on capitol hill, nbc news correspondent heidi przybyla, jonathan lemire, white house reporter for the associated press. with us at the table, axios political reporter alexi mccammond. nbc and msnbc national affairs analyst john heilemann. former republican congressman, now an independent, david jolly. and former u.s. acting solicitor general, neal kathyal. heidi, you were among the first to break the news about speaker pelosi. take us through what you've learned and what you're reporting this hour. >> reporter: right, nicolle. we learned speaker pelosi has decided later today after her meeting with the caucus which you see members entering now that about 5:00 today, she is going to make the announcement that she will launch a formal impeachment inquiry. now, what does that mean? it means that the committees which have already been investigating this president are hoping that under their legal theory, they will be able to have expedited access to documents, to witnesses, and expedited legal process here that has really been clogged up by this administration which has been stonewalling

and jonathan lemire, white house reporter for the associated press. welcome to you all robert, because it is top of mind and happened most urgently tonight, what's the state of play according to your reporting on gun legislation >> at this moment, republicans on capitol hill do not believe the president is willing to spend much political capital, if any, on background checks. and so they're trying to come up with piecemeal legislation on red flag laws, on other aspects of gun control, that they could try to get some kind of senate gang together, a coalition to push it through. but they really fear that without leader mcconnell and without president trump putting their hands on the scale, this thing -- this entire process, it stalls >> michael schmidt, rex tillerson quoted by your newspaper tonight, remarks he made at harvard. that takes us to the front of iran tillerson warned on tuesday that his former boss who fired him a year and a half ago will have to tread carefully. tillerson said, the building the concrete case against iran would be difficult

jonathan lemire, jonathan tyler, big thanks to you. and thank you jeffrey rosen. >>> joe biden's dual threat, president trump's attacks and a tightening primary race. it's reportedly raising a key question among mr. biden's supporters, is he up to the challenge? >>> plus, defending the president. that's what some republicans tried to do this weekend as jonathan just mentioned there. but are they having trouble with their message? >> how do you expect the president's defense to roll out going forward? >> the defense of what? >> well, there's an impeachment inquiry. >> yeah. where an american icon uses the latest hr tools to stay true to the family recipe. where a music studio spends less time on hr and payroll, and more time crafting that perfect sound. where the nation's biggest party store can staff up quickly as soon as it's time for fun. this is the world of adp. hr, talent, time, benefits and payroll. designed for people. liberty mutual customizes your car insurance, so you only pay for what you need. i wish i could shake your hand

shannon pettypiece, and jonathan lemire, white house reporter for the associated press. jonathan, your name was invoked earlier. you get to start us off. what's your read of the white house comfort level? because we're seeing this defense emerge. president can say anything he wishes and everything he says is proper. >> well, tonight is on idyllic scene at the white house. the state dinner is wrapping up. he's in the rose garden. the marine corps band is playing "battle hymn of the republic." behind the scenes there's tumult and concern as this news comes to light. there's been reporting throughout "the wall street journal" was first on the board about the subject matter of the phone call between president trump and the new ukrainian president in back july. in that call, the president pushed his ukrainian counter part to look into these allegations that he and rudy giuliani had been floating for a while now about hunter biden in the ukraine. as you noted, there has been reporting tonight according to sources that outlets have spoken to suggesting there was no quid pro quo

jonathan lemire is with us, white house reporter for the associated press. cratic story line going to be, okay, we took the summer off, don't tell anybody. i know we were talking about the investigations, mueller report didn't really pan out, but have you heard the one about the hush money to this adult film star and a playboy bunny? let's pursue that. >> i think democrats are going to pursue those channels. i'm not sure how effective they'll be or resonate with the american. it's not something we're hearing the presidential candidates talk about on the tray. they're talking about other things, the president's fitness for duty, guns. i think that is where the party wants to be heading, perhaps have more traction. i mean, look, the numbers of democrats who have said they would support impeachment need to grow. that's something speakers pelosi is going to have to contend with. approximate if the numbers swell, that could certainly change. the president though is on the defensive. he is going to be at the rally on monday. that's still in the books, although ther

with uwhite house reporter for the associated press, jonathan lemire. >> season is >> season is over,he book "world in disarray." >> and we came back some. showed some fight. >> excuse me. >> it's just beginning. >> for the astros, exactly. >> very good. >> also with us former treasury -- >> the mets have had their run. >> the mets have had their run. >> my son thinks they still have a shot at the second wild card spot, but it is not going to >> happen. >> how do you recover from that last night? >> that was rough. >> former treasury official, morning joe economic adviser mike rattner, also author of "the matriarchs" susan. we're going to try to stick to news and politics. we're going to start with the a little hurricane. a little that's fine. that's fine. but everything but everything in its proper context and place. >> baseball. >> hurricane dorian. >> cooking. >> lashed parts of florida's east coast overnight with storm surge and hurricane warnings extended up the eastern seaboard as far as the carolinas. we're also following the humanitarian disaster that is unfolding in the baham

