Brian Williams examines the day's top political stories and current political-campaign news.
you need a recount. if that is correct and get what it is, the other thing we know is they have apparently under state law until august 24th to certify this election. we're sitting here on august 7th, we've got 17 days, more than two weeks until this has to be certified. if you have that ten-day waiting period and then it comes under 0.5, you know, you're short of that certification. so the law isn't putting a real lot of pressure on them here to get this certified. the law as we understand it is saying it's going to be ten days before they can open these. again, if i'm a betting man, if you come out here and say, kornacki, your life is on the line, who is going to win this thing, i would tell you balderson, he looks in much better position than o'connor to win this thing. are you telling me are you sure he's going to win it by more than 0.45 points and therefore avoid a recount, oh, no, i wouldn't tell you that at all. recounts, the history of these things doesn't suggest o'connor
will overcome a deficit of that magnitude, but you have to have the recount and you have to see. meanwhile of course these two candidates are both going to be on the ballot as their parties' nominees for this district in november. the clock ticks, maybe we're in november before we get a final answer and in two months they go to the polls again in this district. >> i would never ask you to bet your life, you're too good at what you don't. and we don't allow wagering. steve kornacki, please don't move, i believe balderson is coming out onstage shortly. in the interim, garrett haake, our correspondent, is standing by at danny o'connor's campaign headquarters. you saw, we heard from the candidate. garrett, on nights like this they try to give neither a victory nor concession, though they've got to hit certain markers. as we've mentioned, tonight is the night to pivot to november for both of these guys. >> reporter: yeah, brian, this was even more of an in tweener speech than you might otherwise
see in a race like this, effectively too close to call, because the race doesn't really stop tomorrow. it's just another marker. now we have a quasi incumbent. now we're going to go to balderson. >> very honored to represent the voters of the 12th district. i have so many people to thank tonight. behind me right here, my john joshua, his fiance, he's getting married next april. my girlfriend melanie. i want to thank god. more importantly, my mom and dad who weren't able to be here with us this evening. the thousands and thousands of volunteers that worked this grassroots campaign. thank you all very, very much for all that you have done.
the phone banking, the door knocking, all of it. it's been phenomenal. it's a great honor for me. i would like to thank president trump. i would also like to take the time to thank vice president pence for coming. and the big shoes that i'll be filling, i wouldn't have got through a lot without him through this process. congressman pat tiber. i would also like to take this opportunity and time to also thank chairman steve stiver, he's been a great asset to me through this process. chairman, thank you. there's many others.
i could just keep going on and on. but tonight i'm going to promise to you that i'm going to work relentlessly, relentlessly for this 12th congressional district. america is on the right path and we're going to keep it going that way. it's time to get to work. over the next three months, i'm going to do everything i can to keep america great again. so that when we welcome -- when we come back here in november, get ready, we got to come back here in november, i have earned your vote for a second time. danny o'connor ran a hard race
and i look forward to campaigning against him again this fall. thank you all so much for all your support. god bless you and god bless america. >> all right. troy balderson. and let's repeat the way we opened the hour from our decision desk, and this is boston germane and important to everything we're watching and trying to understand tonight, this race is too close to call. we will not be calling this race tonight. so look, there's a possibility you'll see other news organizations give estimates or the like. we are not. that's where we stand, separated by 1,754. as steve kornacki has so ably laid out for us, we have something north of 3,400 so-called provisional ballots.
we believe this is triggered the state's own system to look back through all the votes cast. this is going to be a while. and let's not forget, they get to run again in november. before we were interrupted by the republican candidate, we were talking to garrett haake at democratic headquarters. garrett, you were talking about how it has to be half victory speech, half concession speech, although officially neither. >> reporter: that's right, danny o'connor leaving the door open to continue campaigning. the speech he gave sounded like his typical stump speech. he considers this a midway point in the race towards november. you didn't hear that from troy balderson at all. you heard much more of a traditional victory speech with the acknowledgement that he's got to do this all over again in november. the other big thing you heard from balderson, i think this is important, the big thank you to donald trump. you showed the president's tweet earlier, brian. i think you would be hard pressed to find a republican in
ohio who disagrees with the central premise, namely that it was donald trump who was able to carry troy balderson across the finish line here. he did not have a great last couple of days campaigning. but he did get a big boost from the president who in some part had to essentially remind republican voters that there was a special election happening this week and his agenda was on the line. every republican strategist i talked to this week said that balderson needed that boost to juice his numbers in the more reliably republican voters who just weren't huge troy balderson fans coming into this weekend. >> how about a word about this district? our viewers along with us kind of fly into these districts where on nights like tonight there's no more important stretch of real estate in this whole country politically. but what an interesting part of the country it is. you've got the terrific city of columbus, ohio, its northern reaches, then stretches the
countryside that look just like the american midwest. >> reporter: yeah, absolutely, brian. it is that mix of suburban, a little bit of the city of columbus, and a whole lot of rural, expansive ohio here that makes up this district. the democratic candidate here is 31 years old. in his life he's never been represented here by a democrat. the mix of voters here have always elected your pro-business, country club, chamber of commerce types of republicans. john kasich represented this district before ultimately becoming governor of this state. pat teaberry very much in the same model. republicans voted for the donald trump party. the operating theory was do people who drive volvos and go to country clubs in those suburbs around the district, these well-educated, wealthier voters, are they really going to stick with donald trump and really stick with his agenda in the face of what we've seen over the last year and a half?
the answer appeared to be yes on those moderate republicans, the swing county, and i don't want to get two steep into steve's lane. delaware county did stick with the republican here. but you did see this enormous turnout of democrats who have turned their back on this president from that suburban part of this. brian, there are dozens of districts that look enough like this in numbovember that they'le picking this apart based on the lessons they learned tonight. moral victories do not a house majority make, they have to get across the finish line in these districts in november. >> garrett haake, thanks, buddy, for your live reporting this evening, we really appreciate it. our lead-off panel, kimberly atkins is back with us. chief washington reporter for "the boston herald." she, as you see, is on the hill. here with us in new york, john heilemann is back with us, long time political journalist, co-author of both "game change" and "double down."
we did a little bit of both tonight in ohio. and el eli stokols is with us tonight. what do you think they make of a barn burner in this district in ohio during this time? >> i think there is some concern. i'm talking and texting with some as we talk right now. there is a lot of concern. look, dozens of districts that are up in the midterms are not as red as the ohio 12th. and the fact that this was such a squeaker, even if they come out with a "w" at the end of it, it's quite an erosion of support for donald trump, who won that district by 12 points. i know the president is claiming victory tonight, and it might be the case that he energized
republicans enough just to squeak over, to squeak out a win here. but he also energized democrats in a way to really get out the vote. one thing that the president tweeted that is true is that it's august, and it's a time when a lot of people are on vacation, a lot of people aren't thinking about politics. democrats were still able to mobilize people, it sounds like particularly in the suburbs, which is going to be a crucial battleground. i think republicans have to be really concerned about that. >> all right, john heilemann, here in our new york studios, as they like to ask during moments like this, what have we learned so far this evening? >> i'm a big fan of the one is a win school, you win a race. it looks like the republican has run this race. hats off for winning the race, because that's all that matters. >> we have to hasten to point out we can't declare at this point. >> that's why i said it looks like. >> absolutely. i got your modifier. >> the second thing i'm a big fan of in analysis is context
and kimberly has provided some, and people on this network have been providing it all night. the fact that it's a squeaker, a nail-biter, that we're still too close to call at this hour, means that democrats should have a lot to be happy about here. they've looked at this race and said, you know, but for a couple of -- a few votes here, we could steal this race and we have 90 days to do that with these same candidates on the ballot. democrats are right to feel good about what they've done here tonight. this should not be a contested race let alone a race that's a razor thin margin. but again, republicans get the win and you can't take that away from him, assuming that things hold, they get this win, and, you know, you can't gainsay that. >> eli stokols, i heard a noted political expert on another network tonight say the following. quote, if democrats can do this well in a district 88% white, they will retake the house.
>> and i think right now that's what i hear when i talk to analysts and consultants on both sides. at least when it comes to the house, the wind is at the democrats' back, the numbers look good. if they're running double digits ahead of where they ran in 2016, they are going to take the number of seats that they need to win a majority, most likely, better than 50% chance at this point. but i think, you know, you go back to the president's tweet, there have been a lot of donald trump tweets that ring less true than what he said tonight. yes, he's going to take a lot of credit for this. that's obvious. but pollsters on the ground in it ohio have said that they saw better numbers, especially in those rural precincts, after he was there. he's also right that it is an interesting time to vote. what he didn't get into in the tweet, but what he said on saturday and what he's been saying over the last couple of weeks, he's got the loudest megaphone in the country. when he can hang his hat on
democrats, just a couple of, it only takes two new york democrats to say abolish i.c.e. to remind voters who are on the face, you may not love me and everything, but here is where the democratic party is going these days, that is also effective. i know danny o'connor said i'm not going to support pelosi for speaker but he bungled that in the interview with chris matthews and that wasn't convincing. democrats have a win at their backs but it does take candidates and it does take some convincing some of these voters. >> i love my friend eli stokols, but i will say this, this isn't the biggest lie the president has told on twitter. the governor of ohio, john kasich, who is the anti-trump governor, who came in and cut an add for balderson in the last week of the race. >> but waited very late. >> waited very late, but it's
late in race this close. who had more effect on this race at the end? governor kasich by coming in at the end, a guy with a 65% approval rating in the state, or donald trump coming in, especially the way balderson performed in some of the republican suburbs where the president didn't help him, john kasich did. >> who did balderson thank? he thanked the president, vice president, congressman teaberry. he didn't mention john kasich. john is correct that the turnout may have been because he didn't just have the trump wing but he also had kasich vouching for him as well. s in -- this is a case where you have the two wings of the republican party pulling for him. the fact that he didn't come onstage and even say john kasich's name also tells you something. >> he's afraid of the trump base. and again, you're not going to see this in many races where
republicans have the money to spend in a race that they should easily win where you're going to have outside democratic groups outspending them by five times and where you'll get a republican governor with a 65% approval rating and the president of the united states on the same side. this is an unusual set of circumstances that barely pulled the republican across, if the results hold. >> we have part two of the trump tweet tonight on this race. it seems he wasn't done. congratulations to troy balderson on a great win in ohio, a very special, i think that means special election, and important race. >> what has he ever done, brian? you said it seems like he's not done. when is he ever done? >> that's true, it all seems like a continuation. is there a vetted process for the campaigns the president will visit? we just learned he may make a
stop in texas for ted cruz, for example. there was some hubbub about who cleared the president to come into ohio, who requested it, who gave their permission in this case. but it's also indisputable, he moved votes. >> yeah, i mean, you're using words like vetting and permission as if it that's something that the -- as if that's something that the president ever goes by. it will be a matter of the president choosing his gut and getting into this. this, which he's calling a win and other republicans are calling a win tonight even though it's still technically too close to call, will probably boost him in that effort. one thing you have to watch is there are still some contested primaries coming up between candidates who are more mainstream republicans and others who are very trumpy candidates who the president is going to be eager to back. so in this case you did see kasich and trump on the same
side, the same candidate, bringing those voters together. that's going to be a big factory moving forward if the republicans are going to be able to create that unity, to get behind people, to get them over the finish line in november, if those fights are nasty, it will be a lot more difficult to do. that's one of the many factors, including how nancy pelosi plays in these races. we still don't know the answer for sure yet. we have to take a closer look at how these precincts voted. president trump is definitely going to be on the campaign trail, whether the candidates he's backing like it or not. >> hey, john, a moment for civics. so let's say, again, to take your point for the purposes of argument, the republican wins, let's say we don't have an official call for days. they become a sitting member of congress. you don't get to inherent the seniority of the republican you're replacing. you get bumped down, get terrible office space and not much of it.
as a practical matter, you inherit much of the staff from the last member of congress, just so you can hit the ground running. you put some stuff on the walls, you get letterhead printed, but you never feel permanent. two-year terms, it's tough to feel permanent because you've got to go out and sing for your supper in november. >> look, both these guys said in their speeches tonight they have to get out there and start working again, have to start raising money again. >> and serve constituents. >> they'll try to serve constituents, although in reality, after labor day, congress will probably go out of session. the house, people will go home. >> with as hard as they work? >> i know, shocking, right? the reality is, unless the president tries to engineer a government shutdown between now and november, the amount of legislative business that gets done on the house side is relatively limited. you'll be involved in the national discourse, the national dialogue. you might have some things to vote on, you won't be completely
useless, but essentially from now until the race is run again you'll be engaged in the act of full-time politics even though you need to pretend you're involved in other things like constituent service and occasionally filling that office in one of those three buildings on the house side. >> eli stokols, how legitimately happy do you think the president is, assuming, again, at the end of this race, that the republican wins. we certainly won't know tonight. >> when donald trump gets anything that he can portray as a victory, he is a happy guy. and he is going to play that up. and i think that's why you've seen two tweets tonight already. he may call the pool back to bedminster tomorrow and hold a press conference. you never know. but this is a guy who is going to, for better or worse, insert himself in every election race, every one of these races that he can. republican consultants, a lot of them don't want him in this race, they think there are
certain places where he will be helpful, others where he should stay away. but this election is about donald trump. he's already in there. he's proven when he goes and does these rallies he can juice the republican turnout, the base vote. the question is what happens in those districts that are closer, how does he also animate those voters who are already predisposed to vote against him, does he bring more of those out? especially on the house side, that's something the republicans are worried about. >> i like to talk about the '90s with brian, because we both remember the clinton administration and we're both old men. you remember vividly in 1994 when bill clinton was out on the campaign trail after labor day. there came a point when the situation was so dire, there were a lot of democrats saying to bill clinton, go home, don't campaign. >> that happens. >> it's not unusual. this was a big wave of democrats who said stay home and the president listened, i went off the campaign trail at the end of 1984 and said, you guys know your politics better than i know your politics, i'm a political
animal, i'm going to sit around the white house and watch college football for the last few months. a lot of republicans are saying, if you can just take the itinerary not through my district, can you imagine donald trump hearing that and saying, you know what, i'm going to defer to the congressman on this matter? >> i'll be here in the residence. that's the sentiment kim atkins was picked up tonight when we went to her. our thanks to our initial panel tonight. to kimberly atkins on capitol hill, and here in new york, john heilemann, eli stokols, much obliged, thank you all for coming out on a busy night. coming up, paul manafort predictably began gnawing at the star witness on things like implement and adultery. and later, new criminal suspicion surrounding president trump's former fix and her long term personal lawyer michael cohen. his problems, while they still do not number 99, now may
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it's the ultimate wifi experience. xfinity xfi, simple, easy, awesome. mr. manafort had a great day. >> rick gates, the star witness in the financial fraud trial of former trump campaign chairman paul manafort, was back on the stand today, day six of this trial. and the defense was quick to go after the credibility of the witness. manafort's lawyers pressed gates on his lies to mueller's team
before he agreed to a plea deal. they brought up an extramarital affair that gates had and asked him about the money he had embezzled from manafort's operation. most of the testimony centered on the financial schemes that prosecutors say manafort developed to avoid paying taxes and maintain his lifestyle even as his income dried up at one point. gates told the court that manafort directed him to disguise millions of dollars in foreign income as loans and to funnel money through shell companies outside the u.s. gates portrayed manafort as a man who essentially went broke after his income stream as a consultant to russian-linked candidates in the ukraine vanished. also today donald trump's name was mentioned in front of the jury for the first time in this trial. and prosecutors presented evidence that manafort tries to use his leverage in the trump campaign to get one of his lenders a job in the administration. it never stops. with us tonight, barbara
mcquade, former u.s. attorney for the eastern district of michigan, who was inside court for today's testimony. she's at the end of a long day for herself. eli hoening is with us, former assistant attorney general for the state of new jersey. peter baker, chief white house correspondent for "the new york times." good evening too you all, i apologize for the late hour. barbara, i have to hear about the parts of this that we are not allowed to see, cameras are not allowed in the court. what were the atmospherics like, especially between gates and mueller? >> it was very interesting to see gates testify. he never made contact with paul manafort. he would look at the
prosecutoring and tprosecutoor or at the jury. i thought gates did fairly well on his direct examination. they used a lot of documents that he connected the dots. a lot of it was corroborated with e-mail and other documents. i thought he didn't do well on cross-examination, he seemed evasive and argumentative. i think he admitted to a lot of fraud and a lot of lies and i think the body language of the jury was that they weren't liking rick gates very much. they put him in the middle for a reason, they used to call it the cooperator sandwich, you start strong, end strong, put someone at the end to allow you to recover. the prosecutors will say, we didn't choose rick gates to be our witness, it was paul manafort who chose him to be his associate. >> no one needs to tell you, barbara, federal judges have enormous power in our society. they are nominated by the president. they have to be approved by the
senate. and they sit on the bench for life. that said, this particular bridge, nominated by president ronald reagan, has played an interesting role in this case. and a lot of people have come away with interesting opinions. today he kind of participated in the case. tell us your assessment of what you've seen. >> well, throughout the trial he's been very hands-on. he injects himself quite a bit. he asks questions of witnesses. he seems very smart and very engaged, in many ways those are positive things. you know, i've never seen any judge get so involved in the case. and today some of the questions he asked were things lawyers might not want to ask but today he actually made astatement, when rick gates testified that paul manafort was deeply involved in financial matters, the judge said something to the effect of, obviously not very involved, otherwise you wouldn't have been able to steal so much money from him.
a really inflammatory comment as this supposedly independent authority figure in the courtroom, an expert on the law, i worry about the impact of a statement like that in front of the jury. >> barbara, if you're the prosecutor in this case, was gates wobbly enough to worry about? >> i would be a little bit worried about him. i think they can probably rehabilitate him. again, i think that there's enough corroborating evidence in the documents that have come into the case and it's consistent with what other witnesses are saying, that they should be all right. the only worry i have is that the jury, who did seem to have some very negative body language about gates, is so put off by h him. but if they look at this objectively, there is still sufficient and significant evidence to convict paul manafort. >> eli, barbara is the one who invoked the word sandwich, it's late and we're hungry.
here is your star witness. he's in an interesting location within the trial. it's mostly a paper case. i guess this means you've got to end strong. you've got to have a great closer and wrap it all up for the members of that jury. >> the most important thing you can do as a prosecutor when you're putting on a cooperating witness, you know they're going to take some damage. you know the defense is going to score some points on them. you have to be able to rally back with corroboration, independence evidence that backs up the corroborator, so you're not just saying to the jury, take this criminal's word for it. what we've seen so far, the mueller team has done a great job of doing that. all the witnesses leading up to rick gates, the accountant, the bookkeeper, the vendors, have had a common theme of, man aenforcememanafort knew where every dollar went.
in one e-mail, manafort said, it's in pdf, can you send it back to me in word? because you can alter a word document but not a pdf. that kind of evidence can stick in the jury's mind. >> you need a great closer here. >> or in some instances, a boring closer. it doesn't sound like they have a superstar like a rivera ready to go, it sounds like they have a couple of guys with 350 eras to get you to the end of the game. but look, boring can be good after an explosive cooperator like this. put a little distance between the cooperator and the closing arguments, let things settle back down, call a couple of more straight-up financial types, and then let it go to closing. >> peter baker, you have a great 30,000-foot view of all of this. and bring us back to this question, why did paul manafort offer himself up to donald trump and why did he do so for free?
>> right. that's a really good question and one we're unfortunately not hearing addressed yet at this trial, anyway, and one that goes much more to the central point of the president of the united states and what does this mean in terms of our understanding about donald trump and the campaign that he waged in 2016. by the time that paul manafort becomes involved in the campaign, he has been cut off from his sources of funding in the ukraine, from his russian-backed, you know, money source, and therefore he's offering himself with no money asked from donald trump. why? one might suspect, of course, that he's using this to try to rehabilitate himself, perhaps to offer some sort of advantage to his russian backers to whom he apparently owes some money. he did at one point offer private briefings to oleg deripaska, the oligarch to him he was indebted. that's not what the prosecutors
are trying to prove today, they're trying to prove violations of tax law and so forth. to the larger electorate who cares about the president and cares about the leadership of the country, trying to figure out what this means, that's the central question. >> and for the larger public who has heard perhaps the president try to diminish paul manafort, was with us for just a very short period of time, there will always be the president taking the other side of that argument. here is an example of that. >> we have great people. paul manafort. he doesn't have to do this. like i don't have to, he didn't need to do this. he called me and said, this is something special. >> peter baker, how will we look back on that sound bite perhaps in six months? >> well, like a lot of things president trump has said or tweeted in the past, he probably wishes he could take it back or at least the people around him wish they could take it back. he was impressed to have paul manafort volunteer because manafort had a long history of republican politics.
he had been involved in the 1976 campaign for gerald ford, 1996 for bob dole, et cetera, et cetera. this is something of a validation for trump at that time to get somebody with manafort's experience in national politics. however, a lot of people around town knew that manafort had these sort of shady connections. a lot of people around washington knew to keep away from him. therefore you have to say did the president of the united states or the candidate who wanted to be the president of the united states have any knowledge of that? if not, why not? we judge presidents by the character of the people they put in place around them. the president will say, i didn't know anything about this, it didn't have anything to do with my campaign, fair enough, but you have to ask, why do you surround yourself with people that have clear issues in terms of honesty, in terms of legal behavior? >> as we thank our guests, a special note to say that we are honored to have a former u.s. attorney as in effect our special correspondent inside that courtroom. court starts early, and barbara
mcquade has pushed on through into the late night. thank you so much to barbara mcquade, to eli honing, to peter baker, we appreciate it. coming up, steve kornacki back at the big board. a deeper look at the lessons from the numbers out tonight when we come back. this is amazing. with moderate to severe ulcerative colitis, are you okay? even when i was there, i never knew when my symptoms would keep us apart. so i talked to my doctor about humira. i learned humira can help get, and keep uc under control when other medications haven't worked well enough. and it helps people achieve control that lasts. so you can experience few or no symptoms. humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened; as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. before treatment, get tested for tb.
