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and what happened to the people in these cars. >> hello, everyone it's high noon in the east. welcome to weekends with alex witt. a dramatic and moving scene in charleston, south carolina, a city in mourning today. hundreds of people from all parts of this country are paying their respects at a makeshift memorial outside the emmanuel ame church where six women and three men were shot to death wednesday evening. as the city grieves, the investigation into dylann roof deepens. the latest court documents show each victim was shot multiple times. law enforcement sources say roof bought the gun himself and they also say roof has spoken freely and admitted his guilt. the charleston sheriff's office says roof has had no visitors other than his attorney. we have two reports, msnbc's adam riess is outside the emmanuel ame church and trymaine li lee. alex, what's going listen to? >> reporter: the arrest warrant is revealing what happened. dylann roof came here at 8:00 wearing a fanny pack. he walked in and joined the bible study class. about an hour later he started an argument with some of the members, stood up and began firing. multiple shots into these victims. one local report indicating he may have reloaded seven times. on his way out, he stands over one of the victims that survived and made some sort of a racist comment. at the same time the pastor's wife and youngest daughter were in a room inside the church cowering under a desk and finally we learned that the father and uncle of dylann roof were the ones who called authorities, turned him inn saying that is dylann roof in the picture and he has a .45-caliber handgun. i want to take you live now here at the church just to show you what's going on. we've had hundreds and hundreds of mourners come by all day long all day yesterday dropping off flowers, prayers lots of emotion today, lots of tears. >> this is real. i mean this ain't something that just happened. this is real man. a lot of lives was lost a lot of families was affected. the whole city of charleston is affected. >> it's showing that we're standing together. we are not separate we are not individuals, we are one and we are coming as one. >> it's time for us to have the dialogue. everybody has to take down their defenses and stop being afraid because you know what? there's going to be a lot of stuff that comes out that might be hurtful. >> reporter: one common theme here is everyone is trying to make sense of it all. alex? >> adam i'm curious, has this been a steady stream all day. can you guesstimate the numbers and the description? it looks to me like it's black, white, young, old, brown, it doesn't matter. there are people from all walks coming here today. >> absolutely. multicultural. we were here all day yesterday, hundreds of people thousands if you add it up between yesterday and today, a steady stream flowers, candles. all of this just trying to make sense and talk to each other and hug each other and cry together so much emotion here and trying to figure out how this happened why it happens and as one person who knows why and how in all of that the dylann roof. >> okay, adam riess, thank you so much. one of the most striking moments in this tragedy came yesterday when the families of the victims were given an an opportunity to speak directly to dylann roof at his bail hearing. instead of hate they had words of forgiveness and mercy. >> i forgive you. you took something very precious away from me. i will never talk to her ever again. i will never be able to hold her again but i forgive you. you hurt me. you hurt a lot of people but god forgives you and i forgive you. >> we welcomed you wednesday night in our bible study with open arm ss. you have killed some of the most beautiful people i know. every finer in my body hurt ss and i'll never be the same. >> for me i'm a work in progress and i acknowledge that i am very angry. but one thing depayne has always joined in in our family with is that she taught me that we are the family that love built. we have no room for hate so we have to forgive. >> while those families offer mercy, the criminal justice system is on the investigation and msnbc national reporter trymaine lee is at the detention center. trymaine, how much closer are investigators to understanding what happened and why? >> reporter: there are so many more questions than answers here in this community that is really stricken by grief. going back to that bond hearing yesterday, it was very difficult to listen to the outpouring of grief from the family. but that magistrate judge says $1 million bond for dylann roof for the gun charge. he said that it's up to a state circuit court to set bail for the nine murder charges that he faces. now going back to what adam mentioned that before dylann roof left the church he apparently uttered some sort of racially charged statement, some sort of racist statement. the department of justice said they are investigating this a number of different possibilities but also as a hate crime. so while there's so many more questions and people in this community are wondering what could have motivated such hate to take nine lives in that church, nine innocent lives in that church investigators are just beginning what will ultimately be a long road even though dylann roof has apparently reportedly admitted his role in the shooting this is the beginning of a long road alex. >> and governor nikki haley says she believes it was, indeed, a hate crime. lots of talk trymaine about the fact that in the bail hearing yesterday the judge forcefully made a point of saying dylann roof's family is a victim in all of this. what's been the reaction to that and what's next for dylann? >> if ever there was a more poorly timed statement it was yesterday. folks on the ground already again gripped in grief and trying to understand what's going on and then for the judge to say you know basically look to these folks as victims even though they are there living and breathing and figuring things out. but, again people understand that when it comes to violence there are victims on all side. but right now they've said it's time to mourn the nine people killed. what's next is again, the bail at some point may be revoked or set in the nine murder charges that dylann roof face. in the meantime, he's behind us in the detention center. >> okay. tra main lee, thank you very much there from there. a dramatic ending in tucson arizona. a pickup truck driver racing away from police crashes right through the intersection. the driver plowed through several other cars before his truck slid to a stop. the driver ran out of the camera camera's view. police used a taser to subdue the suspect. he was later taken to the hospital. officials say the truck was wanted for an ongoing felony investigation. two other drivers suffered non-life threatening injuries. incredible images show hundreds of thousands of tiny crabs blanketing southern california beaches. crews are still busy cleaning the sandy coastlines from san diego to los angeles that have been marred by these creatures. typically the crabs are found in mexico but experts say warmer waters may be responsible for luring them further north and closer to the shore than usual. while most crabs are dying in hoards, some are washing back out to sea alive. in sports new york yankees slugger alex rodriguez made history friday night when he homered for his 3,000th career hit. it happened at yankee stadium in the bronx. rodriguez is the 29th major league baseball player to reach 3,000 career hits and the first to do it since derek jeter homered from the same batter's box in 2011. from there to the weather. the heat advisory in california as those wildfires continue to burn. smoke from the san bernardino mountains is being seen as far away as arizona. the fire is less than 10% contained. and then near fort worth, texas, homes are being threatened in one neighborhood after tropical depression bill dumped rain on the state. reynolds wolf is here with the forecast. high, reynolds. alex we're keeping a sharp eye in parts of the midwest. storms may produce tornados heavy rain and hail. the areas most affected will be parts of the upper midwest including des moines and chicago. another big issue that we have is going to be the tropical depression, the remnants of bill driving to the east which will increase your rain chance. next storm will press in with that moisture already at the surface. which means more widespread shower activity expected for places like new york perhaps even into the jersey shoreline. definitely into places like washington, d.c., charleston, knoxville, louisville getting in on the rain action for today. tonight we see showers migrating up into new york city on to long island from roanoke to norfolk, places like charleston west virginia, we have thunder boomers. tomorrow we see them continue to migrate their way into parts of maine into vermont and new hampshire. in the deep south, it won't be what you see but feel. excruciating heat in many places for today and tomorrow. high times in the south lane folks, you have to be careful out there. take it easy over the next several days. alex, let's send it back to you. still ahead, gun culture in america as yet another mass shooting grip this is nation. hear the latest on what the president had to say about gun reform. stay with us. head & shoulders with old spice. america's number one male dandruff brand. keeping you 100% flake-free. guaranteed. while smelling 100% handsome. take a whiff. head & shoulders with old spice. unbelievable! toenail fungus? 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[ female announcer ] it balances you... it fills you with energy... and it gives you what you are looking for to live a more natural life. in a convenient two bar pack. this is nature valley. nature at its most delicious. and may take an of heart health. you watch your diet, exercise... and may take an omega 3 supplement but it's the ingredients inside that really matter for heart health. not all omega-3 supplements are the same. introducing bayer pro ultra omega-3 from the heart health experts at bayer. with two times the concentration of epa and dha as the leading omega-3 supplement. plus it's the only brand with progel technology proven to reduce fish burps. new bayer pro ultra omega-3. look for savings in this sunday's newspaper. we're looking at live pictures of charleston's emmanuel church where for the third day in a row mourners across every race and age and religion are coming together to offer flowers and prayers and sympathy for the nine lives lost in wednesday's shooting massacre. at the conference of mayors in san francisco, president obama reiterated his demand for gun reforms as the nation mourns for the victims of a mass shooting. joining me with that story, nbc news white house correspondent kristen welker. kristen, good afternoon to you. we hear so much about these national conversations but it seems like the politics of guns in america feels insurmountable at times. >> it is the politics are so tough, alex. for all of the anger and sorrow in washington right now, there still seems to be very little appetite to take action legislatively. president obama who, of course once vowed to change washington has on this issue, like many others seemingly resigned himself to the fact that change just might be impossible. as the nation comes to grips with another mass shooting president obama is expressing his outrage. >> every country has violent, hateful or mentally unstable people. what's different is not every country is awash with easily accessible guns. >> even jon stewart channels his remarks. >> i have nothing but sadness that once again we have to peer into the abyss of the depraved violence we do for-to-each other. >> still, the president seems resigned to the reality. there's little chance of new gun legislation while he's in office with strong opposition from many republicans to new gun laws even the governor of south carolina telling savannah -- >> they always want something to go after. there is one person to blame here. >> addressing the nation in the wake of a mass shooting is something the president has done more than a dozen times since taking office. a turning point, some thought, in 2012 when a gunman killed 20 children at sandy hook elementary school. >> we can't tolerate this anymore. >> reporter: lawmakers pushed for expanded background checks but even that couldn't get the votes. >> this was a pretty shameful day for washington. >> i can't think of a single issue that more kpimly phis his frustration with being able to change this town than the gun control frustration. >> and while lawmakers are expressing their grief again, few are calling for change asinine families in south carolina prepare to bury their loved ones. in the aftermath of the sandy hook shoot, president obama announced 23 executive actions aimed at combatting gun violence including several to improve mental health services. there's no indication the white house is considered similar steps in this case. there are also more lawmakers, democrats and republicans, in congress right now who argue stiffer gun laws violate the second amendment. one more point, alex hillary clinton will address the u.s. conference of mayor this is afternoon and in just a few moments we expect her to touch on this issue as well. >> we know you'll be listening for us. thank you so much, kristen. is washington capable of the reforms and answers to this tragedy and what it demands? joining me now in south carolina is rick wade former senior advisor on president obama's election campaigns as well as deputy chief of staff to former commerce secretary gary lock. rick, you heard the president talking about gun control but race is at the heart of this race. how do you think he might approach this overall? what can he best bring to this situation on both those fronts. >> alex thank you for having me. this is a time where america, the 90% of people in that poll that you just talkeds about, has to stand up. it's unconscionable and unacceptable that it takes a tragedy such as what happens just recently in my home state in south carolina and that has happened over and over and over before and it's time for americans to stand up and speak out. no one is trying to take away the right to bear arm bus we ought to have various safeguards and background checks and i've never understood the challenge and the dilemma to getting that done. so, again, unfortunately it -- perhaps this tragedy will propel members of congress and our leaders to address this issue in a more forthright manner. >> i'm wondering if you've ever heard in the hallowed halls in which you've worked if you hear people, our elected officials, say up with thing because they think it's the politically correct thing to do to reflect their party or their constituents yet maybe privately they're whispering "yeah, we need gun control. things are out of control." do you think there's a disconnect there at all? >> alex unfortunately -- that is the unfortunate nature of plix. let me say this. in this unfortunate tragedy we just saw, there's a question that i hope that you and that america will begin to answer. one of the reasons, according to this murderer, this perpetrator, dylann, he said he engaged in this horrific heinous crime is because it was about what black -- the black race is doing to the white race i think that question has to be answered because my opinion, the extremity of the rhetoric that we hear in the public discourse and the public domain it fuel this is type of hatred and violence. so i think that white america in particular needs to answer the question what is it that the black race are doing to the white race? because if we're going to get to the fundamentals of race in america, it must be a two-ended conversation and an honest and open and transparent one if we'll make progress in the days and weeks and months to come. >> i tell you, i'm feeling you and i hear these questions but then there is some encouragement, and i would hope you take this as well rick when you see the scenes going on right now outside that beleaguered church with that whole community. you've got people, young, old, white, black, brown, everybody is coming together and mourning together and supporting each other. i mean when you see that kind of visual and that's portrayed across the country and headlines across newspapers talking about the deplorable state of thing, doesn't that give you some encouragement? >> >> it gives me a great deal of hope but it shouldn't take these tragedies, the loss of lives, to demonstrate our love and hope and what america is about. i want to see the same coming together and raleigh together in times of peace, not in times of tragedy so after the mourning and the families and they deserve the right to mourn and lay their loved ones to rest we have to make sure the lives of these victim weren't in vain. and this the lives that were taken and that's when i want to see a real -- i want to see the same dialogue when the cameras leave about love and compassion and addressing these core issues that have been divided america for so long. >> i tell you, rick, what we saw on camera that was extraordinary, at least we heard, was all the victims' family members essentially forgiving dylann roof. you know this community. i cannot imagine how they have the capacity to forgive in their deepest moments of despair. how do you account for that? >> this is no surprise to people of faith and people of faith in the african-american community. this is what we do. let's recall even when there were racist attack dogs in the south in the 1960s, we prayed. we know how to forgive and it has been what our entire struggle has been about. i've got to do a sermon. before this church shooting was happening is i was planning on doing a sermon and my sermon now is different than what it was going to be. i have to address this issue of, look, how do you love -- to use the phrase of dr. martin luther king, jr., the strength to love even in these times of horrific tragedies. and i think prayer the center of faith, emmanuel ame church represented that last beacon of hope that people have for prayer and thief close relationship with god it's supposed to be a place where people are reborn not where people die. >> rick wade i wish i could be in your congregation. i'm sure you will deliver a powerful and inspirational sermon, thank you for talking with us today. >> thank you for having me. still ahead, what a friend of dylann roof has to say about the shooter and why he believes that the racism accusation is wrong despite what roof is alleged to have said in the massacre. and a new study says that says the planet is on the brink of mass extinction and humans are on the list. audible safety beeping audible safety beeping audible safety beeping the nissan rogue with safety shield technologies. the only thing left to fear is you imagination. nissan. innovation that excites. i have moderate to severe crohn's disease. it's tough, but i've managed. but managing my symptoms was all i was doing. so when i finally told my doctor, he said humira is for adults like me who have tried other medications but still experience the symptoms of moderate to severe crohn's disease. and that in clinical studies the majority of patients on humira saw significant symptom relief. and many achieved remission. 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. tell your doctor if you've been to areas where certain fungal infections are common and if you've had tb hepatitis b, are prone to infections or have flu-like symptoms or sores. don't start humira if you have an infection. if you're still just managing your symptoms, ask your gastroenterologist about humira. with humira, remission is possible. ♪ ♪ hp instant ink can save you up to 50% on ink delivered to your door so print all you want and never run out. plans start at $2.99 a month. right now, buy an eligible printer and get three months of free ink with hp instant ink. available at participating retailers. the most affordable way to print. hp instant ink. in today's number ones ushering in summer. it arrives 24 hours from now and that means it's vacation time. a new survey finds 2882% of americans are planning a get away with 25% opting to a trip to a beach or the a place to relax. and the biggest concern they have? 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>> nbc's mark pot, thank you for that. the remarkable reaction of the victims' families to dylann roof in court on friday is making headlines across the country today. charleston's own "post and courier" has this headline "hate won't win." the front page of the ""tampa bay times"" has this one, "i forgive you." and the hartford currant"courant," "amid grief, grace." state police are investigating possible sightings of two men in steuben county near the pennsylvania boarder who may if it the descriptions of the escapees and a corrections officer has been placed on administrative leave as part of the ongoing investigation into the escape at clinton correctional facility. officials have released no additional information. let's bring in arthur roderick deputy assistant director at the department of homeland security and a former assistant director for investigations at the u.s. marshal service. welcome to you, arthur. let's talk about these two men. they escape on june 6. the fact that they've been out so long how does that affect the odds of recapturing them? >> i think it does affect the odds because within a couple days you capture these individuals but in this particular case this is obviously a well-planned escape and you're seeing a transition from the manhunt phase into a traditional fugitive investigation and eventually the u.s. marshals and the new york state police working together will get these individuals. it's just a matter of using the standard practices they use everyday in all fugitive investigations. >> arthur, i'm curious, to what extent does the public being properly informed and involved keeping your eyes out, how much does that play into this? to that point, with the police announcing that they are investigating a possible june 13 sighting, that's a week ago, why would police have waited seven days before making this public. >> well i mean that's a good question and i think they're being cautious not to let out all information. this has been pretty much on the news everyday every hour and their pictures have been blasted all over the press and with that type of uptick in information being put out the the public i think they thought they might have had a very good lead here on the pennsylvania border and wanted to fully investigate it before they released the information. they could also have information that they're possibly heading further in that direction or into pennsylvania state itself. that's probably why they ended up releasing that information a week later. >> arthur, is there a way for investigators to figure out if these guys have cell foenls or s orphones or computers or something that may have been given to them? they could track that with pings or would they have to have the numbers first? >> they have pretty high tech tracking equipment. the marshals, that's one of the great things the marshal service does. they're pretty much experts in that particular area and it does help if you have the phone numbers. but they could be looking at associates and relatives and family friends, boyfriend, girlfriend, husband. they could be looking at those numbers also to see if there's any unusual calls coming in from the target area to those numbers. that's one of the basic principles we use. we tried to come up with the way that the individuals are communicating is with their support system. >> a corrections officer, as you know, at that prison has been put on administrative leave as part of the investigation, no details were released. what do you make of that? >> well i mean i think obviously the information that mitchell has regarding the escape itself is going to be the key to this whole investigation as far as the escape and the escape conspiracy goes. obviously there might have been other involvement. there could be some administrative issues that this person was suspended for but it's going to be very interesting to hear this whole story when it comes out about her involvement and others in the facility possible involvement from them. >> how surprised are you, though arthur, that this pair has evaded capture for this long? even though joyce mitchell, the alleged accomplice, has been arrested? does it suggest an alternate plan to you? >> it does suggest an alternate plan and i think whatever information mitchell had was pretty still a very shortly after the escape. so they might have had a plan "b" already set up where somebody else might have picked them up and that they continued to string her along in hopes that they would continue their relationship outside of prison and i think that's probably exactly what occurred. as far as them being out this long, yes, i am surprised and you know the bigger question is are they still together or are v they split up? >> that's a very good question which we have no answer to at this point. arthur roderick, thank you very much for your expertise and insight. we'll take you to san francisco right now. hillary clinton is addressing the conference of mayor, let's take a listen in. >> so much left to do. as a mother, a grandmother, just as a fellow human being my heart is bursting for them. for these victims and their familiesa wounded church and country. for our country struggling to make sense of violence that is fundamentally senseless and history we desperately want to leave behind. yesterday was juneteenth a day of deliberation and deliverance. 150 years ago as news of president lincoln's emancipation proclamation spread from town to town across the south free men and women lifted their voices in song and prayer. congregations long forced who worship underground like the first christians joyfully resurrected their churches. in charleston the african methodist episcopal church took a new name emanuel, god is with us. just as early generations threw off the chains of slavery and jim crow this generation will not be shackled by fear and hate. [ applause ] on friday one by one grieving parents and siblings stood up in court and looked at that young man who had taken so much from them and said "i forgive you." in its way, their act of mercy was more stunning than his act of cruelty. it reminded me of watching nelson mandela embrace his former jailers because he said he didn't want to be imprisoned twice -- once by steel and concrete, once by anger and bitterness. in these moments of tragedy, many of us struggling with how to process the rush of emotions. i've been in charleston that day. i'd gone to a technical school trident tech. i had seen the joy, the confidence, and optimism of young people who were now serving apprenticeships with local businesses, black, white, hispanic, asian, every background. i listened to their stories. i shook their hands. i saw hope and the prides and by the time i got to las vegas i read the news. like many of you, i was so overcome. how to turn grief, confusion into purpose and action. but that's what we have to do. for me and many others one immediate response was to ask how it could be possible that we as a nation still allow guns to fall into the hands of people whose hearts are filled with hate. you can't watch massacre after massacre and not come to the conclusion that as president obama said we must tackle this challenge is with urgency and conviction. [ applause ] [ applause ] now i lived in arkansas and i represented upstate new york. i know gun ownership part of the fabric of a lot of law abiding communities. but i also know that we can have common sense gun reforms that keep weapons out of the hands of criminals and the violently unstable while respecting responsible gun owners. [ applause ] what i hope with all of my smart that we work together to make this debate less polarized, less inflamed by ideology more informed by evidence so we can sit down across the table, across the aisle from one another a and find ways to keep our communities safe while protecting constitutional rights. it makes no sense theyat bipartisan legislation to require universal background checks would fail in congress despite overwhelming public support. it makes no sense that we couldn't come together to keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers or people suffering from mental illnesses, even people on the terrorist watch list that doesn't make sense and it is a rebuke to this nation we love and care about [ applause ] the president is right. the politics on this issue have been poisoned. but we can't give up. the stakes are too high. the costs are too dear and i am not and will not be afraid to keep fighting for common sense reforms and along with you achieve those on behalf of all who have been lost because of this senseless gun violence in our country. [ applause ] but today i stand before you because i know and you know there is a deeper challenge we face. i had the great privilege of representing america around the world. i was so proud to share our example, our diversity, our openness, our devotion to human rights and freedom. those qualities have drawn generations of immigrants to our shores and they inspire people still. i have seen it with my own eyes. and yet bodies are once again being carried out of a black church. once again racist rhetoric has metastasized into racist violence. now it's tempting it is tempting, to dismiss a tragedy like this as an ice lathed-- isolated incident. to believe that bigotry is largely behind us. that institutionalized racism no longer exists. but despite our best efforts and our highest hopes, america's long struggle with race is far from finished. i know this is a difficult topic to talk about. i know that so many of us hoped by electing our first black president we had turned the page on this chapter in our history. i know there are truths we don't like to say outloud our discuss with our children. but we have to. that's the only way we can possibly move forward together. race remains a deep fault line in america. millions of people of color still experience racism in their everyday lives. here are some facts. in america today, blacks are nearly three times as likely as whites to be denied a mortgage. in 2013 the median wealth of black families was around $11,000. for white families it was more than $134,000. nearly half of all black families have lived in poor neighborhoods for at least two generations compared to just 7% of white families. african-american men are far more likely ton stopped and searched by police charged with crimes and sentenced to longer prison terms than white men. 10% longer for the same crimes in the federal system. in america today, our schools are more segregated than they were in the 1960s. how can any of that be true? how can it be true that black children are 500% more likely to die from asthma than white kids? 500%. >> more than half a century after dr. king marched and rosa parks sat and john lewis bled. after the civil rights act and the voting rights act and so much else how can any of these things be true? but they are. and our problem is not all kooks and klanssmen. it's also the cruel joke that goes unchallenged. it's the offhand comment about not wanting "those people" in the neighborhood. let's be honest. for a lot of well-meaning open-minded white people, the sight of a young black man in a hoodie still evokes a twinge of fear. and news reports about poverty and crime and discrimination evoke sympathy, even empathy. but too rarely do they spur us to action or prompt us to question our own assumptions and privilege. we can't hide from any of these hard truths about race and justice in america. we have to name them and own them and then change them. you may have heard about a woman in north carolina named debbie dills. she's the one who spotted dylann roof roof's car on the highway. she could have gone about her business. she could have looked to her own safety. but that's not what she did. she called the police and then she followed that car for more than 30 miles. as congressman jim clyburn said the other day, "there may be a lot of dylann roofs in the world, but there are a lot of debbie dills, too. she didn't remain silent." [ applause ] well neither can we. we have a way to build the most inclusive society, where there is a place for everyone. we americans may differ and bicker and stumble and fall but we are at our best when we pick each other up when we have each other's back. like any family our american family is strongest when we cherished what we have in common and fight back against those who would drive us apart. mayors are on the front lines in so many ways. we look to you for leadership? time of crisis. we look to you everyday to bring people together to build stronger communities. many mayors are part of the u.s. coalition of cities against racism and discrimination launched by this conference in 2013. i know you're making reforms in your own communities. promoting tolerance in schools, smoothing the integration of immigrants creating economic opportunities. mayors across the country are also doing all they can to keep our streets and neighborhoods safe. and that's not all. across our country there is so much that is working. it's easy to forget that when we watch or read the news. in cities and towns from coast to coast we are seeing incredible innovation. mayors are delivering results with what franklin roosevelt called bold and persistent experimentation. here in san francisco mayor lee is expanding a work force training program for residents of public housing, helping people find jobs who might have spent time in prison or lost their drivers license or fallen behind in child support payments. south of here in los angeles and north in seattle, city governments are raising the minimum wage so more people who work hard can get ahead and support their families. in philadelphia mayor nutter is pioneering a new approach to community policing to rebuild trust and respect between law enforcement and communities of color. in houston louisville and chicago the mayors are finding new ways to help workers train and compete for jobs in advanced industries. cities like cleveland and lexington are linking up their universities and factories -- >> we've been listening to hong kong addressing the conference of mayors in san francisco where she got rousing applause there from those. it's a bipartisan group, of course, talking about the reaction to the church massacre there in south carolina as well as the politics and the difficulty of the politics and the pursuit of gun control in this country. she also talked about the difference in the races right now with remarkable statistics she rather incredulously said reflect ours time here in 2015. joining me right now is john ralston ralston, the host of "ralston live." john, i know you got a chance to interview hillary clinton. what did you make of her remarks just now? >> well