jonathan lemire, you look at the shift and we could go back to the beginning of last week, i think itek we're in the 40s now this weekend after americans have had time to digest all of this information, the flood of information coming at them, now it is 55%. well over half of americans want to see this impeachment inquiry move forward. and most troubling for the president, i would think, is that 20% of those are -- are 20% of the republican party. now they also want to see an impeachment inquiry. >> there has been a real sea change here, joe and mika. for months speaker pelosi wanted to stay away from impeachment because of the political considerations, seeing the polls and majority of americans didn't want to go there and now that has changed. the house is on recess and members are in home districts taking the temperature of their own constituents and what they find is reflecting in the polling, more and more americans want to go there and this is a white house that now feels like it is under siege. you saw from the president tweet's last night he's, quote, tweeting supporters talkin

jonathan lemire, how does the white house interpret this?n committee interpret what is happening here as you see these folks getting into this primary? >> the white house is not particularly concerned about any of these challengers so far. yes, certainly there's some states that are moving to shut down their primaries, and that can be perceived perhaps as a sign of weakness as was said. but they're not looking for any sort of challenge. there's no suggestion here that any of these three candidates would really have a chance to steal the nomination from president trump. even if they don't do that, there is the possibility to wound him. the history is there. when incumbent presidents are challenges by a member of their own party in a primary, that often weakens them forward going to the general election. they end up in a far more vulnerable state when they turn to face their challenger from the other party. i think there is a thought here they'd like to end this as quickly as possible. they don't really think these candidates have much in the

jonathan lemire has the first question for you. >> good to see you.llenging biden with his forgetfulness of an answer. he turns out he didn't have it right. but afterwards you told cnn, we are at a tough point because a lot of people are concerned about joe biden's ability to carry the ball across the finish line without stumbling. do you believe he has the ability to withstand the rigors of this campaign and be president? >> i don't know, and i think it is something voters have to decide on for themselves. if i felt he was the best person for the job i wouldn't be on the debate stage or in this campaign. i believe the nominee will have to be someone not only able to get across the end line, but this is a moment where we really need a candidate that can more than beat donald trump -- and i know it is the one thing that voters want, but to me it is the floor, not the ceiling. we need someone to unify the country, bring us together. that's why i'm running. i'm running because i believe i can unify the democratic party but more than that hopefully unify

and joining the conversation, white house reporter for "the associated press," jonathan lemire. >> jonathan's talk quickly about the red sox and the humiliation last night. there's this growing buzz that they're going to blow up the team, sell everybody except for xander and devers. and this from a team that should still in the hunt if dombrowski picked up two relievers at trade time. we could have competed this year and now they're going to add insult to injury by blowing up the entire team. the constitutistupidity of that unforgivable. i can't believe boston fans who are usually meek and mild would say things like that. >> sure. >> by the way, you'll have to talk to willie at some point about your chance meeting with derek jeert, bter, but go ahead >> this is a team that won 108 games last year, won't world series, certainly has a big payroll and that's fine and they were hit with injuries this year, that happens too. but there was a front office that never helped the bull pen either in the spring or at the trade deadline and now the core of this team should still be together next year an

jonathan lemire, we have a new national security adviser who is probably chairing a meeting today on some of these options to present to the president tomorrow. he is robert o'brien, as you well know, former hostage negotiator, a lawyer, without a whole range of foreign policy experience. but apparently well-liked and certainly a big contrast with john bolton who has also made some very controversial comments against the president. >> right. the new national security adviser has the full support of mike pompeo, secretary of state. mike pompeo has certainly consolidated the foreign policy apparatus of the administration. o'brien is seen as a smoother operator than john bolton. he is perhaps more hawkish than the president right now who is in a little bit of a bind now, as you were just discussing. he uses bellicose rhetoric and threatens american adversaries across the world but doesn't seem to want to follow through. he's someone with very few pieces of fixed ideology, this president. but one of them is a real commitment to not be involved in and be entangled in lengthy overseas conf

jonathan lemire, white house reporter for the associated press.lise jordan, former aid to the george w. bush and our friend donny deutsch is back you and i tend to meet on these days of crisis, whether it's cocked and loaded, locked and loaded iran 2.0. whether it's the belikos tweets toward north korea rarely match the tone, tenor, and substance of hisia is an at the elephant in the living room because war is really unpall unpalatable to everyone, and also the iranians. but they have decided to go to the mat. and i think at the end of the day, trump doesn't want to use military power and won't so he's in a real box. >> what culpability does the president have for being erratic in terms of foreign policy for sending love letters to kim jong-un, for pulling out of the iran keel but not replacing it with anything else what's the president's role in any of this? >> well, i think it's this widespread agreement that the president's behavior since he took office makes him an unserious figure in international dip massf. they don't believe he will follow