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this. let me just explain quickly here. again, the lead for balderson right now is 0.9. the state law says 0.5 or less is an automatic recount. right now this would not be an automatic recount. we've been telling you, and i'll put this up here again, there are 3,435 provisional ballots to be counted across the district. this is not going to happen for another ten days. when they're counted, we expect democrats will win them. we expect the margin will be potentially considerable, enough potentially to knock this number not down to zero or anywhere near zero but maybe under a thousand, maybe knock it in half, maybe knock it enough that the 0.9 margin falls below 0.5 and then the automatic recount is triggered. i say there is another wrinkle. i put this out there. take this with a pinch of salt.
the secretary of state is saying there are also 5,048 what they are terming uncounted absentee ballots. the question becomes what is an uncounted absentee ballot? we believe that a small, small sliver of this 5,048, we're talking in the low hundreds, probably, would be military ballots. so the military ballots, you know, let's say 250, ballpark figure here, we expect those to break more republican than democratic, a small number. what about the rest? what are those? what we think, but we don't know, we are trying to get confirmation of, but the suspicion is that what this might reflect is, absentee ballots that were made out to people and that weren't returned. so they're then being counted in this category of uncounted absentee ballots. that has not been confirmed. that has not been told to us. we don't know. it's sitting there, it's on their website. they haven't explained fully what it means.
if that did mean this early vote, absentee ballots that were cast early, we certainly saw o'connor do better, much better than balderson in the early vote. they're from all around, from each county that's in here. again, even going by how we saw the early vote break, would that be enough to ghetto conner over balderson. hard to see. would it be enough to get it under .5, that's a different story. no confirmation, no word. we're trying to track it down. anybody who is curious and wants to look is going to see that number on the secretary of state's site and the truth is, i'm not sure what that is. sti suspect that's absentee ballots that weren't returned. they haven't confirmed that to us. >> sooner or later you're talking about real numbers here. it will be interesting to find out. steve, i can't thank you enough. it gets more and more interesting as the hour gets later. with just 90 days till the midterm elections, one former trump rival is now asking for the president's help. is the houston chronicle
headline reads "ted cruz asks trump to campaign for him in texas." at the this go on to explain during a campaign stop late monday, cruz said he has reached out to his form rival for the white house, lyin' ted was the president's nickname to help him against bate o'rourke. with us tonight, charlie sykes, now contributing editor and podcast host for the weekly standard. charlie, what are the rules in politics? you can brand an opponent lyin' ted, a nickname that still springs to mind along with low energy jeb bush and little marco and then all things can be equalled up if you have a tough race back home in texas? >> yeah, apparently. who knew that ted cruz was quite this elastic? it's not just lying ted. this was a campaign in which
donald trump made fun of ted cruz's wife's likes, implied his dad had assassinated john f. kennedy, his trolls at the "national enquirer"er spread rumors about his personal life. he got booed off the stage at the republican national convention when he suggested the people vote their conscience. but you know in, politics, apparently it's easy to fib and ted cruz has proven that he is willing to get in line with the trump administration. i mean, he is not just on the trump train, he's enthusiastically on the trump train. >> charlie about tonight and what we're witnessing and what steve kornacki's been covering all night, what does tonight mean for you? >> okay, let me give you three data points. i don't want to be misunderstood that whoever wins tonight matters less than trend that you're seeing. this is a district that the democrats won once since 1938. the last republican congressman
pat teberi won by 36 points. and there are 68 republican house seats that are less republican than ohio 12. so yes, the republicans is can celebrate the fact that they may have eked out a victory but the trends here have to be incredibly trouble together republicans. you know, if you're adding double digit democratic numbers across the board, this is going to be a very, very, very tough election. you know, so donald trump can claim that he in fact might have tipped this election in the very last few days but this should not even be close. we should not know these guys can names, not spent five minutes talking about it. the only reason we're talking about is what donald trump has done to theply landscape. >> i hate the way the politics business reduces people to just straight up demographic groups but i'm going to go ahead and quote this political veteran that i quoted earlier in the
broadcast. someone i saw tonight on another network. "if the democrats can do this well in a district 88% white, they can retake the house." >> yeah, there's no question about it. if -- we're really seeing a microcosm of the way in which the suburbs that had been traditionally reliably republican are now turning to the democrats. we're seeing how rural areas are becoming more republican. but again, if you see this pattern extended throughout the country, it is just -- there's no way that you can spin this as a good night for the democrats. the fact this took place in a state as crucial as ohio has got to be another one of those troubling omens i think. >> and john kasich, emerges from this. what do you think is in his future? >> well, who knows. you know, as we sit here right now, it's hard to imagine any successful republican primary challenge to donald trump unless
something really catastrophic happens. john kasich is about the only guy who appears to be expressing some interest. and you know, so it's certainly possible that if republicans start looking around saying, is there an alternative to donald trump in our future, do we want donald trump to define the republican party going into the next decade, they might look to a john kasich. i think it's a long shot. >> and the rest of the summer calendar you think been l be consumed with all things trump and russia investigation with sporadic interruptions for politics i guess? >> i think it's that, and i expect that the rhetoric over immigration will get much more toxic. i think that the rhetoric will be much more divisive. i think the rhetoric you saw in the final few days in ohio is a pretty good indication of what republicans are going to try to
do between now and november and they'll see what works and what doesn't work. obviously, the immigration card is going to be something they'll be pounding away on. >> charlie sykes, all a pleasure to have you on. thank you for reacting to the news we've been covering late tonight. really appreciate it. for those just joining us, our decision deck has put it this way. the race we've been covering in ohio tonight, too close to call. we will not be calling this race tonight. and that goes especially to all the reasons steve kornacki has been laying out for us. we have another hour of special live coverage to come. for now, we'll take a break. i can do more to lower my a1c. and i can do it with what's already within me. because my body can still make its own insulin. and once-weekly trulicity activates my body to release it.
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Analysis and discussion of the day's top stories and compelling issues from Lawrence O'Donnell.
Analysis and discussion of the day's top stories and compelling issues from Lawrence O'Donnell.
Analysis and discussion of the day's top stories and compelling issues from Lawrence O'Donnell.
Analysis and discussion of the day's top stories and compelling issues from Lawrence O'Donnell.
Analysis and discussion of the day's top stories and compelling issues from Lawrence O'Donnell.
Analysis and discussion of the day's top stories and compelling issues from Lawrence O'Donnell.
everybody has gone home. a few hours ago, this was a pretty bumping party. democrats really felt like they had a shot here tonight. it the last 48 hours of this race, everything seemed to be breaking their way. the republican candidate stumbled into a gaffe about franklin county the night before the election started. their candidate had been all over the place in national and local media. they felt like they were fighting out the last few days of this campaign on democratic issue turf talking about health care, they were talking about protecting it social security. that's one of the reasons that democrats nationally by the way like what they see here today. they like the issue set that was fought over in this campaign. they're also going to like the enthusiasm a lot. you talked about that big franklin county number, 65% of the vote. you saw that reflected around this district over the last couple days. core democratic voters were fired up to vote in this race, fired up to volunteer out
knocking on doors out in neighborhoods, out making phone calls. i talked to a lot of voter who's said they have never been as engaged in a congressional election as they were in this one. some folks said they were volunteering for the first time. i spent most of my time today with the democrats. i have to say from the republican point of view here, if there is a silver lining to this narrow what looks like it might be a victory, it's that to some degree their formula worked. you talked about running up the score in some of those rural areas. in a lot of places around the country that look like this, that is what republican republicans have to do, they have to juice turnout in their as a areas with donald trump or adds with nancy pelosi, and hold on and hope this democratic enthus yap wave doesn't knock them off their peshlgs. i do think we saw a little bit of a blueprint how it will work. the resources and money and time
won't be the same when there's 435 house races happening instead of one on a random tuesdayner i august. >> a superb election in the dead of the summer. my kind of night here i guess you could say. garrett, great reporting. thank you for joining us outside what was the o'connor headquarters outside columbus. former republican congressman david jolly from you florida, john pod or ritz and kimberly atkins, columnist for the "boston herald." david, let me start with you. i'm looking at the story from this district. i'm seeing three different stories looking at we showed there franklin county. clinton won it and tonight you saw the energy was there for democrats. the support level for o'connor was higher than it was for clinton by will ten points. turnout level was higher. i'm thinking that story is trouble for republican members of congress, barbara cop stock
right outside washington, d.c. from the suburban areas highly educated, trouble for them when you see that. >> a lot of my former colleagues in congress will have hard conversations with party leadership in the next month or two. the party may begin to pull resources from districts. they might be too vulnerable incumbents to hold toes seats. we're also seeing this trend away from republicans almost at large. these are districts that trump won, states trump won. we're seeing a contrast between the trump effect in a general election which is the special election in ohio is essentially a general election. also the influence of trump in primaries like we're seeing in kansas, move to washington and you're seeing the negative wins that trump brings to those rays. au in all, a good night for democrats. we'll know in ten days balderson probably wins. the trend is getting away from republicans. they're in a lot of trouble when
these races are fought in competitive districts in november. >> the trend we should say. trump by 11 points in this district tonight, one point if this holds. >> if i have this number right, so democrats need 23 seats to take control of the house. there were 24 districts. there are 24 hillary clinton districts. >> up to 25 with that pennsylvania. >> there are 25 districts republicans are sitting in that hillary won. okay. and then there's the question whether or not there are other districts like this one where trump wins by 11 where it gets close. if you look at this you say to yourself, the vast majority of those seats that hillary won those guys are in deep deep deep. >> you're saying a wave. >> if -- i mean, think about this number. so this guy o'connor who is like a nobody out polls hillary in a hillary area.
right? by ten points. so we could be seeing that district after district after district after district. in other words, the democrats could already have pretty close to having the house in their pocket. >> i think they do. i don't think there's a scenario tonight where we would say republicans can hold the house. steve, i have republican colleagues of mine friends who have been in the field. they're incumbents in the field for a year. over the last 90 days, seeing the precipitous drop in support for republicans. that's why you see republicans spend money early. even in majority republican districts, you now have a lot of vulnerable members. >> and i have to say when you sit down, you can do examiners sometime or make the map yourself and start flipping districts and you start out with the number 23 and say democrats got to pick off 23 republicans. maybe republicans are fortified here. it goes fast. kimberly, look, republicans will say bottom line, we won. it wasn't pretty.
again, it's too close to call but certainly you'd rather be balderson with the numbers than o'connor. republicans will say if this holds, we won this thing. that's all that counts. that's the story of the special elections besides pennsylvania a couple months ago, there were a lot of close calls but we won. is there anything besides the bottom line you think they can hang their hats on at all? >> that's a tough thing to say. we saw the president calling this a win. it sort reminds me of a regular season game when you know the playoffs are coming and you know that the teams will make a lot of adjustments leading into that. i think you're going to see that here, some of the things you were pointing out like not really growing the republican -- the suburbanen support for republicans having that slip a little bit. it's just, it may not be enough to overcome those -- to for even in those areas where you have that really inelastic support
for trump in the rural areas if they really are not winning the suburbs and not winning the more urban areas. if the democrats continue to mobilize, they mobilized in the middle of august, think what's going to happen in november. i think it's going to be already really bad news for republicans when it comes to playoff time. >> okay. so republican political consultant made the point that there is oner in lining for republicans which is to say that balderson defeat could have led to a stampede for the exits by not only by voters but by donors by people who have to pone up at the end, gin up enthusiasm. the idea if this had gone the other way, it probably won't, if this didn't look the way it did now, it would have been mass. >> the psychology of actually losing versus. >> the other way to look at it is like the first act of "the walking dead" and the zombies come and don't get in then but
then in three months, the zombies get into your cave. it may just be staving off the inevitable. >> i'm just former republican congressman, you ran. having to deal with donald trump a little bit. if you were running right now as a republican just trying to survive, in terms of -- what's the strategy you try to employ? >> you can't survive a 50-50 district. one of the take-aways from balderson's race is interesting. he was not fully in with donald trump. he occasionally said the right things. i think he wanted to bid the wall. this was an entrenched establishment republican candidate. this was not a make america great again candidate. trump would say he should have been more trump. i'm a product of special elections. my first race was a special election. to john's point, one of the things the party apparatus has to do is convince the high dollar institutional donors they can win these rays. i saw it in my election abconversely, i was running
during the implementation of obamacare and it provides an opportunity in my case for democrats to message test. at the time it was unpopular. the rollout was a disaster. republicans were trying to find their footing on obamacare and frankly they couldn't. republicans rights now are doing exactly the same thing trying to find their footing with donald trump. where is it? they haven't figured it out but they can go back to their donor base and say we at least know how to win. that's about all they can say tonight. >> kimberly, maybe this is sort of a bigger picture thing about the state of politics, the american divide. looking at that map, the one other thing jumps out at me, democratic energy in and immediately around columbus, the energy there the support for the democratic candidate there, you go to the rural parts of the district and these are places that obama won one of the keens in the rural part of this district and it went to trump by 30 points in 2016. there was interesting suspense there tonight would there be erosion for republicans in the
trump country part of this district and there wasn't. this is a turnout might not have been great. balderson was getting trump level support does make me wonder if that's getting to a bigger picture thing where republicans are casting their lot with that america and that sort of the future in the past for democrats. >> i think it depend how each of these districts look. if you have districts with more rural support like that, they will benefit from that inelastic support donald trump has had that we've seen in polling since inauguration day. a lot of these districts are drawn in ways there's a little bit of suburbia other things that come into play some that get closer into urban areas. this might be one way that some of the gerrymandering that's taken place to skim off urban areas to dilute that vote may come back to bite republicans in some ways if we see democrats turning out in those places.
so it's really going to be interesting to see how that plays out moving forward. >> kimberly atkins, thanks for joining us. coming up, other results and analysis from a bunch that we had ohio, we will kansas, michigan. other results, other races to tell you about to break down all the numbers and the latest in today's other big political story, the paul manafort trial. ken dilanian and henry lipman will join us. stay with us. est time to buy. you ready for this, junior? yeah, i think i can handle it. no pressure... ...that's just my favorite boat. boom. (laughs) make summer go right with ford, america's best-selling brand. and get our best deal of the summer: zero percent financing for sixty months on f-150. right now, get this special offer on f-150: zero percent financing for 60 months - during the ford summer sales event. hundred roads named "park" in the u.s. it's america's most popular street name.
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>> we must elect more republicans and we must elect troy balderson. we have to elect troy. >> well, president donald trump at a rally on saturday for troy badderson, republican candidate in that special election in ohio's 12th district tonight. the race as we've been telling you, we are currently saying too close to call. balderson leading democrat danny o'connor by less than a percentage point. voters will not learn the final vote till all the absentee and provisional votes are kouned. maybe the reason we have such suspense, maybe there's a recount as mandate bid state law. the president has already declared victory. earlier tonight he tweeted when i decided to go to ohio for troy badder son, he was down 64-36. that was not good. after my speech on saturday night, there was a big turn for the better. he wins a great victory during a tough type of the year for
voting. he will win big in november followed by another tweeting congratulations to troy badder son on a great win in ohio. balderson is not the only candidate trump's endorsement appears to be helping. he tweeted his support for chris kovach in kansas's republican primary for governor. here's the result, kobach leading by 952 votes, jeff colyer, that's the incumbent republican governor, he had been the lieutenant governor, sam brownback left colyer takes over sort of an unelected as governor at least, here's the key though to keep in mind. the outstanding vote in kansas is almost all in johnson county. we talk about those more upscale suburbs, college changed all that stuff. we talked about them in ohio right outside kansas city. colyer leading by 13 points. certainly on paper you look and
say maybe colyer despite being behind but a very close race. joining me now jason johnson, from the root.com and msbc contributor. john podder ritz and jason. the president will try to find a way to declare victory with any of these. he's doing it in ohio tonight. maybe the republican party will be happy with that one. in can is if kobach were to win this thing, that is something the republican establishment doesn't want to see. >> the president is still the biggest loudest voice for the republican party. he can claim victories tonight and he has proven he can be successful in moving people in primaries. apparently trumpism only works for donald trump. people who push that kind of attitude, that kind of behavior, kobach with all the controversies in his background and the corruption and everything else like that, being
a trumpist works well in a republican primary. it may not be the best thing for you in a jen election. this is really important to understand sort of mathematically as a political scientist. the vast majority of special elections are in gerrymandered districts. it's generally not a swigs where in a special election you can beat the incumbent party. democrats haven't won very many federal elections. they've been winning at the state level. when you can break down a margin from 10 to 16 points to single digits knowing there will be a rematch in two months, every single republican has to be concerned heading into the fall and donald trump can't visit all the districts he needs to visit in order to stave off a blue wave. >> it's interesting. we talk about the trump effect. the obvious trump effect is the fact we had a competitive race in the 12th congressional district a democrat hadn't won since 1980. in terms of the result, the president going in on saturday making noise in this one, how do you look at the results in a way
the trump effect on this one? >> the way, trump is causing democratic enthusiasm. right? this election is -- ohio election is kind of a joke like it's happening in august. they have to run again in november with this recount stuff. >> september we may have an answer. >> who knows when the winner will be sworn in. he'll be for six weeks and run again, right? so the whole thing was a proxy. whether or not garrett haake said they were talking about social security and issues and that you will. nobody was fooled. it was a proxy race. right? so two things happen. so the democratic enthusiasm was huge and there was a trump effect almost certainly positively pore balderson. so the question i would have for dave jolly in this circumstance is, you're in trouble, you're a republican in trouble even if it's a district that looks pretty you know, split, maybe you want trump. maybe your only hope is ginning
Analysis and discussion of the day's top stories and compelling issues from Lawrence O'Donnell.
i was willing to accept the consequences. if you're barbara cop stock, you can't distance yourself from the president but you don't have to embrace him. >> from a democrat candidate's standpoint, it sounds like the president wants to be very visible this fall. if you're one of those democrats trying to unsaefrt a republican and the president is coming to your district a week or two out, are you saying uh-oh, he's going to get the republicans fired up or saying oh, he's going to get the democrats fired up. >> you're saying this is going to raise me money and i have a good chance he does as much damage as he does good. you saw this in the 12th district and you've seen this in other places. donald trump shows up wherever you want to go. you may not be in a position of being able to ask him to show up because a president decides when he wants to show up. sometimes he names the wrong candidate when he cops to a district. i don't know that if it's two weeks in october if you really want to be the person bringing
donald trump. he may not show up. he may not stay on record or message and worse, what kinds of messaging sacrifices will you have had to make at the altar of trump in the previous three weeks to make yourself attractive enough he's going to want to make that swing? i probably wouldn't want to bother with him. you work on the fact you've been an incumbent and care about the local community. you don't want to make this a national race if you're a republican right now. >> whatever the ultimate result in ohio 12, there is plenty of reason for democrats when they're cutting 12 points off trump's margin. the bigger picture coming up. you right now that i♪ ♪i believe, i really do believe that♪ ♪something's got a hold on me, yeah♪ ♪oh, it must be love
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we have been focusing all night on a special election in the 12th district in ohio. believe it or not, there's a lot more when it comes to elections tonight. a bunch of other big races happening around the country including michigan where the democratic state senate leader gretchen whitmer has won the democratic nomination for governor in that state. this according to "associated press." there's been a little bit of chaos in the vote counting out there for the secretary of state site. those are the numbers you see up on the screen showing you a low apartment in. whitmer the favorite of the establishment of the party. you're seeing in the a.p. count winning with 51% of the vote. she defeats apparently former top detroit health official abdul he will syed. he was backed by both bernie sanders and alexandria ocasio-cortez. they campaigned on his behalf ahead of this race.
joining us is democratic congressman eric swalwell of california. let me just ask you. >> good evening. >> you're trying to pick off 23 republican seats in november. how do you feel at this moment? >> very good. there are 79 sees more competitive than the seats where it's still too close to call with danny o'connor as our candidate. michigan, the contest you just referenced more democrats showed up to vote there. people are energized but when you get out of primaries and get to the general election and independents and republican voters can cross over i think we're in a better position. >> are you looking -- are you thinking at all that this word wave gets tossed around a lot. is it a disappointment for democrats if they barely hit that number? are you starting to think in terms of getting a more robust
majority that might have a little bit more clout in power there? >> we're not taking anything for granted at all. when you look at the conor lamb race or how close it is with danny o'connor's race, we believe in each of these competitive races it will be 1,000 plus or minus votes. that's why it's so important that our candidates are able to appeal not just to the democratic base but to maybe disenchanted republican voters independent voters. so we know how important this is and we're going to stick to making sure that they understand that their health care costs are going up. pay collects do not have certainty and that the corruption in washington needs to be addressed. we think that will be the margin of victory. >> one of the biggest messages from republicans against danny o'connor and if they do hang on and win, if balderson does, republicans will say what saved them at the end was running against the idea of speaker nancy pelosi because o'connor
had -- they ran the ad with o'connor on this network saying in the end he would vote with democrats for at the pel. do you expect nancy at the pel to be the democratic leader after this november's election? >> i do. and again, that's the message that shows the bankruptcy of their values that they're not talking about what they're for. they'll have a real problem if danny o'connor is coming within 1500 votes right now and there's 79 districts more competitive. they'd better come up with something more appealing to the values that voters have in their districts. >> eric swalwell, thank you for joining us. our panel is back with us. david jolly, john podhoretz, jason johnson johnson. i'm interested in the question about nancy pelosi. we've seen so many democrats in districts just like this, ohio 12. part of that portfolio is saying i'm not going to vote for nancy pelosi. if democrats get the majority
and it's slim and 20 or 30 candidates show up in washington pledging not to vote for nancy pelosi, can she be the democratic leader? >> she can. but here's the other thing. this works both ways. in the ohio district 12, remember, o'connor's campaign was saying hey, is balderson going to vote for jim jordan if he runs for a leadership position with the controversy going on with ohio state right now. there are lots of different things that can come into play. if the democrats win the house by a reasonable margin, nancy pelosi will initially step aside. dealing with donald trump is not the same thing as george bush. it's not the same thing as barack obama. the democrats need a wartime consigliere, younger more aggressive kind of leadership in order to keep pace with the excitement and enthusiasm of their base. i don't know if nancy pelosi and james clyburn can continue doing
that. >> you got a name in mind? >> so i have said for a long time, i think tim ryan will try something. i think swalwell. there are several members of the congressional black caucus thinking about it right now. i'm fairly confident the new leadership with the democratic party will be a much more diverse leadership than perhaps in the past. >> do you expect nancy pelosi to be democratic leader come january? >> i question whether pelosi is a figure as radioactive as other -- as other political leaders in congress have been to help the other side. like she's not newt. newt was you know, very useful. she's not dole. she's not -- so i think the hope of republicans is that they can somehow threaten republican vote ares to might stay home with the possibility that nancy pelosi will be speaker and a lot of low information voters will say who's nancy pelosi.
so if i'm right about that, then she doesn't have to be turned out because she won't be a figure, a lightning rod of controversy. it's not clear to me the democrats are responding to pelosi in the way they are because they're worried she is useful to republicans. it's nor like she's owed, she's been there a long time. let people that we're more simpatico with have the job. i think she was actually a pretty good speaker when she was tem speaker technically speaking. i'm not sure you should throw her aside for somebody untested. >> the whole drama there, joe crowley seemed in position if pelosi were to step aside. he's not anymore. jason johnson, david jolly, john, thank you all for staying up late on a very fun election night. coming up next, good news for democrats hoping for that blue wave in november. going to break down some of the top tier democratic targs this november. they may be more favorable turf for party than we saw in the
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lymphoma and other cancers have happened. don't start xeljanz xr if you have an infection. tears in the stomach or intestines, low blood cell counts, and higher liver tests and cholesterol levels have happened. your doctor should perform blood tests before you start and while taking xeljanz xr, and monitor certain liver tests. tell your doctor if you were in a region where fungal infections are common and if you have had tb, hepatitis b or c, or are prone to infections. don't let another morning go by without talking to your rheumatologist about xeljanz xr. all right. welcome back again. officially still too close to call out there in ohio 12. even if democrat danny o'connor ends up falling short there there may be something for democrats to look forward to in november. potentially in that district. but maybe elsewhere too as the cook political reports david wasserman tweeted tonight, there
are 6 republican held house seats less republican than ohio 12 according to the cook political partisan voting index. and there are also 119 less republican districts than that pa1 seat that democrats won back in march. the magic number for democrats to win the house, they need 23 to do that. we thought we would take a look at some of those districts that may be top tier target for democrats. why don't we look at this. this was the last one, the last special election it started all the way back in april 2017. since the 2016 election heading into 2018, these are all the special elections for the house. so many great memories. how many nights did we stay up like this. some of these were very suspenseful. clearly a pattern emerged. this is around wichita. this was mike pompeo's district. trump won by 27. the republicans did win the seat
in the special election but that was a move to the democrats of 20 points there from 27 to 7. you saw it in montana. entire state, that's the one where the republican candidate body slammed the reporter the night before the election. again, he did win that election. he might be in trouble this fall but that was a shift of 14 points for democrats. the one big exception on this list, it was georgia 6. it was the suburbs north of atlanta. that's the one thing when republicans, boy, if they want to be optimistic they can say hey, somehow that's going to be the rule here and everything else will be an outlier. but otherwise, look, double digit gains for democrats utah is a weird one. there was a third party candidate in the presidential race. trump's margin there. beak this, coming into tonight, the average gain for democrats versus 2016 was 10 1/2 points.
they beak gained 10 1/2 points tonight. if things hold, a little bit less than a point, we'll call it a point, republicans by a point there. bottom line, take a look at it this way. we say 23 is the magic number. we talked about where o'connor ran up is the magic number. hillary clinton won the one county where she won in 2016. he did 10 points better than her and the turnout was through the roof. who are the most nervous republicans right now? these 25. the republicans here all represent districts that were won by hillary clinton. i think these republicans, if they are looking at that hillary clinton portion of ohio tonight, they got to be worried. there's a lot of demographic similarities in some of these districts. the clinton district republicans i think have to be worried when they see a result like this tonight. coming up, today's other big political story, the trial of paul manafort. still nervous about finding a new apartment?
