with whom the president had affairs. that would be a felony. and they describe how cohen corrected the timeline o contacts with russia about the moscow tower project, admitting they startedas earlier andd longer than previously known. taken together, the filings suggest that contrary to mr.

trump's repeated claims of innocence, he faces potentially serious legal and political jeopardy. and they raise the specter that mrp could eventually be considered an unindicted co-conspirator. an aominous phrase linked to ri dard nixon. id you direct michael cohen -- >> no, no. >> growing peril for the president in two areas. number one, illegal campaign contributions.de fel prosecutors in new york say that president trump directed michael cohen to commit two feloni illegal hush money payments to porn actress stormy daniels and former playboy bny karen mcdougal to keep alleged affairs quiet. prosecutors say, quote, with respect to both payments, he acted in coordination with and at the direction of individual 1. denied p initial knowing about the payments. >> did you know about the

$130,000 payment to stormy daniels? >> no. >> once he admitted knowing about them, he denied recting them. >> he made the deal. he made the deals. and by the way, he pled to two counts that aren't a cre. >> then there are the alleged contacts with russia, which may hold even greater peril for the president. mr. trump has repeatedly denied any contacts. >> i have nothing to do with russia. to the best of my knowledge, no person that ideal with does. >> but in a separate filing, mueller's team says september 2015, cohen conferred with individual 1, mr. trump, about contacting the russian government before reaching out o gauge russia's interest in a meeting between trump and vladimir putin. mr. trump actually talked about a potential meeting that september in a phone interview on "meet oue press." >> outside counsel intimated that you may have a meeting with the russian t. presid do you plan on trying to do that. >> well, i had heard that he wanted to m t withme, and it.tainly i am open to i would love to do that if he

s to do th >> in the end, prosecutors say the meeting did not take place. but as discussions about trump tower moscow were gaining momentum, in november 2015, prosecutors say cohen spoke with a russian national who claimed to be a trusted person in the er russian fion who promised the campaign political synergy, and synergy on a government level. the individual again pushed for a meeting between mr. trump and russian president putin. itid not occur, prosecutors say, because mr. trump was pursuing a similar deal with business associate felix sader. also from mueller's team, cohen admitted circulating false congressional testimony to white house staff and mr. trump's legal counsel before submitting. it and mueller's team also says mr. trump's former campaign chairman, paul manafort, lied about five separate issues, even after he pleaded guilty and agreed toop coate. mr. trump has spent the last

week attacking the special counsel investigation. asked why the president is so upset, trump ally roger stone tells "the new york times" he hasre finally fi out that this is about him. and joining me now i senator angus king of maine, an independent who caucuses with the democrats. p alsot of the intelligence committee there. senator king, welcome back topr "meet ths," sir. >> great to be with you, chuck. >> well, obviously a pretty eventful week. at the end of it you have the justice department, if you will, in the southern district of new york pretty explicitly implicating the president in a crime. and michael cohen then adding to it saying that his testimony, false testimony ng ss, was something that was known in advance by some folks a in around the president. what are your takeaways from this week's developments, and what should congress now do? >> well, i think you outlinedn your tape there many of the questions that are raised by

those filings, and they're really a separate series o filings, but the cohen ones are pretty disturbing. the key phrase to me is directed by individual 1, which everyone knows isesident trump. directed by implicates the president in a felony. now, the president can have some defenses left. i think we should make it clear, he could claim it wasn't knowingly or willful, he didn't understand. it was his own mont , he did think it was a violation of campaign finance laws, but it's still a pretty serio matte but i've got to say, chuck, i think the filing last week that should be most troubling to the white house weren't the ones made on friday, but the ones made with regard to geral flynn earlier in the week because, number one, robert mueller felt that his cooperation has been of such an extent that he recommended no jail time, a kind of prosecutorial pardon, if you will. 19 meetings with the special