i thought the phrasing was fairly powerful alex it took a couple days. she had just arrived in las vegas and i talked to her a little bit about what happened in charleston and now you can see it's had a chance to sink in. and now she's trying to paint a picture for america of what this means trying to put in the context as you mentioned talking about the different lives that african-americans and especially african-american children lead in this country and the problems almost what seems to be the intractable problem of race in america and she brought up guns too in a fairly unscripted moment with me and it's very difficult to get hillary clinton off script. she said "let's doubt the chase. it's about guns." the problem, of course is that after every one of these incidents, aurora newtown, they talk about more laws but the power of the nra in washington is so almost absolute that you can have 80% of the people for what she calls common-sense reforms like universal background checks and it's stifled in congress. >> it's remarkable when you think about the power of the nra yet you see that 90% of americans want some sort of gun control. they want these heinous tragedies to stop. you heard the applause i would have loved to have that camera turned around when it was on hillary clinton. that was a long, sustained, loud applause from everyone there in the audience. all those mayors, the ones on the front line they're the ones dealing with the tragedies in their backyards. you mentioned the nra. what did she say in her interview to you regarding the strategy. but doesn't she believe you can still work with the nra to some degree and find some sort of compromise? >> she talked a lot about how many gun owners will accept what she calls common sense sensible gun reforms and i know gun owners in nevada who are willing to vote for universal background checks. there's going to be a ballot question in nevada. but the devil is in the details in these thing, alex. you're going to ban one gun but not another? it's very very difficult to write these laws and, of course everyone says they want to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill. but then there are the ones on the -- in the nra who say, listen, any gun control law is the nose under the tonight try to confiscate our guns and they use that kind of rhetoric. they raise money off of it. they scare politicians with that kind of rhetoric. so it depends on how you find common sense and sensible and the nra doesn't want to hear those words. >> john, listen we took this interview live -- this statement live from hillary clinton. we have to cut your time short. i know you did speak with her about immigration and trade and i appreciate that. john, we'll talk about that another time. thank you so much for joining us this time though i appreciate it. >> thank you alex. after decades of debate, the confederate flag continues to fly over the south carolina statehouse. what the naacp president has to say about that next. boy: once upon a time, there was a nice house that lived with a family. one day, it started to rain and rain. water got inside and ruined everybody's everythings. the house thought she let the family down. but the family just didn't think a 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chose to forgive the accused killer. this as new information about him is revealed. the open invitation to the gop from a chicago minister who says democrats let him down. and how a couple of hit films could save hollywood's summer. welcome to weekends with alex witt. a dramatic and moving scene at this hour in charleston south carolina, a city in mourning today. hundreds of people from all parts of the country are paying their respects at a makeshift memorial outside the emanuel ame church where six women and three men were shot to death wednesday evening. as the city grieves, the investigation into alleged gunman dylann roof deepens. the latest court documents show each victim was shot multiple times. law enforcement sources say roof bought the gun himself and they also say roof has spoken freely and admitted his guilt. the sheriff's office said roof had no visitors other than his attorney. adam riess is outside the emanuel ame church for us. i imagine it's been a steady stream since the last time i talked to you. >> it continues here. we want to get to mourners and church leaders who have just come out. the arrest warrant is indicating more about what happened here wednesday night the night of the shooting dylann roof came in about 8:00. he was wearing a pouch on his waist. he entered the bible study. he stayed there for about an hour and at that point there was some discussion and he got into an argument with the bible study. that is when he stood up and opened fire little them multiple times than on his way out. he stood over one of the victims and made some sort of a racist comment. also at the same time pastor pinckney's wife and youngest daughter were in the church office cowering under a table calling 911 and finally we learned that the father and the uncle of dylann roof were the ones who called authorities, alerted them that that is dylann roof and he has a .45-caliber handgun. i want to bring you back out here live just to give you a shot of the mourners who continue to stream in here in charleston, black, white, lots of tears, lots of emotion and i want to point out they're going back in right now but church leaders had just come out, taking a look at the crowd. they're discussing whether or not they want to have services tomorrow. there is some indication that they're going to make every effort to have services. i want you to listen to what some of the people here have to say. say. >> i was born here, i was raised here from charleston and i want to show my condolences and pay my respects. >> i hope it brings the community together more now. i'm not saying it wasn't before but even more now and we could just go on from here is and just come together as one. >> the main thing i want people to know is that those nine individuals who -- i don't even know them personally those are our brothers and sisters in christ. >> incredible raw emotion here today. church leaders have told me they're going to make every effort to open up church for sunday services tomorrow. alex? >> okay adam thank you so much. their thoughts are inspiring. i appreciate that. of course, nine lives were lost during the attack wednesday night and they are being remembered with fondness and despair. nbc's ron allen is in charleston with their stories. ron? >> reporter: alex, the shrine and memorial here continues to grow with mourners coming by to pay their respects. so many of them still having trouble trying to comprehend what happened here. as we learned more about those who tragically lost their lives, we're hearing incredible words of forgiveness. nine faithful souls bound by a love of faith and family gunned down. the oldest 87, the youngest just 26 at their weekly bible study. when the alleged killer appeared in court on a video screen something remarkable happened. when the victims' family confronted him. 70-year-old ethel lance's daughter. >> you took something very precious away from me. i will never talk to her ever again. i will never be able to hold her again. but i forgive you. >> later a sister of reverend depayne middleton-doctor, a 49-year-old counselor and mother of four. >> she taught me that we are the family that love built. we have no room for hate so we have to forgive. i pray god on your soul. >> reporter: forgiveness, if not mercy, for a man who allegedly sat with the victims before gunning them down. sources told nbc news the gunman said he almost didn't go through with it because everyone was so nice to him. tywanza sanders, 26, a recent college grad pleaded with the gunman to shoot him instead of his aunt. the unnamed grandmother of a five-year-old girl saved their lives, relatives have said by lying on top of her while the child played dead. there that night was their pastor clementa pinckney also a state senator. sources tell nbc news his wife and their daughter daughter hid in a church office and called 911 as the shooter knocked on the door. cynthia hurd 54 being remembered as a dedicated librarian, decades of service, a branch to be named after her now. >> in one sense, she'll be remembered for where she was when she died, in the church. >> in a sanctuary so viciously violated, the alleged killer showed the relatives no emotion as he listened. >> i forgive you and my family forgives you. but we would like you to take this opportunity to repent. >> reporter: the criminal justice system will probably not be so compassionate. if convicted, there are calls for the alleged killer to face the death penalty. alex? >> all right. ron allen in charleston thank you for that ron. coming up i'm speak with marc morial of the national urban league about what happens in charleston. that's coming your way at the bottom of this hour. while south carolinians are coming together there remains a passionate debate over the confederate flag that continues to fly over the government buildings across the state and delight in charleston. is it heritage or hate. just a few hours ago, mitt romney tweeted the flag should be taken down. "remove it now to honor charleston victims" he wrote. and naacp president cornell william brooks weighed in. >> it's time to bring the flag down, to retire it, to put it in its ignoble grave. it does not represent the majority of south carolinians or all of south carolinians and it certainly doesn't represent all of america. >> the public though seems more divided. an nbc news poll confided that 49% see it as a symbol of southern pride while the other 49% see it as a symbol of racism. joining me now is jason johns, professor of political science at hiram college and joel sawyer former director of the south carolina republican party. gentlemen, welcome to you both. jason, i'll ask you this question. is it possible to have regional pride without being proud of all the history of that region? >> yeah of course it's possible. but it's also possible that somebody can murder a bunch of people and be mentally ill and still be a racist. i think the problem that we often have in this discussion of the flag is that everyone wants to focus on one part of the symbolism instead of just being honest. this is a flag of a former enemy of the united states that was based on the abuse and death of a certain kind of people. there's no place for that in modern political discourse. never has been. >> joel you just heard from mitt romney. what is the argument for keeping the flag? what's the point of it if so many people fear it and are offended by it and by our latest poll fully half of the people feel that way. >> i don't think there is a compelling argument for it. i've long said it should come down. i don't think it has any place in front of a government building, displayed prominently at the statehouse. just one slight correction i would make to something you said earlier, it's not on top of any government building it's in front. but that's still too much for me. i mean i think it's a divisive symbol and needs to i go away. >> do you think that this may be enough to compel governor nikki haley to have this conversation? >> you know it's quite possible. unfortunately, it's not just up to governor haley, it's up to the entire legislature. when the flag was removed in 2000 to its place now there was a two-thirds vote mechanism written into its current display area. so basically it can not even be removed or taken to half-staff or anything like that absent a two-thirds vote of the legislature. legislature. absent a ladder and pair of scissors, it won't come down without legislative action. >> jason, former congressman from georgia, ben jones, on msnbc this morning, he argued that slavery is the american sin, not just the southern sin and that the stars and stripes also flew over slave-owning land. what's your response to that? >> well it's true and it's history. but the important thing for me and i think this is why i say we have to bring in politics when it comes to these tragedies is even if the flag got removed tomorrow, that's not going to bring clem pinckney back and that's not going to bring back walter scott and that's not going to stop voter i.d. laws from being promoted it won't stop jeb bush from claiming he wants to run for president but at the same time saying he favors voter i.d. laws and doesn't want to admit this was a racist attack. i think sometimes we can focus on things that are symbolic and not say there are structural institutional and policy things that need to change here. and while removing the flag may be one small step it's not bringing back anybody's lives. there's more work to do than just this. >> joel specifically getting to the shooting we hear a lot of talk about gun reforms and mental health reforms but not a lot of politicians want to talk about race. and there are witnesses from this terrible event who claim that the alleged shooter dylann roof made these specific remarks to the victims. he has been seen wearing white supremacist insignia on his clothing. is the real issue being ignored? >> i don't know that it's being ignored at all. i think there is certainly a conversation starting, maybe even long overdue conversation about race and the role that continues to play in south carolina particularly in tragedies like this. i don't know that it's being -- nor that people are talking about it and hopefully it's a conversation that will continue. >> but it's a difficult issue, jason. as you know there are no easy policy answers. so so what can really be done? >> well first we have to all -- and alex you're doing a good job of this lots of people are doing a good job -- we have to hold our political leaders accountable. if you can get mad at hillary clinton and president clinton for not calling benghazi terrorism, we can get mad at people for not calling this terrorism and racism. we have to look at the antiseed dents to these kind of policies. we can have disagreements of what is and is not racism but we can look at the motivation behind voter i.d. laws. what we can look at is the motivation behind segregation policies. these are things we can address whether or not we agree on what the roots of these things are. that's what needs to be fixed now. the discussions of r the symbolic thing, we have time for that. but there's policies on the ground that can be changed. >> joel, how confident are you that a tragedy like this can become a turning point for race relations throughout the country? can this finally be it? >> i wish i could say that i was confident. it's an opportunity and it's a matter of whether or not americans will take advantage of that opportunity to make it a turning point. guys clearly it's the beginning of a long conversation, one we've been having and continue to do. jason and joel, we'll be back. thank you so much. >> thank you. >> thank you. we've been asking you today what do you think should happen to the confederate flag. here's your treats. "the confederate flag should be taken down from the statehouse. it represents division and hate." joe tweets "the flag is unpatriotic and represents hate and racist groups love that flag. southern pride can be shown with state flags." "it is a symbol of hate not historically but even at this hour." and kevin plantz tweets "we need to take that flag down. there's no reason to live in the past unless we want to keep our mind-set there." keep talking to me my handle is @alexwitt. we'll go back to the church in charleston where neighbors and strangers are coming together after the horror. you'll hear more about those who died plus the hugs, the prayers and the respect being given there today. >> i only moved here about a year ago and i wasn't sure at that time -- i don't know if this is the place for me to live but i told them i don't think i've ever been more proud to live anywhere my whole life. because no one is talking retaliation, everybody's talking about a respectful decent way to honor the ones that were lost. ♪ don't let'em pick guitars and drive them old trucks ♪ boys? ♪ mamas, don't let your babies...♪ stop less. go more. the passat tdi clean diesel with up to 814 hwy miles per tank. hurry in and you can get 0% apr plus a one-thousand dollar volkswagen credit bonus on 2015 passat tdi clean diesel models. 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what goes through your mind when you see that? >> right now what goes through mind is one charleston. this strengthens our oneness right now as a member of the church and city council it's important for to mourn, heal and begin the process of burying our dead before we get into any other controversial or political issues issues. >> i know that church is part of that community. it's been a difficult decision. there's been a lot of back and forth as to whether or not to hold church services there tomorrow. i believe the last word is they will not be having church services. talk about what goes into that decision. >> i don't think any decision has been made at this point. i'm hopeful that i can walk up those steps tomorrow morning at 9:00 and show the demons and evil that nothing can stop emanuel ame church from functioning normally in spite of this tragedy. >> there's a big debate right now as to whether to refer to this church shooting as a hate crime or domestic terror. but you have labelled it as racially motivated terrorism, is that right? >> that's what it is to me. yes. >> tell me about that. talk about your reasoning. >> well i mean bottom line of any terrorism activity is hate. how can we make a separation between the two? one feeds the other and since this really is racially motivated, i do think that it is racially motivated terrorism. >> moving forward though william, you may have heard my conversation with jason and joel before this commercial break. it's such a difficult topic to try to find a solution to. certainly with public policy. what is the next step going forward? what do you want to see done? >> what i want to see done is for the media and everyone to allow us to mourn and heal and forgive so that we can plan pray and develop the appropriate policy to make sure that this does not happen again. >> and to what extent does that involve elements of potential gun control in your mind? >> i mean i think that we're going to have a lot of time after we bury our dead and heal to talk about some of the political issues and ramifications of this massacre. but right now i think it would be inappropriate for me as a trustee and a member of the church and also as a city councilman to politicize what is definitely something that has been tragic and hurts all the citizens of this city and more specifically the emanuel family. right now we don't want to politicize it. we just want to mourn, heal and forgive and then move forward on whatever other actions we may have to take to make sure this doesn't happen again or make sure some of the issues that you just mentioned that we take a position on. but now is not the time to do that. >> william, i've got to think that you must be tremendously proud of your faith community there in that church. they have been an inspiration by the way they have bonded together. to what do you attribute that to look at these people and say we should adopt some of that in our lives? >> well as a church family, we are very hopeful and we teach the philosophy that living without slope living in continuous darkness and we feel that hope peers through this darkness and we'll see the light. and we'll see the light in the mourning. and we think that this is really morning not just for our city and our church but for this country and that our church, emanuel ame, the pillow of african-americanism is that light. and we think that the sacrifices that have been made is nothing more than mourning in the city of charleston, in the state, and in this country. we will be the light of this city and this country with regard to racism. >> william gregory, well said. our thoughts are with you and your fellow parishioners thank you for your time. >> and thank you for having me. >> you're welcome. ly speak with national urban league president and ceo marc morial about the decision to forgive and what it has meant to people not affected by this violence. plus, the chicago pastor on what he wants to hear from republicans in the race for president. . moderate to severe crohn's disease is tough but i've managed. except that managing my symptoms was all i was doing. and when i finally told my doctor, he said humira is for adults like me who have tried other medications but still experience the symptoms of moderate to severe crohn's disease. and that in clinical studies the majority of patients on humira saw significant symptom relief. and many achieved remission. 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. tell your doctor if you've been to areas where certain fungal infections are common and if you've had tb hepatitis b, are prone to infections or have flu-like symptoms or sores. don't start humira if you have an infection. ask your gastroenterologist about humira. with humira, remission is possible. the beast was as long as the boat. for seven hours, we did battle. until i said... you will not beat... meeeeee!!! greg. what should i do with your fish? 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>> huge. nest had an event in san francisco and showed off a couple of new things. the first was nest protect, which is their wi-fi smoke detector. it's better, you can shut off the sound with your phone which if you've ever had something go too long on the stove and set off the smoke alarm, the fact that you can turn it off is cool. nest acquired a company called drop cam which makes wi-fi security cameras and they are releasing the nest cam which basically lets you have a very small, very elegant looking camera that has full 360 views all over your house, can record audio, report it to the cloud and it works day and night. and nest now will have one app that will control your thermostat, your smoke alarm system and the camera all from one app. >> how big a deal is this? are consumers rushing out to automate their homes? >> they are and they're not. the unfortunate thing is that there are these mixed standards. you have to find out will my lock in my lights and my thermostat work with this system or that system? so we have tons of these devices out there and you can get pretty automated when it comes to lights and doors and locks but when it comes to putting it together we don't the perfect system yet. it's an exciting time. >> christina warren thank you. sweet home chicago and the pastor who has sharp words for the democratic party. he's reaching out to the gop. i take these out... ...to put in dr. scholl's active series insoles. they help reduce wear and tear on my legs, becuase they have triple zone protection. ... and reduce shock by 40%. so i feel like i'm ready to take on anything. ♪ ♪ ♪ (singing) you wouldn't haul a load without checking your clearance. so why would you invest without checking brokercheck? check your broker with brokercheck. welcome back to "weekends with alex witt." we have new information coming in right now on alleged church shooter dylann roof. a web site has been discovered featuring a 2400 word white supremacist j.d. and dozens of photos of roof someone using his name and his mother's home address bought the site domain in february. nbc news has not confirmed the site's authenticity knorr whether roof is the creator. the writer describes his views on race disparaging black people jewish people hispanics and east asians. let's bring in msnbc law enforcement analyst jim cavanaugh. jim, what kind of thing do you make of this that roof may have created his web site. noting that nbc news cannot confirm the site's authenticity. >> even before we see that site let's look at roof and the evidence before us. clearly, clearly the motive is racial hatred. this guy is a two-bit loser coward, a racist terrorist thug. he's using narcotics, he won't work and blames his troubles on others and spews out hatred and bigotry. the symbols on his jacket with apartheid, the racial slur during the murder he told a surviving victim why he killed them because he hates african-americans, he went to this iconic church. if someone is looking far motive other than racism here you have to question what they're thinking about. this is not mental illness. this is clearly clearly racial hatred inspired by the web just like an isis killer is inspired. when an isis killer comes forward, alex we don't say "he's mentally ill." this guy is a racial thug, a terrorist, a hater and he did it for those reasons. the motive is crystal clear. >> you mentioned isis. if again, this web site honestly attributed to dylann roof and things like isis how do extremist, individuals and groups, how do they use these web sites to get their message out? >> well, they've been doing this for 50 years in the white hate arena. they used to use pamphlets, we'd see them over the neighborhoods then they use the web sites to great effect. they stand back. they're looking -- they build a mountain of hate in the talk and they're hoping it becomes a volcano and spews out one of these guys like roof and that they're not connected to it. so it's by design to constantly talk about hate and push these guys out and they become the lone actors or one or two together, like mcveigh or something. they get pushed out. they're there, all around they're loouzers like this guy. i'm just amazed we're looking for some other motive. the motive is so clear and there's tons of facts to support it. he had the murder weapon with him, he has an eyewitness there, there's video surveillance. he's telling the agents and detectives he did it, the proof is overwhelming, the motive is overwhelming. we don't need to figure that one out. >> but how do you find someone like this before he strikes? >> well let's look at his arrest record. he was arrested for narcotics. the federal firearms law says when grow to purchase a guane and if you're an unlawful user or addicted to narcotics you can't by a firearm. but the case law says you have to have a pattern of narcotics activity. so the congress and the lawyers need to revisit these laws. it specifically says you can't be an unlawful user of narcotics and purchase a gun. here's a guy arrested in february with narcotics and yet a few months later he's allowed to purchase a gun. >> april. >> so we have case law from the circuits that says it has to be a pattern and an ever evolving changing pattern. we might need to revisit that. >> we hear so much about tracking foreign terrorists we look at their online footprint. domestically, do law enforcement agencies do the same thing? >> well they do but we have to look at the criminality first. we can't track them because of their views, that's free speech. atf used to be keep in this fight. i think that's changed. i think the attorney general should go back to the director of atf and say we want you deeper in this fight. we want you more in the fight infiltrating the militiamen and the domestic terrorist hate groups and they can coordinate with the fbi and the police for sure but atf was a key in this and i think they've sort of dropped back out of it. they need to get deep in that fight, they need to be in there infiltrating those group pulling out lone actors on the gun charge explosives and bombs because they's been their achilles heel and that's how we took them out. they couldn't kill or bomb or shoot, alex unless they used weapons and we need to be looking at that all the time. not for their views but when criminal activity is afoot, when we hear information about it we used to go after them very hard and i think that's dropped off significantly. >> jim cavanaugh, thank you so much. appreciate your insights as always my friend. appreciate that. meantime, a dramatic and moving scene in charleston south carolina, a city in mourning today. hundreds of people from all parts of this country came to this makeshift memorial outside of the prime minister ame emanuel church. strangers offering their support to the community. >> this is real. this ain't something that just happened. this is real. a lot of lives was lost. a lot of families was affected. the whole city of charleston is affected. >> it's showing that we're standing together. we are not separate we are not individuals, we are one and we are coming as one. >> it's time to have the dialogue. everybody has to take down their defenses and stop being afraid. there is stuff that might come out and be hurtful. when you truly know the word, the word is love god is love. that's how you forgive. it's a hard thing to do not saying you're not hurt but because you know got and you know god the a loving and forgiving god. >> when you pull on the block and you see everybody has come together, you have all races here kids young, old people young people. it amazing, the support. you can see the flowers just lining this whole block. >> let's bring in marc morial president and ceo of the national urban league. always great to have you. >> i thanks good afternoon. >> looking what the we've seen in this past week in charleston how do you make sense of this? >> you can't make sense of it. it was a lensless hateful, heinous act. but all we can do as people is try hard to rise and, as you see in these pictures come together and fight back against hatred division, intolerance, the kinds of things that give root to the act of -- yeah acting alone but certainly influenced by the ideology of hate and supremacy. so these were not heroes. nine ordinary american one who happened to be a pastor and a public servant but people who were doing and living their lives in the right way who find themselves the senseless, needless victims of this act of violence. so this is a time and i think it's an extraordinary time when we can and we must come together with purpose and i do think that means that the flag must absolutely go. we have to come together with purpose and there has to be a new resolve to ferret out those who are, if you will part of these hate groups in this ideology of hate who are nothing but domestic terrorists and we have to come together to address the challenges of violence and poverty in our community and those things that give rise to division. so this is an opportunity that we as a nation have to seize an opportunity because the outpouring is coming. i kneel the nation is unified and united in grief, in mourning, in shock, in disbelief and now we have to be unified to act. >> i'm curious with prard to gun control, marc. much has been made with the fact that dylann roof was able to buy a gun. you heard from jim cavanaugh who said he had a history of drug abuse. he'd been arrested for drugs and that there are laws on the books that would prevent him from buying a gun. he was arrested in february yet in april he was able to buy this gun. do you think ultimately stricter gun control laws would have prevented this? >> alex i like to frame it as gun safety. the idea that the objective of any limitations on gun use, on the ability to purchase guns, is about safety. and i do think it's time to renew the conversation. so to be precise we need stronger background checks on those who would purchase guns. to be precise we need safe storage legislation, to be precise. we need limitations on ammunition. one can't say as an absolute fact whether, in fact, those types of gun safety laws would have prevented this. at this point it's about preventing future incidents from occurring. future, if you will mass killings. we've had over 08 in the last 40 years in this country. it's unacceptable and time for us to say we want to have a nation of peace not a nation of violence. >> there is that tag line though and i want to get you to respond to it it's become very popular, it's very catchy and used by those who support individuals' rights to own and bear arms. they say it's not guns that kill people, it's people that kill people. what do you say to that? >> it's people with guns. a gun alone, a person -- it's a person with a gun. it's what i call a convenience logic that's illogical the idea is that common sense tells it is a bern a gun who can carry out this type of suicide. 16,000 homicides per year in the united states. 70%, seven out of ten, take place with a firearm. so we've got to not allow convenient, if you will arguments, arguments of convenience, arguments that defy logic and common sense, to take away from the fact. and i would not say that simply gun safety alone is the absolute solution to the challenges of violence in this country. there are many things that we of course, need to do. look firearms have been used -- there was, this morning, the killing, it hasn't hit the news, of a law enforcement officer in new orleans who was transporting, if you will, a suspect, so firearms are being used against law enforcement officers. so we need to find if you will a new way forward in this country. and i want to say this. . i also think the people running for president. the united states all the way across the board ought to take a pledge against the rhetoric of hate, the rhetoric of division, the red rick of demagoguery which all too often, pointing the fingers at groups of people in this country. i think people who run for president, for public office also in this time should elevate the conversation going forward. >> to the point of making this potentially a turning point in race relations? do you think this can happen now? >> we have this opportunity, these opportunities seem to come and they seem to go but i think the idea is can we bring together in a visible way, in a forward-thinking way men and women who are black, hispanic asian, white, native american from all walks of life in this nation, can religious leaders across denominations step up and give the nation the moral backbone that it needs to confront? you don't continue front the challenges of division racial bigotry, religious bigotry, bigotry based on sexual orientation by pretending it doesn't exist. you have to confront it. if you will will acknowledging it and saying that we as a nation have to get beyond it. so i think it's an important time. you know we're all shocked because this -- we've seen deaths in schools. now deaths violence in a church. what next? what next? we have got to say no we have to move a different direction. >> marc morial thank you very much. >> thank you alex. >> ahead, scientists say we here in the sixth mass extinction event in the history of the earth. what does that mean? 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yeah. we do. vo: when selling your car, start with a written offer no strings attached. carmax. start here. chicago's south side has never been a likely campaign stop for republican presidential candidates but one local pass store trying to change that. in a story first reported by the daily beast, pastor corey brook says his african-american community has been let down by the democrats they have been so loyal to at the polls. he wants the 2016 gop contenders to come to town and make mare pitch. tomorrow afternoon ben carson is taking him up on his offer following rand paul's speech last month. joining me now is corey brooks of the new beginnings church of chicago also the ceo of the project hood nonprofit. i want to read one of your quotes from this gnarl which you said of democrats "how can our neighborhoods be doing so awful and so bad when we're so loyal to this party who's in power? it's a matter of them taking complete advantage of our vote." how specifically reverend do you feel you're being taken advantage of? >> for the last 50 years when you look at our community, wherever there are african-americans, you'll see a decline in our educational system, in the structure of our families, a decline in the economic situation of our families. our communities are at the brisk of chaos and it's the result i believe of democratic policies that have been in place all this time and a result of them taking complete advantage of a neighborhood of a people it's also because some of our republican friends on the other side have just overlooked and just said hey, they're going to vote democrats no matter what so let's just completely ignore their issues and causes. well, i'm here to say that's not absolutely true. we need a president who is going to listen to all the issues all of the things that are going on in our neighborhood as well. >> i know you've heard from candidate rand paul. tomorrow you're also going to hear from dr. ben carson. do you expect the rest of the gop field to come through? and who do you like best so far? >> well i want to say right now we're expecting governor jeb bush to come to the south side of chicago. we're expecting governor scott walker to come to the south side of chicago. because people need to hear what they're going to do if they're the president of the united states. to be the president means you're not just president of certain groups, but you're president of all of us. on the south side of chicago, all of our needs, concerns issues are just as important. they're the same issues in brooklyn, the same issues in l.a. we need those issues to be spoken about, to be heard, and we need our voice to be heard. and that it can only be done when those individuals in those positions make up in their mind they're going to come to the south side of chicago. we believe it's really important that they come. and we believe it's really important they hear what we're concerned about. >> reverend brooks what is the most important voting issue for you and your congregants? >> we have so many people who are unemployed and not working. that cannot be an america. people need to work. people need to have jobs. when you don't have that in a community, you're going to have a lot of frustration and a lot of crime. so the issue of our day is to be employed, to have jobs. we want to work. we want to be employed. the people in our community want to work. so we need companies to consider our aeroreas. and the only way that can be done is when we have people leading in positions of influence to make that possible. the potential is there and we're looking forward to some great things being done when we have the type of leadership we need to help us. >> and what has been the reaction from your coggregants? any resistance from them to say let's bring on the gop perspective? >> there's always going to be resistance when you try to bring about change anywhere. there's resistance in our neighborhood and in my church. but at the end of the day we want our neighborhoods to be better. the only way to do that is create competition. we can no longer continue to allow democrats to believe it's a cake walk. and we can no longer let republicans believe it's not going to happen. being competitive makes the neighborhood better. so we want people to compete for our votes. no longer are they going to be able to just take us for granted. so we're inviting all the republicans as well as democrats to come to the south side of chicago and put the issues on the table. hear what we have to say and try to make america a better place. >> this will be beginning with dr. ben carson. what time will he be there tomorrow? >> dr. ben carson will be there at 4:00 on the south side of chicago. and we're inviting everybody to come to the south side and see what happens. >> reverend corey brooks, i'm glad you accepted our invitation to be with us. thank you so much. >> thank you. just ahead, the sixth mass extinction the earth has ever seen. that's happening right now. those details next. when heartburn comes creeping up on you... fight back with relief so smooth... ...it's fast. tums smoothies starts dissolving the instant it touches your tongue ...and neutralizes stomach acid at the source. ♪ tum, tum tum tum...♪ smoothies! only from tums. chocolate! yeah! for the grand prize... fruity and honey nut! yes!! that's not a cheerio! 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Transcripts For MSNBCW The Rachel Maddow Show 20160402