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thousands he admitted to embezzling from manafort. though paul manafort is facing charges from before his time as trump campaign chairman, today in court the trump campaign was also discussed. >> it was a tale of dueling narratives at the paul manafort trial today. the star witness rick gates was on the stand for hours accusing manafort of corruption, of tax evasion, of faking loan documents, of bank fraud. then gates came under withering cross examination by manafort's lawyers. the person for whom this is really bad is donald trump, because these guys were running his campaign and they both from the evidence in the trial, whatever the conviction or acquit tatal is, they both appe to have been sleaze bags. he parked millions of dollars in
foreign bank accounts outside the irs. he has not refuted that at the trial. his only hope is to say it was not intentional and therefore not a felony. gates has admitted to massive crimes including tax evasion, bank fraud and stealing from paul manafort. today it emerged he had a secret life, a mistress at a crash pad in london. it was an interesting trial, day in court today. manafort's lawyers did damage gates' credibility, but they didn't challenge sort of the overall assertions that he made in the morning, buttressed by documents that the prosecution introduced, some of which were e-mails from manafort clearing showing his involvement in shady behavior. joining us now harry litman, former federal prosecutor and deputy assistant attorney general under president clinton. ken is saying there it sounds
like gates's credibility was damaged by that cross examination today, the defense team really going after him. ultimately, do you think that matters? >> well, maybe a little. he did get beat up some, but that was to be expected. the important thing is not whether he's done sleazy or criminal things. it's whether the jury now believes he's telling the truth. and what he said is, look, here's my plea agreement. if i tell a lie, i lose it all. i'm incentivized for it. the defense made a textbook error. they said to him, well, if you're done so many lies, should the jury believe you now. he said yes. and they said why? and you learn in trial 101 don't ask a question you don't know the answer to. he was prepped for it and he said, because i'm here to tell the truth, paul manafort had the same choice, he chose another path. i think that hit home. the important thing is not what
he's done in the past but whether as he's sitting there they have reason to believe him. that is not just his word, but all the corroborating evidence that the government has introduced. so they scratched him up some, but i don't think in any critical way. >> i'm curious too what you make of the judge in this case. there's been some coverage, some attention to his behavior in the courtroom, some withering criticism really of the defense team, telling one of the lawyers, saying, i see tears in your eyes, essentially saying, maybe i made you cry. what do you make of what the judge is up to here? >> he actually said that to a prosecutor, a lead prosecutor. >> i'm sorry. i said defense. >> that's all right. i've been in front of him as a prosecutor. he does take a special relish in sort of slapping you around. but he's gone farther here. there's not only what you just
said, which at least was out of earshot of the jury. but within the jury's earshot when gates testified that manafort was on top of everything he did, judge ellis volunteered apropos of nothing, well not everything, obviously, since he didn't know about the money you were stealing, this in front of the jury. that's really improper. you know, ellis is known for being feisty, but this is the kind of thing that can prejudice the united states. i don't think it will, but if it does, there's no appeal. if there's an acquittal here, the united states can't reverse it because of double jeopardy. >> if there is a conviction on the other hand in terms of mueller's investigation, look, this case is officially -- it's about the business practices of paul manafort. the trump campaign came up today in the court, but this has not primarily been about the trump campaign. but in terms of mueller's
investigation of russian interference in the 2016 election, the trump campaign, if he gets a conviction, does it in any way feed into that? is there a connection there? is there a next step if he gets this connection? >> yeah. so i think in a few ways. first, as you mentioned, it does have a little bit to do with the russia stuff even in the trial. of course, manafort and gates, as you mentioned at the top, during the campaign in the thick of it, manafort's losing several hundred thousand dollars a month, in fact. but i just think more generally, trump has so invested in the notion this is a rigged phony probe and a decisive win here by mueller just strengthens his hand, strengthened rosenstein's hand and weakens trump's commensurately. >> the drama is going to continue inside that courthouse. we've got accounts from our
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but i think there that was clearly the question that was asked and when they came back after the break he went in a completely different direction. i surmised that's what happened in the moment. >> that's why you need pros in the courtroom watching these things for us to explain it to dopes like me. barbara mcquade, former u.s. attorney in meche mitch. thank you so much, barb. i really appreciate it. >> thanks for having me. i even got to ride in an elevator with brandon van grek. >> did you really in the counterespionage prosecutor guy? >> i did. >> did you say hi to him? >> i did. it's been great fun. >> i love your life. thanks, barb. that does it for us tonight. we will see you again tomorrow. may we all someday have the opportunity to ride in an elevator with a veteran counterespionage prosecutor when we're in a position to know who that is. imagine the thrill. now it's time for "the last word" with lawrence o'donnell. good evening, lawrence. >> good evening, rachel. and imagine the thrill for rachel maddow viewers who finally have you back. i have a message from your fans, rachel, from coast to coast, from massachusetts to california. please don't ever take a
Analysis and discussion of the day's top stories and compelling issues from Lawrence O'Donnell.
evolve as we push through this part of the testimony for sure. >> and there's going to be a lot more. and we have to get straight from you to steve kornacki with about one second in between because it's too close to call, as you know. >> right on. thanks, man. >> thanks, rachel. it is too close to call in ohio's 12th congressional district. and that means joining us now with the latest on the ohio 12th congressional race is steve kornacki. steve, where are we? >> almost everything is in, lawrence. right now we are almost entirely down to one county, basically it's this. danny o'connor, the democrat, just in the last two minutes before i came on here, he took the lead in the overall count. you can do the math there at home. 201 votes is the lead for danny o'connor. now, that's the good news for democrats. the bad news for democrats is he did it by basically exhausting what was left in franklin county. franklin county, it looks tiny on your screen but it's a third, at least a third of the vote that's going to be cast tonight in this district. this is densely populated columbus. very near columbus suburbs right here. and danny o'connor's been
were worse. there were certainly some that were worse. i think balderson -- oh, wlaushs, let me just do the math right here. we just got a burst. we went from 66 to 82. about half the outstanding vote came in as i was talking. it took it to about 3,900 votes districtwide. countywide. and that does put balderson back in the league by .4 of a percentage point. that is a margin, 677 -- 741. 741 votes is the margin right now. 741 votes is balderson's lead. 17% of the vote still to be counted in delaware county. and just making sure we didn't get any updates here. still a sliver here in franklin county. i'm curious to see what they are. and then -- look. there's two things to keep in mind here. and i want to just get the countywide up here. number one, state law in ohio, if you are within .5 of a point
that's a recount. it's .4 right now. that's one thing to keep in mind. the other is we say this when they're this close at the end of the night. provisional ballots. we're trying to dig up some statistics here. we do think that democrats are likely to do better than the republicans in the provisional ballots. about 2%. if you looked in 2016, about 2% of the county's totals here ended up being provisional ballot. so there is probably a couple thousand that might be floating around there. we would expect the democrats to do a little better. that could be a source there for o'connor. it's really got to be in the hundreds of votes for that to kick in. it might be, though. we've got to see what comes in here in delaware county and what's remaining if they happen to be good precincts for o'connor, he can keep that margin where it is right now, squeeze a little bit more out of here. he'd be within that .5 and we'd be talking provisionals. obviously, if you're a republican you're feeling better now than if you're a democrat about where this is going to land. but this is still -- this is still a little suspense here, lawrence.
>> steve, what is that name at the bottom of the ballot that's pulling 1% of that vote, and who does that affect? >> that's manchik. that's the green party candidate. you can theorize all you want. you would certainly say the green party candidate on the left, the sort of obvious thing you'd say is the green party candidate more likely to draw votes from a democrat than a republican. you could also make the case, know, that hey, are there republicans out there, they don't like donald trump, they don't like the republican party of donald trump and they don't want to vote democratic, do they just use the other name that's on the ballot. but obviously when you get this close that becomes the question. 1,102 votes. it is less than 1,102 votes that are separating danny o'connor and troy balderson. zplt green party once again possibly making a difference in the outcome of democrat versus republican. it's starting to look that way. steve, thank you very much. we're going to come back to you as this develops. we're joined by amanda wurtz. democratic strategist and vice president of the remington road group and a political consulting group based in ohio. david jolly, a former republican congressman from florida.
november. and democrats have a lot of reason to be optimistic. >> cornell belcher, what are you seeing in the ohio 12th tonight and what do you think it means to democrats if the green party candidate in effect snatches away a victory tonight for democrats? >> i want to underline what's just been said here. look, there are 60-plus seats that are more competitive than this one. and if i'm sitting at the republican congressional campaign committee, i've got to hit the panic button. right? this is not a seat that should in fact be close at all. this is not a seat that has even been competitive. but i think you're seeing the pattern that we're seeing in other places. and i think governor kasich, republican governor kasich, hit on this. donald trump can fire up the base of the republican party. but you need moderate republicans, especially in those suburban, sort of upscale suburban seats. you have a lot of moderate women, college-educated women. and you see the pattern of this, sort of these especially women, especially college-educated women breaking hard away from the republican party.
even hard grert republican party this year than we saw in 2006 which puts a lot of districts like this, makes a lot of districts like this competitive. and if you carry that trend over where you see these upwardly mobile suburban districts breaking away from republicans at this clip it's kind of time to hit the panic button and as a republican you have to choose, do i want to save the republican party or do i want to stick closely with donald trump, right? you're going to have to choose between the two because this is a panic button sort of moment. >> let's go back to the numbers. we're going to go back to the numbers with steve kornacki. it's changing by the minute. steve, what do we have now? >> yeah. so i can tell you what the situation is. first of all, just again, the margin we're looking at is 743 votes right now for balderson. you'll note it still says too close to call. why does it say too close to call? look, you get into these situations when they're this close and, you know, nine times out of ten the party that ends up losing starts saying
provisional ballots, provisional ballots, provisional ballots. but this is so close right now and what we know about provisional ballots and we're still learning a little about it suggests we need to understand how many provisional ballots there are in this district because we expect them to break more for the democrat than for the republican. it's 743. there are still some precincts, not many at all, but there are still some precincts in franklin county where o'connor's been rung up the score. so with whatever is left there you would expect him to make a small but eat into that 743. what else is left? only one thing in tonight's vote. 18% of the vote still to come in delaware. the way things are going that would be padded a little bit for balderson. you would expect that. you would expect that. and then the question then is provisional ballots. what we have is the counties are starting to tell us. that's why our decision desk is not changing this from too close to call because we are finding out what is out there and we know what's happened in the past. we have a sense of it. the counties are telling us one by one how many provisional
ballots they have. we've only got two. it's not very useful right now because they're very small numbers. these are very small places. morrow is -- there are 68 provisional ballots here. but morrow is rural. the entire population of this county, population is 34,000. but there are 68 provisional ballots there. muskingham you can come close to doubling it again. small but this is balderson's neck of the woods. 117. but what we want to know really this is the heart of the district pb these three counties account for 80-plus percent of the population. in franklin county, in delaware county, in loink county, how many were there. if you look at the math for these things in the past they break -- in the congressional race here's what i mean. the last time you had a congressional race where we could track these things a little bit the republican candidate did 17 points worse on the provisional ballots than he did in the overall vote. so there was a pretty big drop-off there. that's why we're looking at it this way. the other thing i said is again,
if you're within half a point, 0.5%, there is a state law on the books that says that's, it you're going to a recount, we're not calling a winner, we can't call a winner. they're within that right now. they're signature at 0.4. >> thanks, steve. we'll come back to you as you have more developments there. amanda wurst, you were about to say something as we went to steve. go ahead. >> in terms of republicans hitting the payne button, these two have to match each other again in november. and we have all five statewide executive offices on the ballot as well as a u.s. senate race. and each one of those candidates going to have to look at this race and say how do i thread that very delicate needle, by embracing president trump, that's critical to securing my base, and incorporating grofsh john kasich, who's growing to help me with moderates and swing voters. troy balderson has frankly faltered every time trying to thread that needle. >> amanda, just to go back to
what's going to happen in ohio, this is a special election. special elections for congressional seats don't carry you any further than the end of that particular congress. so this seat is going to be up again in november. do you expect the same two candidates to run? do you expert loser tonight to run for this seat in november? >> so we had a very unique process in that the primary for both the special and the general took place in may. these two absolutely will have a rematch in november. and troy balderson has been greatly supported by the republican establishment apparatus. millions of dollars have been spent to support his candidacy. that's frankly just not going to be an option as the map expands and there's more fires to put out for national republicans. >> david, that's a very important point that amanda makes, is that the thing about safe seats is you that don't have to spend money on them and the party counts on not spending money on safe seats so that they can spend their money on the
contested seats on the difficult pickups. if they have to spend money, as they did in this campaign, the special election, if they spend this kind of money again, around ohio 12th in november. >> to amanda's point, there's not going to be the resources for it. i was the productive a special election, and god bless these two candidates but particularly their supporters who are probably arriving at the finish line exhausted and put their heart and soul into it. november's going to be very different. it's not going to have the national focus. nor is it going to have the resources. what's going on at the national republican congressional committee in real time right now is they are looking at their current incumbents and already having conversations about which ones they're going to write off, which ones they know are going to lose in november and then they shift resources away from those resources to the races they have to save. we're in an environment going into november where you're wondering where the cut line is. is it incumbent republicans favored by three or four or five? how high does the water in the
blue wave actually reach? that's what they're trying to assess right now. and at some point very soon three months out now the national republicans are going to begin to cut their losses, move resources away from certain races. this may simply be one of them that they can't continue to spend on a race that should not be competitive. >> joining our analysis now is democratic national committee chairman tom perez. chairman perez, what are you seeing in ohio 12th tonight? >> it's amazing, lawrence, that we're having this conversation. as you've pointed out, 35 years or so since a democrat has won this seat. it's gerrymandered beyond all get out by john boehner on behalf of one of his friends in congress. and here we are in a dead heat. and whoever wins there's going to be a rematch in 91 days. and what excited me, and i was out in ohio last week, what excited me was the unity of purpose on the democratic side. danny o'connor had six opponents in the primary'll. and after that primary everybody
came together. everybody was united. the local indivisible chapter supported one of his opponents and they were all in. the swing left. the labor movement. the d triple c. the dnc. the ohio democratic party. everybody together. and that is why we got so close. and we'll see what happens here. if ever we need yet another reminder of the importance of getting out there and voting, here we are in another nail-biter. that's why it's so important for people to exercise their right to vote. and frankly, that's why republicans like the republican secretary of state in ohio engage in such constant shenanigans to make it harder for people to vote. >> we're going to have to go right back to steve kornacki with the latest numbers. >> yeah, lawrence, we just got a bunch of them. i'm processing it with you. balderson's lead has expanded in basically all -- get this. this is delaware county. so basically awful delaware county -- there is still some left but almost all of it's in. balderson you can see he's expanded his lead. this has been trump got 55.
he's sitting at 54. 96% of the vote is in in delaware county. what that's done districtwide is it's put him up by 1,680 votes. the lead for o'connor is 1,685. that is 0.8%. what is -- sorry, i just spilled some water. what is left here is a very tiny sliver of flaink, a scattering -- small scattering of precincts in delaware, but also this. i'm not kiding when i say absentees and provisionals. we're tracking these. what we have right now that we know of, and we know of the counts for everything outside of the two major -- the two biggest counties here. delaware and franklin account for 60% of the population. we don't have any counts on what's still to be counted there in terms of absentee and provisional. outside of that, though, we are sitting at 3,730. this is in 40% of the district populationwise. 3,730. what are they?
about 1,000 of them are provisional ballots. and we do expect on the whole districtwide those to break democratic. the other 2,730 are absentee. a very, very, very small portion of that we expect to be military ballots. those we assume would break republican. this is the question. those other absentee ballots, are they early votes, are they votes -- a huge church, of votes in this district were cast early and o'connor won the early vote by a very large margin. folks who were watching earlier saw this as it played out. he won the early vote very big. 3,730 in the rural part of the district. when you add whatever we get out of franklin and delaware you can expect that number to more than double. you'd be talking ballpark figure 8,000 total, 8,500, something like that. and again, at that current split that would be what, about 6,000 absentee slash military plus about 2,500 provisional. with the provisional expected to break democratic. and the question then that looms is if the bulk of those absentee -- we have to understand exactly what they
mean by absentee. we're trying to find out right now. but if the bulk of the absentee are from that category of early vote that we saw earlier, that would be the -- that's an if. we're trying to find out right now. but that's why again with numbers like this where you still see too close to call on your screen. >> steve, we're going to be back to you, steve, whenever you have more to report to us on those numbers. and tom perez, i want to go back to you on what this means for other democratic campaigns, what you're looking at tonight, what it means strategically. what did you see in danny o'connor's campaign that you think you want to see duplicated in other campaigns around the country? >> well, listen, danny o'connor was fighting for the issues that mattered most not only in his district but frankly across america. fighting for access to health care. he wants to make sure that if you have a pre-existing condition you can still keep your health care coverage. his opponent wants to dot opposite. fighting to bring down prescription drug costs. fighting to preserve medicare and social skourt. and his opponent wanted to raise
the eligibility age for those things. these are nuts and bolts fdr democratic issues that we have been fighting for and that's how we've been winning. in response to your question, again, there were something like 60 congressional seats that were tighter than this district, and you see we're in a jump ball here. if there's one thing we've learned over the last 18 months on this job, lawrence, it's that we can win everywhere in this country. we have been winning everywhere. we flipped 43 seats in state races, federal races from red to blue in places like oklahoma and elsewhere, where donald trump won by quite a bit. and we're doing it by fielding great candidates, by organizing everywhere, by organizing early, by leading with our values. we're fighting for an economy that works for everyone. we're fighting for health care. we're fighting for our democracy. that's why we are winning. this gives me great confidence not only in the house races but we've got opportunities to take over governorships. and this is a 12-year cycle.
we have an opportunity, and we've been organizing early in wisconsin, in michigan, in ohio. all of these places. great opportunities for democratic pickups. south dakota, polled the other day. guy named billy sutton, best candidate they've had there since the mid '70s, down by four points and surging. we're organizing across this country and we're talking about those values that are quintessentially american values. the values of opportunity. the values that say we're all in this together. we're not going to play this zero sum politics of i succeed only if you fail. people want their leaders to fight for everyone. and that's exactly what we're doing as democrats. >> david jolly mentioned earlier that the republican candidate, no matter how this comes out tonight, will be the republican candidate in november and will have much more difficulty getting financial help from the national republican party when you get into november because of
the various demands and extended demands we have around the country. what are you going to do from the democratic candidate in this district when it's harder for to you concentrate on an individual district like this? >> that's why these coordinated campaigns are so important. and that's why what i said a few minutes is go is so critically important bep don't know what's going to happen in this race. it's a jump ball. but here's what we do know. democrats were united in their purpose. they were united coming together. it was the indivisible chapter, swing left, the d triple c, the dnc, the ohio democratic party, the labor movement. everybody was coming together. and we see that in ohio with rich cordray running for governor. great candidates for attorney general, secretary of state, treasurer. and sherrod brown, who is a brand in himself, such a leader, such a titan. so when we invest in coordinated campaigns, and that's the essence of the dnc. our investments in infrastructure are designed to
everybody up and down the ticket. we've already invested in wisconsin in a coordinated campaign. we don't know who the governor nominee is going to be on the democratic side. we will know in about a week. but we didn't wait for that. we invested early, we invested prior to the state supreme court race that was held earlier this year where rebecca daallet won by 11 points. i think we can beat scott walker. i think we can elect a democrat in michigan. i think we can win ohio and we're going to compete everywhere. and those coordinated campaigns where we're all in this together, that's how we win. >> democratic party chairman tom perez. thank you very much for joining us tonight. really appreciate it. >> always a pleasure, lawrence. >> when we come back, we'll have more with our panel on this election night and steve kornacki will be the first thing we see when we come back with the latest numbers. a hotel can make or break a trip. and at expedia, we don't think you should be rushed into booking one. that's why we created expedia's add-on advantage. now after booking your flight, you unlock discounts on select hotels right until the day you leave. ♪
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it is another dramatic election night in america. this time in the 12th congressional district in ohio. which has been in republican hands for over 35 years. tonight the democrat is within one percentage point of the republican as the returns stand tonight, steve kornacki is back with us now to give us the latest on those numbers. >> lawrence, let me just take you through the numbers. the margin, what happened is the final few precincts in franklin county, the democratic stronghold, came in. that's all in. the margin right now sits at 1,688 for balderson. you can say everything's counted except there's just a few precincts, 96% in delaware. where are those precincts in they look like they're in areas that are pretty good for o'connor relative to the rest of the county. we're not talking places where he's going to be getting 60%, 65%, 70% of the vote.
i think we're talking places where he may not lose thatch more ground, may make slight gains, eat into that 1,688. that leaves you with two questions right now. number one, it's the provisional ballots. we certainly expect these to break for democrats. we certainly expect them to break for democrats by a pretty solid margin. we think -- we don't have numbers from every county. we think they're going to be in the neighborhood of 2,500 provisional ballots here. if you gave a realistic guess, if you said democrats, you know, got 60% of the provisional ballots here, maybe a little on the low end, they got 60%, they would net from that 500 votes. there would be a 500 vote plurality. if they could get 2/3 of those you'd be getting close to 850. maybe they get a 900 vote -- trying to eat into that figure. as you can see, that would start to get them there. that would take a big chunk. wouldn't quite get them there. then that leaves the other issue here. this is a bit of mystery. and our folks at the decision desk, i'm waiting on word on this. the state of ohio through the
secretary of state's website and the board of elections they're saying they have uncounted absentee ballots that currently number 2,750. and that's not even counting delaware and franklin. so from the rest of the district we're being told individual in these counties there's nearly 3,000 votes there. what are those votes? are those early votes that just haven't been counted yet? we think some of them, a small number, not nearly 2,700 are military votes. so what are they? are they actual votes that were counted? are they early votes? the early vote went democratic. we're trying to find out. i will pass word as soon as i know it because that becomes the key question. if the provisionals break democratic solidly, if o'connor kind of treads water in what's left in delaware you're looking at a gap then of potentially under 1,000 votes. it does raise the question of would you be within 0.5% and have that automatic recount and it raises the question of are there other votes out there that are falling into this category of uncounted absentee that the
secretary of state of ohio is telling us are there. >> steve, we're going to let you go back to studying the numbers and find out more about those absentee ballots. we're going to go to the panel. we'll come back to you, steve, whenever we have new numbers there. we're joined by amanda wurst, democratic strategist in ohio. david jolly, former republican congressman. cornell belcher, democratic strategist. and amanda, you know this district better than any of us do. i'm just reading this tweet from frank luntz, republican pollster, who's pointing out that the ohio 12th district has only once, only once since 1938 has it gone to a democrat. that was once in 1980 when it went to a democrat. so the hold, the republican hold on the ohio 12th goes all the way back to 1938. and in the most recent redistricting, as raich maldow was pointing out in the last hour, it was wildly
gerrymandered to make it more solidly republican. >> this is probably one of the most -- of the reddest districts in the count -- in the state. particularly when you look that it does have part of franklin county, which is trending more and more progressive. columbus in particular has ohio state university and a number of other economic drivers that are bringing younger voters to stay in the city. i think also what you see in this district and in this race in particular is you have really seen -- i know we've talked a lot about the coordinated campaign, but also you are taking a look at a lot of progressive organizations, independent progressive organizations that have been on the ground since 2016. and because they've been building this progressive infrastructure in central ohio and throughout the state, one example is for our future ohio that has been canvassing in this district, was able to flip a switch. so not only were they able to
engage in this race and add capacity where there hasn't been in previous elections, but also this was a great trial run for november and a great opportunity to see what the progressive infrastructure can do when it flexes its muscle. >> yeah. david jolly, this is unlike other congressional elections where when these two candidates, the winner and the loser if we have one tonight, wakes up tomorrow, they are both running full-scale congressional campaigns just as hard as they were running yesterday. they will be running tomorrow for the november version of this election. >> that's it. i woke up the day after my special election and had five or six months until i faced re-election in an equally competitive district as the special. that's when party leaders told me your first job is to go raise money. and not to legislate, not to do anything you that expect to do as a member of congress but go raise money for november. lawrence, i think one of the interesting things we may be talking about tomorrow -- >> david, let's just pause on that. you're talking about you win a
special election as a republican in florida, you go to washington, you get sworn in, and they say to you forget about showing up for committee hearings, forget about your duties that you just took an oath to here in this building, your job is to raise money for yourself because you are much more on your own now when it comes to the november election. >> that's it, lawrence. you can imagine when i first said that publicly. it was actually on "60 minutes." party leaders kind of put me in a corner. yeah, look, i had a meeting with a member of party leadership and my deputy chief of staff over at the nrcc where i was told your first job every day when you wake up is to raise money. and i believe they set the target at about $18,000 a day. they wanted me to raise $2 million in about six months. and understand i couldn't rely on party resources or outside money because everybody had just given everything they had. i got called to the carpet by the nrcc. they said that never happened. so i provided the outlook calendar, the date, the time and the room. and ever since then they've shut up about it. but that is whoever wins this
race tonight is going to be looking at a serious fund-raising hole. lawrence, one thing to watch in the morning is this. what does the donald trump wing of the party -- actually it is the party, the 90% that is donald trump republicans. what do they say about this? because the republican candidate in ohio, though he has notionally embraced donald trump, he has not gone full make america great again. i actually think you're going to see the president and his minions say the reason this was so close is because our candidate in ohio was not donald trump enough. and they're going to lay the blame on the candidate in ohio for underperforming. they're going to say if he was closer to donald trump he would have done better tonight. >> and cornell belcher, we have a report from governor kasich, republican governor of ohio, who said that the republican candidate troy balderson did not invite donald trump to come to that district to campaign for him but donald trump came anyway. >> well, the problem is -- and you were saying it's all across the country. is donald trump does in fact turn off moderate voters, right?