counsel, and a lot of redacted pieces in the filing that was made last week. that's the one i think that really raises some very difficult questions that go to the heart ofhe question of whether there were relationships between the trump campaign, president trump and the russian government during the campaign in 2016, because flynn was, as they say in amilton" in the room where it happens. >> do you know something we don't, given your acss to intelligence, your access to michael flynn and obviously the own investigation that you're a part of in the senate intelligence committee? >> i suspect i do know thingsou thaton't, but i'm not -- everything i'm saying, and i'm question, ised that based on public reporting, not on any inside informati that i ve. for example, i don't know what was redacted from those fly documents. so, yes, we've had, as you know, our committee is working quietly and diligently on many of these

same issues, but everything that i'm sharing with you is based on public infoation and the filings that we've seen from these individuals. >> given that the government as -- is now saying the weigh of the government is behind the charges that the president helped direct michael con to commit that crime, and as you said there are still a defense there for the president, he hen clai didn't know it was a crime or at least a breaking of a campaigninance crime. do you believe there's already enough to start an impeachment r in that doesn't mean he would be impeached. n fact is congress almost obligated to open an inquiry at this point? >> i don't ink so. i think impeachment is entirely different from crinal prosecution. and as you know, the justice department made a decision years ago in an opinion that a siiding prt could not and should not be indicted.o and whether the president will ever face criminal charges with regd to this matter i an

open question. but impeachment essentially, chuck, is political issue and i don't think that the -- well, let me put it this way. i don't think that thereen ev yet available to the public wher thereuld be more or less a consensus that this was an appropriate path. my concern is that if impeachment is moved forwardev thence that we have now, at least a third of the country woink it was just political revenge and a coup against thes ent. that wouldn't serve us well at all. the best way to solve a problem like this to me is elections. >> let me ask yothis, the whole point of the impeachment this s was if because of idea that you can't necessarily hold a president to the sam rule of law that you can hold other individuals and thaethe eans to dealing with a president who commits crimes is through the impeachment process, if you don't go through it,

isn't this c gress' way saying, well, yes, he committed some crimes, but politically it's uncomfortable so, you know, if you're popular enough or if you have a big enough base, you can get away with committing crimes? >> well, interestingly, i have to point out parenthetically xhat what you just articulated istly brett kavanaugh's position on this issue when he was goingcothrough his irmation hearing, that a president shouldn't be indicted or even investigated. impeachment is the remedy. there's certain irony there, i think. but, you know, the standard in the constitution is high crimes and misdemeanors. it's a very high standard. and andrewohnson impeachment -- >> the word misdemeanor -- when people say it's a high crime. high crimes and misdemeanors. that encompasses -- you could arguehat encompasses the

entire -- >> i don't read it that way. and here's why. if you go backdr to johnson's impeachment, the very first one back in 1867, the danger, chuck, is that we don't want to create a pcedent where the congress unseats- a congress of one party unseats the president of another party for essentially political reasons. if that starts to happ if that happens, then we've changed our system. we've becomea kind of parliamentary system because you're overturning the wl of thvoters. so i'm a conservative when it comes to impeachment. i think it's a laest and only when the evidence is clear of a really substantial legal at vin. >> let me ask you a couple of other things. >> we may get there, but we're not there now. >> the president's nominee for attorney general, william barr, who's served in that st before in the bush 41 administration, esere's a report from yahoo! news that the ent initially reached out to mr. barr as a potential defense i attornthe mueller probe of is that enough in your mind to

demand recusal of oversight of the mueller probe if he is attorney general? >> i want to hear more about, number one, that allegation. what were the details. but al from mr. barr himself. i think his hearings will be very important. i'd be surprised if the senate confirms an individual who doesn't commit to protecti the integrity of special counsel mueller. i think that's a going to be kind of litmus test for any nominee for attorney general, and we'll seeow mr. barr handles those >>questions. are you right now, are you in a wait-and-see mode orcould you see yourself supporting mr. barr? >> i'm in a wait-and-see wamode. to see the hearings. e think it's very important to determine how h -- how he answers the question about the i integrity, a say, of the