this was one motorman driving the train. he had a heart attack and decide at the controls, with all of those rush hour commuters on board the train he was driving at speed. you know what happened to all those people on board that train, nothing? it's sad he died at the wheel the people on board that train were completely safe. even though it was the middle of rush hour t. reason they were all okay is because of one specific thing. if you are a motorman or a motor woman conducting a new york city subway train, you have to hold this handle down, the way this person is holding it down in this pick. tilting it being toward himself, right? if the person driving the train let's go of that hand him on board the train, stops holding it down like that. that hand him springs upright. >> that brings the train to a stop. it's called a deadman's switch. if there is nobody there to hold that handle down, that stops the train. when the hand him springs back. it's literally designed to detect if the guy who is driving this ting has turned into a deadman. so they call eight deadman switch. devices have existed for a long time on trains, on subways. some airplanes have something similar where the plane will kick into auto pilot, which lowers the altitude automatically, in the event the cockpit becomes non-responsive. so if no crew members in the cockpit give any response, to the stimuli in the cockpit the fear is that that means maybe the cockpit has lost its oxygen supply. so the auto pilot kicks if, brings the whole airplane down to a lower altitude, basically as a safety measure. and it's done specifically as a response to the pilot and co-pilot doing nothing. it's basically a deadman's switch. and there are a lot of different kind of these used in a lot of different circumstances. but the basic idea of a detdman's switch is it kicks in if you don't do something. if you don't check in or somehow register your presence overtly, that, itself, is the trigger. and it can be a trigger to shut something down like a speeding g train in queens at rush hour on a tuesday morning or it can be a trig tore set something off, like, for example, a hand-held detonator, where maybe you have to keep some sort of switch depressed and if you let that switch go, if you release it, then that's what sets off the explosion. that's a common spooky plot twist in thrillers and spy movies, right? but it's also a real thing, an effective basic form of insurance. if you hurt me, i will let go of this deadman's switch. we will all blow up. do not hurt me. a sort of dead man's switch has apparently just been installed on this strange threat that is now becoming a truly strange subplot in the presidential race right now. we reported at the start of this week on the resurfacing of the d.c. maddal scandal if washington. the d.c. madam case was an escort service that thrived in washington, d.c. for something like 13 years. it started in the early '90s. it was eventually shut down in 2006. when the government brought criminal charges against the woman that ran that agency. she and her lawyer decided they would fight back against those charges if part by releasing records from the escort service, releasing their phone records, so by them releasing those phone records in 2006-2007, we learned about how profile clients of this, for give me, high end hooker service in washington. so the george w. bush and a czar and a sitting republican u.s. for, family value, conservative senator. several other bold faced naimd names in washington basically got outed in that escort service. it's interesting. they didn't get outed in court. they got outed as a part of a media and pr strategy run by the woman running the escort agency and her lawyer. now, the woman that run the agency has since died. she killed herself not long after she was convicted in 2008, after she found out she was facing a long prison sentence. the lawyer, with whom she released those records, he is still around. he is back in the news. because he has long maintained that pack when that court case was brought, those phone records that they released, which was such a scandal and politically devastated at the time. he has long maintained, those weren't the only phone records they have. he says they have hundreds of names from the escort service's client lists, there are thousands of phone numbers. these are all records he says he has access to from his time working on that case, but, he says, he can't legally release those to the public, because there was a restraining placed on him by a federal court in washington, d.c. so again that court case was property in 2006. and even as that case has started to fade in memory, there have always been, you know, reminders of it here and there. the d.c. madam came up again when david bitter tried to run for louisiana governor this year. it's a part of the reason he's not the louisiana governor right now. those unreleased record, there have been wonderings and whisperings about what other names might have been in the d.c. black book, what names and phone numbers in that record nobody has seen yet. in that restraining order, nobody thought the names would see the light of day. as we reported earlier this week, though, something seems to have changed on that front this year. in january of this year the lawyer from the d.c. madam case. again, he has those records. he is under court order not to release them. he says he came to a realization, to a decision at the beginning of the year, he had a new reason to want to release those records. he says he wants to release those records, because they are a matter of national importancech he says what is in those records is relative to the 2016 presidential race. over the last few weeks, he has been trying to basically get released from that restraining order. he has been trying to get permission from the courts to release those remains records. he has now made an application to the u.s. district court, which initially put in the restraining eerd. he's made a representation to the u.s. circuit court of appeals in d.c. he's as of this week made a representation to the united states supreme court saying, quote, time is of the essence. he's saying the supreme court must consider the case. they must give him per pigs to release those ordz. they must do it soon, because he says it's a matter of national importance. it has to be now. it may very well affect who the people of the united states want to affect as their next president of the united states. so that's where we left it on tuesday of this week, after he had delivered that application to the united states supreme court saying, please, let me release these rompdz as of now, we got news, now, two more things have happened. first, is that the lawyer in this case now claims that he has installed a deadman's switch on these records. he says now when he realized or he came to the decision that these records, these unreleased escort agency records were relevant to this year's presidential race. he says he took out what amounts to an insurance policy to protect himself so no one would be threatened to harm him physically as a way of preventing these records from being released. montgomery blair sibley told u.s. news and reports and later told us he has hidden online on four different servers, pdf version of these escort agency records, which he says includes the names and addresses of 815 alleged clients of the d.c. madam. he set up a doom's day switch, a deadman's switch, which is basically designed to automatically reveal the location of those records online if he does nothing for a period of 72 hours. remember, a deadman's swipe is not activated by you doing something. it is activated by you unexpectedly doing nothing. the way he described it to us today is as a quote, 72-hour clock. he told us, quote, the 72-hour clock releases the records, if i disappear for 72 hours. i reset the clock daily. stranger things have happened. so i am taking no chances. he then further elaborated to u.s. news and world report, telling them today the 72-hour clock is rigged. so it specifically does, if it counts all the way down, all 72 hours without him acting to reset it, quote, dozens of reporters will receive a website link directing tlemg where to find the documents online. quote, if i die, disappear, whatever, they will be out. so that's the first thing that's happened today want there is a deadman's switch on the d.c. madam unreleased records. at least the lawyer says there is. so i don't know if you are, let's just guess. let's say you are a presidential candidate who is on the d.c. madam phone list. you better hope nothing happens that prevents him from resetting his blessed 72-how far countdown clock or else the way he explains it. if that happens, ka pow, all the results come out. all the records. who knows this could absolutely be an empty threat. he has shown know prove he has done this, of course, without access to the documents ours, we can't verify his claim one way or another. this is what he is claiming on how he acted to protect this information and acted to protect himself as the possessor of this information. steps one, deadman's switch. the second thing that's happened today is that his application to the united states supreme court, which says that they should release him from this restraining order and let him release the es skorlt agency records, that application with the supreme court got put on the docket at the supreme court today. look at the supreme court website. yes, it is april fool's day, it says it was documented on april 1st, 2016. apparently, they do not make april fool's jokes. this is real. it did get put on the docket. >> that does not mean the supreme court will necessarily hear this case. >> that does mean, chief justice john roberts will take a first crack at deciding whether or not the supreme court should tang it up. honestly, i'm not a lawyer, just a layman's observation, it seems very unlikely the supreme court would take up this case. it is now on the docket. they will now at least consider taking it up. it is a possibility and now here's what you need to know about what this may or may not mean for the u.s. presidential race. because if what the lawyer is saying is true. if there is something in these unreleased d.c. madam phone records, which is relative enough to the presidential races, that it could affect the way people will vote or may affect something else important about the race. if that's true, then speed matters. right? timing matters. these records getting published now would have a manifestly different affect than these manners published in december, after the election. if they are something significant the timing matters. you got to go fast. and so, the d.c. maddal lawyer is going through these channels. now. he is asking for permission to be released to release these records legally. but he is also explicitly threatening. if it's the only way you can get him out. he will release them if he has to. montgomery sibably the lawyer, gave us the statement, quote, trusting that the chief justice will promptly make his ruling and allow me to file my request to modify the restraining order, i will be taking no action with those records until he rules. >> that said, quote, if i am denied the right to file and receive a hearing on my motion to modify the restraining order, then, yes, i will release the record of the d.c. madam relative to this presidential election. so what he's saying is, maybe the supreme court will take this up. maybe the supreme court will say, yes, take this up. in which case, they will wait until he rules an fought release the records. if they say no, they will not clear him to release those records, he says, unequivocally, he will release them anyway. so that's one way they might get released. the other way is if something happens to him that prevents him from clicking his 72-hour countdown clock. in which they will be released automatically. which he has not shown up to hit reset. at least though he says. maybe this is all a dock and bull story. maybe there is nothing in those recordsch he's the d.c. madam lawyer that released those records. he says, not only are these records extent. not only do they exist, not only does he have access to them. he says they are relevant to this selection and if he is right, we are all about to find that out soon. because one way or another, these things are about to come out. tic toc. everybody freak out. whole communities are living on mars and solar satellites provide earth with unlimited clean power. in less than a century, boeing took the world from seaplanes to space planes, across the universe and beyond. and if you thought that was amazing, you just wait. ♪ working on my feet all day gave min my knees. but now, i step on this machine and get my number which matches my dr. scholl's custom fit orthotic inserts. now i get immediate relief from my foot pain. my knee pain. find a machine at drscholls.com >> i have an addition to make to your political science textbook. so please get out your red pen, maybe a sticky note. what we're adding is going in the section that starts with w. what we're adding is a theory we will call the willie wonka. in the willie wonka world of political science, you can win the contest and then lose your prize for the simplest of reasons. >> because he broke the rules. >> what rules? we didn't see any rules, did we, carley? >> wrong, sir, wrong, under section 37-b of the contract signed by him, it states, quite clearly, that all offers shall become nul and void if -- and you can read it for yourself in this photo static copy -- i the undersigned shall forfeit all rights, privileges and licenses and hearing contained, et cetera, et set remarks facts intendium, et cetera, et cetera, it's all there, black and white, clear as crystal. you stole lifting drichgs. you both have it, it has to be washed and sterilized so you get nothing. you lose. good day, sir. >> one presidential candidate broke the rules this year in the same way. facts mentus gloria el et cetera. he broke the rules. he was a presidential candidate, sure. but he protect the rules. whatever those were. you really might now get nothing because of it. it's an amazing story and that's next. good day, sir. don't let dust and allergies get between you and life's beautiful moments. with flonase allergy relief, they wont. when we breathe in allergens, our bodies react by over producing six key inflammatory substances that cause our symptoms. most allergy pills only control one substance. flonase controls six. and six is greater than one. flonase outperforms the #1 non-drowsy allergy pill. so you can seize those moments, wherever you find them. flonase. six is greater than one changes everything. i can't bthat's my boy.t. you're proud to give each other your best every day. and at banquet, we want to give you our best. that's why we're adding 20% more chicken to our chicken pot pies. that's my mom. now serving... a better banquet. ♪ everything kids touch during cold and flu season sticks with them. make sure the germs they bring home don't stick around. use clorox disinfecting products. because no one kills germs better than clorox. >> okay. april fool's day is almost over. just a few more hours to go. so hang in there, keep your head down. they serve as a reminder, though, because there is a day we call april fool's day, doesn't mean you are impugn from cruel jokes the rest of the year. i take, for example the university of south carolina men's basketball team. the gamecocks. great name. they have appeared in the ncaa tournament eight times since 1981. the last time was a decade ago. a couple weeks ago, the gamecocks got word they were about to make their big comeback. they are back after a 12-year hiatus. the coach and athletic director for the team got a tech message on selection sunday saying, you're in! congratulations. this was a huge deal for them, a huge deal for the university of south carolina for about ten minutes. because ten minutes after they got that yay, you're in, text. they got a follow-up coen phone call saying, oops the text was wrong. never mind, you're not in. pretend you never got it. >> that story got a bunch of attention this week. so much so the ncaa issued a public apology for the screwup. the university of south carolina mad about it. rightly so. a super disheartening thing to have happened. even if they only perceived for a moment that something was being taken away from them, right, even if they never had a spot in the tournament to begin with. if they actually had earned a spot in the tournament and had it tan away from them after the fact. now that, that would really be something to complain about. that would be what's happening in south carolina in the presidential race right now. south carolina held their republican primary. it was pretty much a blowout. fought really did donald trump win by double digits. he ended up getting every single dell fat in the state. since then, he has gone on to be the national front runner. even though he's the national front runner, he doesn't look like he has the race wrapped up in terms of delegates this summer. enter obscure rule of the south carolina republican party. starting this year, south carolina republicans decided they have a rule which says that in order to get on the primary ballot in south carolina as a republican, you have to pledge your loyalty to the republican party. well, donald trump did pledge his loyalty to the republican party early in the campaign. here he is, holding up the actual pledge. but this past week, he reniged on that pledge, he now says he doesn't believe that anymore. he will no longer pledge the nominee this fall, because he's not being treated fairly. he is uncommitted to that pledge. now, here's the question if south carolina. if donald trump, by his own admission is no longer loyal to the republican party, does that mean he's now retroactively ineligible to have competed as a republican in the south carolina primary? this is not just some esoteric argument. the chairman told "time" magazine breaking south carolina's presidential-primary-ballot prejudice, it could resolve them and put delegates in jeopardy. really? i mean, donald trump is now outright saying he no longer stands by that republican party loyalty pledge he took. legally, those, within the republican party rules, i mean, those 50 delegates he earned in that primary, are they really going to say those aren't his anymore? are they going to take him away because he no longer believes his pledge? really? joining us now is joel sawyer, a strategist, a former director of the republican party. joel, it's nice to see you. thanks so much for being with us tonight. >> thank you for having me tonight. >> is this something that happens all the time in south carolina politics. we're just noticing it for the first time for this red hot presidential race or is this weird in south carolina, too? >> this is weird for south carolina, i think we will say. it's interesting, because if you look at the way south carolina conduct down ballot races, anything outside the presidential race, we actually have sore loser walls in south carolinach they're unique. you have other places that actually say, if you lo ez the primary. if you are not your party's nominee, then can you fought run for another party, for you know a petition candidate. you cannot take any other proactive action to get your name put back on the ballot. so it's a law in place for sore losers, if they happen to not win the nomination. that was the fear with donald trump, if he ran, he was a popular candidate. if he ran and did not get to that magic number of 1237, does he then run as an independent? so that's why there was this big push to have him sign the loyalty pledge in the first place. >> the pledge, itself, seems unenforceable. the way he has reneged is not ripping it up or unsigning it, but just by saying he no longer considers himself bound by it. is that the sort of thing that would be seen as determinative in terms of his eligibility in the state? is that what they would adjudicate? >> it's hard to say, donald trump if this cycle is pick up your marbles and go home candidate. when he doesn't like something the way the rules are playing out. he makes a threat. in this case, you know the threat was, well, maybe i'll run as an independent after all. which is a threat he has been making throughout this process. i will say, you know, party conventions and party nominating contests are not ba we learn about in 10th grade sifx. it's not who gets the most votes wins. it's this willie wonka-type contest with a lot of different rules and subsections. you know, if i were donald trump and i saw prevus coming up, i'd start to worry a little bit. >> it sounds like you don't expect donald trump will get all the delegates out of south carolina. if you had to bet, what kind of slate do you think south klein will send to the convention? >> you know, it would be tough for me to envision a scenario where they were not bound to donald trump on the first ballot. which is where they are now. they have to be bound on the first ballot. unless somebody sues or creates a court controversy out of this i have a tough time believing it wouldn't play out that way. the real worry for donald trump is going to be what happens after that, after that first ballot, if he doesn't get to the magic number of 1237. if he goes to a second ballot and a third ballot, he better shore up or make some effort to make sure his folks will go on there and be with him after the first ballot if he expects to carry it to the contest, if it does go to a contested convention. >> the former director of the south carolina republican party. thanks for being here, just a moment. i feel like you are our south carolina interpreter. it's alwaysifies to have you here. >> any time, any time. >> it's funny, when you talk to people about what will happen in this race. what joel said there, i expect this will happen, unless something crazy like this happens, court action or somebody sues. you know what, that is becoming less an less crazy all over the countries right now. there is already court proceedings over who the delegates will be in the virgin islands right now, can you bet it's going to be happening in more states other than that, boy, is this going to be fun? all right, got more and more coming up next. stay with us. >> thanks, et cetera, et cetera. it's all there, black and white, clear as crystal. you stole busy lifting description. you bolted the krielig which now has to be washed and sterilized so you get nothing. you lose. good day, sir. uh oh. oh. henry! oh my. good, you're good. back, back, back. 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(cheering) it takesi'm on the move.. to all day long...ss. and sometimes, i just don't eat the way i should. so i drink boost to get the nutrition that i'm missing. boost complete nutritional drink has 26 essential vitamins and minerals, including calcium and vitamin d to support strong bones and 10 grams of protein to help maintain muscle. all with a great taste. i don't plan on slowing down any time soon. stay strong. stay active with boost. now try new boost® compact and 100 calories. you've finally earned enough on your airline credit card. now you just book a seat, right? not quite. sometimes those seats are out of reach, costing an outrageous number of miles. it's time to switch... to the capital one venture card. with venture, you'll earn unlimited double miles on every purchase, everyay. and when you're ready to travel, just book the flight you want, on any airline and use your miles to cover the cost. now that's more like it. what's in your wallet? >> in all of god's great state of nevada, there are about 2.9 million souls. almost all of them live in this little peeky toe corner of the state. 2 million of the 2.9ple people in the state live in clark county, which is vegas and its suburbs. now. nearly half of everybody else in the state lives up there, upper left corner, basically if reno, tomorrow, that gets to be the unlikely center of the american political universech because tomorrow, the republican party is holding its little county convention to elect delegates to the state convention, which will then elect delegates. it's usually as boring as it sounds, but the year, that unassuming sounding event. it may get a little crazy t. local paper, the reno journal is predicting turmoil at this event. they say they are seeing quote serious chaos and friction between the ted cruz and donald trump faction in the county, as they scrap for every delegate plinging proverbial brussel sprouts in what is expected to be the proverbial food fight there. happy saturday, we will be keeping an eye out for you. today, north dakota republicans kicked off their state convention, which is also usually boring, forth dakota republicans are fought holding a primary this year, they're not holding a caucus either. instead, state delegates in fargo this week will be choosing among themself, which 28 of themself, which 28 lucky folks are going to get to go to cleveland, the delegates have the extra joy of being unbounds when they get to the national convention, which means, they can vote for whoever they want. even on the first ballot, donald trump, ted cruz, your mom, chris hayes, anyone. that makes north dakota delegates extremely valuable and makes the pros sect of being a north dakota delegate extremely fun. ted cruz will make the trip to fargo, tomorrow to court these folks in person. donald trump will be sending ben carson to do the courting on his behalf. whether you fall in love with ted cruz or ben carson, these guys need those delegates. they don't have one to spare. we learned donald trump and ted cruz lost delegates when marco rubio came back from the dead for a handful of delegates that he had probably, seemingly, maybe, left behind. senator rubio of course, suspended his campaign. after he did that, the republican party of alaska decided they would essentially give away the five delegates maarco rubio gave to alaskach they reapportioned them to donald trump and ted cruz. alaska republicans figured, why not? marco rubio is no longer running. let's give away his delegates. no big deal. wrong. after the alaskan party did that, marco rubio sent this letter, demanding his delegates back. saying his decision to suspend his campaign for president of the untied states. that's what it says, the untied states. he says that decision was fought intended to release any national convention delegates. so this is intriguing, right? marco rubio is no longer running for president. he has suspended his campaign. he will never be president of the untied states. but he is determined to hold on to his delegates, anyway. it's not just in alaska. he's done this in alaskach he is doing this in 20 other states. he sent that same letter with the same untied states typo to all 21 states, demandsing his delegates back, even though he's out of the race. interesting, right? asked about the senator's motivation for doing this, a spokesman for marco rubio says the candidate quote wants to give voters a chance to stop trump. because by holding on to his delegates, senator rubio makes it harder somehow for donald trump to win the tom nation? not incidentally having a few delegates in his back pocket, might different marco rubio a chance to play himself, amid the chaos. it becomes a jump baum for the nomination. why not pick a guy that ran and won a bunch of delegates? until then, marco rubio hangs around, handing out mistyped letters. he appears not to endorse anybody else any time soon. he does still have sway in this thing. marco rubio is nowhere near the leaders. 