and you have a whole swath of those particularly moderate women who've been leaning republican right now who clutch their pearls every time donald trump speaks. and governor kasich is right. in these swing moderate districts where you do need to win, you know, college educated women, donald trump is a problem. but i also want to go back to something you said -- you that pointed to earlier, lawrence. we're looking at an election here that's probably after the provisionals is probably going to be less than a point. right? so i have to say to my fellows who are voting the green party, look, we are facing an existential threat to our climate and to our democracy. right? and i know the democratic party isn't perfect. but these elections are too close for you to not make a choice between the lesser of two evils. and in the end you know very well there's a party that doesn't even believe in climate change and one party that
embraces science. we cannot allow the party that does not believe in climate change to continue to win by these narrow margins. right? people voting third party. and we saw the protest vote in 2000 -- in the last presidential election, 2016, which i think sort of swung the election away from hillary. i hear you green party. i hear you're not happy with the democrats. but at this point you have to make a choice between the lesser of two evils. >> we're going to squeeze in a break here. when we come back, we'll have steve kornacki and the latest numbers. (vo) why do subaru forester
we are back with our breaking news coverage tonight, of tonight's big special election in ohio's 12th congressional district. steve kornacki is back with us and he has the latest numbers. steve, what do you have? >> they are all the same -- all the votes that were cast today, they are now all counted. so you've got 100% reporting from all of these counties and you can see the margin there, the margin is 1,766 votes for balderson. so the question is right now you can see that 0.9 points. that would be north of that 0.5 that triggers a recount. the question now just becomes can that survive the provisional ballots, the absentee ballots, the military votes that are out there? we think there's going to be probably a little bit north of 2,500, maybe, say, around 2,700 provisional ballots that are cast in this district. if they break democratic, you could do the math reasonably speaking if the democrats netted
700, 800 vote plurality out of the provisionals. that would take a big bite out of that. it would raise the question are they going to get within 0.5. it would not overtake balderson. we also had the question of absentee ballots, did they exist. what is the secretary of state telling us? we think now there's a small number of military votes. we expect they would break republican. a very small number. and the thinking now is those absentee ballots they're probably ballots that were mailed out and not returned and then listed as encounted absentee. it looks like provisional military basically what's left. balderson ahead. it looks like the democrats if you told them at the start of the night they were going to get turnout and support they got at franklin they'd say they won. the republicans getting bailed out by the rural areas where trump surged in 2016. >> steve, so are we going to have more votes counted tonight? >> the procedure and the rule in ohio is that no provisional ballot is counted for at least ten days after the election. >> okay.
so you've created a bit of suspense there. we're going to come back to you, steve, in a minute. msnbc correspondent garrett haik joins us from the o'connor headquarters in westerville, ohio. garrett haik, a group of democrats there waiting for their first victory in over 35 years in this district. what's the latest from there? >> well, lawrence, it sounds like they're going to have to wait a little bit longer. they're trying to keep enthusiasm up here, but as steve pointed out the numbers are just really, really tough to make up for this democratic campaign here of danny o'connor, who by a lost accounts really ran pretty much error-free baseball. essentially the last couple of days of this campaign. but really ran into a wall with the math. i can tell you by being on the ground here the last few days the enthusiasm for this candidacy and for the idea of taking back the house is absolutely real here. and it's something that's going to buoy democrats across the country, that they outperformed
here, regardless of the final result. but that said, moral victories do not a majority make. and republicans i think will look at this and say their theory of the case, of bringing in president trump, juicing turnout in rural parts of the district, and then holding on tight might have been enough to get them through here. can they replicate that in other parts of the state? i think they're less excited to test that theory than democrats are to test the theory of taking good candidates and running against this president in a lot of suburban districts that look a lot like this around the country. >> the one thing we know we're going to hear in both candidates' speeches tonight, garrett-s that they're going to ask their supporters to get out there first thing tomorrow and keep this campaign going because they're both going to be running for this seat in november. garrett haake at democratic headquarters in the 12th congressional district. thanks for joining us. we are now joined by republican strategist mike murphy. mike, joining us by phone, really appreciate you getting in here.
you have run presidential campaigns that needed to win ohio. you've campaigned hard in ohio. you know the 12th congressional district. what are you seeing in that district tonight? >> well, it's an interesting one because nothing beats winning. so congratulations to balderson, who i think is going to take it. but this is a very close race deep in the republican end zone. there are more than probably 45 republican incumbents who have worse districts than this generic generically. so it's a win for the republicans but it's a chilling one because we're not supposed to be having to spend millions of dollars to defend a district like this. i think both parties can find something to brag about. the republicans held this seat. that counts for a lot. but this thing shows there are bad headwinds for the gop, mostly driven by the president. you can see it, we need a little more time to look at the precinct by precinct numbers. clearly the rural affection for the president is still there.
the base republican affection is still there. but the suburban affection is eroding and giving the democrats a real opportunity, and the more democratic areas are really worked up and i think we're going to see when we really analyze this some turnout there, which is another sign that these fall elections are going to be super competitive in a lot of places they normally aren't. >> mike, we always try to interpret special election results for what they mean for the next congressional election, but we rarely get special election results this close on the calendar, 90 days away from the november election. is there something more important in tonight's message than we would have gotten if this was six months ago? >> well, i think this is the pennsylvania 18 trend. this time it went our way. but these are, if you look at the bigger picture, almost margin of error elections, both in the republican backfield. so there is a blue wave. it's up against? fairly safe republican seats to get beyond the 24.
but there's no doubt the majority is very much in play. and i talked to a bunch of republicans in swing districts, and they're nervous as hell. there will be fighting because this is also a wake-up call for the gop. both sides have something here. >> mike murphy, thanks for joining us tonight. really appreciate it. we're going to have more on this special congressional election in ohio's 12th district straight after this break. steve kornacki will be back with us. wait at the counter... ...and choose any car in the aisle. and i don't wait when i return, thanks to drop & go. at national, i can lose the wait...and keep it off. looking good, patrick. i know. (vo) go national. go like a pro. crisp leaves of lettuce. freshly made dressing. clean food that looks this good. delivered to your desk. now delivering to home or office.
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♪ go your own way once-daily anoro contains two medicines called bronchodilators that work together to significantly improve lung function all day and all night. anoro is not for asthma. it contains a type of medicine that increases risk of death in people with asthma. the risk is unknown in copd. anoro won't replace rescue inhalers for sudden symptoms and should not be used more than once a day. tell your doctor if you have a heart condition, high blood pressure, glaucoma, prostate, bladder, or urinary problems. these may worsen with anoro. call your doctor if you have worsened breathing, chest pain, mouth or tongue swelling, problems urinating, vision changes, or eye pain while taking anoro. ask your doctor about anoro. ♪ go your own way get your first prescription free at anoro.com. get your first prescription free i we worked with pg&eof to save energy because wenie. wanted to help the school. they would put these signs on the door to let the teacher know you didn't cut off the light. the teachers, they would call us the energy patrol.
so they would be like, here they come, turn off your lights! those three young ladies were teaching the whole school about energy efficiency. we actually saved $50,000. and that's just one school, two semesters, three girls. together, we're building a better california. monitor their blood glucose every day. which means they have to stop. and stick their fingers. repeatedly. today, life-changing technology from abbott makes it possible to track glucose levels. without drawing a drop of blood, again and again. the most personal technology, is technology with the power to change your life. life. to the fullest. and we're back with our special coverage of tonight's special congressional election in the ohio 12th congressional
district. steve kornacki is back with us with the latest numbers. and what you're reporting, steve, on when we're going to find out about the rest of these ballots. >> yeah. okay, boy. certainly balderson is feeling good now, leading this thing by 1,266. we have a number of provisional ballots for the county. 3,435 is the number district-wide of provisional ballots. one, that's basically double the level of balderson's lead in this thing. we expect provisions to break democratic. would that be enough to break the 1,276? it doesn't seem likely. will it be enough to trigger a recount? that certainly looms as a possibility. 3,435 is what we're looking at
for the provisionals. the secretary of state's website says the provisional ballots are not to be counted for ten days following the election. we're making sure that's not a typo. we're checking the books on that. >> joining our discussion now is brian williams who will be seamlessly taking over this coverage at 11:00 p.m. and brian, we're going to ask the secretary of state, would they please consider counting those ballots during your hour instead of waiting those ten days. >> first of all, i was going to ask you, what about tonight is seamless? why start now? and secondly, oh, it looks like we -- >> oh, we have danny sullivan -- danny o'connor, sorry, speaking at his election headquarters. let's listen. >> -- of our country. i am so grateful. i am so grateful for all of your support. you believed in us. in a race that the pundits said we had no chance even being in.
you proved them wrong. they gerrymandered, they gerrymandered and carved up a district to favor the establishment. but you know what? they never saw you coming. and i'll tell you what. and i want to say something. i want to thank the people behind me, my family, my parents, my sister, my uncle buzz, and the love of my life, my fiance spencer. we just good engaged a couple of months ago, nothing else going on, right? i'll tell you what, this campaign, it is truly something special. we have gone to every corner of this district, because we know if you want to represent the seven counties of this district in congress, you need to fight for delaware county. you need to fight for lincoln
county, merion county, richland county, franklin county. that's what we're going to do when we go to washington. as i went across this district, i heard over and over that the people of central ohio are sick and tired of the same old washington politics. folks want new leadership. a new generation of voices that aren't concerned with party politics but with what's best for mansfield and delaware and columbus and newark and everywhere in between. and as we see division and discord tearing apart our country, we must remember that each and every one of us are god's children and that all of us need to be treated with dignity and respect. and i think we can use a lot more of that spirit in washington these days. we have to work. we have to work to find common ground. we have to not only listen to
but respect one another. and that's why i'll work with anyone that wants to deliver solutions for central ohio, because too often folks retreat to their partisan corners and aren't focused on getting things done for working families right here in our community. in our fight, we've rejected, we've rejected corporate pac money, because big money, we know that big money from big corporations is just one part of the problem with our election. this is a grassroots campaign. powered by small donations. powered by people who just want to have a chance at winning the future for their community. we had seniors on fixed incomes writing us 10 and $20 checks. we had young people saddled with college debt chipping in because they wanted to be able to afford
health care some day. there was a woman who had severe arthritis who could only write two post cards a day but every day she wrote those post cards. she kept fighting. she kept fighting because she and all of us are fighting for our country. we're fighting for a better america. we went door to door. we went house to house. we made our case for change. we're going to make that case tomorrow. we're not stopping now. tomorrow we rest and then we keep fighting through to november. let's go out there. let's get it done. let's change this country. thank you all. >> brian williams, the one predictable line in both of these candidates' speeches tonight was "we're going to be out there tomorrow, fighting." they are now, no matter who is the ultimate winner of this thing, running for that november election about 90 days away from now. >> lawrence, it seems like you've worked in politics
before, because even though it's an august night, that was a november pivot if i've ever heard one. and you're right, the incumbent member of congress will get a stapler and a desk and a chair on capitol hill but they won't feel like moving in because nothing will feel permanent, because we'll be back covering this race at some point. as you know, as you've been saying, special elections are special animals. because the politics industry has diminishing terms for every different demographic. you're dealing with low information voters, as they are affectionately called, because there's no incumbent to market. there is no incumbent to run on. you're telling life stories in real time. so that is part of the interesting story we've seen play out here tonight. >> and brian, we just saw this 31-year-old candidate making his first big election night speech. and he obviously is going to be running pretty hard against the 56-year-old troy balderson in these next 90 days. we may not have a winner.
given that the results of this election can't be certified until at least these provisional ballots are counted, and so we're not going to have a seated member of congress for possibly a couple of weeks. >> yeah, tonight you had me at good evening. i've been sitting in my office watching lawrence o'donnell, and i still felt the need to be honest to our customers. we love having folks as we bridge the hour into late night, this is going to go well beyond late night. we are very likely not going to have a result tonight. when we wake up tomorrow, to your point, if the recount triggers are in fact triggered, we'll be at this a long time. >> brian, i have some scripts about the manafort trial that you can use. i'll have them sent over, that we could not get into this coverage tonight. steve kornacki, i want to get a last word from you about what remains to be done in ohio when it comes to counting votes and certifying an election. >> 1,700 votes is the margin for
balderson. 3,400 is the number of provisionals. it may take them ten days to get those counted. if they break democratic in bringing numbers which you kind of expect, that could drop the margin lower enough that it's within 0.5%. then there's the mandatory statewide recount. listening to o'connor there, that wasn't a concession speech, that wasn't a victory speech. one way or another, he's moving on to november. for the next couple of weeks, potentially, possibly, the fate of this special election still remains officially unresolved. >> i want to thank all of our guests who joined us in this live coverage tonight. amanda wurst, brian williams, thank you for coming in here to create what we're going to do our best to be a seamless transition into the live coverage that continues on this election night. >> thank you so much. as a member of your audience, thanks for a great hour of political coverage.
A recap of the day's headlines and a look at what's in store for tomorrow.
>> fair to say both sides are going to claim victory in was went down tonight in ohio 12? >> yes but your speaking facts. this is a numbers game and these should not be the numbers. the winner is the winner but we will see what happens again in november in the real election, some would say. when we look what this would do to those in my party it will encourage more to come out. when you look at numbers, how many people republicans had in this constituency, this district, so many more republicans here and not just because of the republican candidate but the number of people who voted that way in the past, you have a lot of democrats, interesting to see the exit polls, it is a victory to have such a tight margin for democrats but i didn't think this would be one of the seats that would make it 22 but i said
donald trump pulling a republican candidate's fat out of the fire, the president won this race for mister balderson. there is an issue, and upholding, republicans need to take this as a wake-up call, and in the midterm elections, another issue here, democrats have trouble on their hands. i imagine miss ocasio-cortez will be crying into her pillow tonight because the democrat, o'connor, when you look how he ran, he ran not as a progressive but a centrist. that is a big problem for the democrats. >> he did because he ran is someone much more to the center, like we have seen with connor lamb in pennsylvania. troy balderson the gop nominee, getting ready to take to the
mike in ohio 12, the district where the president and vice president to campaign for him, he remains ahead, what would trigger a recount, we are not in the results. >> i am honored for the opportunity to represent the voters of the 12th congressional district. so many to people to thank tonight, joshua -- chelsea. my girlfriend, melanie. i want to thank god. more importantly my mom and dad who could not be here this evening. thousands and thousands of volunteers. thank you very much. for all you have done.
all of them, it has been phenomenal, a great honor to me. i want to thank donald trump. and i want to thank mike pence for coming. the big shoes i will be filling. i wouldn't have gotten through a lot without him through this process, congressman pat t berry. i would like to take this opportunity to also thank chairman steve stivers, a great asset to me, held through this process, thank you. and many others.
it keeps going on and on. but tonight i'm going to promise you that i'm going to work relentlessly for this 12th congressional district. america is on the right path and we are going to keep it going that way. time to get to work. over the next three months i will do everything i can to make america great again so that when we come back here in november, we got to come back here in november. i have earned your vote for a second time. danny o'connor ran a hard race
and i look forward to campaigning against him again this fall. thank you also much, all your support, god bless you and god bless america. >> enthusiasm as it appears for now a squeaker of a win for the gop contender, balderson sounding victorious, too close to call, there are provisional ballots but he is claiming victory. ed henry is here to explain where we stand. >> the rnc put out a statement declaring victory. the republican national committee saying this is proof the so-called blue wave is just a ripple but there is hesitation to make sure everything is counted, make sure they have all the provisional ballots and the actual votes today, 100% in. troy balderson, the republican
you just saw, winning by 1754 votes. that is a wider margin we had seen an hour or so ago. at one point these two candidates were separated by 150 votes, so 1754 vote lead is massive for troy balderson in the context of how close this race is. one thing that has not been noted a lot, joe manchin got 1127 votes, not enough to tip the balance but without the green party candidate and those votes on the left the democratic candidate would have been even closer. there might be some frustration when you talk about socialists and others pulling the party to the left, the green party candidate ended up making this more interesting.
without the green party candidate this would have been even tighter. >> may have put it within the mandatory recount margin, 0.5. inside the margin, publicly funded but outside that the loser would have to -- if they win their money is refunded. >> with the margin of 1700 votes by our calculation that puts balderson up by 0.9 percentage points. it would be a bigger margin than the smaller advantage of points meaning of the green party candidate had not been in here this likely would have been within the 0.5% needing a recount. barring whatever votes we have we will see what happens. it is outside the threshold. shannon: back to our panel.
>> work really hard. if donald trump is popular in your district, and we head toward the midterm elections. and in suburban areas, these are difficult -- support the president, traditional republican policies. it is a tough act to pull off. >> the talk about the resistance in the left and frustration and anger, and -- >> there is an enthusiasm gap. look at the turn out numbers, a lot of people showed up, donald trump made the difference in the
last minute but he can't be everywhere. he can't be everywhere all the time. candidates have to find a reason to sales of the democratic socialist movement with enthusiastic turnout on the left. >> a number of democrats in party leadership say don't pin your hopes on her. it works like donald trump may not work in all districts. >> what works in the bronx, you
see candidates like this, you see that on the right as well. people who are more moderate, and the same is on the left. i'm not surprised some of the far left leaning socialists factions of the democrat party aren't working in flyover states and not as successful, they do work better in a more diverse multicultural, heavy minority district, and millennials. >> and other states as well. >> establishment republicans, get on board, stop trying to sabotage donald trump, he is the president, time to get on board. as far as democrats go
socialists, you have ocasio-cortez in kansas trying to convert them to socialism, you have a better shot of converting them to vegetarianism out there. >> these other states, thank you very much, stick around as we check on other things, there are other primaries tonight. the gop gubernatorial primary, the president did endorse controversial secretary of state chris kobach force. dan springer is live. >> reporter: could be a long night in topeka. the race for the republican nomination for governor has been close all night long and the endorsement by donald trump could end up being an important factor. the latest numbers with 67% of
the precincts reporting, 40.8%, kobach with 1000 votes separating them. of returns had kobach trailing by 5%, they were cast for the trump endorsement. when today's vote started coming and he surged ahead for a short time and he is trailing by 1000 votes. he is extremely anti-illegal immigration, facing unsubstantiated claims about the number of non-us citizens, he led the voter fraud task force before it was disbanded with no conclusion was governor collier erased his profile even though he occupies the job he is running for right now. a razor thin margin. we will be here and the winner at some point.
>> dan springer in kansas. and army combat veteran who got a presidential endorsement, with democratic senator, mike towbin is live in detroit. >> john james as we just mentioned, iraq war veteran. michigan businessman, he is running away with that, he faces the biggest fight, 3 term incumbent senator debbie stab a no --stabenow has a comfortable lead in the polls and more money. they say she failed the people of michigan but her time is up, she faces the fight of her life. >> debbie stabenow has turned
her back in michigan, whether you are talking about suburbs, she failed all of it. it pits whites against back black paps, less against whites, we are all americans. >> on the gubernatorial primary as well. >> we check back on all of these races. ping) gentlemen, i have just received word! the louisiana purchase, is complete! instant purchase notifications from capital one. so you won't miss a purchase large, small, or very large. technology this helpful...could make history. what's in your wallet?
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credibility problems for robert mueller's star witness who to the government about wrongdoing, now he is admitting he stole money from his former boss, paul manafort and stole something from the trump inaugural committee raising questions whether mueller's team can sway the jury in a case that has nothing to do with conclusion in the 2016 campaign. and bringing the trump campaign to the case, gates admitted he had a next her marital affair, insisted embezzling from manafort, and fake invoices for luxury clothing shops and landscapers to cover up shady transactions. manafort was hammering gates declaring after all these lives and fraud you committed you
expect the jury to believe you? i'm here to tell the truth and take responsibility for my actions. he may have submitted improper expenses to the 2017 inaugural committee to testify when working for that, manafort asked to consider nomination as secretary of the army for chicago banker who happened to have been given him a big loan but the banker never got the appointment so there was no wrongdoing by the trump camp. anthony scaramucci said the case has no evidence the president did anything wrong. >> it is not a tidy case, but i don't think they did anything to implicate the president, these activities were happening well before they joined the trump campaign so hopefully this will get resolved. >> reporter: he submitted improper expenses but did not go into detail about that, facing a
lot more cross-examination. >> getting more news about the former personal attorney michael cohen. >> not about the 2016 campaign. michael cohen is being investigated for possible tax fraud to do with the president. shannon: a busy news day. more breaking news by ohio district 12. for black lives matter protesters. senator elizabeth for calling the justice system racist. and texas leading a lawsuit to
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geico. more than just car insurance. see how much you could save at geico.com. i'm ok! >>it is all about ohio district 12 tonight. it is all about ohio district 12. troy balderson, the republican with 50.2%, danny o'connor 49.3%. there could still be provisional ballots in the mix. it is before the race is certified by the secretary of state but for now balderson is in the lead. kristin fisher covering this race from columbus at gop candidate headquarters, so that optimistic. is he claiming victory? >> reporter: absolutely. if you ask anybody in this room
who will won this race, it is not too close to call. they will say balderson won out right. the associated press technically has not called this race but you heard balderson himself claim victory and donald trump went on twitter and says troy balderson has won the race and he took credit for it, donald trump came on saturday to rally his supporters to remind them a vote for balderson is a vote for his agenda. this race really was as much a referendum on donald trump as it was on troy balderson. if he had lost this race it would have been an epic upset for republicans heading into the midterms. they held onto the seat for nearly four decades but in the end troy balderson it appears will squeak out a win.
this is a sign that when the republican establishment and the entire republican party comes together they are able to hold back this wave many are predicting heading into the midterms. donald trump, mike pence and paul ryan and republican governor john kasich come here and back balderson. they don't exactly see eye to eye, they don't like each other all that much. this is a sign when the republican party coalesces they are able to get a win when they need it. >> these two have to keep campaigning because they are facing off in a november election. >> isn't that the most wild thing? it is a 3 month term and he even said that in his speech over the next 3 months.