mueller investigation. and ain,chuck, the president himself should want the mueller investigation too go completion. it's the way to clear his name. if it's terminated prematurely thneugh his attgeneral or his actions, it will leave a cloud over him for the rest of his time in office, and i think could be very damaging to him politically. if he's as innocent as he says he is, he ought to thing to go to completion. >> okay, senator king, t independent who caucuses with the democrats from main. wsanks for coming on and sharing your v. appreciate it. joining me from across the aisle is senator rand paul of kentucky. senator paul, wcome back to "meet the press," sir. >> good morning, chuck. thanks for having me. >> let me start where i left off with senator king. based on these federal documents that you've seen from michael cohen at this point, if he wasn't president, do you think individual 1 would have also been indicted along with michael cohen? >> you know, i think that's interesting about this is people forget history.

the federalleions commission actually ruled on this with john edwards. they actually came up with ali and said that, you know what, the paying of his mistrs was not a campaign finance violation. but i think it's bigger than th . and i think we have to decide in our society if -- there are thousands and thousands of rules, it'sib incr complicated campaign finance. we have to decide whether or not criminal penalties are the way we should approachl crimi finance. i personally think if someone makes an error in filingpe ork or not categorizing a campaign contribution correculy, it s't be jail time, it ought to be a fine. it's just like a lot of other thingse've done inwashington, we've overcriminalized campaign finance. >> let me ask you about the allegation that michael cohen had circulated his false testimony to congress in advance so people in and around the president, perhaps his lawyers, perhaps him, knew in advance that micha co was going to lie to congress. >> about what issue? >> about the issue of the

tower moscow project. >> i don't -- i guess i don't- how does that sit with you? >> i guess i don't quite undetand it becau i don't know what's illegal about trying to build a hotel in russia. so this is pretty common, and i see no problem with someone running for presoent trying build a hotel somewhere. now, if you are asking and saying i yll give something in exchange for letting us build a hotel, that would be wrong.ha but in't heard any evidence of that. just trying to build a hotel somewhere, i han't imagine that would be criminal. >> but -- >> or why you'd lie about it if it's not criminal. >> that's what i'm curious about. why do you think the story keeps the ing in and around president if all these things are as innocent as you've said. >> right. >> why does he ke changing his story? >> i think it goes back to this whole i of prosecutorial abuse. cohen is faci -- they're saying he's getting this long sentence of four years. oh, my gottness, he's gg a

really, really short sentence. they're threatening him with 20 years or life in prison for tax evasion and shortening to four years. they keep getting the t story change but maybe that's because the prosecutors pressure him say if you don't give him something on trump, you get 20 years. if you give us something on y trum get four years. so this is prosecutorial abuse, i think, and that's why his story keeps shifting. it makes no sense. the president was talkg to the media openly about the deal in russia in 2015. why would it make ace differ whether he still was talking to people in 2016 versus 2015. so really i think we're trying to make and find a crime. this has been my overall complaint about having these pecial prosecutors is that really they find a person and they look for a crime. traditional justice in our country is someone steals something from the grocery store and you have a crime, you try to find out who did it. with the special prosecutor you decide we're going after someone, the president, andg we're goino squeeze as many

people as we can until we can try to get a person. andhat's why i'm against these special prosecutors. i think they're a huge mistake and i think ty're a huge abuse of government power. te the reason he was appointed was to investiussian interference, it wasn't to investigate the president. >> ll, but thenwhy is he investigating tax evasion and whether or not you filed as a federal lobbyist? all the stuff that's been done to either manafort or flynn or any of the others really seems be about other subjects and really what they did to flynn, i think, was unconscionable and i'm hoping that means mueller has a conscious. maybe it's not that flynn gave so much information. maybe mueller has a conscience and knowsaiow u it is what they did to flynn. he was never discussing anything illegal but it gets tied up in er he g to the fbi whe was explicit, even though the original fbi agent said they did not think he was being duplicitous, they did not think he was lying.s