172 delegates is not nothing. he has 29 more dem dpats than john kasich, who is technically still running. marco rubio in for the long haul tore the jumpball for whatever he can do with 172 delegates. in my lifetime, i could not have dreamed of a race that is this bonkers, binoculars, untied, whatever. why do so many businesses rely on the us postal service? because when they ship with us, their business becomes our business. that's why we make more e-commerce deliveries to homes than anyone else in the couny. here, there, everywhere. united states postal service priority: you >> eric cantor was promoted by the football two in congress the pa majority leader, it was a great honor. a little of a surprise for anybody that never got much done in his time in congress during his 13 years in congress, he sponsored six bills, one rename a very nice post office in mr. cantor's district. another bill cleared the way for a new design for the u.s. nickel. er rick cantor got stuff like that done. he had sort of a bigger job tan his list of accomplishments might suggest when he was in congress before he eventually got turfed out by a primary in his home district. shortly before, though, eric cantor has one big success if 2014, he was voting for health research for kids with health money that used to pay for democratic and republican conventions. eric contour didn't sponsor that bill. he was basically congratulated as champion in the house. he had steered federal money to health care tore kids. he had done it by raising taxes and taking the money of public funding of party conventions. who needs the people, who needs public money? corporations can pay for the party conventions, right? of course they will. that was majority leader eric cantor's success, 2014, weeks before he resigned before his term was over. his republican colleagues made him a lovely farewell video about his time if congress. he went off to a new and lucrative job as an investment banker. that was that, corporations would pay for conventions. no more public funding. the corporations will pay. his work was done. until now. now the one thing eric cantor managed to do when in office, besides give us a new look for that nickel about one eric cantor accomplishment is coming to haunt his friends. when in this election they are faced with a front runner they can't abide for stop, now in this election, his plan to fund the conventions, it's coming back to haunt republicans. it turns out corpses would fought maybe like to be the sponsor where the front runner is donald trump and mr. trump said there could be riots. corporations may not want to sponsor the convention this summer. according to "new york times," some of the best known corporations are nervously grappling with what role they should play, given the likely nomination of mr. trump, whose candidacy alienated many women, plaques, and hispanics. coca-cola gave the republican convention over $16,000. last time around wal-mart us the far has not sent a single penney or a nickel. this will be the first set of presidential conventions that won't receive any federal funding. where the burden will fall directly on the shoulders of corporations or the party. thanks to eric cantor's pet projects. and it happens to be the same election when mr. cantor's republican party has a nominee scaring off corporate sponsors if droves. republicans really do need to pay for this convention somehow. maybe they can persuade mr. cantor to do this bill. it might be the least he can do with the legacy he left him. oh remotes, you've had it tough. watching tvs get sharper, bigger, smugger. and you? rubbery buttons. enter the x1 voice remote. now when someone says... show me funny movies. watch discovery. record this. voila. remotes you are back. the x1 voice remote is here. x1 customers get your voice remote by visiting xfinty.com/voiceremote. . >> something is about to happen -- yay! whohoo, truck's here, friday night news dump time. wendy mcneil. hello. >> hello, miss rachel. we have lucy dpra from boston, massachusetts, is playing with us tonight. >> hi, lucie. >> a long-time fan of the show. she is known on twitter as jessidres. she is studying to learn special ed. >> i know you have just interests. i feel i am crossing the space time twitter continnium is there it's nice to have you. thank you. it's great to have you here. i know you know how this works. we'll cut right to the chase. you will get three questions of this week's news. if you get at least two of them right, you will win this piece of junk. >> the amazing, really cool rachel maddow show cocktail shaker. >> not at all to work. if you go ahead credit. what is the random office swag? >> these cool grand large paratroopers. they're really cool. you throw them. they fly down. yeah. they've really cool. >> these are my responsibility. there are things that have non-working parachutes you can throw and hurt a small child if you are not careful, they're definitely a choking hazard, but tons of fun. >> i won't bring them t my 4th graders. >> don't bring them to your 4th graders and don't bring in a cat. steve will determine whether you got the right answer. lucie, steve, steve, lucie. >> good evening to you both. >> hi. >> question one. although, hillary clinton leads overall in the democratic presidential contest. on monday's show, we reported on one aspect of the campaign in which senator bernie sanders is totally cleaning hillary clinton's clock. what is that? is it, a, his super pac is ten times the size of her super pac? b, he has one ten in a row among states that hold caucuses. c, he has one ten in a row in states that hold primaries. or, d, he is way ahead in the polls in the next ten states that are scheduled to vote? >> well, i know he has been having trouble with the primaries, but he's been doing well, really well with the caucuses, so i'm going to go with b. >> steven, did lucie get that right? >> let's check monday's show. >> he lost the first two caucuses barely in iowa, a little in nevada. since then of all the caucus states, he has one ten straight. >> yes, the correct answer is b, lucie is one for one. >> whohoo. question two, this week we paid uncomfortably close attention to the scandal involving the conservative governor bob bentley. before a phone sex tape of the governor and his alleged mistress was released publicly the governor apologized for what he called inappropriate comments. but even after the phone sex tape surfaced, what has the governor insistently denied? has he denied, a, that he was governor when the affair happened. as he denied, b, that his wife had any issue at all with the affair, because they're in an open relationship? has he denied the affair had any physical components or, d, has he denied that he enjoyed the affair? he said it was quote strictly business. >> well, i know that from the multiple playings of those tapes, he seemed to enjoy it quite a lot. and that quite obviously minded, because she went and left him. so i'm going to go with c. >> deny that the affair had a physical component. what is the right answer here? >> let's roll the tape. >> he's insistent emphatically that he never had an affair. he said he never had a physical relationship with this staffer. never had a physical affair with the senior adviser. >> yes, the creepy correct answer is c. >> what is physical really anyway? last question, jess, lucie jess. tuesday's show, we reported that an old lurid washington scandal has come back all of a sudden to potentially affect the presidential race this year. which scandal is back from the dead if washington. is it a, abscam, the fake shaikh bribery scandal, c, the iran contra scandal or d that time when george w. bush's do pestic policy adviser got shop lifted from target? >> i have never heard of anybody getting caught shoplifting from target. >> i'll send you a link. >> and i know it's not the iran contra affair. unfortunately, as much as i hate to remember it, it has to be b. >> d.c. madam. >> steve, you got the answer for us? >> let's check tuesday's show. >> in court filings which we obtained today the lawyer from the old d.c. madam case, sibley, he claims he quote came to believe information contained in the sealed from the public records quote contain information relevant to the upcoming presidential election. >> yep, it is the d.c. madam scandal. >> lucy, you are an absolute ringer, spectacularch wendy, did lucy win absolutely everything? >> louis ki, you are the owner of cool new swag. >> yay! >> lussi, thank you senior much. if you bring it to your 4th grate graders, we need a picktorial. >> you into ed to come up to boston to my former work place this little museum the isabel stewart gardner pulmonary. >> ohy god tissues best heist of all time. >> every time mention on the show, i internally grown, it meant i'd have five visitors the next day ask about, is this the place where the theft happened? i have to spend a very long time, plaining it. >> i am a sucker for a good heist. lucie, great for meeting you. thanks for being her here. well done. congratulations. >> tell us who you are, where you are from, why you flonase changes everything. yeah! ahh... you probably say it a million times a day. ahh... ahh! ahh... ahh! but at cigna, we want to help everyone say it once a year. say "ahh". >>ahh... cigna medical ans cover one hundred percent of your in-network annual checkup. so america, let's go. know. ahh! and take control of your health. cigna. together, all the way. may not always be clear... but at t. rowe price, we can help guide your retirement savings. for over 75 years, investors have relied on our disciplined approach to find long term value. so wherever your retirement journey takes you, we can help you reach your goals. call a t. rowe price retirement specialist or your advisor ...to see how we can help make the most of your retirement savings. t. rowe price. invest with confidence. they automatically shrinkers add an itethe prices jet carts, of millions of other products. very impressive. whew... it's got a little kick to it. i'm sorry, ian't hear you? nice shirt craig. at jet.com, we're always looking for unbelievable money saving innovations. >> so tonight here on msnbc, we are debuting something new that has never been seen before. it's a serious thing. i am telling you, it is also riveting. it's a part of news standards here and at other news organizations that we tried to not help terrorists. we try to not help terrorists in anyway, including spreading their propaganda. so when terrorist groups commit atrocities of some kind, attacks of some kind. the way we've phone they've done it is the terrorists themselves have filmed it. they want that film to be circulated. we as a mat of course don't do that. we will report what we know and can confirm. we may take films sore clips from terrorist propaganda. we take the minimum, only what we can responsibly use without doing tear work for them of actually terrorizing and intimidating people. as a general rule, i think that makes a ton of sense. as news organization, we ned to report what has happened, on our own terms. in the case of terrorism, that means we do not recirculate terrorist propaganda. now, we're at this interesting point, where the independent circulation of their own propaganda by the terrorist group isis, that is the news story about them that is probably the most important one of all. that is the offense. right. >> that is the attack from them. >> that is the way in which they are making themselves a global threat and there is no way to tell that story honestly without showing what it is that they're doing. and so what we're about to do here is something different than you have ever seen. in the course of watching normal news footage, you have not seen what we are about to show you. you have not seen what they have been doing selling themselves internationally. it's serious stuff. it's riveting. it's news worthy. it's a huge story. msnbc's continual coverage is up next. good morning, i'm alex witt if fork. it is the race for the white house. battleground wisconsin, every single candidate from beau sides is in the badger state today, with the gop warming up the clouds, including sarah palin at a fish fry. >> the entire country, its eyes are on the great state of wisconsin. >> i am so happy to be here. thank youch it is always so good to be in wisconsin. >> you have a megaphone, where you are not speaking just for this state, but the

Transcripts For MSNBCW Melissa Harris-Perry 20160213

carly fiorina. now, according to the first south carolina republican polls since the new hampshire primary, new hampshire winner donald trump is maintaining a strong lead with 36% in south carolina. ted cruz is polling at 20%, followed by rubio, bush and ben carson. john kasich is last with 9%. will tonight's debate be a game changer? joining us now to discuss this is nbc's holly jackson. what more you can tell us about how the candidates are prepping for tonight's debate. >> there's a lot going on. not as much going on here behind me in greenville as it sounds like it's going on behind new columbia. i wish i was with you right now. that's where the fun crowd is. we expect things to get crazier here tonight as the candidates start rolling in and getting ready for the debate. let's run through what everybody has at stake. donald trump and ted cruz looking like they're going to face off. they're already looking ready to rumble. particularly after the last couple of debates where we saw the two of them get into it. trump one of the front runners in south carolina, so is cruz. both aiming for the evangelical population. expect the two of them to mix it up. trump already called cruz a liar on twitter. he's hit him for his canadian birth, threatening to sue. cruz has dismissed that. i talk to the senator yesterday, he basically said there's a torrent of insults coming from donald trump's mouth. he won't engage on personality but he will engage on policy. so look for that tonight. you have marco rubio who needs a bounce back after that widely panned some called it disastrous debate performance last go around. christie taking him out there. christie no longer in this, but rubio is. i'm being told by his campaign he's eager for tonight. he's ready to take on those attacks rather than necessarily pivot to hit president obama which is what got him into hot water last time. jeb bush is looking for some bunches tonight. looking to land them, hoping south carolina is the place he makes his comeback. john kasich hoping to keep up the momentum he came with off of that second place finish in new hampshire. he's staying positive. somebody else we may not see attack is dr. ben carson. he's the sixth person rounding out this republican field in south carolina. his campaign feels this is a state that could be big for him. a lot at stake for these candidates tonight, joy, as we look ahead to number seven now, the debate between these republican rivals, the smallest one yet. six people on this stage. so it will be interesting to see the dynamic and how each gets after each other. >> no kids table debate. i'm disappointed. i missed that debate. i miss lindsey graham. >> do you really? i don't know. >> i do. i do. i do. thank you, hallie. joining me now in columbia south carolina are jeremy borden, south carolina freelance journalist. matt moore, chairman of the south carolina republican party and republican strategist joel sawyer. so we are here in the first debate after marco rubio's some would say robotic performance in the previous debate. let's play a bit of what he had to say at the concession speech. i was in the room listening to him. he got a lot of robust applause. take a listen. >> i can just tell you i know many people are disappointed. i'm disappointed with tonight. i want you to understand something -- i want you to understand something, our disappointment tonight is not on you. it's on me. it's on me. i did not -- i did not do well on saturday night. so listen to this, that will never happen again. that will never happen again. >> joel, you're the strategist on the set here. if you are rubio's advisers what does he need to do tonight to bounce back from that? it's become a meme. it's hit social media and hurt him on a national level. >> the interesting thing about rubio, he was the consensus, most consistently strong debater up until the most recent debate. he has to come back and bring the same game he brought in the first few debates when he was consistently the strongest. he has to come out strong, not only take it to the president and hillary clinton, but his other opponents on stage. >> for the republican party, i'll come to you on this, joel, you had more turnout in the first two contests in iowa and new hampshire than the democrats did. you had more excitement around the republican party's process. but you've also not had one candidate sort of stand out as being both the alternative to donald trump and somebody who seems like they could take him on. rubio was that guy, now he's not that guy. >> there's a primary within a primary here. i often point out that south carolina is about twice as big as new hampshire and iowa combined in terms of the republican electorate. there's a lot at stake tonight. i think people around the state, i've been around the state every corner this week. i heard from a lot of people that senator rubio is addressing this so directly is a good thing. they like it. that directness, honesty in politics pays off. >> who is covering this, jeremy? i heard a lot of ads on tv. a lot of anti-rubio ads. give us a lay of the land for what we should look for in south carolina? >> you're asking about the debate and rubio's performance. i feel like for the so-called establishment guys it goes beyond just whether they perform well at the debate. do they actually start speaking to the issues that donald trump is frankly speaking better to? you have towns and matt knows this you have towns in south carolina that are, you know, even though the unemployment rate across the board is fairly low, these towns are totally desolate. even in the upstate like lawrence, where it used to be a big mill town. they never recovered. donald trump, even though people can criticize him for being craig, sort of vaguely angry, to me he's at least understanding that they're angry. >> yeah. >> i wonder whether the establishment guys, including rubio and bush start to -- they'll have do it in their own way. they can't do it like donald trump. you know, it's not who they are. >> because who can. >> nobody can. >> right. >> do they actually start to speak to those real issues? so i think it goes beyond just do you have a good performance. do you have a good line here or there. can they really pivot on the campaign and start talking about the issues that people actually care about? >> first of all, we should look at the polls. when i got out of the airport and drove by the hotel, all i saw were trump signs. a lot of trump signage. when you talk about the issues, you talk about the economy, but what about immigration? we came into this race thinking immigration is what was driving trump voters. but are republicans in this state, is that a primary concern to them. >> it's one of them. south carolina is a diverse state. it's a state with a lot of cutting edge manufacturing, making airplanes, cars, also a lot of social conservatives, evangelicals who are not all the same. voters who are focused on the military. gigantic military installations in south carolina, a lot of retirees. it's immigration, also related to the economy, to the broader issue of government's role and the scope of government in peoples lives and national security. >> can we put that poll number back up? the republican party -- matt is talking about the diversity of issues that are important, jeremy is talking about we have to talk about the economy. donald trump is still the person that is consolidating -- not a majority, but a plurality of republican voters. how panicked is the establishment of the party on that. >> i feel like immigration and the economy are linked. because you see your own status diminished right now, in terms of in these communities in south carolina, you're angry at something. and i know that like the republican party, the establishment man over here doesn't like to -- they don't like to link those two. it's a tough issue to explain to people. and the fact is the republican party, and the democratic party really, this issue has not been dealt with. i think that's something that is driving a lot of the anger. they're linked in that way. >> how does the party address it in a way that then doesn't turn off latinos down the road, come off as being ethnic in a negative way? >> that's a manger challenge. the republican party, i think, is -- no offense, is a little bit addicted to this drug of winning now rather than winning 5, 10, 20 years from now. if we talk in such a way to give voice to an angry, older, whither crowd that is -- that is upset about immigration policy and talk about it in a way that appeals to their fears, we'll have trouble 20 years from now. and, you know, donald trump has talked about it in a way that appeals to that segment of the population. >> it's interesting because it mirrors the way the south is trying to reboot itself in terms of its own grappling with things. don't go anywhere. there's so much more to talk about here from columbia, south carolina. now the crowd can weigh back in. we'll be right back. ♪ ♪ [car driving] ♪ [engine revving] ♪ ♪ [car engine] [car speeding away] [car engine] ♪ ...one of many pieces in my life. so when my asthma symptoms kept coming back on my long-term control medicine, i talked to my doctor and found a missing piece in my asthma treatment. once-daily breo prevents asthma symptoms. breo is for adults with asthma not well controlled on a long-term asthma control medicine, like an inhaled corticosteroid. breo won't replace a rescue inhaler for sudden breathing problems. breo opens up airways to help improve breathing for a full 24 hours. breo contains a type of medicine that increases the risk of death from asthma problems and may increase the risk of hospitalization in children and adolescents. breo is not for people whose asthma is well controlled on a long-term asthma control medicine, like an inhaled corticosteroid. once your asthma is well controlled, your doctor will decide if you can stop breo and prescribe a different asthma control medicine, like an inhaled corticosteroid. do not take breo more than prescribed. see your doctor if your asthma does not improve or gets worse. ask your doctor if 24-hour breo could be a missing piece for you. see if you're eligible for 12 months free at mybreo.com. >> do they want someone telling us right now that any given position he might change tomorrow if the political winds shift? or do the people of south carolina want a consistent conservative? a fiscal conservative, a social conservative, a national security conservative who has been the same yesterday, today and tomorrow? that's why conservatives are uniting behind our campaign. >> that was senator ted cruz in greenville, south carolina yesterday speaking to reporters about why conservatives should support him over donald trump. joining me now from greenville is gabe gutierrez. we're looking at a battle between trump and cruz. we figure it will probably get ugly tonight at the debate what are we expecting to hear? >> good morning. south carolina obviously a rough and tumble state. this battle between ted cruz and donald trump is getting nastier. remember a few weeks ago even when there was this unspoken truce between donald trump and ted cruz, at least they weren't going after each other in debates, back slapping each other on the debate stage, that has obviously changed. now there's a fierce battle for first place here in south carolina. donald trump going after ted cruz yesterday threatening to sue him. the republican front-runner is threatening to sue another candidate over not being a natural born citizen if, donald trump says, ted cruz doesn't stop running negative ads against him. as you heard in that sound bite ted cruz saying he's the consistent conservative and donald trump is not fit to be president. he's running a series of negative ads not just against donald trump but also against other candidates in this race. one of them against marco rubio backfired when it turns out that one of the actresses in that ad had previously starred in adult films. the ted cruz campaign saying the company that made the ad did not vet this particular actress. they said they would not have hired her if they knew her filmography. she did speak to cnn after the ad was pulled. here's what she had to say. >> this is politics as usual. i -- it was done in a snap moment. someone has to make a decision. i have no ill will against ted cruz. he has a job do i'm a middle class working girl. i had a job to do. >> bizarre race now in south carolina. in a state that is used to it. here at the debate tonight, we don't only expect to see trump and ted cruz go at it, but a high stakes battle between marco rubio and jeb bush. the stakes are very high for them. marco rubio trying to bounce back from the fifth place finish in new hampshire. and jeb bush trying to reinvigorate his campaign. his brother, george w. bush planning on starting to campaign for him on monday. two battles here, trump versus cruz, marco rubio versus jeb bush, and john kasich trying to stay above the fray. joy, back to you. >> gabe, thank you very much. appreciate that from greenville, south carolina. i feel like we'll wake up tomorrow morning and find out we've all been in a cohen brothers movie, and that's what's happening here. i feel the subtext of the ted cruz and trump bromance is going after ted cruz on that vague foreignness what do you think about that? >> in south carolina, the people in office now, let's not forget two years ago in south carolina senator lindsey graham was part of the gang of eight and won an overwhelming election victory here in south carolina. if you're a member of the establishment, republican, democrat, anyone in between, the solution is not to do nothing on immigration. we all agree. but i think where the rubber meets the road here for cruz and trump is not only the rhetoric but the different types of policies they're proposing. >> haven't you just literally performed the thing that is angering white working middle class voters. the logic is for immigration reform. the rationale thing is for immigration form. implying if you're not for it, you're not rational. >> the fact that there are 12 million people here illegally is already de facto amnesty. >> how do you do it then, joel? from a messaging standpoint, the party is now essentially running against immigration reform, but then trying to substitute marco rubio as a potential nominee. you would that even work? >> i think the big thing we have to do is choose the words we use more carefully. the most toxic thing in this country in probably the last decade was the word amnesty. if you look at these bills, it's anything but amnesty. it's penalties. it's, you know, in some cases, not gaining full citizenship. not being able to vote. so the idea that we're just going to wave a flag and if you're here, cool, you're a citizen. go vote. that's what amnesty is. nobody proposed amnesty. i think we have to take a step back, we have to be careful about the words we use, and i think that it is irresponsible to a degree for some politicians to be hitting each other on the idea that one supported amnesty and the other did. >> but the last politician in the republican party to propose amnesty was ronald reagan who did outright amnesty and is a secular saint in the republican party. >> yeah. >> now he is. >> the answer is yes. the fact is the republican party -- i wonder, too whether marco rubio running away from that bill will prove to be a crucial mistake. just because, you know, if he had defined it and if people -- the republican party was basically behind that bill, ted cruz was basically in the beginning behind that bill. if they had -- they had done all these focus groups after losing last time, right? how do we win? how do we win next time? so we have to take on immigration. they go and take on immigration. as soon as primary politics gets involved, they run as fast as they can towards the right and don't try to stand their ground and say this is the right thing to do. people see that. you know, i don't know whether the majority of republicans -- maybe they would have taken it out on them. you can't go down one road and run back to the beginning and say, well, i promise we'll do better next time. >> right. >> i think people see through that. that's why i think we're seeing so many confusing sort of contradicting things. you know, ultimately the republicans and -- you can blame it on democrats, too. for the republican electorate, they have not gotten the job done. they send the majority to washington to do something. as soon as things got hot, they ran away from it people see through that. that's part of what we're seeing in this election. >> i think trump is helping us see through it because he's punching holes in some of the things you're talking about. when we come back, we want go around to some of the candidates who have not gotten as much attention. jeb bush is bringing in the big guns, dubya. dubya is back on the campaign trail. >> they love him there. >> i hear they love him here. as we go to break, let's listen to jeb answering questions from supporters in south carolina. >> expand the net as it relates to mental health services that are bottom up. these are community-based organizations. third, we have to deal with the complicated nature of hippa. are you in the mental health field? 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that was a leap. but i knew i could rely on american express to help me buy those building materials. amex helped me buy the inventory i needed. our amex helped us fill the orders. just like that. another step on the journey. will you be ready when growth presents itself? realize your buying power at open.com if you're going to commit a stupid crime, you might want to use something other than a gun is the attitude. we had dramatic reductions in gun violence, at the same time we protected the rights of law abiding citizens. the fact that 1.5 million people have a concealed weapons permit is creating a safer florida. it works. the seco . >> that's jeb bush standing in front of a big old american flag addressing supporters in south carolina just hours before tonight's gop debate. the former florida governor may have started out his campaign not wanting you to basically ignore his last name. he's just jeb, exclamation point. so that all seems to be changing as we head into the south carolina primary. for the first time this monday former president george w. bush will appear on the campaign trail alongside his brother at a rally in north charleston. the appearance comes on the heels of a new jeb ad that puts dubya front and center. >> i know jeb. i know his good heart and his strong backbone. jeb will unite our country. he knows how to bring the world together against terror, he knows when tough measures must be taken. experience and judgment count in the oval office. >> the former president's flavoribility ratings have climbed since he left office in 2009. with the south carolina primary one week away, jeb bush is polling in fourth place. jeb bush when we first -- when he first appeared on the scene, his shock and awe phase of his campai campaign, he didn't really claim the last name bush, his surname. let's listen to him recently. >> i'm bush, proud of it. i love my brother, love my dad, love my mother. it's part of who i am. >> that will work in south carolina, right? why? >> that's the 50 delegate question here in south carolina that goes to the winners -- the winner of the primary. what george w. bush did so well, he combined a warmth and compassion with that texas toughness. so i do think that having him here in south carolina for governor jeb bush could be helpful. i expect a big crowd in charleston tomorrow night -- two nights from now in forth charleston for george w. and jeb. the question is does that translate over to support who changes their vote, who of those undecideds joins jeb. >> seeing jeb bush at that event and seeing george w. bush in that ad reminds you how different these two in terms of their political acumen, their ability to be a politician. jeb's standing there in front of a giant american flag with no people behind him. this odd image where you see his shadow on the flag. just from a staging point of view. george w. bush was all about that theatricality of being president, the personal touch as being a politician. can jeb bush capture george w. bush's magic without his political skill? >> they're two totally different people. the george w. bush appealed much more as this tough, populist appeal. jeb is more of a policy guy. he's not going to get out there and say, you know, kind of crazy out there things just to get an applause line. the key difference between the first two bushes who did well here and the third is that the first two bushes did well before establishment was a dirty word. right? now you have -- you think about the polling earlier with trump and cruz in the lead, you have 56% of people in the electoral wanting something other than the establishment. >> right. >> so i think that's a key difference this time, too, beyond the style. >> the key difference, too, is that when george w. bush was winning this primary in the year 2000 he was doing it to extinguish the outsider candidate, which was john mccain, and did it in nasty fashion. the insinuations that there was an illegitimate black child. you don't see jeb bush trying to go that ham against donald trump. >> it seems like he's shunned that off. but, what's amazing about this to me is that it speaks to the division in the republican party, right? that you have part of the republican party, some half of it or i don't know exactly what the percentage would be, some half of it that still likes dubya, the past president, picture of the establishment. it's almost like trump is speaking to a totally different constituency than the so-called establishment candidates. my question is -- this doesn't directly answer your question, but what happens after this primary in south carolina when it looks like trump will win big. if that happens, what is the future of the republican party? i think no one is talking about it. they're like, oh, this long primary cycle to go. you know, worry about it later. the questions are fundamental right now. >> one of them is on the war. one of the big issues that donald trump is using to take down jeb is iraq. and that issue does not seem to cut in jeb's favor even with republicans. >> it's fascinating. i think we are having a big discussion now in our party about not only the direction of the party's future but of the state's future and the country's future. that's a good discussion for us to have. it was coming eventually. democrats right now are having a very similar discussion. >> little bit. >> the elites in the democratic party and the superdelegates are skewing things in hillary's favor. the focus on our side is maybe short-sighted. >> you guys are so fascinating. >> but they're having a similar discussion, but you don't see -- even though bernie sanders is not a typical democrat, some would argue a democrat socialist, i don't think the divisions are as stark. i could imagine if trump were to be the nominee that you would have a major revolt if bernie sanders were to somehow be the nominee, he's not quite there yet. but, you know, i think the democratic party would unite behind him. that speaks to the division and more so, you know, do you see -- is there a real possibility for a third party or a big part of the republican party to say we will no longer tolerate what we've seen. >> or michael bloomberg to jump in and scramble the whole thing further. the majority of republican voters in south carolina are evangelical christians. how are candidates reaching out to them? that's next. (man) hmm. what do you think? ♪ (stranger) good mornin'! ♪ (store p.a.) attention shoppers, there's a lost couple in the men's department. 