>> maybe back out to ohio if this kicks up again for the fall. thank you very much. democrat darling senator elizabeth warren positioning herself to run for president in 2020 taking another step to the left it appears to be attacking america's criminal justice system. chris gallagher does in fact checking. >> reporter: at the time elizabeth ward was participating in a q&a session in new orleans, the massachusetts senator talked about what she said were disproportionate arrests of african-americans for petty drug possession. >> the criminal justice system is racist. front to back.
>> reporter: political analysts say warren is prepping for presidential run and trying to forge ties beyond her largely white political base in massachusetts but the "national review"'s rich lowry called warren out for what he called lies about the justice system quoting the contention that us law enforcement is a product of racial hatred is a paranoid lie from top to bottom, beginning to end, front to back. lowry cited numbers showing african-americans are arrested for more than petty drug crime saying blacks account for 50% of homicides and police are not just making up these crimes. beth lindstrom, the republican running for warren's seat, apologizing for her comments, words like this are polarizing and divisive and used for personal political gain for 2020 without regard for how they sound to the many good people in massachusetts and around the country who are tasked with criminals keeping us safe, administering justice.
amid this debate over race and justice a group of black lives matter activists filmed themselves crashing the wedding of one of the second of police officers accused of fatally shooting stefan clark in march. >> i wonder -- how you have been sleeping? >> reporter: stefan clark was allegedly vandalizing cars when confronted by police who thought he was carrying a weapon. he was not. the shooting is under investigation and black lives matter found to approach the accused officers where they are vulnerable. >> reporter: thank you very much. up next, ken paxton on his challenge to daca and iranian sanctions in place for 24 hours but are they having an effect? citizen protests, the regime continues to stand its ground.
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you can barely feel. we really pride ourselves on >> temaking it easy for youass, to get your windshield fixed. >> teacher: let's turn in your science papers. >> tech vo: this teacher always puts her students first. >> student: i did mine on volcanoes. >> teacher: you did?! oh, i can't wait to read it. >> tech vo: so when she had auto glass damage... she chose safelite. with safelite, she could see exactly when we'd be there. >> teacher: you must be pascal. >> tech: yes ma'am. >> tech vo: saving her time... [honk, honk] >> kids: bye! >> tech vo: ...so she can save the science project. >> kids: whoa! >> kids vo: ♪ safelite repair, safelite replace ♪ >>the departmen shannon: department of homeland security says there are 6000 foreign travelers who overstay their visa plays your remains until the end of the year. and newly police report said 252 million foreigners traveled to america on visas. and people who cross the border illegally in 2017.
and these facts by homeland security tonight, a mother so desperate for a job in the us she turned her daughter over to alleged predator, ramon pedro claiming the girl was his daughter, processed and released and expected to attend immigration proceedings in the future, they turned up at a hospital for medical attention. that is when authorities say it is not related to pedro. and evidence she had been sexually assaulted. he is under arrest facing multiple charges. the third action for childhood arrivals program in a state of legal limbo tomorrow, the texas attorney general will take the case to federal court room and a fight to end the obama era program to grant amnesty to illegal immigrants who entered the country as children for good. texas attorney general ken paxton with us, you're staying up late, thanks for being with us.
on a different track i want to read something from the federal judge, we reported here, ruled against the administration's attempt to get rid of daca, the court holds if dhs wishes to rescind the program it must give a rational explanation for its decision, the assertion that the prior policy is illegal, that president obama didn't have the authority accompanied by a hodgepodge of illogical policy assertions, will not do. he says the administration hasn't done a good enough job, what is the deal tomorrow? >> president obama had no authority to change the law, admitted he didn't have the authority, similar case like this a couple years ago we took to the supreme court and won. we are going to make the same argument, unconstitutional action by president obama and
should be vacated and set aside. shannon: very simply daca is constitutional, deal with it. >> it is unconstitutional but they need to set this aside and if something needs to be done it needs to be done by congress. policy decisions need to be vetted with all our representatives, a decision by the entire congress, that is not the way the system was set up by our founders. shannon: three judges say it is constitutional, at least the attempt to get rid of it, why are three federal judges come down on that side. >> i don't agree with their reasoning, doesn't make sense that donald trump cannot undo an executive order done by a predecessor.
and not talking about the decision, but going back shannon: the daca recipient who said jeff sessions pulling back on these rulings, the attorney general can say he is a polling rule of law when he wants but conveniently forgets, the supreme court will decide whether termination of daca illegal but no one can convince that doing so is just. just or legal. how does this decision get made?
>> if we allow the president to make law those exceptions will continue, do people want donald from making law? that is not the way the system was set up, they distrusted power in the hands of one person. and federal judges change law which is what they try to do, nor should president obama, this is about what our founders believed which was spreading power around, letting elected representatives make the decision. not one person. shannon: are you asking for a nationwide injunction? >> not initially. the whole order be set aside. and no longer exists. shannon: there's a split among federal judges, we have eight justices and a 4-4 decision leave no resolution. we will see, keep us updated on your argument tomorrow. it is too close to call, breaking news from the secretary
of state. iran says it is nowhere close, are the new sanctions that snap into place at midnight already biting? the latest got a check from ohio district 12. so i can buy from enterprise car sales and you'll take any trade-in? that's right! great! here you go... well, it does need to be a vehicle. but - i need this out of my house. (vo) with fair, transparent value for every trade-in... enterprise makes it easy.
ohio. all eyes are on this ohio special election for house seat district 12. democrats were hoping tonight's election would be a precursor to a progressive wave in november. the race is too close to call. but we are getting breaking news. now you see there the spread is about 1700-plus votes. they say 100% of districts are in but they're telling us this additional information. 3,435 provisional ballots were cast. there were 5,048 outstanding absentee votes. none of those ballots can start to be counted until august 18th. now then we understand it has to go through every potential county. they've got bipartisan groups to count and tally them up. that's got to be done by august 24th and only then will there be an official certification.
we're told at that point if there is less than .5 percentage points separating the candidates, that would trigger an automatic recount. we've got a long way to go on this race. tonight balderson up by 1700 plus. but again thousands of votes still outstanding. this is going to be a long process it sounds like, at least a couple more weeks. let's check in on foreign policy. so far iran is not backing down. hall has the very latest. >> protests against iran continued this week after months of unrest, as anger against the regime's corruption grew. now the situation is near breaking. but the iranian leaders the situation is near breaking. iranian leadership is defiant. just hours before the latest sanctions hits, president rouhani rejected negotiations with the us despite donald trump's offer of talks with no preconditions.
>> what americans are seeking is to make the iranian people hesitant about their country. >> reporter: since donald trump withdrew from the iran deal, the value of the iranian deal reached record lows and rouhani said he would rely on china and russia. he said negotiations were meaningless, the us would have to apologize. >> translator: if you stab someone and want to talk, first thing you have to do is remove the knife. >> reporter: in the streets of tehran opinion is torn. >> i believe america cannot do anything because iranian's are backing each other. >> reporter: others are hoping the government will talk to the us. >> government should find -- but
iran has some allies, the north korean prime minister, with senior iranian officials days after meeting with mike pompeo. protesters and by making the economy worse. the protest will turn into something more when the iranian people. >> we will be back with an election update. hey, no big deal. you've got a good record and liberty mutual won't hold a grudge by raising your rates over one mistake. you hear that, karen? liberty mutual doesn't hold grudges... how mature of them. for drivers with accident forgiveness liberty mutual won't raise their rates because of their first accident. liberty mutual insurance. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty ♪
the louisiana purchase, is complete! instant purchase notifications from capital one . technology this helpful... could make history. what's in your wallet? >> shannon: final update for now on the ohio district. they are s shannon: right now the candidates are separated by 1700 votes. and there are provisional ballots, 5000 absentee ballots will come in,
Brian Williams examines the day's top political stories and current political-campaign news.
Brian Williams examines the day's top political stories and current political-campaign news.
remind folks what that means? >> yeah. there's a question about the status of the ballot. maybe a question about the status of the voter. they tend to be, i keep saying, they tend to be democratic ballots. they tend to be voters, especially in franklin county, from delaware county. oftentimes, you find that sometimes in nonwhite areas. you start having i.d., voter i.d. requirements. maybe it is folks who won't have i.d. so you end up getting a situation. when you look at the provisionals, they tend on come more from provisional counties. i think the number was something like 1,400. came out of franklin. i think it may have been in the
democratic part. a lot of them end up being counted. they're cast provisionally and then they're reviewed afterwards. >> all right. we'll be back. thank you so much. let's bring in garrett, our correspondent who has been standing by. garrett, i presume the party is thickening out. and i presume. and i presume win, lose or draw the attention now goes to november. >> yeah, brian. the party is over here. it's just our team here keeping the lights on. this race isn't over. we heard from both candidates tonight in the nonconcession concession speech and the not quite honest victory speech that wasn't quite a victory speech that this is not over. this race immediately transitions into november. you can think of this like a late primary almost. setting up these two candidates again with now the republican potentially depending how all that recall business goes being able to call himself an incumbent in this case.
but democrats like some of what they have seen on the ground here as they go into november in this race and in a lot of other races that will look like this in similar suburban counties. they feel like they fought a lot of this race especially the last couple of weeks on their issue turf, if you will, talking about things like protecting health care, social security benefits, issues that democrats want to be talking about. you weren't seeing the republican hammering the democrat particularly effectively on things like the republican tax bill. so democrats fee like even if they got not quite all the way there on the numbers, the issue said here was something they can continue to work with. whether this race itself stays as competitive in november when it is not the race on the calendar with both parties pouring in millions of dollars volunteers from all over the place coming and flooding the zone, that's a separate question. but there are blueprints laid
out in there race from both parties that they each think they can take back to some of these other races that be competitive in suburbs like this all over the country. suburban houston looks similar to this where you've got some of the burbs and how do you balance that mix in this competitive environment. >> garrett haake thanks for covering a dwindling crowd at the democratic headquarters in ohio 12 tonight. with us tonight in studio, former republican florida congressman david jolly and kimberly atkins agreed to stick around, chief washington reporter for the "boston herald" as has peter baker, correspondent for the "new york times" thanks to all three of you for staying up late. congressman, again, just a civics and kind of a physical plant question. the winner gets to be an incumbent member of congress. the winner will go, will get really bad office space. they'll be on the bottom of the
seniority list. >> he'll get his predecessor's office. >> you do inherit the office space? how does that work? >> i replaced the most senior member of congress. for eight months as a freshman, i had the best office on capital little. >> you had a beautiful view of the dome. >> then reality sets in. >> but they can't move in. they can't feel as much as anyone can move in with a two-year term. >> let's say it's 12 weeks before the next election. house is out till labor day. because it is an election day, they'll be in for about three weeks. whoever the incumbent is, they will be an incumbent for all of about three weeks. what they will do is spend every day back home and continuing to raise money. >> you've got constituent services and questions and what happened to my social security check that don't stop coming in. >> that's the tough thing about a special election.
what happens when somebody resigns is the staff stays in place likely till last night under the direction of the clerk of the house. constituent services can continue. but all those constituent services now get picked up tomorrow. they have to be staffed up. i think politically tonight what we're seeing is this. it's very hard to see a scenario where republicans keep the house in november. the trend is simply getting away from republicans. if you look at the conor lamb race, tonight, republicans are underperforming by historic proportion. and we have yet to see a race in the last two years since donald trump got elected in a truly competitive district in a 50-50 district. november, there's going to be 40 or 50 races where the playing field is level and watch out. democrats could probably pick up every single one of those. >> kimberly, do you expect this to have a slow motion concussion wave like the old black and white flips of nuclear tests as it -- as the realization of what congressman jolly is talking about continues to roll over all the republican members up on the hill?
>> i think so. i think you definitely see this. they're going to be a lot of people looking at the playbook and trying to figure out exactly how they can change it to sort of staunch the potential bleeding that could be ahead. it's worth reiterating no matter what the president said, this was a district that republicans should have won easily. and the fact that they didn't really changes the entire strategy here. i think republicans a few months back thought they could talk about the new tax law and talk about immigration and really bid a lot of support there moving into the midterms. it seems pretty clear that those issues aren't taking hold exactly the same way that they hoped that it would be. perhaps the president is being a distraction with his twitter account. don't forget that he did insult lebron james right before the election, too. there's a lot of variables here. and republicans don't have that clear strategy that i think they thought they would have by now. democrats don't either.
but they're doing a better job in terms of at least getting out the vote so far. you have both parties taking a close look at this race to figure out what they do next. >> peter baker, your role is reminding us what else will be going on in the background as all these folks, all these incumbents campaign to stay in office, all the challengers campaign to unseat them in congressional districts times 535 across the country. >> that's right. congress won't be in session very much between now and the election. a lot of dynamics are locked into place when it comes to their legislative records. one exception will be the issue of keeping the government open. passing the spending bills necessary to move into the next fiscal year. the president has talked about how he wishes he could shut down the government in order to leverage money for his border wall.
that sent republican leaders on the hill into paroxism of panic. they don't like the idea of doing that right before an election. every time they experience a government shutdown in the past, they haven't done well in the polls after the election. therefore, balderson doesn't want to be the one vote he takes before he has to head back to the voters all over again in ohio. right now most of the legislative actions or inactions as it were have been taken and they have the record to run on and have to defend or attack as they see fit. >> and peter baker, i couldn't help but watch because we live in a television april, these two events in ohio tonight. backdrops were not word class or ready for live national television coverage. everybody looked the way you'd expect everybody to look. but there was televised live because we're in the trump era. and there's now a laser beam of attention everywhere two people
are on a ballot. >> that's exactly right. this is the first time this particular district has had this kind you have national attention in decades. this is not a competitive district for the most part. you don't see a lot of media attention or attention by the national committees. you don't see the kind of money flowing in they've had. suddenly they're the focus of the political world. not because this one race matters that much. that one vote isn't going to change anything between now and the election whether he it cops to the house. what it did have was the potential for a big embarrassment for the president. he ran out there to make sure it wouldn't have that. the larger trends are still there and consistent with the other special elections we've seen for the last 18 months. they're worrisome to republicans because they don't see the path to energizing their voters to come out in a way that will stop this so-called blue wave that the democrats hope is building. >> can't thank you all enough. you helped us greatly covering the news. david, kimberly atkins, peter baker.
coming up, he has likely visited more public schools in america than any other american alive today. sadly, he's attended funerals for dozens of young people gunned down in chicago, illinois. coming up, we will be joined by chicagoan and former education secretary arne duncan when the 11th hour continues.
were shot between friday afternoon and monday morning. 74. 12 of them sadly were killed. according to the chicago tribune, "it marked the worst violence of any single weekend in chicago since at least before 2016, the year in which hop sides hit records unseen for two decades." this afternoon, the police superintendent eddie johnson announced as many as 600 additional police officers are being deployed. he says they'll be in the hardest hit neighborhoods by the weekend. we are happy to be joined tonight by arne duncan, a proud chicagoan, former head of the chicago public schools and as a member of the obama cabinet, one of the longest serving secretaries of education in our nation's history. his new book "how schools work, an inside account of failure and success from one of the nation's longest serving secretaries of education," is available starting today. mr. secretary, thank you so much
for coming. this is not a book about firearms. it's not a book about violence and survival though i have to ask you because the topics are not mutually exclusive. violence in a city like chicago and education in a city like chicago. >> they're absolutely enter twined. i'm obsessed with reducing violence at home. this weekend is no way to sugar coat it, it's devastating. what i say everyone may not agree with, the police have a role to play but i don't think we can arrest our way out of this and incarcerate our way out of this. we're working directly with young men 17 to 24 years old most likely to shoot and be shot and providing job training for them, providing mental health services, providing trauma counseling, life coaches. and guy who have been on street shooting at each other are walking away from that life and want to do something different. we have to solve an economic problem, not a crime problem. these men will eat, pay rent,
they have to make a living. it's our choice whether they do that in the illegal economy which leads to violence or the legal economy. in my heart i believe over the next couple years, these men will lead us as a city to where we need to go. >> let's hope you're right. we have to hope you're right. you're cruising along. there are stories about chris christie, great story about john kasich. you come to the point where you're writing the book in realtime and parkland happens. last time i saw you to interview you was at the march that have shooting. ten years from now in this country, will something better have happened in american society because of that awful tragedy? >> it has to. i've been very pessimistic on this issue since the sandy hook massacre. that was the worst day of president obama's presidency, my worst day in d.c. when 20 babies get killed and five teachers and a principal and we still get nothing done in terms of common sense gun legislation. that was devastating.
these teenagers across the country have been raised on mass shootings. they've been raised on gun violence and not tolerating it, not going to stand for it. that march was something different in the air. young people from parkland, from chicago, young people i'm working with from across the country are stepping up. we as adults and parents have failed frankly and i apologize all the time to young people. they will lead the country to a place that is much safer, much more free of fear. i'm more hopeful on this issue than i've been in a long, long time because of the leadership and courage of our nation's young people. >> growing up as i did in jersey across the river, you listen to new york radio and tv as a kid. there was a guy on the radio, a new york haberdasher name the cy sims and he used to say, at sims an educated consumer is our best
customer. i've always thought that was a wonderful slogan. we like to think an educated voter is our best voter in this country. you believe you've seen signs that is not a universally held standard. >> i wish everyone came to the voting booth thinking about education. you're talking about politics tonight. my constant question i don't care an much. are they coming to voting booth thinking about, is this congressional leader or mayor or governor or senator going to help raise graduation rates and make college more affordable and increase access to pre-k. specifically with president trump, i don't think he wants to have the best educated citizenry in the world. i think when you have authoritarian tendencies and call the press the enemy of the people and want to become the only source of knowledge and truth, i don't think it's in his self-interests to have the best educated citizenry in the world. that deeply troubles me. >> the job you held was own created in the eisenhower era, not that many people have served
as education secretary. there are not that many living former education secretaries. the current secretary betsy devos, has she reached out to you? have you talked shop at all? >> it's stunning. she never reached out. i talked all the time to my predecessors, margaret spellings, secretary bennett, republicans, democrats. it's a small club. i was the ninth serving. these are very wise people and at the end of the day, we're all working together. she never reached out. that's all i can say. >> i wish you luck with the book. how schools work by arne duncan, former secretary of education during the obama administration. >> thank you. i know as the a politically busy night. thank you for visiting us here in the studio. >> thanks so much for the opportunity. >> another break for us. when we come back, we've been talking about how it's election night in other places. aside from the 12th district in ohio. steve kornacki brings us up to speed on all the races we're covering tonight right after this.
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big board to brick us up to speed on everything else. >> so the president donald trump inserted himself into this ohio race. we've talked a lot about that. the other race where he inserted himself in the homestretch was the kansas gubernatorial primary siding with kris kobach. boy, this is a nail biter. kris kobach is leading right now doing the math by about 687 votes over, this is jeff colyer. this is the incumbent governor. the lieutenant governor who took over when brownback, the republican governor left. this is sort of an unelected incumbent governor here seeking a full term in his own right being challenged by kobach playing the role of insurgent. trump coming out for kobach at the wire yesterday. bob dole, as soon as trump did that he endorsed colyer. outstanding vote, trying to get a sense where that's from. there's a not insignificant
portion of the remaining vote in kansas from johnson county. we talked so much around columbus, upscale suburbs, the equivalent in kansas city, johnson county, that you would expect colyer may get more boost out of that than kobach. this thing just an absolutely squeaker right here. the electoral implications for republicans, there's a poll that shows colyer if he's running leading the democrat by ten points. flip it around, kobach, if he's the nominee, a dead even race. greg or mann is going to run. that's a big story in kansas. one other in michigan, the numbers very confusing. i'm looking myself here for the first time. you had gretchen whitmer sort of the favorite here.
el sayed. you're not seeing a lot of vote counted. you might see more vote in. this is from the secretary of state site. there's been disparities between what the secretary of state is reporting and what other folks are getting from their people. we've got the can of state's numbers here. gretchen whitmer. it would be an upset if she loses. we had a house race. long time democratic incumbent lacy clay being challenged by cory bush, the significance here, cory bush's most well-known endorser alexander ocasio-cortez. we watched her topple a giant in national democratic politics, joe crowley in new york. she endorsed cory bush and said folks in missouri, you can do it, too. bush falling short though. so you don't necessarily have a part two. we wanted to see if there was energy somewhere besides that district in new york. not a great showing for clay. but certainly still he's not
necessarily sweating at this hour. he's going to win that thing. the big outstanding drama is in kansas, this governor's race. i'm clicking to see if we've got anything new. kobach ahead by hundreds of votes. we want to get a better sense where that's coming from. if he wins this, you know trump will be crowing about it tomorrow and the republican establishment will be saying oh, what have we gotten ourselves into for november. certainly from an electoral standpoint, he could win but that looks like he's a tougher sell in a general election certainly than colyer. >> that phrase we keep using has never been using, every vote counts. we have a couple headlines at this hour. number one, a bunch of folks will be up late into the evening counting votes. number two, the electorate is changing and for those of us who are diehard steve kornacki fans, he's back the next hour to host
the whole thing. we'll be watching. steve kornacki, thank you for your contributions tonight. we have been able to reach mike murphy by phone. and we're happy to be able to talk to him. the veteran republican strategist, long-type advisor to mitt romney, jeb bush, john mccain to name a few and former u.s. member of congress, david jolly remains here with us in studio. so mike, good to have you. thank you for making yourself available so late at night. what are we witnessing happen to the republican party do you think? >> well, our appeal is narrowing because our president is quite unpopular. i was looking at the numbers in ohio and while the republicans have a good argument for the small part of it, we won the seat, if you look at the seat itself, it's so deep in our backfield it's very troubling that we're going to have probably a narrow, narrow win there. i looked at the suburban counties which are a good bellwether, particularly delaware county.
president trump ran about 16 points ahead there when he ran for president. o'connor looks like will lose it by eight points which is if you translate that, if that's what suburban counties like delaware look like in november on election night, we'll probably lose the house, some other big races and if the president had numbers like that republican versus democrat, he wouldn't carry ohio. so this is in the small way a republican victory but in a big way, the democratic blue wave is no fantasy. it is real. the next 90 days will be about can the party do something to solve this problem and a lot of it brought on by donald trump. >> another way of putting it as we've been saying tonight, if you want to go straight up demographic, if the democrats can do this in a district 88% white, it's going to be very tough for the gop to hang onto the house. >> yeah, it's like playing a football game where you're playing the whole game and your
half of the field. so these are troubles. we're seeing other canaries still on the bottom of the cage tonight. catherine mcmorris rodgers has a tighter race than normal in washington state. kansas where you saw very rare thing which was president trump came in and endorsed against an incumbent republican governor. and that's almost never done in a political party because you break a lot of china that way. and that one's dead even. i think colyer may inch out. i've been trying to look. it's super close and it does show the power that trump still has at least in republican primaries if nowhere else. >> david, charlie sykes was on a few minutes ago saying there are 68 districts that are less republican than the one that is deeply contested tonight in ohio. >> that's right. that goes back to what we said. when you get to november, there are a lot more competitive races. it's hard to see how republicans
at this point hold onto the seat or hold onto the house. we're seeing a lot at play tonight. the ohio race is essentially a general election. we're seeing the trump dynamic play out in a general election and the trump dynamic play out in a republican primary in kansas where he's anointed the republican nominee, if you will. we're seeing the power of trumpism in a republican primary and the weakness in a general election. i'm glad mike brought up the state of washington, as well. democrats are really performing strongly in the state of washington right now. there's actually, when he referred to kathy mcmorris rodgers, she is a member of republican leadership who make it to november but right now she's tied with her democratic opponent and they will go into november with a very hard fought race. the last thing i'd say and i'm glad mike referred to this, as well. we're talking about states and communities and to your point on demographics overwhelmingly white that put donald trump in the white house. this is where republicans are
now losing. if you were to look forward to 2020, you would say the trend is getting away from donald trump, as well, there's no way he can win pennsylvania and ohio and wisconsin and these other states that delivered the white house for him. this is a bad omen not just for november of '18 but for 2020 if we don't find a course correction for republicans. >> mike, how does the party work in the gop? who decides where they're going to dig in and declare what congressional races as firewalls? we're just going to defend, defend, defend? we're going to try not to lose this one? >> well, it becomes resource allocation. what you're going to hear out of republicans is that our pelosi campaign works and we won this seat but as david said, you know, we're 60 seats into the republican list. so winning seats like this don't hold the house. step one is guard resources and they've probably admit there are
a dozen to 15 seats that we can try to defend but it will be really hard. it will be that second dozen where they start to really apply dollars. but they applied millions and millions of republican dollars there were democrat are dollars, too. this proxy war we just had in ohio 12 was massively funded. there isn't that kind of money to go into every seat. they to make tough choices. normally the president would have a normal political operation that would use the bully pulpit of the white house to move and get out of trouble. the problem is this president is the atomic clock and he runs towards trouble and makes it worse. we don't have the normal rule book how to get out of trouble. it will be scary for those 40 to 50 seats that can be in play. >> david jolly agreed to stay for further punishment. mike, i can't thank you enough for taking our call. it's always a pleasure to have
you on the air. thank you for joining us. another break for us. coming up, this other breaking story earlier today involving president trump's one-time fixer michael cohen. and the southern district of new york which you may have heard of, all of that when we come back. managing my type 2 diabetes wasn't my top priority. until i held her. i found my tresiba® reason. now i'm doing more to lower my a1c. i take tresiba® once a day. tresiba® controls blood sugar for 24 hours for powerful a1c reduction. (woman) we'd been counting down to his retirement. it was our tresiba® reason. he needs insulin to control his high blood sugar and, at his age, he's at greater risk for low blood sugar. tresiba® releases slow and steady and works all day and night like the body's insulin. (vo) tresiba® is a long-acting insulin used to control high blood sugar in adults with diabetes. don't use tresiba® to treat diabetic ketoacidosis, during episodes of low blood sugar, or if you are allergic to any of its ingredients.