so i very troubling what these special prosecutors can do. i tell people this. if special prosecutor went after your life for the last 40 years, not you inarticular but anybody, i think they could dredge up accusations. so i'm absolutely against it and i think it's a iscarriage of justice and we should not have special prosecutors going after one person. w and if get this way and if we're going to prosecute people and put them in jail for campaign finance violations, we've become areananablic where every president gets prosecuted and everybody gets thrown in jail whhere done with office. >> let me ask you this. you're a strict constitutionalist. i think you would probably take that as a compliment when it comes to your -- >> absolutely. >> --urified reading. does that mean this belongs in congress' hands and it's up to congress to investigate these crimes and not a special prosecutor? >> yes. d the other thing is crimes can be investigated as well. if there are crimes that are being committed. but without a special prosecutor, what happens is you investigate crimes. you don't go to this whole idea

of sort of conspiracy. here's the danger ofac consp and we're discussing this right now with reforming our drug laws. what they do is, you kno an unfortunate young woman is transferring money from her boyfriend, who's a drug dealer, gets caught up. they add conspiracy to it and t add 10 or 15 or 20 years and now this woman is in life for exchanging some money with a drug dealer. so we have to be wary of what we do with conspiracy because it adds a lot of years to stences and we compound these sentences. we have nonviolent people in prison. there was a guy that sold marijuana and got caught for hir time and got 55 years in prison. that's not right. >> i want to go to saudi arabia. you've been one of the advocates of getting america out of the war inyemen. i want to play for you the president's friendliness to saudi arabia i'm curious if this bothers you. take a listen. >> i like the saudis, they're very nice. they buy my apartments, you wouldn't believe it. i make a lot of money with them.

they buy all sorts of my stuff. alkinds of toys from trump. they'll pay me anything. they have nothing but >> are you at all concerned that the president'sio pos in saudi arabia have -- are impacted by his own fialncial gs with them? >> i think that when 're aling with arms, that no personal financial dealings with have anything to do the decision. really not even the finances of the country. i think selling arms should have to dl solely with our national security, not jobs, not money, nothg. and i really think that the war in yemen that we have no vitala natiecurity interest, and not only that, i think our involvement in this terrible is one of the things that engenders more terrorism. as more people die from starvation, as people pick up bomb fragments and on the bomb fragment it says made in america,t creates more terrorism. so i think it's a risk to be involved with the saudis andld

shot be aiding and abetting their bombing of civilian areas. yemef is onee poorest countries on the planet.omes th port. pompeo told them three weeks ago quit bombing civilian ports. what have udd done? they have dropped 300 more bombs on civilian areas since then. the saudis areac not goodrs and will not respond unless we quit selling them arms. i would also expel the saudi ambassador. the saudi ambassador should go home. that would send a strong message that we're displeased with what theynde doing. >> finally on the president's nomination of william barr. it's been noted that he has an expansive view of executive wer. when i heard that, i thought, uh-oh, he may have trouble getting rand paul's vote for confirmation. am i correct? >> uh-oh is right. i'm concerned that he's been a big supporter of the patriot act which lowered the standard for spying on americans and even went so far to say that theio paact is pretty good but

we should go further. i'm disturd that he's a fan o taking people's property without a conviction. many poor people in our country have cash taken from them and the government says prove to us where you got the cash and you caget it back, but the burden is on the individual. it's called civil asset forfeiture and he's a big fan of that. i haven't made a decision yet on him. but the first things i've learned about him being for more surveillance of americans is very, very troubling. >> senator rand paul, thanks for coming on and sharing your views. much appreciate it. >> thank you. when we come back, how much and political peril is president trump facing, and will the newou democratic be ♪ ignition sequence starts. 10... 9... guidance is internal. 6... 5... 4... 3... 2... 1...