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lead with more than 37%. joining me now from greenville is pastor mike gonzalez, evangelical chairman with the cruz campaign in south carolina and the senior pastor at columbia world outreach church. appreciate you being here. >> good to be with you. >> so, explain to me, if you will, what are the main issues, the most important issues at least when your congregants talk to you and not to have you speak for the entire evangelical community in south carolina, but what are the most important issues? >> the most important issues for evangelicals at large are life, marriage and religious freedom. and also i would add a fourth to that, that is someone, a president who will uphold the constitution who is a lawful president. that's what ted cruz is. that's why we're seeing such a groundswell of evangelicals coming around ted cruz in south carolina. we've been working towards that. >> i want to play a bit of ted cruz talking about how his faith would influence his decisions were he to be president of the united states. let's take a listen. >> critical question is who do you trust on supreme court justices? we are one justice away from the supreme court mandating unlimited abortion on demand up to the moment of birth. >> pastor gonzalez, what do you say to americans who are more secular who say what we don't want is to have a president in the white house who is essentially using his own personal faith to run the country when the constitution has a separation of church and state. >> well, the reality is that this idea of the separation of church and state is a myth. i mean, you bring your faith into the marketplace like you do anything else. so ted cruz is a -- will be a president not just, you know who is a preacher and pastor in the white house, that's not the idea. i believe all americans can rally around ted cruz because he upholds the constitution. i believe all americans wanted to truly uphold the law. >> let me just push back on you a bit. the separation of church and state is not a myth, it's a constitutional fact. it's a fact on the ground. it's a part of our constitutional makeup. the founding fathers were explicit that they did not want to have a national church. can a candidate like ted cruz run on essentially saying he would ignore that part of the constitution if you're saying he's a president who would actually run on the constitution? >> i'm saying that the constitution upholds our first amendment rights. ted cruz is practicing that. he's not violating that. so the idea that he would do anything else but really follow the law and the constitution, it's just not true. he's going to do that. our faith is a vital part to our lives. that doesn't mean he's in the white house preaching, you know, all of the time he's going to be doing that while president. it's his faith, it's who he is. you can't separate him. it's like when you scramble eggs, you can't unscramble them. that's the reality. our constitution gives us our religious rights and our religious freedoms. you can't take that away. >> i want to come out to the panel and add you guys in here. you hear a lot of that talk about the separation of church and state being a myth. you hear that sometimeses from evangelicals. how does the party get from here to a general election having embedded that in the primary campaign? >> it's not a myth, it is part of our constitutional fabric. but i think that religion has always had a place in our politics. there are some blurry lines there. at the same time i wonder about this strategy from -- that you're hearing now from the ted cruz campaign because there just isn't that much -- there isn't that much room between the republican candidates on the issues that he is saying are paramount for south carolina evangelicals. to me -- and you can ask the other members of the panel who are well versed in this, they'll decide on other issues. i wonder whether ted cruz is speaking enough to those issues. but in terms of the separation of church and state. that's a big question. this is why somebody like ted cruz, you know, why you have people like bob dole saying we can't nominate ted cruz or even some of these other guys is because that does pose big problem fors because that does pose big problem for for them in the genl election. >> the coattails of this issue of believability where you draw the line, i don't think most americans have any problem with somebody standing up and saying i'm guided by my faith in my day-to-day life. but where do you draw that line? are you going to push your faith on me? freedom of religion means freedom of everyone's religion. it's -- there's a story line of, you know, you wanted people who will protect this faith or that faith. as soon as you start carving out one faith or another -- >> how salient is this issue of religious liberty, which is a big cause of ted cruz from the election here in south carolina. >> it adds to what joel and jeremy are saying, all evangelicals in south carolina are not the same. maybe in terms of the issues they care about, versus the non-denominational megachurch member, not only a difference of opinions on issue but also style. that's the division now and the discussion going forward is style. one side says we are working to get political power because we can do x, y and z. results on the other side says the gospel says we have to be serving people. when you serve people you get the benefit of the doubt. >> does it surprise any of you that donald trump, who i believe is catholic, who doesn't have outward prodestations of faith as other candidates, does it surprise you he's ahead in south carolina by a large margin? >> it's surprising, but at the same time he's speaking to those other issues. it's like when i've been at trump rallies, and they are the -- the energy for him is as big as he's saying, which is scary for the other candidates, but basically he has been able to speak to those other issues, and the other thing that -- just to go back on matt's point, evan g evangelical vote is the most unpredictable. 56% of people in south carolina say they're evangelical christians, because it's so unpredictable and divided, that's why i wonder about the cruz strategy. will it have the same effect as it did in iowa, or is it so unpredictable and these people are really focused on other issues that it backfires. >> pastor, mike gonzalez, i'll give you the last word. how do you expect your candidate to do in this primary in a week? >> i want to tell you this. across our state we're seeing over 300 pastors who have endorsed ted pastors from all walks of life. on primary day, we believe ted cruz will win the lion's share of the evangelical vote. >> pastor mike gonzalez, thank you very much. i want to thank my guesses, jeremy borden, joel sawyer, matt moore will be back with us later in the show. we're seven days away from the democratic caucus in nerve nerv nevada. we'll take you there next. this bale of hay almost derailed the ranch. when a wildfire raged through elkhorn ranch, the sudden loss of pasture became a serious problem for a family business. faced with horses that needed feeding the owners were forced to place an emergency order of hay. thankfully, mary miller banks with chase for business. and with a complete view of her finances, she could control her cash flow, and keep the ranch running. chase for business. so you can own it. and loud crowd here in columbia, south carolina. we're here at liberty taproom. this crowd is bernie centric. people feeling the berne. we've walked around and talked to a lot of people in this restaurant and said if you want to come back, we'll be doing a little broadcast a little thing we call television on saturday. as you can see, the hustle of which campaigns to get their people here. it's a part of strategy in campaigns, stuff like this so you're seeing that divide in south carolina. the democrats are heading west for their next big contest, nevada holds its democratic caucus in seven days. there's a lot at stake for hillary clinton and bernie sanders fresh off their thursday debate in milwaukee where they clashed over race and other things. in nevada they will face a sizable latino electorate. 15% of democratic caucusgoers in nevada are latino. this is where clinton beat barack obama in 2008 by six percentage points. the race is on to line up latino voters. the question is not whether la teens no will shape the race, the question is how. joining me now from vegas is lucy flores, democratic assembly woman for district 28 in nevada, and she's a bernie sanders supporter. thank you for being here. i wanted to ask you about where the polls stand right now in nevada. i will put up a poll number here that we have. latinos make up 15% of the nevada electorate. african-americans 15%. asian persons, 3%. and white voters 65%. i guess the question would be whether latino voters tend to vote their vote share. whether they tend to vote at their share of the electorate. >> you know, first of all in the last -- caucus iing is differen from a general election. the numbers tent to fluctuate. the hard thing about the caucus is it's hard to determine who will show up that day. so what i have seen antidotally is how much the campaigns have been hustling to go out there and talk to the latino democratic specifically knowing they make up such a large percentage of the electorate out here in nevada. >> we know also nevada is a heavily unionized state. the union vote will be important to what happens. 169,000 union members listed in 2014. 59% of union households voted for barack obama in 2008. so for latino voters, give me the balance on the issues that are most important to them between economic issues that would affect the household and things like immigration. >> all of those issues that matter to every day people, whether it's african-americans, latino, whatever demographic is important to latinos as well. economics, exactly what you stated, and, shgs yshg, yes, ims important. you have seen immigration has never been the number one priority. it's been a priority but not the thing that's the top of every person's mind. it is about jobs. it is about who will have better access, better opportunities for their kids, access to education, et cetera. particularly here in nevada where we've been having such a hard time with our educational system and have not been doing well. so the latino community is interested in -- what we call just every-day top of mind issues for all americans. >> all right, lucy flores in las vegas, appreciate it. coming up, the biggest union in nevada weighs in. ey limit whu earn bonus cash back. then - those places change every few months? i think i'll pass... quicksilver from capital one puts nothing in your way. you simply earn unlimited 1.5% cash back on every purchase, everywhere. you can't dodge the question... what's in your wallet? 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>> one of the challenges in this phase of the campaign is that it is not just one state focused. so they have to move around a bit. in nevada where the caucuses are one week away, we have both hillary clinton and bernie sanders doing evenevents, tryin get out the vote and appearing tonight in colorado for a democratic party event like they did last night in minnesota. there's a lot of that mountain west rotation going on where they're trying to get the message out, where there's a lot of common ground in what they're talking about but the differences are so critical and key. we know that hillary clinton has been emphasizing her long relationship with the african-american community. she's got some very strong endorsements. we saw bernie sanders trying to cut some new territory there. making some time yesterday to speak with a group in minnesota that had a lot of concerns about some of the issues that are most relevant to the african-american community. he was really trying to talk about how his ideas with respect to wealth, class and how the economic system should change could benefit them, especially some of the young people. they are trying to find those voters who will hear their messages in a way that sort of ignites their involvement. in nevada we know that there are many union employees, many of them a part of the tourism business that certainly drives places like las vegas. so that will be critical as well. getting the message out is important but also getting those voters who are perhaps still undecided or maybe not as motivated to be involved. that's a big part of what we're seeing this weekend. joy? >> all right. kelly o'donnell, thank you very much. and back here with me -- for the last few days i've been in south carolina where hillary clinton and bernie sanders campaigns have been. they've been working overtime to make their case for the african-american votes who make up 60% of the likely democratic primary electorate. one of my stops here in columbia was to the legendary stroys barbershop, a key stop for president obama when he was candidate in 2008. i asked barber darrell goodwin which of the candidates earned the support of his customers. >> the older clientele, they are leaning towards hillary. the younger, they are leaning towards bernie. so, you know, the younger, they're feeling their student loans, you know, bernie is saying things they can relate to. i guess hillary is saying more things that the older crowd can relate to. the older crowd don't realize we need more. we need more as a people. >> here with me now is steve phillips, founder of power pac plus, and author of the book "brown is the new white." amanda day, former communications director for congressman james clyburn. and senior project manager for np strategies, simone sanders, national press secretary for the bernie sanders campaign. you heard darrell who is amazing. he gave a fresh cut to that gentleman who was there. i want to start with you, steve. he talked about a generational divide among african-americans that i have seen for myself, but i think when people say generational divide, they think the under 30s are more with bernie sanders. i'm seeing a generational divide that cuts off at about 50. what do you think? >> correct. i think we are seeing a new civil rights movement, black lives matters movement, people coming out and being active, it'sthe question of are you standing up and fighting back, or are you going to let people kill our people. we're looking for a candidate who has backbone, new solutions and puts their money where their mouth is. >> simone you joined the campaign after the black lives matte matters, why do you think bernie sanders is getting the vote since this is not something he talked about since the black lives matters uprising. >> we have to go back to before bernie sanders was an elected official. as a student in college he was organizing with core, he got arrested trying to desegregate housing units in chicago. so this is not something that's "new to him." he does have an intense focus on african-american issues, on issues of police brutality, criminal justice reform and economics as well. he said in the debate the other night that the african-american community were the largest hit by the wall street collapse. african-americans and latinos lost a large amount of wealth. folks took a double take and said is that true? yes, that is true. when we talk about addressing economic inequality in this country, we are definitely talking about policies and practices that are for african-americans. >> steve, one more time on that issue. one of the debates is whether the focus on economics, focus on wall street gets around the issue of race that would not work with african-americans. do you think that's a message that can get directly to african-americans when race is not the central part of the conversation? >> i don't. that's his challenge. he has to be more explicit and intentional. black people are not poor by accident or a quirk of history. we were placed in slavery, developed the wealth of this country, denied access to the gi bill benefits, so there's an intentionality to the current situation, we have to be intentional to address it. >> amanda, i've been on the ground and looking at the infrastructure of the two campaigns. the volume of outreach has been. been surprised by the volume of the sanders campaign. you used to work for jim clyburn, probably the biggest political machine in the state. have you been surprised by sort of the variation between the infrastructures of the clinton and sanders campaign? >> i have. i was telling simone before we came on today, my door has been knocked on many times by the sanders campaign. they call every night -- i'm not answering, no offense to them -- but they call every night. reading yesterday about the numbers between the sanders campaign and the clinton campaign and how they're reaching out to voters, it's a stark difference. both campaigns have great staff. but the sanders campaign does seem to be larger. >> look at this. we basically said anybody can come. but there seems to be sort of a lot more event and organizational energy. this is part of the field, deciding to show up. >> it's organic. it's not something that they send -- i'm on their e-mail list. i didn't get a blast saying go to liberty today. having that organic feel is something we felt in '08. it expands race, age, economics. it seems to be the energy here. >> one of the dynamics of the sanders movement also takes place in social media. there you have a completely different dynamic between african-americans and not all but a lot of sanders supporters, who aggressively kind of civil righ rights sway and bernie sanders civil rights activism. has that had a negative impact? >> i don't think it's had a negative impact, but we have seen this backlash online. the senator noted, i've said it, we've all said, we are running a positive campaign. we want our campaign to be positive, we want supporters to be positive as well. we're not into attacking anyone, we are not attacking on the airwav airwaves, on radio, but we have seen this ground swell in south carolina, and on social media not just with young white people, young latinos, do latin african-americans, our message is a message that speaks to the american people, once folks hear the senator's message they'll like him and want to join the political revolution. i think what we're seeing her is a testament to that. >> when we come back, we'll have more. i want to give simone a chance to talk about those pictures, those photos that have been controversial. we want to talk more about dynamics of race in this campaign. stay right here. up next, just who -- who is president obama's bff? office bf? then you might beformance laptogearcentric.e bff? 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>> because she has been with the obama -- what is it? cabinet? >> mm-hmm. >> i'm very impressed with that. she's going to continue what he's started. >> i want to come back to this notion of the obama blessing, how each candidate is really sort of seeking it in a way. i want to button up this discussion that you started about this notion of bernie sanders civil rights record. i think that's an important issue that we need to discuss. it's been used by the campaign as sort of a benefit of trying to say this is what should sell you in part on bernie sanders. >> not just this is what should sell us, but this is part of who he is. this is not just something we put on an say this is going to be bernie sanders today. this is what his whole entire political life is built on, the work of dr. martin luther king jr. senator sanders, was an organization -- >> is it relevant from what he did after 1964 to now. >> yes, extremely. >> was he organizing for african-americans for 50 years? >> not just for african-americans, but organizing around the yishissue. the senator introduced a bill for 1 million jobs that will create 1 million jobs in underserved communities. senator senaaunders has been a staunch advocate for women's rights, for issues that affect black and brown people in this country. this conversation about that this is new for him, he's just a civil rights -- no, no, no. >> i don't think people are trying to say it's new. what people are reacting to is the attempt to inflate bernie sanders into a leader of the civil rights movement on some sort of par with john lewis. >> no one has said that. >> there is a sense of people saying he is a civil rights leader like john lewis. let's listen to john lewis respond to that in his own words. it's caused controverscontrover. let's take a listen. >> i never saw him. i never met him. i would chair the student violent noncoordinating committee for three years from 1963 to 1966. i was involved in the state-ins, the freedom ride, the march on washington, the march from selma to montgomery. but i met hillary clinton. i met president clinton. >> see, that's caused backlash. you just read a book, i read a book, we know john lewis has known clinton since the '70s. people have gone after him on that. what do you make of this controversy? >> first of all, as somebody who came up in the rainbow coalition days of the '80s, i love that they're saying i love this black man more. there is an important issue, it's an area of danger for sanders to be able to alienate the leaders and civil rights by saying i'm as good or better than they were, rather than showing a question of respect and appreciation for the work they've actually done. >> i want to read you guy as statement that john lewis has issued clarifying his comments about bernie sanders. he said the fact that i did not meet him in the movement does not mean that i doubted the senator participated in the civil rights movement. neither was i attempting to disparage his activism. that was the crux of the backlash against john lewis, there were few people saying if you're attacking john lewis, you're on the wrong page in terms of spirituality, but there was an attack on him saying he was diminishing the work of the unknowns in the civil rights movement. how has that played out? >> senator sanders and i have profound respect for congressman john lewis. these attacks online, we do not condone those things. that's not something we participate in. we're running a positive campaign. we know, like congressman lewis said. it's not a surprise that he probably didn't meet senator sanders. you can't metet every person engaged and involved in the movement. but participation of people who were staunch advocates in line for the issues. that's what this campaign is about, the issues. >> i want to get to this question about barack obama. that's another issue that's controversial. first of all, the selma photo is not bernie sanders. >> no. he was in selma during that moment. >> let's talk about this dichotomy of barack obama. how much danger does it potentially hold that senator sanders said this, i want to play this sound bite when he was on the tom hartman show in 200 20116789. >> i think one of the reason that's president has been able to move so far to the right, there's no primary opposition to him. i think it would do this country a good deal of service if people started thinking about candidates out there to begin contrasting what is a progressive agenda as opposed to what obama is doing. >> how does that wind up playing out in south carolina among democrats? >> the democrats in south carolina are in extreme favor of president obama. i think it's also to remember that these candidates are oning for themselves, they're not campaigning for barack obama. president clinton yesterday in tennessee said his wife was a changemaker, the current president is not. we have to remember that they're campaigning for themselves, their spouses, it doesn't mean that they dislike the president, doesn't mean they do not support the president, but they're trying to separate themselves to win an election. >> you made a point about the age distribution of the democratic primary voters in past elections. >> in 2008, 55% of voters were african-american. 40% were under the age of 44. 61% were women. we're extremely diverse in our democratic primary. both candidates, secretary clinton and senator sanders have to go out and reach the voters on a race level, general level and age level. >> that means a lot of people will be voting in this primary who don't remember the clinton era, and only remember the clintons from 2008 when they were not that nice to barack obama. how does that play out? >> the candidates have an opportunity to talk about whatnot only will they do, but they raised $200 million so far. how they're spending that money now. are they elevating candidates of color, putting resources behind those folks. that will send a strong signal as well as who they choose for the vice president. >> interesting, we have a lot more to talk about. i want to get into these discussions about the crime bill. we're out of time, though. i want to thank you all for being here. so much more to talk about. we could go on for another hour. senator cory booker will join us live next. ♪ ♪ ♪ (vo) making the most out of every mile. that's why i got a subaru impreza. love. it's what makes a subaru, a subaru. if you have high blood pressure many cold medicines may raise your blood pressure. that's why there's coricidin® hbp. it relieves cold symptoms without raising blood pressure. so look for powerful cold medicine with a heart. coricidin® hbp. i'm here to get the lady of the house back on her feet. and give her the strength and energy to stay healthy. who's with me?! yay! the complete balanced nutrition of great tasting ensure. with 9 grams of protein and 26 vitamins and minerals. ensure. take life in! all across the state the economy is growing,arts today. with creative new business incentives, the lowest taxes in decades, and university partnerships, attracting the talent and companies of tomorrow. like in utica, where a new kind of workforce is being trained. and in albany, the nanotechnology capital of the world. let us help grow your company's tomorrow, today at business.ny.gov i think millions of americans are better off because of his presidency, so, yes, i will build on the progress he's made because i am a progressive who actually likes to make progress! >> that was hillary clinton speaking at a fund-raiser in minnesota last night, praising president obama while taking a subtle shot at bernie sanders. this afternoon hillary clinton will be in nevada which holds its caucus one week from today. joining us from nevada is cory booker who is supporting hillary clinton. thank you for being here. >> thank you very much for having me, joy. >> let's start off with that notion that hillary clinton is hugging barack obama in order to appeal to african-american and latino voters who really love the president. i want to play you a sound bite from denmark, south carolina here in south carolina where hillary clinton was at a town hall recently making just that point to attack senator sanders. take a listen. >> he tried to get some attention to attract a candidate to actually run against the president when he was running for re-election. he does not support the way i do building on the progress that the president has made. >> and senator booker, couldn't the sanders side of that argument just say, yes, but if you want to talk about criticism of the president, we could just play a highlight reel from 2008. hillary clinton herself was very critical of then candidate barack obama. doesn't she risk having that set of sound bites be played against her in response? >> campaigns get -- you hear a lot of rhetoric from a lot of candidates. it's important to listen. i pay attention to what folks do before its election season and they have to court certain communities. they ran a bruising campaign. i was an early obama supporter. as soon as that campaign was over, the president went to hillary clinton to try to push his agenda. the president's agenda wasn't just dealing with war-torn areas in the middle east and a lot of conflicts that might make headlines. the president's agenda was to work with hillary clinton in an intimate manner that african-americans and all americans, if they think about it, like. hillary clinton was a person that barack obama sent to africa, south america to advance issues of human rights, women's rights. yes. to help many african-american latino people around the globe begin to get economic justice. these are two people -- it's not hugging going on, they have hugged. they worked together to accomplish some tremendous things. there's a trust there. there's a competence there and there's a record there that's very important. >> senator booker what does it say about the state of the hillary clinton candidacy that two of her top surrogates, two prominent well respected sort of storied people, madeleine albright as well as john lewis have had to walk back statements eluding to senator sanders, and they're the ones who had to back down on statements about women's support about the two candidates and bernie sanders civil rights record? >> madeleine albright and john lewis are really important historic figures. john lewis is in many ways one of my great heroes. when i went to be sworn in as united states senator representing new jersey, in the moments before i went to swear on my oath, i went to john lewis' office. he's a man of tremendous esteem. whether they talk -- backed down, the fact is they're supporting hillary clinton. john lewis, the entire congressional black caucus. i'm in nevada where my mom has lived for the last couple years, the entire black legislator have supported hillary clinton. not because of the campaign, not because of surrogates like me but because of a long 40-year relationship with hillary clinton and intimacy. these been part of the community, worked in the trenches with the community from the time she came out of law school to the time this campaign began. this is not just it's campaign season, let me turn and get some photo-opes with african-americans and others. this is a person we trust and know. especially people that work in washington like john lewis and other titans of the congressional black caucus, they're supporting her because they believe when it comes to r urgent issued, i've lived and worked my entire professional career in newark, new jersey, there's urgencies going on in our communities. we trust hillary clinton to be the president to move the ball going forward and dealing with the crisis we have in america. senator booker we have a short time, but you talked about people who know her, worked with her, doesn't that speak about her fundamental problem? if you look at polling out of new hampshire -- this is a mostly white electorate, hillary clinton lost to people under 65, 83% to 16%. she only ron those over 65. you move to the gender gap in new hampshire, bernie sanders beating hillary clinton among women. beating her 55% to 44%. even beating her greater among men, 67% to 32%. you move to nevada, the most recent polling shows sanders is whipping in the gender gap against hillary clinton there. if that replicates itself here in a state like south carolina, doesn't it mean being the institutional, established candidate works against hillary clinton? >> again this is a campaign season we're hearing institutional establishment. this is a battle for america. it's not an electoral battle or campaign battle, these are folks who need to get more income because they have more money at the end of the month versus month at the end of the money. this is a shameful reality that we're incarcerating the poor, mentally incapable. for me, i went to washington to battle on these issues. the first policy issue i had a conversation about was incarceration. i stepped up from the time i was a mayor, to a city council person, and now in the senate. i will be speaking in black churches, seeing my mom tomorrow for val types day, those folks will not be throwing around poll numbers and rhetoric. they will talk about the real kitchen table issues that affect the african-american community and the latino community. the champion for that, fighting for children's rights in the black community in arkansas, fighting for children's healthcare in the white house, fighting as a united states senator to advance the cause of an urban place like harlem, like the bronx, that has been hillary clinton. a lot of folks are going to trumpet these campaign things, but the reality is there's a trust in many communities for her. that's why i'm out here working so hard. >> i need a very short answer from you, senator booker. i'm going overtime, my producer also kill me. but michelle alexander wrote a scathing piece on her facebook and to the nation saying the clintons have done more arm to the african-american community than good. the 1990s, the bill clinton era, a net plus for hillary clinton or a net minus given issues likes that incarceration that many believe from bill clinton's policies that hillary clinton supported. >> michelle alexander is one of the most important voices in the community today. i read her article last night on the plane. she not only talks about the clintons, she talks about bernie sanders, too, who voted for the crime bill. the congressional black caucus voted for the crime bill. there were mistakes made back in the bays i was in law school and i watched what happened with an 800% increase in the national prison -- federal prison population. it's raidiculoridiculous, it's outrageous. it's a shameful chapter. which candidate has the connections to the community, the track record to address the harms from the 1990 when we were building a new prison in the united states every 12 days. so very simply, hillary clinton for me, the first conversation she came to me, she started with me, talking with me about criminal justice reform, she knew that was the policy issue i was focused on like a laser beam in terms of trust, nknowledge, and a track record to undo those things that bernie sanders and bill clinton were involved in creating, hillary clinton is the one. her very first policy speech was not about wall street. her first policy speech was not about foreign policy. it was about mass incarceration and her agenda and her plan to deal with this shameful chapter in american history that must end for the sake of all people. >> senator cory booker, thank you very much. >> thank you. and up next, we go live to greenville where the republicans are warming up for tonight's all important debate. first, here's what some young voters at the university of south carolina had to say about the candidates. >> everyone talks about trump because he's so in your face, but one thing that i like is he makes the other republican candidates talk about things. even though he says it in a very, like -- not appropriate way most of the time. >> i'm really thinking bernie sanders. to me, he seems like the most capable candidate. the one that i can take most seriously. sunrises. it's my job and it's also my passion. but with my back pain i couldn't sleep... so i couldn't get up in time. then i found aleve pm. aleve pm is the only one to combine a sleep aid plus the 12 hour pain relieving strength of aleve. and now... i'm back. aleve pm for a better am. iand quit a lot,t but ended up nowhere. now i use this. the nicoderm cq patch, with unique extended release technology, helps prevent the urge to smoke all day. i want this time to be my last time. that's why i choose nicoderm cq. hey how's it going, hotcakes? hotcakes. this place has hotcakes. so why aren't they selling like hotcakes? with comcast business internet and wifi pro, they could be. just add a customized message to your wifi pro splash page and you'll reach your customers where their eyes are already - on their devices. order up. it's more than just wifi, it can help grow your business. you don't see that every day. introducing wifi pro, wifi that helps grow your business. comcast business. built for business. try align for a non-stop,ive sweet-treat-goodness hold-onto-your-tiara, kind-of-day. live 24/7 with 24/7 digestive support. try align, the undisputed #1 ge recommended probiotic. . tonight the remaining republican presidential hopeful also meet in greenville, south carolina for the final debate for next week's primary. chris christie and carly fiorina suspended their campaigns and the remaining are fighting not to be next. donald trump is leading the polls here in the palmetto state with 37%. joining me now is will whitson. you have been hanging out with john kasich this week. how is john kasich approaching the south carolina primary? >> he's really approaching this in a way that is not exactly the same as