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violations. that investigation is related to a 2016 payment cohen made to adult film star stormy daniels to keep her from talking about an affair she claimed she had with trump in '06, something trump denies. now sources are telling the "journal" that can "federal authorities are assessing whether mr. cohen's income from his taxi medallion business was underreported in federal tax returns." back with us tonight, elie honig, former assistant u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york, former assistant attorney general for new jersey and david jolly has kindly agreed to stick around. members of our audience would be forgiven for not knowing what a taxi medallion is. i've asked to show it on the air. there is one from new york city. in this city and others, you get a certificate but you also get a
steel medallion kind of riveted to the hood of your cab. it is your license to own and operate that cab and counselor, why is it always such a fraught line of work to be in? >> these pieces of metal are extraordinarily valuable. >> before uber, forgive me for interrupting, they were $1.3 million. >> over $1 million. there's a finite number here in the city. they wanted to control the number of cabs here. and they were worth 1.2, $1.3 million. uber and lyft drove that way down, but still worth a quarter million dollars each. they're closely regulated, rules and regulations about taxes that need to be paid. that's where cohen may be getting into trouble. historically there have been all sorts of games played that have gotten people into trouble with these medallions. >> these are not medallions controlled by cohen. these are just taxi medallions we grabbed in the taxi medallion file tape business. i know you are ex of the southern district of new york. it's not with any knowledge of
the case that i'm asking, what do you think is going on with mr. cohen? >> so southern district, when we investigate somebody, we look for everything we can get. >> i've heard that. >> we're tenacious. and in new jersey, too. but you know, when you see someone like michael cohen interested in cooperating, you want to up the pressure as much as possible. if there are tax fraud allegations against cohen, that will increase the pressure on him to finally come in and cooperate. let me offer some free advice to michael cohen as someone who fairly recently worked in the southern district. if you're going to cooperate and there are indications you need to get in and do it. the longer you wait, the worst a deal you'll get and the less valuable you are to the prosecutors. >> i ask this question of all the former feds we've had on this broadcast. what's the way you use to describe someone's life when you suddenly come under the spotlight of a place like the southern district of new york? >> it's your worst nightmare i
think. you know, the southern district is tenacious. we will bring all the resources to bear and you know, always in pursuit of justice but if you've committed crimes, you do not want the southern district on your tail. >> congressman, we have a president who there were various account yesterday that maybe he knew something about a changing in status for his son donald junior but these headlines now, it's just -- it's this pen numb all of it circling around the russia case at large. >> and happening in a political landscape of elections which we're seeing tonight. you are seeing the trump team kind of crumble around the president as a result of their own culpability. we don't need to feel empathetic for the folks now beginning to be held account from manafort to cohen to others. there's the gravity of it.
there's also the political reality, electoral consequences of it. one of the things we're seeing in the body politic is this distrust of president trump and the people around him. and voters are beginning to use that distrust to inform their decisions. i believe it's what we're seeing tonight in ohio. i believe we'll see it in november, as well. >> counselor, what is the distinction folks at home for being confused. is this part of the mueller case? no, they said this one's going on in the southern district of new york. what is the relationship. >> it appears the mueller team wants to stay focused on the mandate as special counsel to focus on election interference. in order to stay focused and to preserve resources they've farmed off certain pieces primarily to the southern district of new york. that said, i have no doubt if mike cohen cooperates or anyone else of value cooperates those resources will be shared with the mueller team. they're all part of the department of justice and they'll put on the best case
they can. >> i heard maggie haberman on cnn tonight said her guess was that by tomorrow, we would learn about the contents of rudy giuliani's letter to the mueller team about a potential interview. are you where i am on this? and that is i'll believe it when i see it? >> yeah, i think so. it's kind of amusing to see giuliani demanding these terms for the interview because the fact is, he doesn't have the upper hand here. he knows that. he was a prosecutor. ultimately -- >> does he have any leverage? >> minimal. >> they've got the client everybody wants. >> right. i think giuliani knows the things he's demanding are outrageous. you'll agree to certain concessions maybe more for the president of the united states. he's way out of line for what he's demanding, time limits. >> in obstruction. >> i wonder why. if they don't agree, mueller i believe will drop a subpoena. you end up in the courts and trump is going to argue executive privilege. it didn't work for nixon in the '70s.
it didn't work for bill clinton in the '90s. it's not going to work for donald trump. it's nor national security and military secrets. nightmare scenario for trump is if he loses in the courts and has to go in a grand jury, he's under oath. there's a stenographer taking down every word he says and no lawyer, no defense lawyer allowed in that room. can you imagine the carnage if you unleash mueller or one of his attorneys on trump with no lawyer there. >> david jolly, a friend who is a lifelong new yorker and known donald trump for decades always says the following reminder to me. this guy was on the payroll of the network in this building for 14 years. he is used to being kind of the entertainer figure in whatever room he walks into. he is a physically large and imposing guy. he's always been able to make people laugh and get attention. he i think truly believes in his ability to come into that room, take over and charm the folks
even the grizzled veteran investigators. >> true. >> having established all of that, what's your straight up prediction, will we ever see mueller on one side of a table and donald trump on another? >> i don't think so because i think it's too dangerous for donald trump. and his counselors will convince him of that. he is a master of brand management. he is not a master at dealing with the law. his culpability, the jeopardy of him sitting down particularly under oath i think would be too massive for this president. one point though that was made about the southern district of new york that's very important. politically if trump were to move to have mueller fired by dismissing rosenstein, because of these referrals to the southern district of new york, they might kill the mueller investigation but these matters continue in the southern district of new york under a different jurisdiction. and so even if he were to dismiss rosenstein, that doesn't mean the president's liabilities is forever wish extinguished because he can still get brought into these other.
>> the limits on the president's ability to pardon are states able to have their own cases so that punishment is still meted out on top of any presidential pardon. sf yes, states are the great escape hatch. if the president goes nuclear and starts firing people including perhaps the u.s. attorneys in the southern district, the u.s. attorney in the southern district which he could do. then you still have your attorneys general. new york, new jersey, perhaps elsewhere. i'm not speaking from inside information. you're correct. that's separate and the president cannot pardon someone on a state charge. >> gentlemen, i cannot thank you enough. we've learned a lot in this segment. appreciate you both being here for it. elie honig and david jolly, thanks. a deeper look at the lessons from this particular election night when we come right back. every fire department every police department
we can keep all these emergencies small. and the fact that we can bring it together and effectively work together is pretty special. they bring their knowledge, their tools and equipment and the proficiency to get the job done. and the whole time i have been in the fire service, pg&e's been there, too. whatever we need whenever we need it. i do count on pg&e to keep our firefighters safe. that's why we ask for their help. america is on the right path and we're going to keep it going that way. it's time to get to work. over the next three months, i'm going do everything i can to keep america great again. so that when we welcome -- when we come back here in november get ready, we've got to come
back here in november, i have earned your vote for a second time. danny o'connor ran a hard race. and i look forward to campaigning against him again this fall. >> can you believe how close this is? we -- we are in a tie ball game. and you made this possible. the grassroots individuals who have been knocking on doors, fighting for the future of our country. i am so grateful. i am so grateful for all of your support. you believed in us. in a race that the pundits said we had no chance even being in. you proved them wrong. >> point of information or two here. this was a race to become a seated member of congress only to have to sing for your supper again in november. and while you heard the
republican there kind of claiming victory as did the president kind of in his tweet tonight, we have to emphasize our decision desk is not calling this race. and we're not prepared to do so. the math is not there. whatever else you may read or see. on that, we are pleased to welcome back to our broadcast tonight, jeremy peters "the new york times." he's with us by phone from washington. david jolly remains with us. jeremy, was this a case of you as a political junkie up late watching the coverage unable to sleep or did we calling you on your phone make it impossible for you to sleep? >> at the risk of trying to sound like i'm flattering you too much, brian, it definitely was your persuasive producers. >> great answer for 30 points
and the lead to jeremy peters. jeremy, let me ask you the follow-up. what do you think it is we're witnessing tonight? >> i think tonight what you're seeing is the manifestation of a lot of worries across the republican party about what has happened to the trump voter. right now there's a lot of talk about this phenomenon caused the missing trump voter where you had people who turned out in 2016 to vote for trump who are just not showing up in these superb elections. there were 100,000 some in the pennsylvania special, another 100,000 of them in an arizona special election. and the worry is that the enthusiasm for trump has either diminished or is not carrying over to these congressional candidates. that makes a lot of sense when you think about the fact that donald trump is a candidate who let's not forget is not really a republican. trump spent the better part of his political career as short as it's been attacking the republican party and its leadership.
why should we expect that enthusiasm to carry over to a wing of the party that he has disparaged. i think you also have to factor in the idea there are a lot of voters fatigued by donald trump and everything happening in the country. you know, republicans dodged a big iceberg tonight but it's going to be a very long cold winter ahead. >> and david jolly, you must be so curious, florida is full of trump voters. how many of them are the trump voters that jeremy just described? >> there's a lot of them and likely missing in november. the energy is still there on the right. the question is, where do these independent and lost voters go or do they show up. we should say recognize two candidates who worked very hard as well as their volunteers. we won't know for ten days who
wins. if it's balderson, he deserves congratulations. danny and his team have a lot to be proud about tonight. that was a star on stage giving a nonconcession concession speech. watch for him in november and congratulations to all the people on the ground tonight. >> that's the thing about special elections. both of them will be back for november. you could hear and see that pivot in realtime tonight as we've been covering another wild night in electoral politics. our thanks to jeremy peters, thanks to david jolly for helping us with this hour of coverage. that happens to be our broadcast for tonight. the extended edition. thank you so much for being with us. steve kornacki picks up our live coverage right here on msnbc now. all right. well, that special election for the house seat in ohio's 12 district remains officially at this hour too close to call. that is our declaration here at nbc news.
Chris Hayes discusses the day's top news.
we expect those also break democratic enough to erase a 1754 lead? no, but could it be enough to cut into that 754 enough that balderson's advantage which is 0.9 right now over o'connor if that ends up at 0.5 or less, state law says guess what, we got to have a a recount here. you could potentially, i wouldn't say it's the likeliest scenario but you could see that happening. there are also 5048 what they are calling uncounted absentee ballots, that were mailed out to voters in some cases weeks ago and they haven't been mailed back. a lot of them probably aren't going to be mailed back. some of them a small number probably military ballots maybe still making their way. some of them probably a small number are voters you had to have them postmarked yesterday. if they sent it out yesterday, it still comes in, that vote probably still going to be
district, the areas that currentlied to trump, the turnout wasn't as high but the vote, the margins that balderson ran up here were trump-like. did you not have much democratic support out here. o'connor didn't make inroads there. maybe he wanted to. the key was delaware county. this is the wealthiest county in ohio. suburban, it is more almost urban when you get down close to columbus, more clackly suburban. trump got 55%. not great for republicans. the question was would balderson do worse? he did 54. he had to be a little lower than that i think. there needed to be more erosion in the delaware county for him to lose. doesn't look like quite enough erosion for o'connor to pull this off tonight. too close to call. still the chance of a recount. no matter how many days they drag this out now, these two get to do it all over again in november when they're one of 434
other rays around the country. that is the lay of the land there. garrett haake it on the ground at o'connor headquarters wes terville, ohio. it looks quiet behind you. what was it like to be out there tonight? i'm the last man standing. they've turned off the lights. everybody has gone home. a few hours ago, this was a pretty bumping party. democrats really felt like they had a shot here tonight. it the last 48 hours of this race, everything seemed to be breaking their way. the republican candidate stumbled into a gaffe about franklin county the night before the election started. their candidate had been all over the place in national and local media. they felt like they were fighting out the last few days of this campaign on democratic issue turf talking about health care, they were talking about protecting it social security. that's one of the reasons that democrats nationally by the way like what they see here today.
they like the issue set that was fought over in this campaign. they're also going to like the enthusiasm a lot. you talked about that big franklin county number, 65% of the vote. you saw that reflected around this district over the last couple days. core democratic voters were fired up to vote in this race, fired up to volunteer out knocking on doors out in neighborhoods, out making phone calls. i talked to a lot of voter who's said they have never been as engaged in a congressional election as they were in this one. some folks said they were volunteering for the first time. i spent most of my time today with the democrats. i have to say from the republican point of view here, if there is a silver lining to this narrow what looks like it might be a victory, it's that to some degree their formula worked. you talked about running up the score in some of those rural areas. in a lot of places around the country that look like this, that is what republican republicans have to do, they
have to juice turnout in their as a areas with donald trump or adds with nancy pelosi, and hold on and hope this democratic enthusiasm wave doesn't knock them off their perches. i do think we saw a little bit of a blueprint how it will work. the resources and money and time won't be the same when there's 435 house races happening instead of one on a random tuesdayner i august. >> a superb election in the dead of the summer. my kind of night here i guess you could say. garrett, great reporting. thank you for joining us outside what was the o'connor headquarters outside columbus. former republican congressman david jolly from you florida, john pod or ritz and kimberly atkins, columnist for the "boston herald." david, let me start with you. i'm looking at the story from this district.
i'm seeing three different stories looking at we showed there franklin county. clinton won it and tonight you saw the energy was there for democrats. the support level for o'connor was higher than it was for clinton by will ten points. turnout level was higher. i'm thinking that story is trouble for republican members of congress, barbara cop stock right outside washington, d.c. from the suburban areas highly educated, trouble for them when you see that. >> a lot of my former colleagues in congress will have hard conversations with party leadership in the next month or two. the party may begin to pull resources from districts. they might be too vulnerable incumbents to hold toes seats. we're also seeing this trend away from republicans almost at large. these are districts that trump won, states trump won. we're seeing a contrast between the trump effect in a general election which is the special election in ohio is essentially
a general election. also the influence of trump in primaries like we're seeing in kansas, move to washington and you're seeing the negative wins that trump brings to those rays. au in all, a good night for democrats. we'll know in ten days balderson probably wins. the trend is getting away from republicans. they're in a lot of trouble when these races are fought in competitive districts in november. >> the trend we should say. trump by 11 points in this district tonight, one point if this holds. >> if i have this number right, so democrats need 23 seats to take control of the house. there were 24 districts. there are 24 hillary clinton districts. >> up to 25 with that pennsylvania. >> there are 25 districts republicans are sitting in that hillary won. okay. and then there's the question whether or not there are other districts like this one where trump wins by 11 where it gets close.
if you look at this you say to yourself, the vast majority of those seats that hillary won those guys are in deep deep deep. >> you're saying a wave. >> if -- i mean, think about this number. so this guy o'connor who is like a nobody out polls hillary in a hillary area. right? by ten points. so we could be seeing that district after district after district after district. in other words, the democrats could already have pretty close to having the house in their pocket. >> i think they do. i don't think there's a scenario tonight where we would say republicans can hold the house. steve, i have republican colleagues of mine friends who have been in the field. they're incumbents in the field
for a year. over the last 90 days, seeing the precipitous drop in support for republicans. that's why you see republicans spend money early. even in majority republican districts, you now have a lot of vulnerable members. >> and i have to say when you sit down, you can do examiners sometime or make the map yourself and start flipping districts and you start out with the number 23 and say democrats got to pick off 23 republicans. maybe republicans are fortified here. it goes fast. kimberly, look, republicans will say bottom line, we won. it wasn't pretty. again, it's too close to call but certainly you'd rather be balderson with the numbers than o'connor. republicans will say if this holds, we won this thing. that's all that counts. that's the story of the special elections besides pennsylvania a couple months ago, there were a lot of close calls but we won. is there anything besides the bottom line you think they can hang their hats on at all? >> that's a tough thing to say. we saw the president calling this a win. it sort reminds me of a regular season game when you know the
playoffs are coming and you know that the teams will make a lot of adjustments leading into that. i think you're going to see that here, some of the things you were pointing out like not really growing the republican -- the suburbanen support for republicans having that slip a little bit. it's just, it may not be enough to overcome those -- to for even in those areas where you have that really inelastic support for trump in the rural areas if they really are not winning the suburbs and not winning the more urban areas. if the democrats continue to mobilize, they mobilized in the middle of august, think what's going to happen in november. i think it's going to be already really bad news for republicans when it comes to playoff time. >> okay. so republican political consultant made the point that there is oner in lining for republicans which is to say that balderson defeat could have led to a stampede for the exits by not only by voters but by donors by people who have to pony up at
the end, gin up enthusiasm. the idea if this had gone the other way, it probably won't, if this didn't look the way it did now, it would have been mass. >> the psychology of actually losing versus. >> the other way to look at it is like the first act of "the walking dead" and the zombies come and don't get in then but then in three months, the zombies get into your cave. it may just be staving off the inevitable. >> i'm just former republican congressman, you ran. having to deal with donald trump a little bit. if you were running right now as a republican just trying to survive, in terms of -- what's the strategy you try to employ? >> you can't survive a 50-50 district. one of the take-aways from balderson's race is interesting. he was not fully in with donald trump. he occasionally said the right things.
i think he wanted to bid the wall. this was an entrenched establishment republican candidate. this was not a make america great again candidate. trump would say he should have been more trump. i'm a product of special elections. my first race was a special election. to john's point, one of the things the party apparatus has to do is convince the high dollar institutional donors they can win these races. i saw it in my election and conversely, i was running during the implementation of obamacare and it provides an opportunity in my case for democrats to message test. at the time it was unpopular. the rollout was a disaster. republicans were trying to find their footing on obamacare and frankly they couldn't. republicans rights now are doing exactly the same thing trying to find their footing with donald trump. where is it? they haven't figured it out but they can go back to their donor base and say we at least know how to win. that's about all they can say tonight. >> kimberly, maybe this is sort of a bigger picture thing about the state of politics, the
american divide. looking at that map, the one other thing jumps out at me, democratic energy in and immediately around columbus, the energy there the support for the democratic candidate there, you go to the rural parts of the district and these are places that obama won one of the keens in the rural part of this district and it went to trump by 30 points in 2016. there was interesting suspense there tonight would there be erosion for republicans in the trump country part of this district and there wasn't. this is a turnout might not have been great. balderson was getting trump level support does make me wonder if that's getting to a bigger picture thing where republicans are casting their lot with that america and that sort of the future in the past for democrats. >> i think it depend how each of these districts look. if you have districts with more rural support like that, they will benefit from that inelastic support donald trump has had that we've seen in polling since inauguration day. a lot of these districts are
drawn in ways there's a little bit of suburbia other things that come into play some that get closer into urban areas. this might be one way that some of the gerrymandering that's taken place to skim off urban areas to dilute that vote may come back to bite republicans in some ways if we see democrats turning out in those places. so it's really going to be interesting to see how that plays out moving forward. >> kimberly atkins, thanks for joining us. coming up, other results and analysis from a bunch that we had ohio, we will kansas, michigan. other results, other races to tell you about to break down all the numbers and the latest in today's other big political story, the paul manafort trial. ken dilanian and henry lipman will join us. stay with us.