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maybe that's why most of our clients come from other money managers. fisher investments. clearly better money management. welcome back, the panel is here.di glaude, peggy noonan, peggy atkins and jonah goldberg.

we went into the way back machine for the campaign. here's a great paul manart quote during the convention that now you just have to see two years later. >> so dob clear, mr. trump-- so to be clear mr. trump has no financial relationships with any russn oligarchs. >> that's what he said. that's what i -- that's obviously what our positiois. >> we're a long way from there, kimberly. >> really. yes, we really are. the's always a weet, there's always a quote when it comes to paul manafort. obviously whatwe saw this week, usually when files come out and they paint a picture of what's going on, they call them speaking indictments. this is like a shouting indictment of the broad category robe mueller is looking into, includinthese ever-denied connections with russians, business deals with riussians that president trump deni

having. if people have been lying to congress, lying to investigators about that, that is a big problem for the president. of the e put up sort quick bullet points of michael flynn -- of the michael flynn sentencing memo from elier this week plus michael cohen's. in michael flynn, we learned that there are three vex investigationsere's been coing on. the mueller probe, the criminal probe thought to be the kidnapping of the turkish cleric and a third undisclosed fr investigatio the michael cohen cooperation agreement we learned of more contacts with russian interests during the campaign, more discreet russian-related matters, more contacts with the whthe house 2017 and 2018. i think perhaps the most dning thing inthere, jonah goldberg, the idea that his prepared testimony to congres when knew was false, had been t circulated amose in and around the president. >> yeah, you did get the sense that, like, if you flash the cameras the white house counsel's office this week, you

see lloyd bridges and airplanea to picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue. it seemed likeel the w not only came off the bus but flew off the bus. i've got to say, though, just trying to take a step back from theaz cess of the week, you know, i don't like the way we are talking about impeachment right now. it is impeachment has become -- or all of this stuff. we are basically routsourcing ou moral, our political judgment to legalisms. as a conservative who i think has invested quite a bit of time and energy criticizing the clintons and bill clinton for his behavior, this week just basically absoluly confirmed that the president of the united states paid off a porn star and playboy model to hide an affair during a run for the presidenal campaig and the response from many people on my side of the aisle is, well, maybe it'sy technicall not legal -- >> as you heard there from rand paul. >> or campaign finance laws shouldn't be treated as criminal

things, they should be treated as fines. but the problem for conservativism for republicans is when you ma that point, it's true. but you're outsourcing all your moral judgment, l other things to those considerations. and frankly, you know,arack obama was guilty of campaign finance offenses. that doesn't mean he should have been impeach. we're just taking the conversation out of where it belongs. >> campaign finae questions in this instance are tied tois election. so part of the issue is the legitimacy of the democratic process. and so caught between the kind of hesitancy senator angus king and the defense of senator rand paul, one wonders, one worries whether or not folks will take up theirty responsibio address this issue at its core it seems to >> it seems to me the news of friday, the filings of friday, to me the big headline is not the payoffs to women with whom

individual 1 was alleged to have had relationships, it's much more that trump world we see again, it is demonstrated before us again, trump world does not do wellith sunlight. it's like there's a seri rocks -- >> they'd be great vampires is what you're saying. >> no. i'm saying there's a bunch of rocks or slates in trump world. you pick one up and you're always seeing bgs and spiders and worms. do you know what i mean? there's always something, the serious part is russia. it looked to me on friday tha at all needs to be developed, and it's going to go somewhere not. but that's the serious stuff. >> let's go to this issue impeachment. it was interesting to hear angus king's hesitance. rand paul believes there should

be no mueller but if you have to do it, you shouldo it in congress. how do democrats do this? what is the consequences of saying angus king is right, let the vors decide in 2020. what are the consequences of that? >> that's why this lever is thvee. there ar few checks on a president of t president. even the impeachment process, it's incredibly difficult to take a president out of office. that's why it's never happened. >> probably should be. >> exactly. itde done by ign. we're hearing a lot about, well, there's no way that he's going to be convicted in th senate, so why try. that's like saying, oh, we livi district where peop b aren't ups these crimes. we're not going to charge them because he's probably not going to be convicted. no. you char the crime an let the process go through. if house members findim achable offenses, it is not just the right thing to do, it's their duty to bring that and let the senate vote as the senate votes. >> i don't see how the house mocrats resist it.