you've seen some other candidates. while the other big candidates were in greenville for the faith and freedom forum, john kasich was here in columbia, going to orangeburg, south carolina, an area that is usually regarded a when it comes to votes. he's trying to get votes in other areas where you don't see candidates going to. when he addressed people yesterday in columbia, he didn't speak about the same issues that you heard over and over again, like isis, obamacare, healthcare, he spoke about education, giving power back to the states and reaching out to people that he said were in the shadows, such as junkies, addicts, or the mentally ill saying those individuals have been given the shaft by the u.s. government in recent years. he says it's time to help those people again as a result of greater economic growth. as one person put it, he's reaching out to people who normally don't vote republican. >> very interesting. will whitson, thank you very much. appreciate that. just one week from today south carolinians will head to the polls to vote in the republican primary. a recent poll from the augusta chronicle puts donald trump way ahead of the pack with 36% report from likely republican voters. ted cruz has 19.6%. joining me now is matt moore, chairman of the south carolina republican party, jamie harrison, chairman of the south carolina democratic party, and republican state representative, nathan valentine. thank you all for being here. matt, i thought there was some interesting information about john kasich that we heard from will, that he's running at the not republican in the race. could that work in south carolina? >> south carolina has a lot of people from ohio, a lot of new jerseyans, a lot of transplants from florida, retirees from the military. he may have success in south carolina. >> that's interesting. the ads for kasich on air, is something like in my first 100 days this is what i'll do. kasich did well with this alt candidacy in new hampshire, do you expect he could do well? >> his campaign has major expectations where he will finish. he's been in areas of south carolina that are amenable to his message, charleston area, the sixth congressional district in south carolina. he's a governor. people like governors here. he could find some success. >> representative valentine, your guy, marco rubio, what does he need do in this debate tonight? >> he needs to do what he did in every debate except the first part of the last one, he needs to stay above the fray. all these guys are attacking each other, he's trying to stay low and stay focused on what he's doing. >> you are a legislator. >> i am. >> i'm sure a very good one. >> thank you. >> how do you respond to this question of accomplishment? do you have marco rubio who was the speaker of the florida house, but it's a job that rotates in. as a united states senator, even his supporters have struggled to name what he's accomplished that qualifying him to get basically a promotion into the white house. >> sure. i think it's ironic that you mention that here in south carolina. that's the same stuff we heard when governor haley was running for office. she's too young, too inexperienced, it wasn't her turn. she had to go out there and fight. rubio has accomplishments. republicans call it obamacare, others call it the affordable care act. he knew there was an insurance bailout that would cost billions. he has saved us billions by making that bailout come out of there. he's tightened up with hezbollah, has done all types of things with the va. the electorate seems to be interested in sound bites and red meat. >> only sound bites if you repeat them three times. >> true. >> does it hurt him he switched on immigration reform? >> i don't think it does. we all evolve. rubio is the most conservative candidate here. i won't talk about the others who have come to jesus lately on many issues. he's been there. senator demint from our state, he was with marco rubio long ago. >> he did run as a tea party candidate. jamie, the controversy here is over who loves barack obama more. how important is this third mystery candidate in the democratic primary? >> listen, barack obama is probably the most popular person in democratic politics here in south carolina. and it is a smart strategy by both secretary clinton and senator sanders to tie themselves to barack obama, particularly if they're looking at and targeting the african-american vote, which they need to be. >> what am i seeing? when i'm out there walking around and seeing what i didn't expect to be the level of support for bernie sanders among african-americans, why do you suppose that is? >> senator sanders and secretary clinton have great ground games here in south carolina. you know, secretary clinton has been doing this a while now. her campaign was here a little longer, a few months before senator sanders. senator sanders has really put the energy, the effort and the resources into also building a great grassroots operation. >> yeah. >> i'm proud of both of them. at the end of the day, as chairman of the democratic party, i get the benefit from all of it. >> you sound like jim clyburn. we talked about barack obama on the plus side for democrats. how much is he a factor in the republican race? >> he's on the ballot certainly on the democratic side. i think our party right now is moving in a completely different direction the last seven years. when it comes to bernie sanders, you can't ab revolutionary without rejecting totally who is in office now. so sanders is doing that on the left. our party has conservative ideas on how we fix some of these ideas on the right. the big story on the left is democrats, the dnc, superdelegates being stacked in hillary clinton's favorer. that will be a big story line going forward. we have had a good discussion about issues. it's rough and tumble. that's the way it is people want to cover the daytona 500, they want to see the crashes instead of the cars going around in circles. >> let me give you an opportunity to put those out there what would republicans have wanted to do differently on healthcare? >> we want to give consumers more access, control costs. obamacare, simply an effort to reform the insurance market. nothing to do with quality of care and the access to care across the country. real hospitals are closing. obamacare has made that worse. so there are a lot more patient things that we can do to fix the healthcare problems that's not been fixed in the country. >> jamie, i want to ask you on the flip side, he's talking about universal health kay. one thing i have not heard discussed a lot is taxes. will a sharp increase in taxes, even if it is swapped out for free healthcare play with south carolina voters in a general election? >> well that's something that i think democrats are going to have to -- they're tussling with that now, where is this sweet spot in terms of tax increases? one thing i wanted to mention, matt flagged -- he said rule hospitals are closing. look at the states where rural hospitals are closing. they're in the states with southern governors who all have denied medicaid expansion. that's why rural hospitals are closing because they are not getting the medicaid dollars that they would normally get. it's not a problem of the president, but it's a problem of governors like the governor we have here. >> and legislators. i have to come to you my legislative friend. states like north carolina, south carolina and other states having a crisis with hospitals, the hospitals are saying this themselves because they won't take the medicaid money. if your constituents paid into medicaid, why is it that states like south carolina won't take the affordable care act expansion of medicaid. >> while it sounds good that the federal government would pick up a chunk of the healthcare bill in the first one or two years -- >> for ten years. >> longer than that. what will happen is ultimately the state then is burdened with having figure out where that will come from. there's nothing worse than putting people on roles, and then saying we can't figure that out anymore. >> people said we won't be able to sustain it. there's no way to continue to pay for it. floss rational argument for people not to be covered today. >> in south carolina, we are living within our means. our budget, between healthcare and education, that's the largest part of our budget. we have to sometimes say no. as an elected official is it good to tell people no, no. but that's what we have to do is govern. >> matt, as the party chair for the republican party, you've seen louisiana flip to a democratic governor. they'll get the medicaid expansion. states like kentucky, a conse e conservative state but a democratic governor, they like their version of the affordable care act, how is it that you can deny people care and how do your candidates explain that? >> nobody wants to deny people care. it's just the opposite. we want the government to stop being an obstacle, be a friend to consumers who simply want better healthcare to do things like buy insurance across state lines, to do things like have price clarity at hospitals and clinics. there's none of that. it is extraordinarily expensive the system we have now. >> we're out of time. thank you very much. appreciate you, matt moore, jamie harrison and nathan valentine. we are just one week away from the south carolina republican primary as you know and from the democratic caucuses in nevada. stay with us, there's a lot more coming up. ♪ (flourish spray noise) ♪ ♪ (flourish spray noises) ♪ (school bell) ♪ ♪ (sigh) ♪ (flourish spray noise) ♪ share the joy of real cream... share the joy of real cream... (flourish spray noise) ...with reddi-wip. ♪ if you have high blood pressure many cold medicines may raise your blood pressure. that's why there's coricidin® hbp. it relieves cold symptoms without raising blood pressure. so look for powerful cold medicine with a heart. coricidin® hbp. may not always be clear. but at t. rowe price, we can help guide your retirement savings. so wherever your retirement journey takes you, we can help you reach your goals. call us or your advisor t. rowe price. invest with confidence. tonight's gop debate here in south carolina and the upcoming south carolina primaries. when we come back, i'll talk to some of the fine patrons here at the liberty tap room about their impressions of the candidates so far. stay with us. then those places change every few months... please. it's time you got the quicksilver card from capital one. quicksilver earns you unlimited 1.5% cash back on every purchase, everywhere. doesn't get much simpler than that. what's in your wallet? full of guests on the waye and a cold with sinus pressure, you need fast relief. alka-seltzer plus severe sinus congestion and cough liquid gels rush relief to your tough symptoms. to put you back in control. [doorbell] woman: coming! alka-seltzer plus sinus. hey how's it going, hotcakes? hotcakes. this place has hotcakes. so why aren't they selling like hotcakes? with comcast business internet and wifi pro, they could be. just add a customized message to your wifi pro splash page and you'll reach your customers where their eyes are already - on their devices. order up. it's more than just wifi, it can help grow your business. you don't see that every day. introducing wifi pro, wifi that helps grow your business. comcast business. built for business. now comes the fun part of the show. who are you supporting in the upcoming election? >> bern of course. >> feeling the bern s! >> i can tell who you're supporting from your shirt. >> who are you supporting? >> jeb bush. >> i understand i have a little inside information. you have already voted by any chance? >> i did vote this morning. >> you voted early absentee? >> i did. >> why do you like jeb? >> it's a gut feeling. >> how are you guys supporting? >> bernie. >> lots of bernie supporters. we should ask this young man, what do you think about all this attention you're getting in your state? >> um, i don't know. >> the right answer. that's why we love talking to the kids. today that is actually it for our show. this has really been exciting talking to the voters here in south carolina. we will see you again tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. person and coming up, more of our continuing election coverage with msnbc al alex witt. bye-bye. n't keep you up at nigh. know you have insights n't keep you up at nigh. from professional investment strategists to help set your mind at ease. know that planning for retirement can be the least of your worries. with the guidance of a pnc investments financial advisor, know you can get help staying on track for the future you've always wanted. ...one of many pieces in my life. so when my asthma symptoms kept coming back on my long-term control medicine, i talked to my doctor and found a missing piece in my asthma treatment. once-daily breo prevents asthma symptoms. breo is for adults with asthma not well controlled on a long-term asthma control medicine, like an inhaled corticosteroid. breo won't replace a rescue inhaler for sudden breathing problems. breo opens up airways to help improve breathing for a full 24 hours. breo contains a type of medicine that increases the risk of death from asthma problems and may increase the risk of hospitalization in children and adolescents. breo is not for people whose asthma is well controlled on a long-term asthma control medicine, like an inhaled corticosteroid. once your asthma is well controlled, your doctor will decide if you can stop breo and prescribe a different asthma control medicine, like an inhaled corticosteroid. do not take breo more than prescribed. see your doctor if your asthma does not improve or gets worse. ask your doctor if 24-hour breo could be a missing piece for you. see if you're eligible for 12 months free at mybreo.com. 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who said they wouldn't support donald trump throughout the primary process and came around. nikki haley being one of those individualings, not mitt romney. here's why this matters, this is important. first and foremost the source -- mark preston, our stellar colleague was who broke this news. >> stellar. >> saying this is a one-on-one meeting between donald trump and mitt romney that will discuss covering and a potential spot in a donald trump cabinet. why this matters is a couple reasons, no question in the first week in the wake of donald trump's stunning election, mohelty mattered, it always matters to donald trump but it mattered to his team as well so a lot of republicans felt on the outside, because we didn't support you wholeheartedly we weren't allowed into the transition process and republicans were worried about what that meant for the future administration. there's talent that would be expelled because of that so this addresses that a bit as well but this is also a very clear sign to republicans worried about the direction of this administration that, hey, we're willing to talk to anybody and you all respected mitt romney, you got behind mitt romney in 2012, everybody respect what is mitt romney did in organizing the olympics, as a governor of massachusetts and we're talking to him. everybody else should be willing to come in as well. it's an important olive branch from the trump folks and an important olive branch for mitt romney recognizing this is the president-elect and the man he has to work with and for. >> hopefully bettering america has governor haley been there? >> she was very opposed to him while she was supporting rubio. she did come around. we have sources telling us she is in the running for a spot as high as secretary of state a lot of republican officials are scratching their head but when you talk to trump advisors, the point them to make is we're bringing in talented people that we think can contribute. will she be the secretary of state selection? nobody is saying that, rudy giuliani clearly has the leg up on that but that she's willing to come in and the trump advisors want to bring her and others in the party in is an important moment for a campaign, a transition, that's had difficulty over the last couple days and now every time you talk to somebody they say "hey, we're getting it back on track, we giving the president-elect the opportunity to make the decisions to help this administration going forward. >> no one is taking a breath. just full steer ahead. >> we all had those vacations planned. >> bye-bye. phil mattingly, thank you very much. let's refresh our memories on how bitter the relationship was between governor romney and president-elect trump. in june, romney said trump's election could legitimize tracism and misogyny and trump hit backyard. >> mitt romney is a sad case. [ boos ] he choked you know what a choke artist is? when a guy misses the kick you get rid of him, you bring another one in, right? because you don't want that thought going in his head too much, he joked. he should have beaten a failed guy, he was a failed president. >> let's talk about this with political analyst gloria borger, ryan lizz a, a washington correspondent for the "new yorker," andre bauer who is the former south carolina lieutenant governor, a donald trump supporter and can talk about nikki haley and maeve reston. great to see all of you, so much to talk about again today. maeve, i want to begin with you because when you were in the trenches you covered romney's presidential run and now we have the news, thank you, mark preston, that he'll be meeting with donald trump this weekend and talking even as much as a potential position in the cabinet. how do you read that? >> well, a position in the cabinet, some of the romney sources that i've talked to, say that may be like a little too premature of a step romney is magnanimous, he is someone who wants the country to get off on the right footing with a presidential transition team scrambling to fill the positions and there's no one who knows the process better than mitt romney. mike levitt who ran his transition team literally teamed up to write a book an how you do a presidential transition. they -- mitt romney was familiar with the names they were going through. the vast number of positions you have to fill and so i think that mitt romney can offer in that meeting not only names but guidance about how to approach this, how to vet people and i think that, you know, that will be the spirit of the meeting tomorrow. as far as floating romney for some kind of a position, certainly he would be qualified for any number of things but that may be more coming from the trump team that the romney side. >> gloria, i know you have republican sources, what's your intel? >> well, you know, i've talked to a bunch of romney people who were surprised and stunned by this, first of all, so kudos to mark preston for breaking the news before even they knew about it. >> wow. >> and they, above all else, say that romney's a patriot, as maeve was saying, and that, of course he would want to offer his guidance and his support. the question of whether, a, he would be offered a job because don't forget people who voted for donald trump also voted against the establishment and mitt romney embodies the establishment. so whether he'd be offered something is an open question and whether he would take it is another big question because there are those who believe that romney is a patriot and would do whatever he could do for his country and there are some i spoke with who said, look, on foreign policy in particular don't forget romney was the one who said that russia was the number one foreign policy problem facing the united states and if you look at what donald trump has said about vladimir putin i think he's kind of at the other end of the spectrum. so there would be issues upon which they might have very, very difficult time dealing with each other. >> well, let's also throw under the republican establishment columns south carolina governor nikki haley. not only that, ryan lizza, she was the first indian american woman to become governor of south carolina. she endorsed several other candidate, cruz, rubio until ultimately she said okay to trump. do you think they are giving her a good look? it's one thing to be governor, it's another to be secretary of state or this a pump fake? >> i don't know on haley. it ee's puzzling she would be a candidate for secretary of state given she doesn't have any background in that world? the other candidates make a little more sense. i do think on romney this is the most interesting meeting so far that trump's had on his schedule and, look, people that hate each other in politics have worked together before, remember john kennedy and lyndon johnson hated each other, barack obama and hillary clinton were not the best of friends before he chose her as secretary of state. this is different. romney never came around to trump, he was the leader of the never-trump movement in a sense, the leader of the opposition so for trump in his victory speech the first thing he said was people who are against me, i'm going to bring you in, he hasn't really made good on that promise yet and so this will be an interesting test for him, whether he can -- whether loyalty during the primaries is the ultimate thing you need to get into the world or if he's willing to forgive. for romney i think it's a different thing, people around him will be telling him stay away from the trump administration, you were right about this guy, he's a danger but i think a lot of other people will be saying you know what? as bad as you think trump is, he needs the best people in the republican party and get in there and serve your country and, frankly, my own view is the latter is the thing that most republicans view -- most republicans should take. >> as gloria put it, he's a patriot. but andre, you're my south carolina voice, you're also my trump supporter voice. so just to remind our viewers, governor haley, she really rose to the occasion in the national spot like in the wake of the church shooting in charleston, south carolina, and the bipartisan effort to remove the confederate flag from the state capital grounds. tell me what you think of her and do you think she would have the chops for the job? well, i should as precursor tell you i was in office for 14 years until nikki haley beat me for governor. [ laughter ] so i'll try to be as fair as i can. >> heard it was a good debate. >> she's clearly one of the movers and shakers within the republican party, no question. i think you'll see her get a cabinet post. i don't think think it will be secretary of state but i think he's interviewing for a purpose. i think he is looking at her with serious intent on possibly offering a cabinet post. i don't think it will be a secretary of state post but what you're seeing is a businessman board room donald trump. forget about the campaign, this is about how do i get it done and who is the most efficient that i can put in that job so being magnanimous, bringing in people that didn't say the right things, it doesn't matter. he's moving forward trying to make this country great again. >> andre, i know you all would have done opposition research. what are some of the weaknesses under the governor haley column? >> republicans don't do opposition research. [ laughter ] i'm kidding. >> oh, really? >> wink, wink. >> she's been vetted. we had a four-way republican primary that was a heated primary between a tuj, lieutenant governor, congress and and she -- so she's been vetted and she had a reelection as well and she was at one time talked about as a vice president vp candidate. when you talk about secretary of state having no foreign policy experience will be difficult. clearly she's met with leaders. we had a boom in business from foreign count preez bringing their businesses in here -- not countries but independent businesses coming here so she has had a little bit but probably not at the level you would expect for secretary of state but there's other cabinet posts she would be more than qualified for. >> gloria, to you. let's talk about prime minister abe, the japanese prime minister at trump tower, later today all of this as overseas president obama is bidding farewell and thanks to one of his closest foreign leader allies chancellor merkel. just the fact that the japanese prime minister was on the phone with him last week, flash forward a couple days, this man is on the plane heading to trump tower. does that signal nervousness and fear of his rhetoric on the trail or is he like "let's get going"? >> i think both, actually, but if i had to ged i would say more the former because you had the president-elect who is now on the record saying that japan ought to get itself some nukes in order to potentially defend itself, it's a very pacifist country and i think that there's a great deal of concern in the country and i think what abe is doing is getting over here to meet with the president-elect himself and hear where he really is on these issues because they're of great concern to his constituency so i think it's probably a smart thing for him to do and i think it's a smart thing for donald trump to do because as barack obama was pointing out in his press conference with angela merkel today, he was saying the tone you set is so important, the seriousness of purpose is so important. that was campaigning, this is governing. i think it was a message he sent to donald trump and i think donald trump probably heard it from the president in the oval office as well so this will be his first tete-a-tete really and i bet he'll listening to that. >> campaign in poetry, govern in prose. appreciate your voices, that meeting with the prime minister happening later at trump tower. today, coming up, one of the a many meetings with president-elect trump. retired general michael flynn. who is he, why is he near the top of the list to become the next administration's national security advisor? also, we are getting our first glimpse into what president-elect trump's immigration plan may actually look like, what sources are telling cnn about talk of some sort of registry system. and breaking news, we have just learned who plans to challenge democratic leader nancy pelosi for her job over at the house of representatives. we're back in just a moment. yog delicious natural cheese for over 100 years like kraft has, you learn a lot about how people cook. i wish i had like four different mexican cheeses but in one super melty cheese. it does exist! you still have two cheese wishes left. seconds can mean the difference between life and death. for partners in health, time is life. we have 18,000 people around the world. the microsoft cloud helps our entire staff stay connected and work together in real time to help those that need it. the ability to collaborate changes how we work. what we do together changes how we live. when they thought they should westart saving for retirement.le then we asked some older people when they actually did start saving. this gap between when we should start saving and when we actually do is one of the reasons why too many of us aren't prepared for retirement. just start as early as you can. it's going to pay off in the future. if we all start saving a little more today, we'll all be better prepared tomorrow. prudential. bring your challenges. approaching medicare eligibility? 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>> tim ryan, ohio democrat, elected in 2002. he's a 43-year-old member from ohio trying to tap into rust belt and working class voters, people who didn't vote for democrats. he just sent a dear colleague letter to democrats on capitol hill urging them to support him. he said that under our current leadership democrats have been reduced to our smallest congressional minority since 1929 this should indicate that keeping our leadership team unchange willed simply lead to more disappointment in future elections. brooke, i got a chance to mr. ryan today and he stepped up his criticism of nancy pelosi. >> we're at the lowest number of state and federal officials since reconstruction. we have the lowest number in our caucus since 1929 and we've lost over 60 seats since 2010. the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and you keep getting the same results. so time to move on, i think. >> it will still be very difficult, an uphill climb to knock off nancy pelosi, she has a deep reservoir of support, particularly with all the money she's raised for her colleagues but there is a lot of anxious. i spent a lot of time talking to house democrats today. they want to hear more from nancy pelosi about what she would do as the leader. that's one reason why democrats delayed the leadership elections scheduled for today until after thanksgiving. they want to hear more from nancy pelosi and it's given room for tim ryan to mount a challenge against her. brooke? >> manu, thank you very much. one of the many people meeting with president-elect trump, required lieutenant governenera michael flynn is apparently at the top to the national security advisor. >> reporter: how is it going today? >> really well. it's a great transition and the president-elect is in full control, believe me. >> if he is selected, he would be the first person on trump's team with significant experience in america's post 9/11 wars. let's talk about that with lieutenant general commander mark hertling. so nice to have you on. you know mike flynn. you know him from when he was at j-soc. do you think he's qualified for the job? >> good afternoon, brooke. i'd say mike is a dedicated and passionate and energetic soldier. he's risen through the ranks in the military intelligence branch, he was a staff officer, he provided by intelligence to other commanders. he did very well when i served with him. we were both in northern iraq, he was working for scan mcchrystal when i was commanding the multinational division in northern iraq and he was very good at targeting and going after al qaeda. so he brings a certain skill set to the table. he will be challenged in a job like this, i believe, because of the dynamics associated with all mattersover national security across the government. he's taken a position of national security advisor which, by the way, as you know, doesn't have to be confirmed by congress where people like al hague, condoleezza rice brent scrowcroft, zbigniew brzezinski, strategists with a very big world view, mike brings an intelligence background to the table but, you know, you have to pick an nsa that matches or compliments the personality and the desires of the commander in chief, mr. trump. >> let me ask you, because you say he does have -- he knows the intelligence -- he has intelligence background, he knows the enemy. part of the role of the nsa is being a go-between between a lot of these other figures. does does he have that experience? >> that remains to be seen but you'll have in a national security council meeting or a primary meeting with the president you'll have strong personalities and strong egos with a sect state, sect def, member other members of cabinet and intelligence community all demanding their view to be heard. the guy or the gal who's the national security advisor in the past has been the balancing act between all of those to bring about matters of national security so that voice has to be a calming one and take into all considerations from a variety of governmental resources. you bring a guy with an intelligence background into the job who is very good with tactical intelligence and supporting kpla ining commanderl be stressed in that kind of environment but he will be, if he is, mr. trump's choice, mr. trump will listen to him and hopefully he'll be a calming influence and provide an alternative view when all these big egos get in the way. >> just quickly since i have you on the james clapper news today, director of national intelligence, he announced he is resigning. apparently the agency expected it, they say it's not necessarily political. what was your reaction to that? >> it's partly political because all cabinet members and appointees have to submit their resignation when the president leaves. that's a requirement by law. but mr. clapper, general clapper, has been in government service and the intelligence community for a very, very long time and he's tired and i think he also said in his statement that he didn't want to work one day past that transition office so i think general clapper is sending a signal that transitions and naming members of transition teams go way beyond just naming the names. you have to get in the organization, form a team, determine what your subordinates look like, get a feel for what is going to happen in that environment or in your particular organization and be ready to go on day one to accept any challenges that come across the desk. so what i think jen clapper is saying is i'm out of here on january 20, somebody better be here to take my place and it better not be a newbie, it better be an individual who has had a couple weeks to figure out where the bathroom is and where his closet is to hang his coat. >> let's hope more than that. general hertling, as always, thank you so much. >> thank you. coming up next here, we have new details about what ple president-elect trump's immigration plan may look like. what sources are telling cnn about this possible registry system. first on cnn, mitt romney and donald trump meeting this weekend. a source says romney is being considered or this will be part of the conversation and he could be considered for a trump cabinet position. more on that in a moment. new plan...same doctor. i'm happy. it's medicare open enrollment. have you compared plans yet? it's easy at medicare.gov. or you can call 1-800-medicare. medicare open enrollment. you'll never know unless you go. i did it. you can too. ♪ thank you for being with me. a number of muslim americans have expressed fears about president-elect donald trump because of statements like this that he made on the campaign trail. >> donald j. trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of muslims entering the united states until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is going on. >> now trump later walked back that statement saying he would not use a religious test, instead would implement, he said "extreme vetting for immigrants from regions that export terrorism." still, we haven't had a clear picture on what exactly his immigration policy would look like. let's go to pamela brown, our justice correspondent getting new details about any possible policy. what are you hearing? >> i eke speaking a person involved with president-elect trump's immigration plans and i'm told a proposal is being developed to closely track immigrants traveling to the united states from high-risk countries like an entry on parole system. the people from countries deemed high risk would be entered into a database, fingerprinted and be required to check in with federal authorities on their whereabouts. it's similar to the program that was implemented in the united states after 9/11 which imposed higher scrutiny and tracking of people coming from muslim ja jorty countries with the exception of north korea. the program was ended in 2012 following complaints of racial profiling. i spoke the architect of the immigration plan's chris kobach, he said this would keep people from coming from areas of the world with high trace threats regardless of religion. he wouldn't specify which countries only saying it's moving target and he said some muslim countries aren't on the list but this plan as you can imagine is drawing fire from people on the left with senator elizabeth warren tweeting just in the last hour "registering and tracking americans based on race or religion is idiotic, disgusting, unconstitutional and is a recruiting bonanza for isis." but important to emphasize basically they're just looking at options and they will have donald trump decide which route he wants to go down once he is officially in the white house, brooke. >> kris kobach, secretary of state kansas, someone who's been on the show as a surrogate for mr. trump. coming up next, south carolina governor nikki haley is on a list as a possible pick for the next administration's secretary of state. who is she, how qualified is she? 