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we have to elect troy. >> well, president donald trump at a rally on saturday for troy balderson, republican candidate in that special election in ohio's 12th district tonight. the race as we've been telling you, we are currently saying too close to call. balderson leading democrat danny o'connor by less than a percentage point. voters will not learn the final vote till all the absentee and provisional votes are counted. maybe the reason we have such suspense, maybe there's a recount as mandate bid state law. the president has already declared victory. earlier tonight he tweeted when i decided to go to ohio for troy badder son, he was down 64-36. that was not good. after my speech on saturday night, there was a big turn for the better. he wins a great victory during a tough type of the year for voting. he will win big in november followed by another tweeting congratulations to troy badder son on a great win in ohio.
balderson is not the only candidate trump's endorsement appears to be helping. he tweeted his support for chris kovach in kansas's republican primary for governor. here's the result, kobach leading by 952 votes, jeff colyer, that's the incumbent republican governor, he had been the lieutenant governor, sam brownback left colyer takes over sort of an unelected as governor at least, here's the key though to keep in mind. the outstanding vote in kansas is almost all in johnson county. we talk about those more upscale suburbs, college changed all that stuff. we talked about them in ohio right outside kansas city. colyer leading by 13 points. certainly on paper you look and say maybe colyer despite being behind but a very close race. joining me now jason johnson,
from the root.com and msbc contributor. john podder ritz and jason. the president will try to find a way to declare victory with any of these. he's doing it in ohio tonight. maybe the republican party will be happy with that one. in can is if kobach were to win this thing, that is something the republican establishment doesn't want to see. >> the president is still the biggest loudest voice for the republican party. he can claim victories tonight and he has proven he can be successful in moving people in primaries. apparently trumpism only works for donald trump. people who push that kind of attitude, that kind of behavior, kobach with all the controversies in his background and the corruption and everything else like that, being a trumpist works well in a republican primary. it may not be the best thing for
you in a jen election. this is really important to understand sort of mathematically as a political scientist. the vast majority of special elections are in gerrymandered districts. it's generally not a situation where in a special election you can beat the incumbent party. democrats haven't won very many federal elections. they've been winning at the state level. when you can break down a margin from 10 to 16 points to single digits knowing there will be a rematch in two months, every single republican has to be concerned heading into the fall and donald trump can't visit all the districts he needs to visit in order to stave off a blue wave. >> it's interesting. we talk about the trump effect. the obvious trump effect is the fact we had a competitive race in the 12th congressional district a democrat hadn't won since 1980. in terms of the result, the president going in on saturday making noise in this one, how do you look at the results in a way the trump effect on this one? >> the way, trump is causing democratic enthusiasm.
right? this election is -- ohio election is kind of a joke like it's happening in august. they have to run again in november with this recount stuff. >> september we may have an answer. >> who knows when the winner will be sworn in. he'll be for six weeks and run again, right? so the whole thing was a proxy. whether or not garrett haake said they were talking about social security and issues and that you will. nobody was fooled. it was a proxy race. right? so two things happen. so the democratic enthusiasm was huge and there was a trump effect almost certainly positively pore balderson. so the question i would have for dave jolly in this circumstance is, you're in trouble, you're a republican in trouble even if it's a district that looks pretty you know, split, maybe you want trump. maybe your only hope is ginning it up. >> that's the question. the governor there made it sound like balderson maybe didn't want trump.
what had you have said in his position? >> we need to dissect president trump's tweet. based on electoral science it's absurd. it's important to understand early voting is a demographic all to itself. donald trump did not shift this election. i knew in my first race i was going to lose the early vote because i knew the performance of early voters versus those on election day. this is fascinating because donald trump might say, and we may see the numbers that he created enthusiasm and brought more republicans out. you have to measure how many democrats cape out out of concern and anxiety to the oppose donald trump. the reality is, trump's impact on 2018 is obvious. republicans are losing. republicans are having to compete where they never have before. republicans are underperforming by 5 and ten points because of donald trump. the donald trump effect is not winning close races like tonight. it's losing and undermining what has been ten years of successful republican politics. >> my question is, you've got
two weeks to go, barbara cop stock in the virginia suburbs and maybe not the right candidate for this, two weeks to go. you're down three or four. your only hope is somehow ginning up republican turnout. you've got to gin it up. the trump effect may be there. the trump effect is already stimulated the democrats. if you're one these moderate sort of like establishment republicans, that's what i'm asking, do you want him there last week of october. >> i don't know. i'm just saying. > it depends on the district, not the candidate's ideology. the best course would be to were silent on donald trump. and just not ask him to come to the district. i was actually a republican who stood on house floor, called for him to drop out of the race and
said he's bad for the country, i'll never support him. my republican base will never let me live that down. that's fine. i was willing to accept the consequences. if you're barbara cop stock, you can't distance yourself from the president but you don't have to embrace him. >> from a democrat candidate's standpoint, it sounds like the president wants to be very visible this fall. if you're one of those democrats trying to unseat a republican and the president is coming to your district a week or two out, are you saying uh-oh, he's going to get the republicans fired up or saying oh, he's going to get the democrats fired up. >> you're saying this is going to raise me money and i have a good chance he does as much damage as he does good. you saw this in the 12th district and you've seen this in other places. donald trump shows up wherever you want to go. you may not be in a position of being able to ask him to show up because a president decides when he wants to show up. sometimes he names the wrong candidate when he cops to a district. i don't know that if it's two
weeks in october if you really want to be the person bringing donald trump. he may not show up. he may not stay on record or message and worse, what kinds of messaging sacrifices will you have had to make at the altar of trump in the previous three weeks to make yourself attractive enough he's going to want to make that swing? i probably wouldn't want to bother with him. you work on the fact you've been an incumbent and care about the local community. you don't want to make this a national race if you're a republican right now. >> whatever the ultimate result in ohio 12, there is plenty of reason for democrats when they're cutting 12 points off trump's margin like this. the bigger picture coming up. the nature of a virus is to change. move. mutate.
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we have been focusing all night on a special election in the 12th district in ohio. believe it or not, there's a lot more when it comes to elections tonight. a bunch of other big races happening around the country including michigan where the democratic state senate leader gretchen whitmer has won the democratic nomination for governor in that state. this according to "associated press." there's been a little bit of chaos in the vote counting out there for the secretary of state site. those are the numbers you see up on the screen showing you a low apartment in. whitmer the favorite of the establishment of the party. you're seeing in the a.p. count winning with 51% of the vote. she defeats apparently former top detroit health official abdul he will syed. he was backed by both bernie sanders and alexandria ocasio-cortez. they campaigned on his behalf ahead of this race. joining us is democratic congressman eric swalwell of california.
let me just ask you. >> good evening. >> you're trying to pick off 23 republican seats in november. how do you feel at this moment? >> very good. there are 79 sees more competitive than the seats where it's still too close to call with danny o'connor as our candidate. michigan, the contest you just referenced more democrats showed up to vote there. people are energized but when you get out of primaries and get to the general election and independents and republican voters can cross over i think we're in a better position. >> are you looking -- are you thinking at all that this word wave gets tossed around a lot. is it a disappointment for democrats if they barely hit that number? are you starting to think in terms of getting a more robust majority that might have a little bit more clout in power there? >> we're not taking anything for granted at all.
when you look at the conor lamb race or how close it is with danny o'connor's race, we believe in each of these competitive races it will be 1,000 plus or minus votes. that's why it's so important that our candidates are able to appeal not just to the democratic base but to maybe disenchanted republican voters independent voters. so we know how important this is and we're going to stick to making sure that they understand that their health care costs are going up. pay collects do not have certainty and that the corruption in washington needs to be addressed. we think that will be the margin of victory. >> one of the biggest messages from republicans against danny o'connor and if they do hang on and win, if balderson does, republicans will say what saved them at the end was running against the idea of speaker
nancy pelosi because o'connor had -- they ran the ad with o'connor on this network saying in the end he would vote with democrats for at the pel. do you expect nancy at the pel to be the democratic leader after this november's election? >> i do. and again, that's the message that shows the bankruptcy of their values that they're not talking about what they're for. they'll have a real problem if danny o'connor is coming within 1500 votes right now and there's 79 districts more competitive. they'd better come up with something more appealing to the values that voters have in their districts. >> eric swalwell, thank you for joining us. our panel is back with us. david jolly, john podhoretz, jason johnson johnson. i'm interested in the question about nancy pelosi. we've seen so many democrats in districts just like this, ohio 12. part of that portfolio is saying i'm not going to vote for nancy pelosi. if democrats get the majority and it's slim and 20 or 30 candidates show up in washington pledging not to vote for nancy pelosi, can she be the democratic leader?
>> she can. but here's the other thing. this works both ways. in the ohio district 12, remember, o'connor's campaign was saying hey, is balderson going to vote for jim jordan if he runs for a leadership position with the controversy going on with ohio state right now. there are lots of different things that can come into play. if the democrats win the house by a reasonable margin, nancy pelosi will initially step aside. dealing with donald trump is not the same thing as george bush. it's not the same thing as barack obama. the democrats need a wartime consigliere, younger more aggressive kind of leadership in order to keep pace with the excitement and enthusiasm of their base. i don't know if nancy pelosi and james clyburn can continue doing that. >> you got a name in mind? >> so i have said for a long time, i think tim ryan will try something.
i think swalwell. there are several members of the congressional black caucus thinking about it right now. i'm fairly confident the new leadership with the democratic party will be a much more diverse leadership than perhaps in the past. >> do you expect nancy pelosi to be democratic leader come january? >> i question whether pelosi is a figure as radioactive as other -- as other political leaders in congress have been to help the other side. like she's not newt. newt was you know, very useful. she's not dole. she's not -- so i think the hope of republicans is that they can somehow threaten republican vote ares to might stay home with the possibility that nancy pelosi will be speaker and a lot of low information voters will say who's nancy pelosi. so if i'm right about that, then she doesn't have to be turned out because she won't be a figure, a lightning rod of
controversy. it's not clear to me the democrats are responding to pelosi in the way they are because they're worried she is useful to republicans. it's nor like she's owed, she's been there a long time. let people that we're more simpatico with have the job. i think she was actually a pretty good speaker when she was tem speaker technically speaking. i'm not sure you should throw her aside for somebody untested. >> the whole drama there, joe crowley seemed in position if pelosi were to step aside. he's not anymore. jason johnson, david jolly, john, thank you all for staying up late on a very fun election night. coming up next, good news for democrats hoping for that blue wave in november. going to break down some of the top tier democratic targets this november. they may be more favorable turf for party than we saw in the 12th district in ohio. that is next.
12 according to the cook political partisan voting index. and there are also 119 less republican districts than that pa1 seat that democrats won back in march. the magic number for democrats to win the house, they need 23 to do that. we thought we would take a look at some of those districts that may be top tier target for democrats. why don't we look at this. this was the last one, the last special election it started all the way back in april 2017. since the 2016 election heading into 2018, these are all the special elections for the house. so many great memories. how many nights did we stay up like this. some of these were very suspenseful. clearly a pattern emerged. this is around wichita. this was mike pompeo's district. trump won by 27. the republicans did win the seat in the special election but that was a move to the democrats of 20 points there from 27 to 7.
you saw it in montana. entire state, that's the one where the republican candidate body slammed the reporter the night before the election. again, he did win that election. he might be in trouble this fall but that was a shift of 14 points for democrats. the one big exception on this list, it was georgia 6. it was the suburbs north of atlanta. that's the one thing when republicans, boy, if they want to be optimistic they can say hey, somehow that's going to be the rule here and everything else will be an outlier. but otherwise, look, double digit gains for democrats utah is a weird one. there was a third party candidate in the presidential race. trump's margin there. beak this, coming into tonight, the average gain for democrats versus 2016 was 10 1/2 points. they beak gained 10 1/2 points tonight. if things hold, a little bit less than a point, we'll call it a point, republicans by a point there.
bottom line, take a look at it this way. we say 23 is the magic number. we talked about where o'connor ran up is the magic number. hillary clinton won the one county where she won in 2016. he did 10 points better than her and the turnout was through the roof. who are the most nervous republicans right now? these 25. the republicans here all represent districts that were won by hillary clinton. i think these republicans, if they are looking at that hillary clinton portion of ohio tonight, they got to be worried. there's a lot of demographic similarities in some of these districts. the clinton district republicans i think have to be worried when they see a result like this tonight. coming up, today's other big political story, the trial of paul manafort.
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day six of the united states versus paul manafort. during his second day of testimony, rick gates who is cooperating the robert mueller testified that he falsified tax and bank documents at manafort's request. during cross examination, manafort's lawyers pressed gates about his lies to the mueller team and the hundreds of thousands he admitted to embezzling from manafort. though paul manafort is facing charges from before his time as trump campaign chairman, today in court the trump campaign was also discussed. >> it was a tale of dueling narratives at the paul manafort trial today. the star witness rick gates was on the stand for hours accusing manafort of corruption, of tax evasion, of faking loan documents, of bank fraud. then gates came under withering cross examination by manafort's lawyers. the person for whom this is
really bad is donald trump, because these guys were running his campaign and they both from the evidence in the trial, whatever the conviction or acquittal is, they both appear to have been sleaze bags. he parked millions of dollars in foreign bank accounts outside the irs. he has not refuted that at the trial. his only hope is to say it was not intentional and therefore not a felony. gates has admitted to massive crimes including tax evasion, bank fraud and stealing from paul manafort. today it emerged he had a secret life, a mistress at a crash pad in london. it was an interesting trial, day in court today. manafort's lawyers did damage gates' credibility, but they didn't challenge sort of the overall assertions that he made in the morning, buttressed by
documents that the prosecution introduced, some of which were e-mails from manafort clearing showing his involvement in shady behavior. joining us now harry litman, former federal prosecutor and deputy assistant attorney general under president clinton. ken is saying there it sounds like gates's credibility was damaged by that cross examination today, the defense team really going after him. ultimately, do you think that matters? >> well, maybe a little. he did get beat up some, but that was to be expected. the important thing is not whether he's done sleazy or criminal things. it's whether the jury now believes he's telling the truth. and what he said is, look, here's my plea agreement. if i tell a lie, i lose it all. i'm incentivized for it. the defense made a textbook error. they said to him, well, if
you're done so many lies, should the jury believe you now. he said yes. and they said why? and you learn in trial 101 don't ask a question you don't know the answer to. he was prepped for it and he said, because i'm here to tell the truth, paul manafort had the same choice, he chose another path. i think that hit home. the important thing is not what he's done in the past but whether as he's sitting there they have reason to believe him. that is not just his word, but all the corroborating evidence that the government has introduced. so they scratched him up some, but i don't think in any critical way. >> i'm curious too what you make of the judge in this case. there's been some coverage, some attention to his behavior in the courtroom, some withering criticism really of the defense team, telling one of the lawyers, saying, i see tears in your eyes, essentially saying, maybe i made you cry. what do you make of what the judge is up to here?
>> he actually said that to a prosecutor, a lead prosecutor. >> i'm sorry. i said defense. >> that's all right. i've been in front of him as a prosecutor. he does take a special relish in sort of slapping you around. but he's gone farther here. there's not only what you just said, which at least was out of earshot of the jury. but within the jury's earshot when gates testified that manafort was on top of everything he did, judge ellis volunteered apropos of nothing, well not everything, obviously, since he didn't know about the money you were stealing, this in front of the jury. that's really improper. you know, ellis is known for being feisty, but this is the kind of thing that can prejudice the united states. i don't think it will, but if it does, there's no appeal. if there's an acquittal here,
the united states can't reverse it because of double jeopardy. >> if there is a conviction on the other hand in terms of mueller's investigation, look, this case is officially -- it's about the business practices of paul manafort. the trump campaign came up today in the court, but this has not primarily been about the trump campaign. but in terms of mueller's investigation of russian interference in the 2016 election, the trump campaign, if he gets a conviction, does it in any way feed into that? is there a connection there? is there a next step if he gets this connection? >> yeah. so i think in a few ways. first, as you mentioned, it does have a little bit to do with the russia stuff even in the trial. of course, manafort and gates, as you mentioned at the top, during the campaign in the thick of it, manafort's losing several hundred thousand dollars a month, in fact. but i just think more generally, trump has so invested in the
notion this is a rigged phony probe and a decisive win here by mueller just strengthens his hand, strengthened rosenstein's hand and weakens trump's commensurately. >> the drama is going to continue inside that courthouse. we've got accounts from our reporter and those court drawings too we get to put up on the air. always fun to get to show those. we'll be right back.
>> translator: in total, it's about 79. >> the constitution says the census must count everyone so that means noncitizens, too. >> as we head into the 2020 elections, can americans trust the system? or is the swamp too deep? that's a challenge in parts of >> drain the swamp! the country like this. where there's a fear of the government, a fear that only increased since president trump took office. >> what are the people so worried about? >> translator: because the i never thought in elementary school growing up families here are mixed. some of them may not have their learning about elections in documents. america that one day i would be some were born here. talking about the world's so you're giving your addresses, greatest democracy, vietnam. you're giving your personal >> vietnam has the best voter turnout. information, where you live. so i think that could be they put us to shame. intimidating to the community. >> vietnam, dominica, uruguay, malta, seychelles, ecuador, turkey, then on page, basically at the end, it's the united states. >> keep going. >> while it's always been hard to get an accurate census count here in south texas, activists keep turning the page. like martha and maria say 2020 >> the united states is could have been devastating. between -- that's because the trump administration wanted to add a >> bosnia, herzegovina, and question we have not asked since 1950. singapore. >> bottom line, is we have some problems. ♪
is this person a citizen of the united states? it's a question that career census officials have said could lead to a huge undercount in communities already living in fear of even the most routine contacts with the government, not to mention possible deportation. >> america is the most renowned democracy on the planet. >> i know families every day, a government that is supposed to they give blessing to the family members because they really be for and by the people. don't know if somebody's going to come back, they're going to be stopped by the constable, by the border patrol, by the police and, yet, so many of us take a pass on exercising our most department. fundamental right of all, all these departments can stop a voting. family for a blinking light, for a little more than half of the a wrong turn and the family can people in this country who can vote bother to show up at the end up being deported. polls, even when the stakes are highest, in a presidential election. >> and that's the reality of in non-presidential years, life here and the idea that the turnout is much worse. census bureau becomes another one of those agencies. >> so what's wrong with our democracy? u.s. commerce secretary wilbur as we head into the 2020 ross who oversees the census elections, that question couldn't be more urgent. voter turnout as well as trust bureau says the question was in the election system itself could play a huge role in deciding who becomes our next president. requested by the justice department to help enforce the voting rights act of 1965. voting rights activists weren't >> drain the swamp. buying that explanation.
more than a dozen states filed lawsuits to block the question, >> with our most basic saying it was a blatant attempt democratic process in crisis, to give republicans an advantage katy and i are wading back into by undercounting traditionally the swamp to see just how deep democratic communities. it goes. from allegations of a rigged the case eventually made it all the way to the docket of the system, to alleged election supreme court. around the same time, fraud -- >> if you're confident that you won, don't you want to call for another election? congressional democrats called a hearing to demand answers from ross. >> sir, why won't you answer any questions? >> to the folks who think the swamp in washington, d.c., runs >> thank you very much. >> ross stuck to his story. >> doj sought census block level citizenship data for use in voting rights act enforcement. >> and supporters like try to find out what we're doing wrong. republican representative james excuse me. are you a delegate? what country are you from? comer of kentucky argue the citizenship question is necessary. >> every working taxpaying uruguay. you're the third highest voter citizen should want to know how turnout in the world. many people are living in the 97%. united states. >> 97%. >> why? your tax dollars go to things to build infrastructure, to do things like pay for education, pay for law enforcement. >> australia also has compulsory we need to know how many people voting. are living here. >> people who work, career professionals, within the census and a voter turnout rate almost bureau, have already said that
during the last census in 2010, 1.5 million african-american and twice as high as ours. latino people were undercounted how does it feel to have better by the census and this will only voter turnout than the greatest democracy in the world? increase that number. >> well, i think a lot of people look at the u.s. and wonder why you have that system. so why do you support it? >> where are you from? >> denmark. oh, please, talk to us. >> oh, my. >> i believe that every american is supposed to fill out the >> such an honor. census. >> you do a great job. i believe that we should know if >> are you from sierra leone? people that fill out the census you're 18th place in the world. you know what our turnout is? >> no. >> 122nd place in the world. are citizens or not. >> whoa. >> why? people ask me all the time, when you're talking about the wall, which is a huge subject. >> why are we -- i'm talking >> we all learn, even in about the census, sir. >> listen. listen. when we're talking about the wall, people say, how many kindergarten, to try to learn children in making decisions. illegals are here? i don't know. >> there you go. nobody knows. we can take a census every decade and hopefully we can >> yeah, because our elections determine how many illegals are are on tuesday. here. >> yes. >> what days are your elections? and the census isn't going to say go out and hunt out people >> on saturday. >> go figure. >> if you were to give us advice, what would it be? that are here illegally or not. that's misinformation. >> start from the young ones. the democrats are trying to use >> so start with this guy? >> start, yes. scare tactics and play the race >> are we a democracy? card. and let me say this. >> i'm not so sure. it's not just minorities. >> wow. there are people in my district, they don't like filling out the wow. census. they don't like the government knowing their business, but it's important to know how many >> andy! >> hi. people are living in the united states. >> as the debate in congress >> u.n. elections consultant continued, a bombshell dropped andrew reynolds helped organize shattering the trump
elections in countries around the world. according to reynolds, america's administration's entire explanation for adding the citizenship question. voting problems aren't exactly a secret. >> after you. >> thank you. when you're overseas helping set >> dahlia lithwick, senior up democracies, say this is the editor and legal correspondent way they do things in america, for "slate" has been following using america as examples, are the census story from the start. you met with pushback, why should we listen to what happens when i sat in that house oversight committee hearing and in america? >> many times. listened to wilbur ross saying the reason they wanted to put and people are sort of angered census was because of the voting that the u.s. would come and tell them what to do. rights act, at the time it >> are we just giant hypocrites when it comes to democracy that seemed very suspicious and it we're able to go around the turned out that there was good world and set up democracies, reasonor that. >> yeah. i mean, it was beyond suspicious. yet ours is sort of in shambles it was audacious becaus at home? >> the real challenge of all the a trump administration that has expertise in the u.s. is to take not done anything in any other it to other places and to offer context to enforce the voting rights act. they treated it as though it's an inconvenience. choices and options and don't do the notion that suddenly there's some of the things we do but this burning need to protect copy some of the good things. >> would it help if more of us minority voting in america from turned out to vote? >> absolutely. this administration. but people turn out when they it's not only short of feel invested in the process, paradoxical in light of how they they think it makes a difference. treated minority voting, it's and they have access to voting. also just a flat-out lie. >> with another election around the corner, the questions about >> that lie was exposed when gop our electoral system are more
critical than ever. >> the majority of people in strategist tom hallford died and this country abide by the rules of this democracy, they pay his daughter discovered taxes, but they don't participate. documents among his private they don't have a say and they choose not to have a say. possessions. >> his daughter finds these zip >> well, that is the question. do they choose not to have a drive with information that say? shows he had engineered this as i think most people feel like their votes don't matter but what does that mean? a plan explicitly to suppress minority votes. does it mean they don't have faith in the elected leaders that come here to washington, d.c.? >> in the files, he calculated a so much alike in the republican, democratic party, their lives never change no matter who's citizenship question would help representing them? republicans in the redistricting process by discouraging hispanic communities from responding to or is it people have legitimate the seine cuss. he even drafted talking points gripes about systemic abuses to support his argument. getting to the polls? some of those same points were >> voter suppression. later used by the justice department in an official letter >> they don't believe the electoral college, think russia asserting why the citizenship interfered in the question. question was needed. >> so the biggest question is how does it get better? >> if i knew, we'd have 100% voter participation by now. >> let's figure it out. >> it's right there and quite literally they are scooping up language that he had used. so, boom, suddenly we have kind >> in north carolina, people of a smoking gun. have good reason to think their votes don't matter. >> with a looming july 1st that's because even though there deadline to print the census questionnaires, voter rights was an election for congress advocates presented the documents in a last-minute in 2018, it took halmost a year filing before the supreme court. they're getting ready to print
this thing and then the supreme court weighs in. to fill the seat. what happened? >> it's a rigged system, folks. it's a rigged system. it's a rigged system. it's a rigged election. >> since the 2016 campaign, >> so there are four solid votes donald trump has been promising to say this is absolutely fine. wilbur ross did nothing wrong. to drain the swamp of what he claims is rampant voter fraud on john roberts who writes the the part of the democrats. majority opinion, he says, i don't believe him, he's lying. but here in north carolina, it's the republicans who are accused of election fraud. he doesn't use the word, "he's >> mr. elias. >> how are you, sir? how are you feeling? lying," but he essentially says i believe the reasons given are >> on the morning we arrived, pretextual. poll workers were getting ready i have no problem in principle with what he was trying to do. to testify at a hearing to see but the way it went down makes if a new congressional election me feel kind of queasy, so he should be called. >> was this a fraudulent election? >> we'll have to see, won't we? >> what do you think? >> there's new political drama sides with the liberals. in north carolina tonight. >> soon after, trump announced he was dropping the citizen question from the 2020 census. >> back in november of 2018, gop house candidate mark harris beat >> it's deeply regrettable, but it will not stop us from his democratic rival dan collecting the needed mccready by a razor-thin margin. but right away, allegations of information, and i think even in greater detail and more ballot tampering emerged. accurately. so basically, this whole thing >> while activists were successful in getting the is about whether or not this question blocked from the 2020 election was decided fraudulently. like a 900-vote margin in the campaign. census, lithwick warns it might not be a total victory. >> the sad part of the story is >> the harris campaign was that if the point of this was to terrorize hispanic voters into
accused of illegally going door to door to collect mail-in not voting, the damage is done. ballots and altering them to whether or not that question help the republican ticket. appears on the census, what matters is you are in our sights and until it was sorted out, the and you should be afraid to congressional seat remained participate in this democracy. empty. >> is there evidence that harris >> we don't know yet how the knew about this? >> that's what we're trying to fallout from the census fight will affect the 2020 election, find out. but what if the government made it easier to vote? >> while jacob and i were talking, harris and his team two civil rights leaders have a took a break from the hearing. >> let's go that way. >> we wanted to get some answers straight from the source. novel idea to get more people to the polls. >> mr. harris, what do you have to say about the illegal ballot >> we call it the trump card. harvesting by people associated with your campaign? i handed it to him. >> did you know about it, mr. harris? >> did you know about the illegal ballot harvesting? >> you actually took his picture >> if you're confident that you won, don't you want to call for and you put it on there. another election? >> sir, why don't you answer any any comments doug? questions? >> harris declined to comment, yeah. only pay for what you need with liberty mutual. but we did speak to the only pay for what you need with liberty mutual. con liberty mutual solo pagas lo que necesitas. dallas woodhouse, executive director of the north carolina only pay for what you need... only pay for what you need. republican party. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ even though he counted 22 cases of ballot tampering to favor republicans, he said mark harris was still in the lead. a lot of folks ask me why their dishwasher doesn't get everything clean. i tell them, it may be your detergent... >> so you still say -- that's why more dishwasher brands recommend cascade platinum... >> so you still say harris is -- >> dallas, if this was happening ...with the soaking, scrubbing and rinsing built right in. on the other side -- >> exactly.
for sparkling-clean dishes, the first time. >> it's interesting that you say that. cascade platinum. >> we constantly are hearing republicans say that democrats (make-a-wish volunteer) ok, he's coming,y) c'mon c'mon...ing! are engaged in voter fraud. there's almost never any evidence of that and right here, here we go... you're holding a board that has ♪ at least 22 cases of voter fraud in the state of north carolina. (little santa) somali...alika? >> in one district. (little santa) where's kiara? >> executed by republicans in one district. >> in one congressional district. (little santa) i got this for you. in one election. >> so 22 cases of voter fraud by a republican. (vo) when you grant a child's wish, you change lives. where are the democratic cases (vo) you can choose make-a-wish to get two hundred and fifty dollars from subaru when you get a new subaru. of that because i'm interested in mark harris' lead. (vo 2) get 0.9% during the subaru share the love event. here's what i would tell you. if people did illegal things, and i think there are people that the testimony shows, they [sneezing] ♪ should be prosecuted. you don't want to cancel your plans. >> mark harris maintained he did [sneezing] cancel your cold. not know anything about improper the 1-pill power of advil multi-symptom cold & flu collection of ballots. but on the next day of the knocks out your worst symptoms. hearing, harris' son, john, a cancel your cold, not your plans. advil multi-symptom cold & flu. federal prosecutor, took the stand and revealed that his dad cake in the conference room! not only knew about the plan but showing 'em you're ready... to be your own boss. that he warned his dad that it that's the beauty of your smile. was against the law. crest's three dimensional whitening... ...removes stains,... >> i told him that collecting ...whitens in-between teeth... ballots was a felony.