>> as a plipolitical matter, it just too tempting and the base >> the base may punish them if they don't. >> consider jerrold nadler who was on the judiciary committee in 1998 who said, yeah, clinton may have lied under oater and injured himself but these were lies about covering up sex. those while technically impeachable do not rise to the gravity of the level of impeachment. there are going to be all sorts of double standards that apply. the best thing for the democrats is for mueller to find something of real weight that would justify going to impeachment. >> you have conspiracy, yohave obstruction, you have campaign finance and emolumentes. and we're seeing it's not going to be a shoe that's going to drop, it's goill to be an an if democrats do not pursue this, they wille held accountable for abdicating the.

responsibili i understand the politics. it goes to the moral question, the ethical question. democracy is at stake. if seems to me if democrats don't take their responsibility seriously, they will be held responsible for what happens. >> but the responsibility to do investigations or to move quickly to impch -- >> investigations. >> well, mueller is doing the investigation, right? >> we do know he's directed criminal behavior. that's clear. so the machine ry needs to star to move. we're going to pause. when we come back, we're going to turn to another story. it's the attempt by state republicans to strip power from newly elected democrats in the midwest. it's happening in michigan and ♪♪ traders -- they're always looking for advantages. the smart ones look to fidelity to find them. we give you research and data-visualization tools to help identify potential opportunities. so, you can do it this way...

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welcome back. we're going to turn to a couple of end runs around the november election results. in wisconsin a republican legislature has approved a set of bills tha essentially would strip some power from the newly nd attorney rnor general. why, you might ask? the newly elected governor, tony evers, and the newly elected attorney general are newl elected democrats. scott walker has indicated that he does plan to sign the bills

that would among other things give the republican legislature control over major appointments and reduce early vo ng, which tends to benefit the democrats inn wisconsin, d two weeks. e republican legislature is also doing the same thing. this has happened before i many a legislature. democrats have done this in the past to republican governors in lame duck sessions in other states. joining me from the state capitol of madison is wisconsin's incoming governor, tony evers. governor-elect evers, welcome to "meet the press." >> good morning, chuck. >> let me start with this. you said you were going to personally lobby sco walker, the governor who youde feated, to veto this legislation. how have those talks gone? have you metith him? >> i communicated with governor walker over the telephone a few days ago, and laid out my position that vetoing the

oegislation was going to be an important thing noy for -- to make sure that our -- what happened last vember, the vote of the people of wisconsin, is actually upheld and we're putting people in front of politics, but also it's just bad legislation. i made that pitch, and he was noncommittal. i knowly publ he's said in other arenas that he plans to sign most or all ofit. so i'm not particularly encouraged at this point in time. t it's around scott walker's legacy. he has the opportunity to change us and validate the will of the people that voted n onvember 6. >> did you negotiate with him? s d you say, look, i know x i really important to you, i get that. but what's with y and z here? did you go to him and say, look, i really think this part is just cry. please voe teto that. if you want to keep this, i get it. >> no. i talked about a few areas that

are really important that actually republican business leaders have talked about, that uld take away power and implicate -- and make economic development much more difficult in the state of wisconsin, but the entire thing is a e 's a hot mess. and i believe thatould veto the entire package. in fact at least three or ceur of the p that are in there now, he has vetoed previously. and so it makes no sen to . you know, he's been a long-time public servant and he has a legacy here, so we'reef h that he will veto the whole thing. >> i'm curious, after you were elected and w quicklye heard word that the republican speaker and the republican majority l leader in thislature there were considering these bills, did you reach out to them personally before the bill started going? and if you did, what was that conversation like? >> well, i met with robin voss,

the speaker, much before those words -- that rumor came down the pike. no, i haven't had a chance to talk - i mean it was last minute. a was one of these here's rumor and then here's the bills that have been worked on for several months. but, you know, chuck, if scott walker had won this election, we wouldn't be sitting here talking to you today. >> is there any part -- you know, one of the things that the speaker said, he goes, well, in hindsight maybe we gave the governor too much power. take the partisanat off a minute. all right. i know that perhaps many people read that comment tongue in cheek. ribut do you believe he's t? >> well, there are things in that bill that really had nothing to do with giving scott walker anything. so, no, i don't agree with that. you know, we have balanced power in the state of wisconsin. legislature and both sides are republican, i'm a democrat, the attoey general is a democrat. i view this as completely different than what robin vossb

