nbc news chief political analyst chuck todd.er stephanie cutter and lahnee chen, a fellow at the hoover institution at stanford university. thank you for being here after a late night particularly for you, chuck todd because you were just in new york tracking the results. let's remind people of the results. trump beat haley in south carolina by a 20-point margin and there's no way to sugar coat it. losing if your own state is devastating. in 2016 you had kasich and ted cruz win their home states, but marco rubio lost and got out. what were your takeaways and what is haley's next move, do you think? >> i'll tell you, the most remarkable number to me in the exit poll was 77% and that was the percentage of folks who said they had made up their minds about who they would support before the start of the calendar year and trump won 70% of those folks. so you only have essentially one in four republican voters. this is the south carolina republican electorate is close to being a microcosm of a generic republican electorate than anythin

. >> nbc's chief political analyst, chuck todd joins me now.ibe in this great article that you were up for nbc.com, the current state of american politics, for a family audience, i'm going to call it mubar, messed up beyond recognition. >> well said. >> i want to start with what you put as reason one. donald trump's control over the gop. why is that such a big part of this? >> well, i mean, there's just no room for any other debate. yesterday in particular, chris, i think is going to be a day that we can say has certainly put a period on the end of whatever attempt there was for a nontrump wing of the republican party to have any juice, right? essentially the nontrump ring has surrendered everywhere. they have surrendered in the senate, mitch mcconnell pulled his support for the bill. they surrendered at the rnc, ronna romney mcdaniel, apparently getting rid of the romney name wasn't enough to keep trump on her side. in some ways that was a squeeze out. you have seen the trump folks targeting anybody that has hired a political consultant that w

. >> with me now, nbc news chief political analyst, chuck todd and former republican congressman, carlossnbc political analyst. chuck, help us understand what really happened here? use your keen eye to read between the lines or share with us from what you may have learned in conversations you had in the last hour since he made this announcement. >> this is very unshocking news. you know, look, the fact of the matter is he was losing his grip on the conference. you just saw it with the border bill. right? this was something he insisted on trying to get ukraine funding and the border done together, and usually when mitch mcconnell insists on this is the way it's going to be done. this is the republican point of view, james langford is our point person, there's no debate. well, not this time, and he lost it. and so look, he had been challenged for his position in a way he had never been challenged before at the start of the first congress. he does not see eye to eye with the trump wing of the party. he and nikki haley, you know, nikki haley did an interview the other day where she acknowled

chuck todd, mark mckinnon, thank you so much. >>> we have breaking news now. details on the nature of a national security threat that the house intelligence chairman sent a cryptic warning about. nbc national security and global affairs reporter, dan deluce what are you found out. >> a foreign military capability, and that foreign military is the russian military. now, specifically why he chose to make his statement when he did and why he didn't choose to wait until we understand tomorrow the national security adviser is going to be briefing the house intelligence committee about this threat but that apparently is what he was referring to, some type of russian military capability that is a threat over the medium and long term. and you had today, congressman himes, his democratic counter part, the ranking democrat on the house intelligence committee saying people should not panic. this is something that's serious and is being addressed but it's not sort of an emergency. now, that will lead to many questions. is this somehow related to russia's space weapons or

how do democrats message this republican border failure on nbcnews.com, chuck todd calls out, quote, biden's rhetorical inability to put his opponents on the defensive and connect the dots for the public and in public about congressional gop intransigence. he argues that biden's absence from the public debate has allowed the right to dictate a false narrative. does there need to be a change in messaging? >> yeah, chris, look, i think chuck todd is incredibly smart but i actually am going to disagree with him on this. president biden and his team have been working mind the scenes, working with negotiators to try to come to a deal. the bottom line is this, the messaging is pretty simple here. republicans try to tout that they are strong on the border this is their top priority. they are proving now to the american people that is not the case because here is a bipartisan bill, the most bipartisan bill we've seen in well over a decade in congress that republicans have put to the table that they helped craft, and democrats support, and they will not support it, why? because we're in an el

joining us now, nbc news chief political analyst, chuck todd, punch bowl cofounder, jake sherman, and former republican congressman, charlie dent. jake, since this is your life, tell us, was this a surprise today, and what happens now? >> well, katy, it was a surprise today meaning we had no idea it would happen today. this is not a surprise more broadly, right? mitch mcconnell is 82. he's obviously had his health challenges this year, as he indicated on the floor, his wife's sister recently passed away. and then there's the obvious big conflict, right. if trump is going to be the nominee, it is not sustainable for mitch mcconnell to be the senate republican leader period, hard stop. whether he did this now or in november or in december, it was just a matter of time. now, the question about how this is going to change is a very important question. a lot of that will depend on whether donald trump is elected president. if donald trump is elected president, john barrasso or another very conservative member of the senate republican conference will likely become the leader. if not, someon