...and protects from future stains. crest. healthy, beautiful smiles for life. >> it was a stunning admission that by the end of his son's testimony had the congressman-elect in tears. the following day when mark try eucerin advanced dry srepair lotion. harris took the stand, he agreed it helps stop dryness from recurring the election results should be thrown out. by going beyond ceramides with natural moisturizing factors found in skin >> through the testimony i listened to over the past three eucerin advanced repair lotion days, i believe a new election should be called. for healthier looking skin. i need all the breaks, that i can get. >> a new election was held in at liberty butchumal- cut. liberty biberty- cut. we'll dub it. september 2019, but mark harris was not one of the candidates so you only pay for what you need. this time. denying any wrongdoing, harris only pay for what you need. dropped out, citing health ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ issues. instead republican state senator dan bishop ran against mccready. >> republican dan bishop defeat mccready in last night's election. >> this small district might be an extreme example of electoral dysfunction, but it makes you wonder if this is why so many of us don't think our votes matter. hey, how are you guys doing? do you guys vote?
>> no. >> you don't? how come? liberty mutual customizes your car insurance so you only pay for what you need. i love you! only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ i looitaly!avel. yaaaaass. with the united explorer card, i get rewarded wherever i go. going out for a bite. rewarded! going new places. rewarded! anytime. rewarded! getting more for getting away. rewarded! learn more at the explorer card dot com. if we learn nothing else and get... rewarded! from former special counsel robert mueller's testimony to congress, it is that our election system is vulnerable. >> in your investigation, did you think that this was a single attempt by the russians to get involved in our election or did you find evidence that suggests (man and woman) [burst of t♪lking to animals] (vo) it feels good to give back. they'll try to do this again? >> oh, it wasn't a single
(attendant) thank you so much. attempt. they're doing it as we sit here. (woman) oh, you are so welcome. (vo) you can choose the aspca to get two hundred and fifty dollars >> even after mueller's warning, congress hasn't done much to from subaru when you get a new subaru, make our electoral process more secure. like the all new outback. (vo 2) get 0.9% on a new outback and that is in large part because senate majority leader during the subaru share the love event. mitch mcconnell won't bring the most recent election security you get more than yourfree shipping.ir, bills to a vote. >> oh, i'm not going to let you get everything you need for democrats and their water your home at a great price, carriers in the media use the way it works best for you, russia's attack on our democracy i'll take that. wait honey, no. when you want it. as a trojan horse for partisan wish-list items that would not you get a delivery experience actually make our elections any safer. you can always count on. >> even if we make our elections you get your perfect find at a price to match, on your own schedule. more secure, the fact still remains only about half of us will likely go to the polls. you get fast and free shipping on the things that but as discouraging as that make your home feel like you. that's what you get sounds, we were able to find when you've got wayfair. some signs of hope. so shop now! yeah. only pay for what you need with liberty mutual. >> texas historically has some only pay for what you need with liberty mutual. of the worst voter participation in the country, but it turns out con liberty mutual solo pagas lo que necesitas. that's only part of the story. only pay for what you need... ♪ only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ i'm meeting with rice university
political science professor mark jones, who researches what drives voter turnout. we're in a neighborhood in houston where most people do vote. >> this is a very high turnout area, one of the highest turnout areas in the entire houston metro area. >> in this neighborhood three-quarters of people voted. >> right. >> in other neighborhoods -- >> one-quarter. >> one of the biggest cities in the country, one of the most diverse populations in america. where was everybody? >> i think there's a large portion of the population that doesn't feel that elections affect them and feel somewhat alienated from the political system and, therefore, they don't turn out to vote. you have another group of people that simply are too busy with life. >> you're talking about survival. >> yeah. they care about survival. they care about the children being able to go to school in a safe way. they care about jobs. they care about effectively having enough to eat. they don't care about donald trump. they don't care about russia. if anything that drives them away from politics because it's so much noise and so much negativity that it just leads many people to turn off.
>> professor jones says it is possible to boost turnout among the historically disenfranchised. it just takes some work. and that is exactly the work >> if we measure the health of a democracy by how many people vote, then america is in serious voting rights advocates michelle trouble. houston is the biggest city in and brianna brown from the texas organizing project are doing. texas, but here in the suburb of what is the texas organizing project? bel-air, onlyabout one in four people is likely to vote. this has some of the lowest >> at election time we ran large voter participation in all the city like around 27% of people showed up here in the midterm election when they had a record turnout. hey, guys. scale voter programs. can i ask you a quick question? can i ask you a question? so we found 3 million people hi. of color who currently sit out are you a voter? elections who could be voting. do you vote? >> in 2018, we turned out over >> no, i've never been. >> never in your life? 270,000 unlikely voters. >> that's a big number. do you guys vote? >> no. >> we run a highly intensive >> you don't? program. how come? we do a minimum of three knocks on the door. >> politics is a deep thing, i don't want to get into it. usually, at least three phone >> in this area, not many people vote and i'm trying to calls. >> and on election day -- understand why. >> and on election -- >> it's going to be only one >> no, during early vote and election day. >> so, yes, if you made a vote, your vote. commitment to vote, we will continue to call you and knock on your door. i don't know. >> you don't feel like it makes a difference. >> exactly. >> just didn't get a chance >> basically you ask people -- >> um -- >> inspire people. because i got a restaurant >> we inspire people. business and i -- stuck in there >> to the polls. all the time.
>> you have a restaurant business and you're stuck in the restaurant all the time. do you feel like the politics >> all joking aside, when it that goes on day to day, the comes to getting out the vote, things that we vote for, affect your life? >> yes. inspiration and voter engagement eventually, it will, but, like, are critical. but equally important, we need things take a lot of time. to remove the barriers that keep so many voters away from the polls. >> trying to convince people that voting is worth the time >> back in new york city, we met and effort is a challenge. with civil rights activists bill and martin luther king iii. and that's at least in part their fathers fought together to expand voting rights. because so many potential voters feel disconnected from the >> dad used to say that a process, especially when it voteless people is a powerless comes to the unique way we choose our president. people and one of the most important steps we can take is >> we are the popular vote! >> because of our electoral that short step to the ballot college system, we don't vote box. directly for the candidate. >> now the sons are continuing their legacy and are looking for instead, each state is assigned a solution to one of the a number of electoral votes obstacles many voters face. on martin luther king day 2017, based on its population. 4 days before donald trump's the candidate that gets 270 inauguration, the electoral votes wins. president-elect invited king and wachtel to trump tower. but is this really the best way to elect a president? they saw the meeting as a chance to pitch trump on what they believe is a novel idea. >> hello. hello. >> we said, mr. president, what are you open for business? we have here is an idea that's going to make it easier for all americans to vote. >> for you, we're never closed. presidents carter, president
>> oh. clinton, president bush, have i'm hoping that election night all said it's a great idea and guru, steve kornacki, might have you have the opportunity to some answers. prove that you can be bipartisan what's the point of electoral college? and do something for all >> that goes all the way back to americans. we call it the trump card. the founding of the country, right? i handed it to him. this idea that the interest of >> this looks like a picture of each state would be represented in an electoral college. a social security card with >> we saw for the second time in donald trump's picture on the front and the back. recent history in 2016, the >> 35 states require voters to show some form of i.d. at the person who won the electoral college was not the person who won the popular vote. polls, and their pitch is that why? every citizen had easy access to >> well, i mean, take a look at a free photo i.d. then more this map right here. people would be able to vote. right, for 2016. what you got, you got areas wit you actually took his picture and put it on there. >> he said -- populations, tend to be blue >> great idea. collar white voters. >> said, let me make it easy, this is a group you saw donald you own hotels. trump, he inspired huge turnout. as president, you're going to so it allowed clinton to win the own voting booths. you got to fill it with voters. popular vote nationally but for you're a businessman. you understand the practical trump to pick off a pennsylvania, a michigan, a common sense solution to getting wisconsin. people into voting booths and >> and you need those states along with florida. that is a photo i.d. >> you can lose the national >> so far, president trump popular vote in trump's case by hasn't turned king and wachtel's upward of 3 million votes but idea into action. because you had such a >> but, look, the reality is concentration of your type of voter in those places, that's that no one is really interested
electoral vote rich. in trying to make it more that's 46. that's -- that's what made him convenient for people to vote. president. >> to get more people to the >> an nbc news/"the wall street journal" poll shows 53% of polls, we'll need to do more to restore faith in a system that has left so many disenfranchised americans want to elect our president with a popular vote. and disillusioned. before he won the presidency, but sometimes, before you can donald trump was one of those people. build a better future, you need he called the electoral college to look back at our past. a disaster, but after his have you ever seen this picture victory? of your grandparents? >> a few minutes ago, my dad was explaining it to me. >> the electoral college is genius. it's genius. >> so you guys tell us about this picture. i'm telling you, it's genius. >> sure. this is the group that went to the nobel peace prize in >> not surprisingly, several of december of 1964 and it's the 2020 democratic presidential basically the starting line of candidates would like to see the the civil rights movement. electoral college abolished. >> if we got rid of the electoral college, we'd get a >> do you feel like looking back little bit closer to one person, one vote. on this photo and all that your >> if democrats think getting parents were trying to do that rid of the electoral college will give them an advantage in they would be happy with where we are today? or disappointed? frustrated? 2020 and beyond, steve warns they should think again. >> i think there are areas where >> it feels like it's this permanent thing that only helps republicans. you look and you see great things happening and i think my in 2012, the talk was it might mom and dad will be happy about help democrats. it. i'm not at all convinced there's i think everyone who takes a a permanent long-term republican moment and looks at where we are advantage there. >> i wonder if our system works, and what is happening in our though. world should be very concerned
we were talking with some folks at the u.n. from various at this particular moment and i countries and when we asked them believe dad and mom would be. about our politics, a lot of but they'd be out there challenging us. them expressed total shock that >> for most of our history, we could have a candidate who wins the popular vote but america has struggled to live up doesn't win the election. to the ideal of a government for >> yeah. oh. welcome to u.s. politics. and by the people. but we, the people, have to do our part, too. >> democracy shouldn't be this complicated, right? we need to stay informed. and if we want more people to hold our elected officials accountable. participate, shouldn't we make it easier to vote? and, yes, vote. we're heading to washington, d.c., to ask a seemingly simple that will at least give us a chance to strengthen our question and it turns out even democracy and get out of the that is complicated, too. full disclosure. swamp. before i was a journalist, i was an election reform advocate. the question i always liked to ask first was, why do we vote on tuesday? next time on "american swamp" -- roads getting better or worse? >> i'd say getting worse. quick question for you, >> the crumbling states of congressman. america. >> do you know why elections are held on tuesdays? >> fix the damn roads. >> i really ihould know the >> politics and potholes. >> why washington lo answer. >> i don't have a clue. so the gridlock is a welcome >> you can call my office. >> about why we vote on tuesday? thing for most lawmakers. congressman nunes.
>> i'm not sure. >> why are you looking at me? >> katy -- >> well, jacob knows. jacob is the expert on this. >> jacob, tell us. due to mature subject matter, viewer discretion is >> because in 1845, we were an advised. agrarian society. it took a day or longer to get to the county seat to vote, a day to get back and you can't travel on sabbath, so tuesday was the only day. still today we vote on the tuesday after the first monday in november. just had an assault with injuries to the inmate. but it's not in the >> after an inmate is assaulted. >> the blood came out when his constitution. >> do you have any more obscure knowledge? >> that's not obscure. head struck the floor. >> the jail identifies a >> if i was elected on tuesday, keep it on tuesday. suspect. >> that's the problem. members in congress don't want >> he is a bully. to change the way they were elected. he likes to prey on the weak. >> but the violence doesn't stop there. >> he sucker punched me. >> maybe congressman king is kidding but every joke contains some truth. >> this ain't the first time you assaulted anybody. >> what is the evidence? the truth seems to be that those in power aren't too >> it's scary. invested making it any easier >> there are people over there for americans to vote. in some places, that can take an ugly turn. to get that story, we're headed to one of the biggest political battlegrounds past and present. >> they were pulling people over, they were stopping folks.
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>> the debate over election reform is nothing new. and throughout our history, the struggle for voting rights has exposed disturbing truths about one of the most complicated issues in america. race. >> we will dramatize this whole situation and seek to arouse the conscience of the federal government by marching by the thousands on places of registration all over. >> in the 1960s civil rights icon martin luther king jr. led marches across the south demanding equal rights, including the end of legalized discrimination at the polls. latasha brown, co-founder of black voters matter, says it's a fight that continues today. >> you know, while i wasn't quite born during the civil rights movement, a lot of my work was really around continuation of that work.
and what's really awkward and crazy to me is many of the stories that i heard that happened in the '60s, i'm dealing with that now. so our work with black voters matter is to engage black voters who we feel have, particularly in the south, but throughout this country, you know, have been marginalized and there's all of these layers of voter suppression that we see ongoing. >> hello. >> hello, how are you? >> commissioner. >> latasha is introducing me to a colleague who says he personally experienced a harrowing episode of voter intimidation in southern georgia. in 2018, he borrowed a limousine from a funeral home to drive people to vote. let me just stop you there. that's pretty creative, info innovative. you went to the funeral home, you borrowed their limousines from the funeral home to take people in style to the polls. does it work? do people show up and get in those limousines? >> it worked. it worked.
we were very successful. >> while he was driving people to the polls, roy said he had a run-in with state troopers. >> is it unusual to see state troopers in city center of cordell? >> most definitely. most definitely. >> right as the election is coming in. so they're present. they were pulling people over. they were stopping folks, asking for their driver's license. and so it appeared to be a tactic to really discourage folks and particularly to focus on the african-american community. >> royce was parked on the wrong side of the road when a state trooper approached him. >> the state trooper, he pulled up behind the car. i looked at him and said, you know what, i'm sorry for being parked on the side of the road, if you give me a moment, i'll move the car. and he yelled at me. he said, no, you're not going to move anything, you're going to stand right there. he hit the radio and called backup and probably seven, eight, close to nine troopers showed up. >> a woman shot this cell phone video from down the street. >> two police and the rest of them state patrol. that's a crying shame, on one little person. >> if there was, like, a bank robbery in progress -- >> exactly.
>> and then what? >> the commander instructed the guy that if he was going to give me a ticket to give me a ticket. if he wasn't, let's go. >> and? >> they give me a ticket and left. >> did you ever say, hey, look, i'm just trying to drive people to the polls today. >> they was aware of what i was doing. i pulled up beside people and said, hey, let's go and vote today. no, i don't want to have to deal with the police. >> that's crazy, i'm sorry to interrupt you, but that's crazy to me, that maybe it shouldn't be in the united states of america the first reaction to some folks before they go and vote is i hope i don't have to deal with the police. the georgia state patrol office said the trooper who gave the citation followed proper procedure and that he requested backup because there were so many bystanders on the street. >> we have to protect our democracy. this is a people issue. it's a citizenship issue. >> stacey abrams ran for governor of georgia that same year and lost by less than 55,000 votes. she believes that voter suppression and other tactics were at least partially to blame.
>> do you think the vote was stolen from you, the election was stolen from you? >> i think the vote was stolen from the people of georgia. i don't know if empirically i would have won. but if you add together the thousands of people that faced extraordinarily long lines, who faced hurdles that should not happen in a democracy, the votes that we know were not counted, the secretary of state who was also my opponent in the race purged more than 1.4 million voters over basically an eight-year period. >> the opponent abrams is referring to is gop governor brian kemp. purging voters from the rolls is not illegal. in fact, the law that allowed kemp to do it was passed years ago by democrats as a way to remove people who had moved out of the state or died. but abrams says kemp's office purged voters in a way that disproportionately impacted african-americans. isn't there a law that defines how you get purged? >> but the aggressiveness and the fault in the database.
people were purged who had not matched any of the criteria for being removed from the rolls. >> the voting rights act of 1965 is supposed to guard against racial discrimination at the polls, but in 2013 the supreme court decision in shelby county versus holder erased a key provision in the act and weakened those protections. shelby versus holder, do you think 2018 would be different if that court decision -- >> 2018 would have been different. 2016 would have been different. >> why? >> in the wake of the i vis ration of the voting rights act in shelby v. holder. georgia passed many laws. we saw poll closures and purging that were to longer governed and regulated because there was no oversight. >> abrams accused the georgia election board of racially motivated voter suppression tactics and took the fight to court.
>> in the coming days we will be filing a major federal lawsuit against the state of georgia for the gross mismanagement of this election and to protect future elections from unconstitutional action. >> is there going to be a point in our history where we can say, we've moved past those times? if it's 50 years later, are we not there yet? >> african-americans were denied humanity for the better part of 200 years and were denied agency for the long history of america except for the last 50 years. we cannot undo centuries of oppression and centuries of bad action with good intention and good will without actually putting in place laws to force our better angels. >> abrams' lawsuit is still ongoing. while the georgia board of elections is fighting the allegations. >> while voting rights activists fight back against suppression tactics, it turns out there are all sorts of legal ways for lawmakers to pick and choose the voters they want to show up at the polls. to get that story, we need to get back to north carolina. >> we are walking up on the line, the gerrymandered district. >> in a second, we'll be in another district. >> actually, you're already in another district. >> oh. need all the breaks that i can get.
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there are reports of an attack at a synagogue in new york. initial reports are of a stabbing in munsey. new york city's counter terrorism unit says they are closely monitoring. we will keep you updated as we get more details. updated as we get more details you might think a state with an equal number of registered voters for each party would have an equal number of officials representing them in congress, but that is often not the case at all. take north carolina. even though voters in the state are split almost 50/50 in terms of their party affiliation,
republicans hold 9 out of the 13 seats in congress. >> to understand why, jacob and i met with student leaders at north carolina a&t state university. they say their political power has been undercut by what's called gerrymandering. >> so we are walking up on the line, the gerrymandered district. >> so in a second we will be in another district. >> actually, you're already in another district. >> so if i'm over here, i'm in district 13. >> i'm in district 6. >> wait a minute. hold on a second. >> hold on. >> so katy's in the 6th district. >> and me and you are chilling in the 13th. >> 13th. >> gerrymandering is tactic used by state politicians to draw up congressional districts to help one party win, and it's legal all across america. >> north carolina is one of the most gerrymandered states in the union. >> where is the actual dividing line?
>> basically it's, like, where the sidewalk cracks. >> i would say that. >> so there has to be a good reason that the school has been split in half. >> they believe that the republican party is better for north carolina than the democratic party. >> who is "they"? >> the folks who -- >> the state folks. >> the folks who did the drawing. the north carolina general assembly. >> before republicans redrew the map in 2016, the 10,000 students here were all in one voting district represented by a democrat. that meant students here at the nation's largest historically black college or university also known as an hbcu could have had the power to swing an election. >> so you think the legislature is purposefully dividing the largest hbcu in half in order to dilute the power of the student body? >> yes. >> what was the outcome of splitting the university in half? you got a republican and democrat now, who democrat -- >> two republicans. >> two republicans. >> yeah. we're represented by mark
walkers and ted bud. >> jacob and i have been having this debate. what stops people from voting? is it things like voter suppression, is it too hard to vote, or is it voter apathy? or are they one in the same in some respects? >> i would say both. >> what would this country look like if everyone or the vast majority of people or even the majority went out and voted? >> i think it would look like a democracy and what it is supposed to look like in theory, which in theory a democracy is a participatory process where everyone is encouraged to participate. and, like, participating is accessible. right now, that's not the case. >> we asked to speak with republican representative david lewis who led the redrawing process for the current district map. in an email statement, lewis said dividing the campus, "was not done intentionally and no one on the committee, either democrat or republican, realized that the campus was now split."
>> it's not a coincidence that you see the greatest amount of extreme positions, inconsistent with what the people want, when you see the greatest amount of gerrymandering. >> former u.s. attorney general eric holder sees gerrymandering as a national emergency and a moral threat to our democracy. do you think gerrymandering is at the root of the problem for voting issues in this country? if gerrymandering was fixed, that we'd have fairer elections? >> if gerrymandering were fixed, we would have fairer elections. you'd also have policies put in place that were consistent with the desires of the people. you would have more say in gun laws, more say in efforts with regard to climate concerns. you'd have better approaches to dealing with reproductive rights. it's not a coincidence that you see the greatest amount of extreme positions inconsistent with what the people want where you see the greatest amount of gerrymandering. i'm here to end the practice of gerrymandering. >> shortly after the 2016 election, holder launched the national democratic redistricting committee which is
working to ensure districts are drawn fairly. this isn't just about democrats getting more power. you think this is going to be fairer for everybody. that's a hard argument to convince people of that are not democrats, that are happy republicans. >> so, yes, you have to have democratic participation. in the same way, i'd look at democratic-controlled states. what happened in maryland with the creation of the gerrymandered district that made republicans superfluous. that i think is equally wrong. >> now holder's job rtuled that partisan gerrymandering is legal and redistricting decisions should remain in the hands of state legislatures. >> we will be counted! >> and there's another battle threatening to impact every election in america from town council to the president of the united states. and this one has a twist straight out of the swamp. >> boom, suddenly we have kind of a smoking gun. as a struggling actor, i need all the breaks that i can get. at liberty butchumal- cut.
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>> the way we vote for our representatives starts with a pretty simple question. how many people live in the united states? >> the census, which is taken every ten years, doesn't just count heads, it determines political power. if a state loses population, it loses seats in congress. and influence in the electoral college. a shift that could decide the next presidential election. there's a lot at stake as we gear up for 2020. and so far under the trump administration, the simple act of counting people hasn't been so simple. in fact, it is a swampy mess. >> i've come to the rio grande valley in south texas to find out why. >> martha and maria are members of lupe, a non-profit community organization which conducts outreach to encourage latinos to respond to the census.