eves, and that is that we are trying to invalidate the will of the peoplle the pe of wisconsin voted for me because they knew that i wafor good schools and good transportation system and good health care. they didn't -- they didn't elect me to fight overis admative powers in the state of wisconsin vis-a-vis the republi majority. no, i think this gets us off to a bad start. i think it's a mistake, but we'll continue working to get the peop of wisconsin to convince scott walker to think about his legacy and make sure that heoe v this language. >> democratic congressman glenn moore said the legislators who enengineered this coup, their actis amount to a smash and grab hijacking of the voters' will. at a coup seems strong, but the fact of ther is as i just

said, if scott walker won this election and he did not, i did, we wouldn't be sitting here talking about this today. scott walker wouldn't be sitting herebo talking , geez, they're trying to balance the power here. so no, i think it is directly related to win by a democrat, and that would be me. we need to have this vetoed. >> one of their rationes has been, well, governor-elect evers margins al came from two cities, madison and milwaukee. we have to represent the rest of the state. what do you say to that charge? and more importantly, you won a very narrow election. how do you reach -- >> of course. >> how do you reach across this divided state at this point?e >> it would h been a lot easier without this legislation, i'll tell you that. i have reached -- in my present job as state superintendent, that's a statewide elected pochtion. i've r across the aisle on all numbers of issues.

that's part of my dna. i'm an educator. so i always try to find common ground and i'll continue to do that going but i won the election. any way you slice it, i won the election. and i actually narrowed some of te votes ate and i won lots of those counties outstate in the past. i am theovernor and will be the governor of the state of wisconsin and represent all people. >> if he doesn't veto this legislation, do you plan to sue? do you really thinkou have standing? >> all issues are on the table. i'm not making any promises one way or the other, but we're looking at all options at the table. i need to stand up for the people of wisconsi there's 2.6 million people that voted in this last election,nd they expect me to do that. so we're going to pursue this.el >> governot tony evers, democrat from wisconsin, thanks for coming on, sharing your views. good luck when you actually take the oath. >> thanks, chuck. when we come back, the one issue on which democrats are thinking like republicans, and

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trade has been b news this week, which made us wonder where exactly do america stand on trade? guess what, a lot mthe complicate you may think. at the most basic level americans claim they like trade. a whopping 74% saytrade is good for the united states. only 21% believe it's bad. and support for trade generally goes up when your party is in the white house. republican support for trade hovered in the 60s during the obama presidcy, but when esident trump in office, now 81% of republicans say trade is good. at's only 10 points more than democrats. majorities of both parties believe trad is good. but, we do start to see some sharp partisan divides when we get specific. as with president trump's leading issue right now, tariffs. remember, he a tariffman. for generations, it was democratsngwho were for u tariffs and for protectionism. republicans were opposed to that. now 74% of republicans say the

trump administration's increased tariffs are a good thing forhe country, while 81% of democrats say they're a bad thing. so what's driving these trends? behind support for the tariffs are groups that have made up president trump's base, whi men, men over 50 and those without a bachelor's degree. folks, by the same the way, for protectionism 30 years ago. ey just were registered democrats then. their views haven't hanged, ey changed parties. they're also electoraer implicationslooking regionally. the tariff issue is most hotly contested in the midwest. not surprising, given that area has long beenhe manufacturing sector's home and was also crucial to president trump's se victory in 2016. look, the pew numbers suisest it democrats who are now the ownedraders, a label long and cherished by the chamber of commerce wing of the republican party. now it'sh republicansare the, quote unquote, better dealers with foreign countries. what detractors might call e