jonathan lemire, white house reporter for the associated press.ormer congressman david joins us and the rev al sharpton host of "politicsnation" here on msnbc. the president of the national action network. rev, in politics when you go in for the political assassination, you better make sure your gun is loaded. he made an attempt to take biden down, to diminish him to suggest he's diminished and he missed. >> well, i think clearly he did. you know, i was there last night in houston, and i was sitting there. and when he did it, and i like julian castro. he's very strong on a lot of the things i'm concerned about. but clearly he went three or four times suggesting that mr. biden was forgetful and wasn't working with a full deck in terms of memory. which is a republican talking point. i think we've got to be very careful that we not confirm what we know trump and them are going to do if biden or whoever is the nominee. that's one. second, you win the nomination by getting the most votes, not by doing the beatdown, especially when you're using a false

i want to bring in jonathan lemire, white house reporter for the associated press. jonathan, i think not a topic anybody expected this morning. we would be talking about. basic question here. it appears somebody took a sharpie andrew an addition to the cone here to send it into alabama. have you been able to get anything through reporting about what might have happened here? >> president trump is very fond of sharpies. reportedly he himself made the alteration to the map in the hours before this briefing in the office. let's back up a step here. on one hand, this is an undeniably funny event, it does matter. it is a serious thing. president's words matter. what the president says or tweets can rattle markets, global capitals and can frighten the residents of a state who might then believe they're in the path of a dangerous hurricane. in this case, the hurricane was never really any threat to alabama. certainly not after a day or two of uncertainty from the national weather service. what happened is you walked through chronology. the president tweeted out that alabama

and jonathan lemire or as president trump calls him, a faker. >> we'll be on the air past three hours today as we watch the acting dni director appear before the house intelligence committee. that will be fascinating. >> hey, willie geist, what an extraordinary 24 hours. you can go to the night before and before we actually got to see what the white house called the trump. people were predicting that it was going to be much ado about nothing. the next morning of course it kploiexplodes and republicans are shocked that the white house released that transcript. and news continued breaking throughout the day and, of course, last night you had the whistleblower report read and apparently so disturbing that republicans on and off the record were saying that it was far worse than what the white house released in the morning. ben sasse who has been strangely silent over the past year, ben sasse coming out and talking about it being very troubling. >> ben sasse was a tell to me saying what he read in that report, which by the way we may all see at some point today, the whistleblow whistleblow

it's just not plausible. >> neil, it's jonathan lemire.the wrongdoing by the president himself and the phone call and how he's using the government behind him to support it. my question, though, is what can is congress's recourse? what can they do to force the issue in the interim? >> well, they can do one other thing. since that november 2018 they control the house of representatives. and the house of representatives is essential for, for example, doj funding. funding for the office of legal counsel. funding for the attorney general's office. they can do all -- and funding for the intelligence community. they can selectively cut and say, look, we're not going to affirmatively reup parts of the budget because you're engaged in lawless, unconstitutional behavior and a cover-up of it. i think they've got some tools, and this is what we wrote in the "washington post," this is the case for impeachment in the is what the founders put it in for, for abuse of the public trust. that phrase high crimes and merchandise misdemeanors is all about a pr

with us we have white house reporter for the associated press jonathan lemire. senior adviser at moveon.org and an msnbc contributor, karine jean-pierre. donny deutsch is here, preeminent branding and marketing expert. did he write that? >> i made fun of the name. but saturday night politics they give him a summer run. knocks it out of the park. >> yeah. >> doubled cnn's ratings. >> in households, exactly. >> that's what -- that's what the older dudes look at, households. me, i'm like britney spears, right? sort of the '90s thing. how many britney spears fans -- but what a great run. a lot of weeks you're doubling our main competitor at cnn. i mean -- >> it was a great run. here's the thing. in the national interest i think after this summer it was too much. it was very disconcerting to the president. you know? he had tweeted about it a few times. it was unnerving to him, and sunday mornings were rough on him as it is. >> listen, we're doing the summer thing. we have been a ratings success. >> yes. >> let's just give him a couple -- >> give him a few weeks back.