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"the people of south carolina are embarrassed by nikki haley." to which she responded as a southerner "bless your heart." she seemed pretty thrilled about trump's win. >> i'm giddy and if you talk to any of the governors here we are so excited at the possibilities and opportunities that will be here is the idea that we can now start to really govern. i've never known what it's like to have a republican president. >> joining me now, two voices from south carolina, joel sawyer, republican strategist and former aide to south carolina congressman mark sanford and jamie harrison, chairman of the south carolina democratic party who is also a candidate to be the chair of the dnc. gentlemen, welcome. >> thank you. >> thank you for having us. >> jamie, let me begin with you as you've worked with the governor for quite a bit. what does this say about trump that he's looking at her and is she up for the job? let's start with the latter question. is she up for it? >> listen, i'm not going to be partisan here, i think if governor haley was being considered for secretary of commerce then that would be a good thing but i don't know if the governor knows anything about being secretary of state and so that just makes me question donald trump in terms of his understanding of what the role is and question nikki haley and do you really want to do that? so i don't know. >> she was extraordinary in your state, we covered it. in the wake of the shoots at mother emanuel and the confederate flag controversy. do you agree with jamie, joel, that maybe she doesn't have the chops for the state department or would you disagree? >> i respectfully disagree with jamie. there's not a policy manual to becoming secretary of state. what nikki haley has shown an extraordinary ability to do is put smart people together, listen to people who are subject areas experts. you look at the way with how she dealt with the flag but the thousand-year flood that same year and hurricane matthew this year. >> right. so you're saying yes. >> yeah, i mean, she puts people together that are subject area experts, you don't come in as governor and know climatology or disaster management, you put together experts who do. you listen to those people and i think she's been a good decision maker in that regard by surrounding herself with smart people. >> jamie, there's one camp that has given the president-elect credit for giving a serious look for the first indian american woman to be governor in the state of south carolina. on the flip side, people wondering if it's just a show. what -- let's take him at his word that he's looking at her seriously. what's the sign to democrats? >> well, again, the sign to america is we should be scared donald trump doesn't know what he's doing, again, if governor haley was being considered for secretary of commerce i would say yes. she's been great at bringing businesses and corporations into south carolina. but it takes a certain understanding of the world and what's going on in the world to be secretary of state and if you look at george bush's appointments, you look at barack obama's appointments, every single one of those candidates for secretary of state had foreign policy experience. governor haley hasn't had that so you want somebody who understands the nuances and histories of all of these different things and in all due respect to joel, taking care of the flood and get confederate flag to come down, does that equate to being secretary of state caliber. >> it doesn't necessarily equate to being secretary of state but it equates to a skill set i think you need to bring to the job. i think she certainly has a skill set to do that job and there's no policy manual. there are things that certainly she would have to learn but she's shown to be a very capable leader. >> jamie, let me move on and talk about you and potentially your future with the dnc. they're looking for new leadership, they want to embrace the progressive voice within the democratic party. why do you think you could be that person? >> i think i have a unique understanding of both washington, d.c. and what's going on in the states. when you look at it, right now 33 governorships are controlled by the republicans. 69 out of 99 houses of state legislatures are controlled by republicans. that says to me we're not doing our job in the states. the national party needs to invest in state parties. i understand the challenges of being a state party chair in a res state but i also understand the challenges of going into the grass-roots and rebuilding this party so i hope what i can bring to the discussion and hopefully to the chairmanship is that unique understanding. the ability to talk to the nancy pelosis and the chuck schumers of the world, to get things done there but also the ability to go down and talk to the grass-roots activists. >> a lot of names being floated for that. jamie, good luck, joel, thank you so much. >> thank you. we want to get back to our breaking news, the big news this afternoon that we have learned donald trump will be meeting with i didn't remember over the weekend, this is the same governor romney who called mr. trump a phony and fraud during a blistering 20-minute speech earlier this year. trump has had his own choice words for romney as well. we'll talk with the man who broke that news next. ♪jake reese, "day to feel alive"♪ ♪jake reese, "day to feel alive"♪ ♪jake reese, "day to feel alive"♪ >> that's a good quality for a chief of staff. he knows everybody and he's got good judgment. steve bannon is a powerful intellect and a thoughtful leader that consistently provides good advice and so it's a good team right now. >> sir, would you like to serve in a trump administration? >> i'd be honored to be considered and mr. trump will make those decisions. >> do you want to be secretary of state? >> i haven't -- if he asked me, i'll share with him but i'm not talking about my agenda at this point. i'd be pleased to continue to serve in the senate. i've got a lot of work to do there but i feel that the house and senate are charged up. they believe we've got a new leader that the president will be the one that sets the agenda and the whole congress will be supported. >> reporter: will you be with trump in his meeting with abe today? >> i had planned to go back to d.c. and i may not do that so i don't know, i don't think so at this point. >> how long do you plan on staying here in new york? >> not much longer. tomorrow's friday, i think. >> reporter: have you seen "hamilton"? >> i have not seen hamilton. my wife would not -- >> reporter: [ inaudible question ] >> i have not committed to do that so i'm not on the -- i'm not committed to go to that. >> reporter: there are reports that mitt romney will be meeting with donald trump. what do you think about this idea that his arrival from the campaign season and now have passed the point where the campaign is over. >> i think it's good to the president-elect is meeting with people like romney. there are a lot of talented people that he needs good relationships with. and i think mr. romney would be quite capable of doing a number of things. but he will be one of those, i am sure, that's reviewed. and mr. trump will make that decision. >> do you think you could be confirmed easily in the senate by your colleagues? >> people have to make that decision. actual senators will cast those votes on any kind of confirmation. what do you think? >> any more questions? one more? >> we're working on it. happy to have your support. thank you. >> these are the moments when we hang on every word here. you have loyal supporters and soldiers of the trump administration, jeff sessions. kellyanne conway. the campaign manager. you heard the question about romney. mark preston, you want to jump into the conversation. mark preston broke the news that mitt romney would be meeting with donald trump over the weekend. you heard senator sessions say it's good. he is quite capable of doing several jobs. what do you think, mark? >> brooke, i hung on that as well, which is interesting because they're talking about positions that are interesting that also jeff sessions could potentially do. jeff sessions himself has been mentioned potentially as a secretary of state candidate. we'll see if he is really in the mix for that. but it is this game of dominos. and they fall all in line. if mitt romney were to go into the secretary of state job, if that's what donald trump offers him or has a very serious discussion with him this weekend about, you have to wonder where does everybody else go? does jeff sessions go to the department of defense or he's been mentioned or potentially to the department of justice where he has a background in? what about rudy giuliani who seemed to be openly asking to become the secretary of state or be appointed. >> chess pieces. >> a lot of dominos dropping, brooke. >> mark, thanks so much. back in a moment. ible for medic that's a good thing, but it doesn't cover everything. only about 80% of your part b medical expenses. the rest is up to you. so consider an aarp medicare supplement insurance plan, insured by unitedhealthcare insurance company. like all standardized medicare supplement insurance plans, they pick up some of what medicare doesn't pay and could save you in out-of-pocket medical costs. call today to request a free decision guide to help you better understand what medicare is all about and which aarp medicare supplement plan works best for you. with these types of plans, you'll be able to visit any doctor or hospital that accepts medicare patients. plus, there are no networks, and virtually no referrals needed. there's a range of plans to choose from, too, and they all travel with you anywhere in the country. join the millions who have already enrolled in the only medicare supplement insurance plans endorsed by aarp, an organization serving the needs of people 50 and over for generations... and provided by unitedhealthcare insurance company, which has over 30 years of experience behind it. ♪ call today. remember, medicare supplement insurance helps cover some of what medicare doesn't pay. expenses that could really add up. these kinds of plans could save you in out-of-pocket medical costs. you'll be able to choose any doctor who accepts medicare patients. and there are virtually no referrals needed. so don't wait. with all the good years ahead, look for the experience and commitment to go the distance with you. call now to request your free decision guide. this easy-to-understand guide will answer some of your questions and help you find the aarp medicare supplement plan that's right for you. . in this post-election world, everyone has a little something to say. so, cnn opened up the phone lines, and we have been flooded with calls from across the political spectrum. here is just a few. >> hi. my name is mike. i've been going through my downs and ups over the last week. extremely disappointed in the results. questioning, frankly, the country that we live in. not realizing how many people would choose the direction that they did on election day. but there have been bright points, and i try to remain optimistic. optimism is hard when my 8-year-old son asked me this morning how come the nazis were coming back after seeing a news report about swastikas. yes, it's a tough time. and we're trying to get through it. thanks. >> i didn't feel very good for the last four or five years at all, even though i voted for obama. and i -- that he let me down. i don't really believe that he loved america. by the way, this is very significant, i am a democrat! and so, all of a sudden i don't believe what's happening in the democratic party. it seems like it's going so far left that it's gone into the socialist range. >> here with me, we keep talking about this. listening to the voice mails. i keep saying we need to go on a listening tour and listen to how people were feeling in this country. it was your idea, so i want to go to you first. how many tearful voice mails did you hear? >> everyone's on facebook and twitter and talking about how they feel and how angry they are, how happy they are, and talking at each other. and people weren't really listening to each other. we wanted to listen to them and hear what they were thinking so we opened up the phone lines and the voice mails started pouring in. we're at about 7,000 now. people are crying. people are laughing. people are happy. people are sad. we're getting everything. >> people are hitting the beep and calling back because they're not finished leaving the voice mails. >> that's correct. one come called back. she went over the time limit and called back four more times because she really wanted to convey that, in her own words, she felt like an island in her community because she voted differently than everyone else. that's what's very interesting about this project. we spend a lot of time on social media, a lot of time at the dinner table arguing with friends and family about the outcome of this election. this is the first time, me personally, that i've had to sit silently and listen to a voice in my ear. i think it's a different perspective than we're used to. it's very personal and it's very raw. >> listening. listening. we all need to be doing more of it, i think. we have more -- more voice mails. listen to these. >> i couldn't be happier for the results of the election. i am also a gay male. and it was a great turnout. i think everyone is freaking out about -- that trump will take away rights. he is obviously not. he said he's not going to touch gay marriage. so i think everyone should probably calm down a little bit and just take a step back. >> transgender woman. i am [ bleep ] terrified. like, everybody else i know is too. there are tons of back lash. tons of crimes happening against people like us. we're so visible. most i know are staying inside for days now trying to avoid going out and about. i went out today and i couldn't stop looking over my shoulder. i was so afraid. i'm not really sure how things are ever going to feel again. but we just need to hide and stay safe. >> kept looking over my shoulder and i felt so afraid. you all actually took the time to call some of these people back. >> yes. >> tell me about some of the stories. >> thomas from tennessee -- >> the gay male who voted for trump. >> right. from everything we heard leading up to this election we would have put thomas in a certain category. i was really interested to hear his side of the story. he even told me. i face a lot of backlash from my gay communities openly supporting trump. he said i am a single father. it came down to economic issues. he voted solely based on obamacare. >> you? >> for me what was surprising was the people who you wouldn't expect to vote the way they did. i talked to a woman named alexis who lives in texas. her parents crossed over the border illegally from mexico. she was born in the u.s. she is for the wall. she has family members who are crossing over from mexico. she says, i get that that they're crossing over, but i think we need to deport some of the illegal immigrants. we need a wall. it isn't okay. i called her back. she was really impassioned about it. people like alicia, the transgender woman. she said she grew up in a liberal town in massachusetts. very liberal town. over the last year she is scared to go out. she is scared to go into the town. >> can people still call? >> the phone lines are open through inauguration day. we've seen in the past seven days alone how much things have changed. i am sure that's going to happen all the way up until january. we want to keep the phone lines open. we want it to be a cathartic process and also we want to learn things on our own. >> please call us. we've gotten 7,000 messages so far. we're still listening. >> the phone number is 646-535-9720. i am sure we have it on cnn.com as well. masuma and amanda. great idea. thank you. first listening to love stories in february. and now it's the election. i'm brooke baldwin. thanks for being with me. "the lead" with jake tapper starts right now. thanks, brooke! if you can't beat them, join them. "the lead" starts right now. the shift from campaign mode to commander in chief. some huge surprises, including an unexpected cabinet hopeful heading to trump tower today. who is it? plus, donald trump building bridges. not in like the unite the country sense. actual bridges. his plan to spend a trillion dollars on infrastructure. and whether for congressional republicans it's a bridge too far. and it's true. i read it on facebook. that, of course, could not be more wrong right now. the fake news sri

Transcripts For MSNBCW Kasie DC 20190304

second act. he fights the ghosts of 2016 as he runs under a new reality, front-runner? we're going to start with breaking news as we come on the air. according to the associated press, at least two people are confirmed dead in alabama after a tornado ravaged parts of that state. these pictures are from the town of smith's station, alabama. pasts of the same system are responsible for massive trukss in a town outside of columbus, georgia. one home was reportedly knocked off its foundation and spun around in the air for some time. there's search-and-rescue effort under way but no word on how many injured in georgia or if there are any fatalities there. we're monitoring this story and will bring you more in an update in a couple of minutes. our hearts are obviously with the people in those affected areas. but we do want to bring you now a broad view of what is happening here in washington. about 16600 days away from the 2020 election. a new nbc/"the wall street journal" polls the president's arooval ratings climbing. if you go by economy numbers, it's humming along with gdp at 6.2%. >> everyone in this great country right now because of our great, new economy is doing well except, of course, for the never-tr never-trumpers but they are on mouth-to-mo mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. it's mouth to mouth. mouth to mouth. >> meanwhile, michael cohen goes back to capitol hill this week. former russian-born trump business associate felix sater will testify in public the week after. the judiciary chairman said they could for documents from more than 60 people in the president's orbit as part of an obstruction of justice inquiry. it sounds like in the weeks to come house democrats will also also weisselberg, ivanka trump and don ald trump jr. for interviews. oh, and the mueller report could be submitted basically any day. but back to michael cohen and his return to congress. this time saying he would tell the truth about his own misdeeds and those of his former boss. >> is there any other wrongdoing or illegal act that you are aware of regarding donald trump that we haven't yet discussed today? >> yes, and again those are part of the investigation that's currently being looked at by the southern district of new york. >> on saturday in the longest speech of his administration, the president unburdened himself about a number of people, particularly those surrounding the russia probe, with one notable exception. >> so they don't have anything with russia. there's no collusion. the collusion delusion. i saw little shifty-shift, humor ow podesta, great genius attorney general says i'm gonna recruise myself. robert mueller, robert mueller, robert mueller -- when i fired lying james comey, i said you know, first lady, melania, melania, it's bad. he's a bad, bad is, he's a bad, bad guy. the people in the fbi are incredible people but not this one. this was worse than the election of andrew jackson. i'm not just saying it. but you know what, we're winning and they're not. we're winning and they're not. >> okay. no mention of michael cohen, his longtime lawyer, until he tweeted this about five hours later. with that i would like to welcome my panel here on set, nbc news intelligence and national security reporter ken dell lanian. white house bureau chief for "the washington post" and msnbc political analyst philip rucker, former executive director of the south carolina republican party, joil sawyer and co-founder and managing editor of the beat d.c. tich ti tiffany cross. phil rucker, i barely know where to start with this speech. it did seem after the trip from vietnam where he was 12 hours off the news cycle here in washington while he was reportedly up all night watching michael cohen that he did have a lot of feelings and thoughts, things he needed to say. you were on that trip. i mean, what's your sort of overarching view of how this week has gone for the president and where things stand now? >> k.c., it's not been a good week for the president. that summit in vietnam, he came in there with high hopes he would be able to persuade kim jong-un to make a deal. instead left completely empty handed. he couldn't get anything out of the north korean dictator. he was in the air 20 hours going to vietnam, 20 hours going back. meanwhile, everything was hitting the fan here in washington with the testimony. >> very polite way of putting it. >> of his personal attorney michael cohen. that cpac speech, it was not consistented or planned for hscd for planned to talk like that two hours. >> did he have anything on teleprompter? >> apparently he had remarks prepared but it was not the remarks he delivered. his aides, i talked to some yesterday and they were surprised by that performance and sort of laughed it off. as put it, he unburdened himself. others would say it's truly a bizarre moment in the history of the president united states. but he had a lot he wanted to say and he got it out there. >> would you consider it sort of the first speech of 2020 from him? i suppose we've seen rallies from him. >> he did that texas rally down in el paso where he was head to head with beto o'rourke a couple weeks ago. that was the first actual campaign speech on the calendar cycle, 2020 cycle. cpac is his home. he feels very much in a comfortable place there. remember, he was going to the cpac conference before he became a presidential candidate. he got big crowds there years ago. he feels like that's his base, those are his people. so when he's in front of that audience, he kind of lets it rip. to him this was a kickoff moment. he's seeing all of these other democrats out there announcing their campaign's massive rally, camilla harris, and he wants a piece of that action. >> for sure. ken dilanian, first of all on the cpac speech, does he create new problems for himself in context of the russian investigation every time he goes out and does something like that in. >> one thing i noticed and others noticed two times he mentioned his wife in the context of knowing things about russia. he said he discussed the firing of james comey, and we wonder does that make her a witness? she would have spousal privilege. >> i'm glad you brought that up of the let me show our audience exactly that moment ken talks about. >> when i fired comey, i said, you know, first lady, i said melania, i'm doing something today, i'm doing it because it really has to be done. he's bad. he's a bad, bad guy. and i said to the first lady, i said but you know the good news, the good news is that this is going to be so bipartisan, everyone's going to love it. so i said to melania, melania, the good news, this will be a popular thing. and a fire a bad cop, i fire a dirty cop and all of a sudden the democrats say how dare he fire him! how dare he do this? >> by the way, first lady melania's trump three-state the best tour starts tomorrow. ken, you were saying, spousal privileges may not be entered into the public record. >> in federal law, a spouse cannot be compelled to testify against another spouse. besides, wee believe be rot mueller's close to wrapping up his investigation. the report can go to the justice department as soon as this week. it's not clear this is relevant but it sure perked up a lot of ears. >> for sure. you also have reporting into investigations whether michael cohen talked to the president about a pardon. >> not necessarily the president. this started to percolate, i heard about it last week, phil's paper got to it first but we are reporting, three people familiar with this say both the house and senate intelligence committees asked michael cohen about whether there were pardon discussions. he told them something, we don't know what. this is back when his home and office were raided and he was still on the same side as the president. so there was a nudge that it could add up to obstruction of justice but there's a lot more to learn on this story. >> joel, i would like your take. the republicans did not jump to the president's defense here. they attacked michael cohen repeatedly. but do you find the actions of the president and michael cohen to be defensible at all? >> no. i mean, look, if what michael's saying is true, there's the old saying about birds of a feather, right? i don't think the republicans members of the committee played it exactly right. i think because -- look, if you're a person who doesn't have your mind made up watching this hearing, this show, just calling someone a liar over and over and over again doesn't convince me that he's a liar. michael cohen has a long record of public statements. it's very easy to go back and pick apart and say were you telling the truth when you said this? were you telling the truth when you said this in i don't think republicans really necessarily made the case michael cohen is not a guy who should be ace lend listened to. i think at the same time there's a lot of he said/he said stuff with regard to the president's private comments on race, that sort of stuff. that's not going to change anybody's mind. that something maybe the president said to michael cohen, the president said he didn't. but those sorts of things don't move the ball forward. >> i'm kairos becaucurious beca they didn't jump to the president's defense. but i think they did. when you attack the messager, you attack the message. >> sure. >> but they could have gone farther to attack the actions as well as the witness. >> possibly. but we didn't learn anything new from the cohen hearing and i found it interesting they kept calling michael cohen a liar. let's talk about what he's saying he lied about. he lied to congress underoath about trump tower moscow. is that the best defense from republicans? their contention is he lied, that donald trump wasn't still in negotiation with vladimir putin over this huge financial deal for him in moscow. and if that's their contingent, it's kind of weird that's the theme. >> it's a rock in a hard place. >> it's not a rock in a hard place. >> my point is you were right about him doing it six months when he was actually doing it? there was no negotiating at trump tower moscow at some point. so if you're defending the president, you're defending the timing. >> the timing is kind of significant here, ken dilanian, because it means he was potentially having a financial interest in russia while he was running for president and telling the american people he had no interest in it. >> not only that, it was a project that would have acquired vladimir putin's approval while he was praising bizarrely vladimir putin. >> exactly. >> i think we did learn a lot in the cohen hearing because what we learned is he's cooperating extensively with southern district of new york. he's got documents. they have multiple investigations going. and that could end up being more dangerous to trump than the mueller investigation. he brought a bank statement that appeared to raise questions about financial fraud, campaign finance fraud. and it seems to shift the momentum how we're looking at these investigations, those of us who cover this are now focusing more on the suouthern district than what they're doing? >> i think we definitely learn things like that but i don't think there were any clutching moments that people thought oh, my god, i thought donald trump was such a truthful leader of the country and now he's lying. i think they brought the receipts, proverbial and literal but i don't think many people thought this guy didn't know about the payments stormy mcdaniel or inflate his tax returns for the purposes of building this new property. that's why i say wep did the learn a lot from this hearing, in my opinion. >> potentially a different environment where we went 0 to watergate where the entire country tuned in wanting to learn instead of saying they already have their opinion. we want to turn back to the breaking news out of alabama where, according to the associated press, two people are dead as tornadoes ravaged part of the smaj. we will go to nbc's tammy laettner. what's the latest? >> reporter: that's right, emergency officials saying at least two people dead, numerous injuries and extensive damage from the tornado that touched down just less than a half a mile from where i'm standing. it happened earlier this afternoon. residents did have some warning. they were told take cover. and then the skies got dark. the tornado touched down. there was extensive damage to homes, to businesses. now this is a main interstate where i'm standing, and there's been a line of cars backed up for the last few hours here and that's because this small town in eastern alabama of about 4,900 people, it took such a hard hit that traffic has been slowed, and it's not been able to get through. ground crews, emergency workers are still going door to door in this small town, trying to assess the damage, trying to figure out if people still need help. as you can see, it's dark out here. it's going to be a very long, difficult night for the people that have lost their homes out here and for those that are still trying to find loved one rz. kasie? >> long, long night indeed. tammy, thank you so much. we will be back with you when we have more updates on this story. a lot more to come tonight on "kasie dc." signs of movement on the gun debate in congress. i'm joined live by congresswoman debbie dingell. first, the president had the authority to grant jared kushner's security clearance, why not just say so say s ? flonase sensimist relieves all your worst symptoms, including nasal congestion, which most pills don't. and all from a gentle mist you can barely feel. flonase sensimist. you can barely feel. half of small businesses fail within 5 years.ne. and more people than ever struggle with debt. intuit is here to change this story... with giant solutions like turbotax, quickbooks and mint that give everyone the power to prosper. intuit. proud makers of turbotax, quickbooks and mint. 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(vo) there for you when it matters most. unlimited on the best network now includes apple music and a samsung galaxy, on us. all starting at $40. only on verizon. all of you. how you live, what you love. that's what inspired us to create america's most advanced internet. internet that puts you in charge. that protects what's important. it handles everything, and reaches everywhere. this is beyond wifi, this is xfi. simple. easy. awesome. xfinity, the future of awesome. the controversy surrounding presidential son-in-law jared kushner's security clearance reached new heights this week after after "the new york times" reported last year president trump ordered then chief of staff john kelly to give top-secret clearance to kushner despite concerns from top officials. the president reportedly overruled recommendations from intelligence officials and white house counsel don mcghan. that's according to four people briefed on the matter. the president has previously denied he anything to do with the decision, and now the house oversight committee is demanding the white house turn over documents and witness interviews regarding its process for issuing security clearances by tomorrow. earlier today, how judiciary chair jerry nadler called the move, quote, an abuse of power, even though it is well within the presidentese constitutional authority. ken, you've been working on this. i want to play for everybody why this is such a sort of stunning -- it would be stunning regardless but it's also important to note the president essentially has said that he did not do what "the new york times" is reporting he did. here is "the new york times" interview, audio only interview with "the new york times's" maggie hagerman. take a look. >> did you tell general kelly or anyone else in the white house to overrule security officials? >> i don't think i have the authority to do that but i wouldn't do it. jared's a good -- i was never involved with the security. i know just from reading there were issues back and forth, the amount of security for numerous people but i don't want to get involved in that stuff. >> so ken, why lie about something like this? first of all, the president does have the authority to do this. so what's the problem? >> you can only theorize but why lie because it's embarrassing to have to do that because your son-in-law cannot qualify for a security clearance. the career specialist who looked at jared kushner's application concluded he could not be trusted or should not be trusted with the nation's secrets and they were overruled. nbc news reported that about a month ago. the piece we didn't have, which "the post" and "the times" have confirmed, the man in the white house who overruled his underlings was acting on the orders of the president, passed down through the chief of staff staff and white house counsel. >> where they felt so freaked out about this decision they felt they had to right it down? >> absolutely. this is both an fbi background check for one level of clearance and cia background check for a different level of clearance. they both flagged significant concerns about foreign influence in jared kushner's background. he failed to list his foreign contacts when he filled out his form, which most people say from a regular person would exclude you. he had special treatment and he got more special treatment and raised a host of questions. >> it's worth pointing out here, kasie, this is not normal. in a traditional, normal white house someone who is a senior adviser to the president, if they're not able to get a security clearance for whatever reason, they're no longer the security adviser to the president. they don't hang in these job two years waiting for clearance and having the president intervene. it is within his authority but it's not something most presidents do. and we should also point out just the pattern of deception on this issue, the president has lied about it repeatedly, the white house staff has lied about it repeatedly, ivanka trump lied about it. although i don't know how much she personally knew about the circumstances. but people have not been truthful and honest and transparent with the american people about the process, even though it's allowed. >> but they knew it was a big problem. >> and elijah cummings has written to the white house counsel and giving the white house until tomorrow to respond to his request about some of the things they have raised about concerns about concerns of jared jared kushner's clearance. it will be interest what the what the white house responds but i don't think they will get somebody to explain it. >> and that was part of the story. >> one thing to add if jared kushner were feeling at all humbled or embarrassed, he didn't show it last night. i was at the gridiron dinner, big, fancy white tie and tails dinner and he and ivanka were there mingling with everybody, acting perfectly themselves as if everything is normal. >> what's so interesting about that, their lawyer, abbe lowell, mished issued a statement to me when he told everyone there was nothing unusual about this clearance, that was the information he got. he threw them under the bus. >> i was curious about that, how much long can abbe lowell stay jierd kushner's lawyer? it seemed to imply kushner was lying to him. >> that's one implication. he also talked to other people in the white house as part of his own investigation and it's his position they all represented to him there was nothing abnormal here. it's a huge question mark. i hope the outoversight committee can get to the bottom of it. >> i feel like there are a lot of euphemisms question marks in this case. maybe another one. ken dill lynnian, thank you so much as always. when we come back, we will dig into brand-new polling as president trump gives what feels like his first campaign speech of 2020 and uses, shall we say, colorful language. >> i think my language is very nice. the new green deal or whatever the hell they call it, this speech should have been delivered one year from now, no now, damn it! podesta i believe that day because he still hasn't gotten over getting his ass kicked, okay. and all of a sudden they're trying to take you out with [ bleep ], okay? 