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end game, brought to you by oneing. continuing our miso connect, protect, explore and inspire. back in engame. on earth 2 this would be a very rsation because the end of the midterms you talk about 2020. it seems odd to talk about2020 when we're in the midst of who knows what's going to happen in this upcoming congress. however, the race does seem to have started and already democrat on democrat crime has begun. beto 'rrke, elizabeth warren and kamala harris all starting to see what happens when you become a presidential candidate. every little thing becomes a headline. kamala harris had an aide who had a sexual harassment issue. all of a sudden elizabeth warren isng out that aides to her are starting to talk to the press, questio decisions on this dna thing.

and there's beto, whe a whole bunch of bernie sanders supporters are going, uh-oh, let's startaking the case he's not a real progressive. kimberly, i want to start with the elizabeth warren stuff. this is your beat, "boston herare." is t a split inside warren world here? what are -is there something we're seeing here or you've seen for a while that we're only >> look, i think and sadly enough we're two years out of the presidential election. i think what elizabeth warren's biggest prob people are already getting tired of her. the presidential buzz around her has been going on for so long, and the pushback that she r t afat terrible dna rollout, i would think that the staffers are trying toei protect t future jobs and trying to distance themselves. >> her chief of staff isnt appa meeting with beto o'rourke. >> oh, my goodness. >> i think she's unpopular i massachusetts. voters in massachusetts hate it

when their leaders run -- that'o why mitey couldn't get re-elected governor. that's why duval patrick's popularity -- ask michael dukaki dukakis. that happens to everyone. but elizabeth warren possibly her t realize how hi political perils were and sort of floated things that really fell early. and a field this big, people immediately start looking at the next best thing. >> obviously it's the beto phenomenon thateems to be upending all of this. what do you make of beto? >> i asked a bunch of democrats on election night, tewh me, is beto's magic? these were people in new york who had been volunteering to make phone calls for him. they had bn on the phone banks. they had been working hard for him. the best answer i got was that he reminds m of bobby kennedy with a certain youthfulness and seriousness. his magic so far is lost on me. think he was dinged a little bit -- >> he may not be trying to get your vote yet. >> that's possible.

>> in fairness. >>ahm emanuel dinged him a little bit, right? either this week or la when he said, beto o'rourke, he lost, right? we don't neese a to me the headline on 2020 in the democrats is, g are theyng to look just like the republicans in '16? the rublicans had 17 candidates for president, which was an indication their party was breaking up. how many candidates are the democrats going to have this year, 20? >> i would alsincate there were so many candidates because they thought hillary was beatable. ime i think a lot of people think mr. trump is beatable. >> i would expect rahm emanuel to ding beto o'rourke because in some ways what we're goingo see this election season in 2020 is the fight within the democratic party for the soul of theemocratic party. so we've talked about the republicans being overrun by trumpism. ere is an ideological battle being waged, right? so the progressive wing of the democratic party is trying pull the party to the left. rahm emanuel is the poster child

of the folks that they want to so i expect him to say what he said. but beto o'rourke is interesting to me because of how he speaks. he's not running away from certain issues. heaw not running from, quote unquote, identity questions. he's not running awayrom issues mike medicare r all. but questions about fossil fuel is real.ve you to ask certain kinds of questions. >> everybody is going to have a wart when this is all done. the question is how focused will be on that person's wart. >> in 2016 you had a collective actiep problem on thelican side where all you needed was a sticky plurality to get the nomination. donald trump i don't think got a majority of republican primary votes anywhere. >>ntil very te. >> so i don't know if it's kamala harris, beto o'rourke, i don't know who it is, but could be appealing to the progressive hungry base of the democratic party and win the nomination for the exact same collective action

problems or structure issues, and then be so far to the left and get the nomination that it makes it at least easier for donald trump to run against them. i' not saying that donald trump is a shoo-ino win or anything. >> that's the same logic that donald trump said wo much easier for hillary clinton to win the election. that's a good place to stop the conversation there. thank you very much. that's all we have for today. thanks for watceng. for th of you celebrating hannukah, we wish you a happy eighth night tonight. or as we might s the seventh miracle. and we'll be back next week, because if it's sunday, it's "meet the press." >> announcer: you can see more end game and postgame on the "meet the press" twitter account. for top-quality floors at rock-bottom prices,

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