joining us now, political director chuck todd. great seeing you this morning. so what do you make of -- let's break them down by parties. the democrats did last night and how the republicans did last night. >> when you look at the amount of organization and attention that the write-in campaign got, i think it was kind of an underwhelming number given that two of president biden's primary opponents from 2020 endorsed this. it was actually a free vote, right? there was no consequences to the vote. so to me it was as easy to rally folks for a vote like this as you could, and it certainly measured the intense if i of this issue in one congressional district, but i kind of look at the results and it is like look, there is a -- there are different levels of issues you got to deal with on a campaign, there are concerns, there are problems, there are fires. i don't think this is a fire. i think this is a concern. >> and comparing biden's primary performance to the other previous -- >> to me no different. to me it was not -- i did not make it as noticeably different. to

discussion where we're very fortunate to have one of journalism's most knowledgeable political experts, chuck todd is a five time emmy award winner and currently the chief political for nbc news. chuck has held several other prominent roles with the with the network over the years, including chief white house correspondent, political director and of course, moderator of meet the press. so please join me in welcoming josh green and chuck todd. well, thank you. all right. is this on? can everybody ready? we're excited that we're the inaugural talk here. yeah, we were just told were the inaugural book event at the new politics and prose and had i known, i would have brought a bottle of champagne and we would have christened the event. yeah. so can everybody hear me okay? and everything. everybody's good. all right, let me do a quick i want to i want to introduce you before you introduce me unnecessary. but for it. yeah. no, i'm really safe. chuck here. nobody knows this, but chuck was one of my sort of key, my early political education in the early 2000. i worked in the in the watergate building at t

nbc's chuck todd is calling it one of the three issues likely to move the small slice of swing votersng with inflation and overseas conflicts. will abortion be the decider it was in the midterms? >> it certainly is a bright spot for president biden and democrats. after the dobbs decision, basically you have seen in special elections, in midterms, voters turn out in droves, including not just democrats and progressives, but a lot of republicans to support reproductive rights and reproductive freedoms and the alabama decision -- you saw republicans from president trump -- former president trump to down ballot scramble to distance themselves from that and say they support ivf. this is an issue that, regardless of messaging and regardless of some of the positions on ivf, that republicans own. it's something that is very effective for president biden, talking about reproductive rights. you are seeing him cast it in terms of freedoms. saying republicans will take away freedoms. even when president biden was talking about age, which is a weakness for him, he cast it in terms of, age doesn't

. >> reed, chuck todd or today that donald trump is the number one reason for political dysfunction atley, finding her swagger and calling it out. >> i will say this, ambassador haley cut about 70 to lincoln project ads that will run about 6 million times in the course about nine months. i will say this to, look, she has understood not what issues like, which is that she, unlike her home state senator, tim scott, it's gonna up for ritual humiliation. she's going to go swimming. i'll say this, we'll have to see a little bit of three dimensional chess here, gang. okay, should not be the nominee, fine, but here is what i can tell you, the longer that she isn't erase, saying stuff like you said at the nevada, the better for the country. there are a whole bunch of republicans that we saw in iowa that we saw in nevada and, look, 31%, trump can't afford to lose half of them. he can't afford to lose a third of them. you can't afford to lose 20% of them when it comes to republican, so every day that she's out there saying this, there are more and more republicans, and i think i set this to you

was it chuck todd? is it jake tapper? i wasn't happy with his response to. but if it was a jaw dropping moment, i mean, i think he laughed, actually is an interesting reaction to it because. it was such a. yeah, because it was such new concept. the idea of calling it alternative facts. i mean, people who create something for people to believe, you know, disinformation and don't often label it themselves as that. well, she was pushed was under some some pressure. you know, it's new for politics. it's not in the academy where it came from. i mean, that idea that there's no truth there's only narrative that comes from the academy that came from literary, from postmodernism and relativism. so i was already familiar with that. i just never seen it used in american politics. so the thing that i started to wonder, you know, at that moment when she's talking about alternative facts is, you know, son of a gun. now the right wing has up postmodernism because there wasn't that long ago when -- cheney's wife was writing a book excoriating the relativists. you know, thes

senator chuck schumer says the trial will begin in late february, very unlikely to kick him out of congress, the senate is democratic majority. >> todd: in case there was any doubt, we know who the big guy is. tony bobulinski leaving 0.0% doubt. >> brooke: yeah, tony bobulinski testified for hours behind closed doors from 10:00 a.m. to 6:30. saying his family's foreign influence pedalling to china and ukraine sold out to foreign actors seeking to gain access to joe biden and the united states government. top democratic on the oversight committee jamie raskin says bobulinski offers no testimony that indicates any criminal activity by president biden and offers no suggestion or evidence that president biden was involved in hunter's businesses. house republicans say they learned a lot. >> he talked about joe's involvement and numerous times he talked to joe biden. he mentioned joe biden thanked him for what he was doing with his brother and his son. >> when joe biden shows up at four seasons restaurant for lunch with eight chinese officials at cefc. joe biden comes in and gives a short presentation and leaves and three weeks later 3 mil