. >> so, jonathan lemire, this is just extraordinary. have the commerce secretary traveling abroad in greece tending to the company's business calling back to the noaa and saying the national weather service correctly, by the way, the office in birmingham came out and said, alabama, don't worry, despite what the president tweeted you are not in the path of this storm telling the noaa to direct the national weather service to fix this mistake. in other words, you might be correct, but you crossed the president so fix it to be incorrect. >> for a day or two the president's sort of obsession that he was right about this forecast that alabama was in the pamg of this hurricane was treated as an amusing little story, the sharpy on the map and that sort of thing. first of all, you have a government, sort of an unprecedented amount of federal government intervention here threatening staffers trying to reverse engineer the data points to prove in some ways the president was correct. and also, you know, using the powers of the government to try to

>>> thanks to jonathan lemire and alicia. >> most of all if you are in the path of the storm, please stay safe. chuck todd with "meet the press" starts now. >> if it is tuesday, hurricane dorian is heading towards the u.s. after slamming the bahamas. tracking the devastation and the connection between strong storms and climate change. plus america's largest retailer takes aim at ammo sale. whether debate makes a move on gun laws. the democrats newest plan to investigate president trump. welcome to tuesday, it is "meet the press" daily on this first unofficial d official day of fall. good eveningevening. 24 devastating hours over the bahamas as a category five storm topping out at 185 miles, tieing a record for atlantic hurricane. you are looking at some of the first footage just at msnbc of some of the intense devastation at the bahamas. at least five people have been killed. half of all dwellings were damaged or destroyed on abaco and bahamas. the united states, at least a million people are under evacuation order from florida up to the carolinas where the storm could make landfall

. >>> thanks to jonathan lemire and alicia. >> most of all if you are in the path of the storm, pleasedd with "meet the press" starts now. >> if it is tuesday, hurricane dorian is heading towards the u.s. after slamming the bahamas. tracking the devastation and the connection between strong storms and

we have white house reporter jonathan lemire, jean yor

and "morning joe's" jonathan lemire have a story talking about these tactics.ot only try to discredit the person making the accusations but you roll out rudy and have republicans there to acts a chorus for you. >> thank you very much. we'll be reading axios am in just a bit. you can sign up for that newsletter at signup.axios.com. >>> "morning joe" starts right now. >>> we begin the week at a remarkable point in american politics. the white house trying to hammer congress by silencing a whistleblower. >> it's an incredibly significant day with nancy pelosi getting pushed very hard by the democratic caucus on the question of impeachment. >> is rudy giuliani the president's private lawyer. >> says he is or. >> someone tasked by the state department to conduct government business. >> says he is. >> we have word now that we have the whistleblower complaint. it's been released to the public. it's been declassified. it's been partially redacted. >> mainly he sought to pressure the ukrainian leader to take actions to help the president's went 20 re-election bid. >> wh

and jonathan lemire or as president trump calls him, a faker. >> we'll be on the air past three hourswatch

jonathan lemire and john pedhoritz are back. boaten is out.nents of taking a very tough line on iran. some said even confrontational, wanting to or at least advocating for a military strike of some sort in a limited capacity. with his voice not in the room now, where does the president stand on being hawkish on iran? >> you saw the tweet tonight, he's certainly willing to at least use the rhetoric, the bellicose rhetoric for that. he has been far more reluctant to actually engage in any sort of military exercise, military activities, with iran. he is for the most pat -- he's ordered air strikes in syria but for the most part he's stayed away from that. bolton did take a much harder line. they had clashed in recent months. the president has prized his image of trying to be a dealmaker, that he could bring kim jong-un to the table, we've had a few summits that haven't accomplished anything, kim jong-un is still firing missiles from north korea. i is wall with the president when he went to the dmz and he stepped across in north korea. there's bee

s jonathan lemire quotes historian jon meacham on the dangers of trump never admitting he made a mistakeidents admit when they screwed up, they nix it and they move on. right now it's a mistake about a hurricane hitting a state. but it also can be is a far bigger deal and cost people lives. and help create a climate where people can't trust the government. the constitution with its checks and balances was drafted on the intellectual foundation that we all make mistakes all the time. a president does, congress does. the courts do. the people do. it's remarkable that more harm hasn't come of it. it would be funny if it weren't so serious. >> peter baker, this is actually a serious matter as shep smith said on fox news. the topic couldn't be more serious for a lot of people. the president's tweet had to be corrected by the weather service in alabama and birmingham, 30 minutes after he made it. and here we are with the president obsessing about this last night while south carolina, north carolina and virginia were all targeted by this hurricane. bill karins said over 3 million people in nort

. >> first of all, jonathan lemire, let's talk about this article in the "new york times."dy makes mistakes, we make mistakes every day in talking about mika and me, cour reproach. >> yeah. >> but everybody makes mistakes. but, you know, we were on the phone yesterday and asking each other, wait a second, a woman who steyer claims was abused by kavanaugh, has she denied this? has she claimed this happened? why -- why is there this glare omission in "the new york times" story in there were molly hemingway and others on twitter were saying that, in fact, she had no recollection of this happening and her friends were saying the same thing. and i could not believe "the new york times" would write this piece without that information contained in it. are you surprised 24 hours -- is it 24 hours went by before they clarified that fact? and let me just ask also our producers just put in there that this max steyer may be respected, but was it not relevant to note that he was opposing counsel for the other side of brett kavanaugh in the monica lewinsky legal proceedings? i don't unde