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[ limu grunts ] only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty, liberty, liberty, liberty ♪ the president's two-hour speech at cpac yesterday seemed to serve as a preview of what we can expect from him on the 2020 campaign trail but in many ways it sounded like an event straight out of 2016. >> you know i'm building the wall, we're finishing the wall. others cannot come into our country and steal our wealth and steal our jobs and build their country and not defend our country. i want to say we lost 800 -- this is for many years, almost $800 billion in trade. from the day we came down the escalator, i really don't believe we've had an empty seat at any arena, at any stadium. >> the president also opened his playbook about how he plans to paint the democratic party ahead of his re-election effort. >> democrat lawmakers are now embracing socialism. they want to replace individual rights with total government domination. under the green new deal, which somebody described as a high school term paper written by a poor student. so i do like the green new deal. i respect it greatly. it should be part of the dialogue of the next election. thank you. >> our new nbc news/"the wall street journal" poll shows 18% of americans have a positive view of socialism while 50% have a negative view. so clearly the white house has decided that this is a line of attack. what's your sense in the white house about how they view the the current field. how concerned they are about joe biden jumping in? >> they're concerned about some individual candidates who seem to have pop and star power and ability to sort of speak to the masses and use social media, someone like kamala harris for example. but what they're trying to do strategically is lump all of these democratic candidates together and they think trump will have an advantage by the democrats moving more to the left to try to secure the progressive elements of the base. so for the most extreme thing th that elizabeth warner want to pro ho propose, trump would want to move it over so they include some of the middle of the road folks. >> what we heard, lock her up chants? and the wall, does the president, can he use the same things he ran on in 2016 as a template for success in 2020? does he need something new? >> i think will he have to have something new to convince people in pennsylvania, michigan and witness witness because they took a chance on him because he was something different, something new. yeah, he tweets weird things and he says things that aren't true but he's something new. i just want a change, right? so i think given four years of him, he's going to need something other than 2016 to get those people to give him another four years. i think there's a huge opportunity for democratic candidates. i think the proposition of trump is largely an economic one, and i think if the economy -- particularly if the economy comes off with a sugar high in the next couple of years too, that he's going to have a real fight on his hands. >> i just want to weigh in on that. i don't know. i think maybe they gave him something new but he was essentially a one-trick pony. the scary thing about his cpac speech was all of the people cheering in the audience. it was numerous falsehoods, two hour long, sweatiest speech he gave but written with lies. so many people in the audience were not prepared for it. it's not teleprompter information we got. >> exactly. >> to your point, joel, i don't think you can penetrate this layer of willful ignorance from the trump base. >> i'm talking about swing voters. >> we talked off camera and i think these swing voters, if you're still on the fence at this point, i'm not sure -- >> some voters are not us, they're not people who live in politics. >> fair enough. >> but p you can actually find them. >> but if there's somebody on the fence about trump, whether they will for vote for trump or a democratic candidate, i will argue i'm not sure what it will take to convince this person. can you look at the president's record. you can look at his statements that he's made and the position he's put america in domestically and globally and you would have to ask these people, what is your -- what's the measuring factor? >> they're not measuring anything right now. they're going to work and trying to raise their kids and they're going to decide a week before they go to the polls who they will vote for. >> who in the white house is most concerned to speak to those people? >> it keeps changing. there's concern joe biden can speak to swing voters, people who came out for trump in the midwest, wisconsin, pennsylvania voters. but there's a lot of concern about other candidates as well with trump's advisers. they were impressed by kamala harris, a little worried about beto o'rourke, whether he could make magic happen. they're concerned about other democrats who might rise up and create energy. they most fear somebody who will be a foil to trump and be sort of his equal in terms of speaking to mass audiences and creating energy. >> essentially not being anti- -- there were so many people who wanted to vote against hillary that voted for president trump as well. >> exactly. >> for sure. joel sawyer, tiffany cross, thank you both for the spirited conversations. still to come, things fall apart. some of the most intractable problems in the world and now despite optimism from the white house, deals are proving illusive abroad on everything from denuclearizing north korea to peace in the middle east. le . that rocking chair would look great in our new house. ahh, new house, eh? well, you should definitely see how geico could help you save on homeowners insurance. nice tip. i'll give you two bucks for the chair. two?! that's a victorian antique! all right, how much for the recliner, then? wait wait... how did that get out here? that is definitely not for sale! is this a yard sale? if it's in the yard then it's... for sale. oh, here we go. geico. it's easy to switch and save on homeowners and renters insurance. bill's back needed a afvacation from his vacation. an amusement park... so he stepped on the dr. scholl's kiosk. it recommends our best custom fit orthotic to relieve foot, knee, or lower back pain. so you can move more. dr. scholl's. born to move. around here, nobody ever does it. i didn't do it. so when i heard they added ultra oxi to the cleaning power of tide, it was just what we needed. dad? i didn't do it. #1 stain and odor fighter, #1 trusted. it's got to be tide. president trump has been branding himself as an expert deal maker for decades, and since entering the political arena, he's predicted success on some of the most illusive foreign policy challenges of our time. >> if you're a deal person, right, the ultimate deal is that deal. israel, palestinian, i will try the best i can. and i'm a very good deal maker. believe me, try and solve that puzzle. >> we're looking seriously at things that may be ultimately peace in the whole of the middle east. i think we have a pretty good shot, maybe the best shot ever, and that's what we're looking to do. >> and, of course, he has long sounded bullish on north korea as well. >> north korea, we will take care of it folks. north korea is a problem. the problem will be taken care. we'll handle north korea. it will be handled. >> presidents have, of course, struggled with these problems for decades, and reality set in this week for this administration. jared kushner sought to raise support from an israeli palestinian peace plan during a tour through the middle east but emerged with little to show for it. further complicating matters, the expected indictment of israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu and, of course, president trump and kim jong-un abruptly cut short their second high-stakes summit and vet vietnam without a deal or a clear path forward. i will start with you, because you were in hanoi for that summit, we heard conflicting reasons why this all fell apart from the americans and north koreans. what is your sense of exactly what happened, why it fell apart and what we should take away from this as the most significant peace? >> the specific sticking point seems to be economic sanctions. president trump and mike pompeo, the secretary of state, said north korea demanded that the u.s. lift all economic sanctions in north korea in exchange for closing one of the nuclear facilities, which would have left a whole arsenal that north korea would still maintain, a problem for u.s. and it's why trump said he walked away from the table. the bigger problem in these negotiations is they were coming in literally going to meet and north korea would never abandon their nuclear weapons and u.s. wouldn't go all the way and remove the sanctions so the work traditionally done in advance of the summits did not take place here. trump flew to vietnam hoping he might be able to create some synergy, some chemistry with kim jong-un and get a deal and it wasn't going to be. >> we also here with us have evelyn fargas, former deputy assistant to the secretary of state and national political reporter of defense. what you have written in foreign policy.com that the push for a trump/kim nuclear summit still hasn't run its course totally. why do you think that? >> i think as bill just explained, there's a big gap that needs to be bridged but it's not completely umbrageable. it's just going to take the experts to sit down and bridge it and it's possible if -- and what i wrote there is if we keep economic sanctions on north korea and keep sanctions on them because we're motivated to change their economic situation. also if we maintain military deterrence. deterrence is what basically is elg it kim jong-un if you make any move towards our south korean allies or towards u.s. forces in south korea, either -- well, conventionally, you know, hopefully not nuclear move, that we will take action and our forces are ready. unfortunately since i wrote that, the president made a decision to freeze those exercises. i had hoped he wouldn't. >> josh, i want to talk to you about the middle east here. we heard the president talking about how he feels like he can solve what has been one of, frankly, humanitarian's most retractible problems for quite some time now. what is your sense of how jared kushner's tour went and where things stand now? >> kushner's tour seemed to go okay. he met with top leaders in the region, first meeting he had with mohammad bin salman since the khashoggi killing. he was basically laying out some of what was going to be in the plan and what he's expecting from middle eastern countries to try to make it possible, such as aid to help the palestinians rebuild. but the fact of the matter is for more than a year now, kushner and his team have been waiting for the ideal moment to unveil. they're waiting for a time when the politics in the region were stable enough he had the best prospects for success. now the combination of what's going on in opposition to the plan and also benjamin netanyahu facing indictment seems to make clear there's not going to be a great time for this. the middle east is a mess. has been a mess for a while. and several steps the administration has taken have made it only that much harder. even tonight, kasie, we have breaking news on this, the state department is announcing it's merging the u.s. embassy it moved to jerusalem with the u.s. consulate, which for decades acted as the defactor u.s. bea to the palestinians. this is one more move to take away a separate autonomous way to engage with the u.s. government and create a further exception the administration isn't being fair, as biased in this and make it potentially harder to get a deal. >> can we dig into netanyahu for a second. what role is he playing and why are his political troubles at home important for our position? >> that's a great question. the administration has been relying on netanyahu to be the one when they finally present this plan to bring israelis to the table, particularly right wing israelis who are opposed and on record, opposed to allowing palestine statehood. own over the last years as the administration has done all of these basically gimmes to the israelis moving the embassy and other things seen as really one sided, the idea was in the end they're going to come up with a deal that has hard stuff for the israelis that will make it much fairer and when there's opposition from the right wing, netanyahu will be able to pull a nixon goes to china kind of thing and basically bring his part along. of course, if he's not the prime minister or if he's so underwater with his own political crises he's unable to be effective, that's one more problem jared kushner and his team have to reckon with. >> your tage on if these goals the administration set are at all possible? >> i think it's really odd they've been having these negotiations go on, as josh said, for over a year. we don't know anything about it. the american people doesn't know what's going on pt as far as i know congress isn't in the know. another example of the administration not letting congress in and briefing congress and working with congress. and relying on prime minister netanyahu is a mistake. he is not -- his future is uncertain and i think he's polarizing in the region, certainly the palestinians view him with a lot of suspicion. the other part, of course, of this plan is relying on the saudi crown prince, who is also not viewed as credible by many other players, including our members of congress. and presumably any kind of peace deal would allow some money, some kind of assistance to certainly the palestinians, maybe israelis. we provide a lot anyway. so congress would have to back up whatever deal jared kushner comes up with. >> lots of questions there. thank you all for being here tonight. coming up next -- as congress grapples with background checks for guns as fault lines emerge from democrats, congresswoman debbie dingell joins me live on set up next on "kasie dc." 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(vo) there for you when it matters most. unlimited on the best network now includes apple music and a samsung galaxy, on us. all starting at $40. only on verizon. the president is threatening to veto two gun reform bills that passed the house this week. requiring background checks for all gun-related purchases and give the fbi seven more days to complete the checks. both measures head to the senate and face steep opposition. on thursday, democratic congresswoman dingell stressed the need to make the bills law and explained why with a personal anecdote. >> i will be honest on this floor! my father was mentally ill. i had to hide in that closet with my siblings wondering if we would live or die. one night i kept my father from killing my mother. he shouldn't have had a gun. this is what i remember as a child. my mother went out and bought a gun and then all of us were scared to death about her gun and my father's gun. we had two guns to worry about. no child, no woman, no man should ever have to go through that. >> and democratic congresswoman debbie dingell of michigan joins me now. quite a speech. i think probably a lot of viewers that didn't realize that was part of your personal back story. >> well, i don't -- i don't talk about it a lot. for a variety of reasons. you know, when i was younger you didn't talk about it. quite frankly, when i first started at general motors, someone found out about it and tried to blackmail me with it and i think one of the reasons i talk -- i didn't know i was going to be speaking until five minutes before i had to get up. people thought that the motion to recommit was on veteran i issues and when i listened to -- i really spoke from the heart that day. >> you weren't planning on making that speech. >> no. they thought the motion to recommit is a veterans issue and guns are complicated. but i think people don't realize it happens in all kinds of households. how complicated the issues are and my mother's still alive so you don't want to hurt your mother but i do talk about it because people need to know. it's comply kaicated. >> this is the first major gun legislation to pass the congress in a couple of decades. and in some ways that reflects a change in the democratic caucus. some members were from areas of people very focused on protecting the second amendment. what do you think changed that allowed this to pass? >> well, let's be honest. the man that i loved and was married to was an nra board member at one point and something we disagreed on although the last time i spoke about this when we had to sit in on the floor and he later told me that he had been proud of me for talking about it so openly. but i think, you know, these shootings occurring every day, in schools and public areas have people thinking, okay, there's some people -- i don't want to take people's guns away. my husband was a very responsible gun owner. but there are people that shouldn't have guns at certain times and how do we -- i think people are more willing to have that conversation now. >> you mentioned a motion to recommit which for people not terribly familiar with the procedure on the floor it's a chance for the minority to make changes before the bill passes and they focused on the immigration agency i.c.e. and said that the background check system to report any undocumented immigrant this tries to buy a gun to i.c.e. and caused a revolt on the liberal side of your caucus after this passed. there's been reports that ocasio-cortez said behind closed doors every moderate that voted with republicans on that to allow this change would be on a primaried list that she would try to, you know, oust them from office. is that actually how it went down? what are the tensions like behind the scenes? >> so a motion to recommit is a ervet effort by the other party to try to make it difficult for members of the other party. and when democrats did it to republicans, they -- zero. they never passed because republicans realized they're a parliamentary maneuver and designed to cause members of the opposite party problems. and look. i had a hard time on the background check versus i.c.e., as well, with largest population of muslims in the country living in my district. i know what can happen. i think that people are trying to explain to members that these are a parliamentary maneuver designed and if everybody sticks together then they can explain that but when people start voting and you have times when it works and when it doesn't then it can be a problem. i think what aoc was trying to say was she tried to explain how difficult the vote was for her and said you're creating a list of people that could -- people are going to know that you are feeling vulnerable. some people have interpreted it the other way. our caucus has to work this through. we had a very honest discussion on thursday and we'll walk through but we have to be smarter. we did much better on thursday because for many reasons. but we had to be smarter about understanding what the other party's trying to do to us and sticking together. >> all right. fair enough. your lost your husband john dingell, first time i've seen you since then. how are you? >> we had a love affair. we were a teem. anybody that thinks you get up and keep going, so it's hard. >> thank you. >> i hear him in my ear, woman, you got work to do. >> we have been thinking about you here at the show. >> thank you. >> thank you so much. still to come, a gut check moment for republicans. when is a national emergency really an emergency? plus, the president lashes out at congressional democrats trying to probe everything from his campaign contacts with russia. "kasir dc" after this. it neutralizes stomach acid at the source. ♪tum tum tum tum smoothies. also available tums sugar-free. half of small businesses fail within 5 years.ne. and more people than ever struggle with debt. intuit is here to change this story... with giant solutions like turbotax, quickbooks and mint that give everyone the power to prosper. intuit. proud makers of turbotax, quickbooks and mint. what if you had fewer headaches and migraines a month? botox® prevents headaches and migraines before they even start. botox® is for adults with chronic migraine, 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting 4 hours or more. botox® injections take about 15 mins. in your doctor's office and are covered by most insurance. effects of botox® may spread hours to weeks after injection causing serious symptoms. alert your doctor right away, as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition. side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue, and headache. don't receive botox® if there's a skin infection. tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. with the botox® savings program, most people with commercial insurance pay nothing out of pocket. talk to your doctor and visit botoxchronicmigraine.com to enroll. welcome back. i'm casey hunt. we'll get to the top political stories of the day and how congress is investigating the president in just a moment. but we start with devastating severe weather in the deep south. at least 14 people are dead in alabama according to the lee county sheriff. the dead are said to include children, two adults and more people are still unaccounted for. this video comes to us from the town of smith's station. and nearly 50 miles away a powerful tornado battled parts of georgia. a search and rescue operation is currently under way there. no word yet on the number of injured in georgia or whether there have been any deaths. we'll monitor the story and a live report now from the tornado zone. we have tammy le 2itner on the scene. we have confirmed 14 dead? >> reporter: yeah. that's right, kasie. 14 dead in lee county from two tornadoes that touch dodd un. one was an 8-year-old girl. tragic. many more injured and getting the first look at the damage. this is a gas station we're standing in front of. just one of the many businesses and residences damaged. i'm told that one of the employees was actually inside of this gas station when it happened. he actually came outside and took cover by a brick wall here and we are with one of the owners. al, this is al patel. how are you guys doing? you're starting to piece things back together here. >> when they call me and told me i did not believe what happened. i rushed here. got here. found the store destroyed. my employee came rushing. he hugged me, crying. if he didn't come out within ten seconds of this incident he would have been gone. >> you said he had some injuries, though. >> yeah. he had some injuries on his arm and not major but he does have some injuries. like i think he hit a wall or door or something. and so that's how he have injured his little arm. >> it is unbelievable, though. not more extensive just looking at the building. >> it looks bad. you cannot go inside because of the fire department said structural damage is really bad inside. but i took some pictures and it looks pretty bad. super destroyed. from the back of the building you would siee a lot more damag than this. it took the canopy on top and the tornado went inside and it just knocked out the side wall. my employee managed to get outside in a timely manner or we would lose him. i'm glad he's okay. i'm super glad he's okay. >> thank you so much for talking to us and good luck building there. >> thank you. >> appreciate it very much. and as you can imagine it's a very long night. we know that rescue crews are on the ground. we have seen them out here. they're still going door to door. you know? i'm just looking around me and we drove by and there was a cell phone tower in the first 100 yards. it was crumpled, down completely destroyed. we drove by a bar about 100 yards from where i'm standing. i don't know if you can see over there but the roof is completely ripped off of it. there are no walls. there's nothing left of the bar. and this is just where i'm standing what i'm seeing. there is not a whole lot left of this town of 4,900 people in eastern alabama. kasie? >> tammy, thank you very muchl for that report. we'll be staying in touch with you throughout the hour. our hearts and prayers, of course, are with the people there that you are talking to. joining us now over the phone is the coroner for lee county, alabama, bill harris. bill, thank you for taking some time out of your night to talk with us. i realize you are probably in the process of finding the families of the vikctims. what can you tell us about the devastation in the home county? >> i have not been able to see any of the damage yet. but i have set up my command center in the school parking lot down here to receive the descendants. we have 14 confirmed dead that the time. i expect that number to go higher. probably be here through the night. they're just having trouble getting into these roads and driveways because of the devastation. so we're -- it is just going to be a long night and families can't find anybody and showing up. call everybody they can and see if you can find who you're looking and if you can't, let us know who that is so we can find somebody we don't know who it is we can match up the identity. >> sir, we have seen reports of children among the dead as well as adults. can you give us information? >> i don't know how many but, yes, there are some children involved. >> and has your community ever experienced anything like this before in the time that you have been the coroner? >> not in my lifetime. nothing of this magnitude. i'm part of the state mortuary operations response team which is a volunteer agency that is stationed dimptd apets around the state and one of the assets is here in lee county. this asset is deployed and i have volunteers on the way here now to assist me as well as surrounding county coroners that have jumped in to assist us with the retrieving of the bodies and find the family members. >> what should family who is ie looking for loved ones, who should they be calling? >> coroner's office. there's a 24-hour number listed in the book. 334-737-6370. sheriff's office might take some calls. the hospital called me. they have folks showing up there. they want a list of the fatalities we have now but we haven't even begin to identify those yet. positively identify them. it is a long process. i have actually seen ambulances still coming, emergency where they found some people in the late hours that are actually still alive and being taken to hospitals for treatment. >> lee county coroner bill harris. we are thinking of your in lee county, alabama. thank you for your time tonight, sir. >> thank you. >> our thoughts are with you on what's a very, very long night. but now here we want to move to the flurry of investigative activity in washington. chairman jerry nadler said today it is, quote, very clear president trump has obstructed justice. and now his committee is requesting documents of more than 60 people connected to the president and his administration. as he looks into obstruction of justice, corruption and abuse of power. elijah cummings said if michael cohen mentioned your name on wednesday's testimony you might be hearing from his commit tee. among the names, ivanka trump, donald trump jr., eric trump, alan wes elberg, corely lewandowski and david pecker. at the same time, the house ways and means committee is preparing a request for years of the president's tax returns and interceding to give jared kushner a top secret security clearance, house investigators demand the white house to turn over documents related to the clearances of top officials by tomorrow. well, to break this down, i want to bring in my panel for this hour, jake sherman, reporter for the associated press, wanda evans and brendan buck and former spokesman for house speaker john boehner, michael steel. welcome to the show. it's great to have you guys here. brendan, welcome to the dark side. i'm going to start with you, actually, because one of the things we saw on the oversight committee with michael cohen was a lack of defense of the president's actions. and rather a series of attacks on michael cohen's credibility. which fair enough. but is what the president has done here defensible? house republicans' actions in the hearing seem to suggest they don't think it is. >> if they had something to defend they would have done this. i mean, i know this conference very well and they're not shy about defending the president. so i think jim jordan did it to the extent he could. and probably more pugnacious than most and the embodiment of this conference. they are all about fight. they are very much in the president's corner and will defend him to great lengths but this was a strategy decision clearly on their part. >> let's just remember, michael cohen is the worst possible witness for a congressional hearing. he is someone as congressional republicans mentioned time and time again, actually been convicted of among other things lying to congress. >> yep. >> every hearing from here on out gets harder for house republicans because they won't be able to attack the witness for exactly that reason. >> yeah. what's your sense of what the next steps here are going to be among these house commit tees and how do they walk that fine line? we have seen democrats be careful as not be seen as overstretching. >> the gulf is of representation and the rank and file particularly talking about the rank and file really wanting to see it push towards impeachment and something house democrats are careful of talking about and heard those remarks that chairman nadler made of documents requesting from the folks. he's talked about we don't know if the evidence bears that out yet and seeing how they mix that up with the overlapping investigations will be interesting. >> what's the next move? >> the president tweeted he thought the hearing contributed to his decision to walk away from the north korea talks so that's a new wrinkle l. >> interesting. >> what it highlights is how ridiculous of a claim it was for the president to say governing might be easier in divided government. people said and wrote with a straight face in the weeks leading up to the election. listen. nadler is going to the heart of the trump administration. to the president's family. to his accountant. his father's accountant. this is only as mike said going to get much, much worse for the president. and forget impeachment. that is a process that might or might not happen. oversight is bad for the president. endless testimony. live tv. with the president in the country it is just going to be -- this is brutal. i don't think republicans have wrapped their minds around just how bad -- at least at the white house. i think capitol hill there is a recognition of that. >> do you agree? >> yeah. obviously there's a lot. there's a downside to that, obviously. so look this past week. democrats passed two -- two of the biggest gun control measures passed in a long time and nobody was talking about it. entirely overshadowed by the entire spectacle and i will question oversight is important but i question the degree to which the investigations are going to learn anything that bob mueller doesn't already know. he's had all access to the people for all of this time. he could do everything that these folks can do in the committees an he is far better equipped to find the answers with the tools, resources or experience he has. the committee is not a substitute for law enforcement. >> to the extent that governing and politics is a television show now and i don't say that in a glib manner. >> to an extent. >> this is fascinating because bob mueller has this behind the scenes and cummings and nadler and the commit tee chairs doing it on television in realtime. >> other thing is bob mueller won't release the president's tax returns and it was interesting that in a way ocasio-cortez actually possibly made the strongest argument for getting hold of those saying take the financial disclosures of michael cohen and only way to prove committing insurance fraud is the tax returns. >> impeachment is political exercise and what i think house democrats are doing is oversight is popular. impeachment is not. they'll call it oversight as long as possible while laying out a factual basis to lead to articles passing the house. >> they are buying insurance on the mueller report. if it doesn't provide the smoking gun that they need they need to play a predicate for the next step. the train is on the tracks now. this is happening whether they call it impeachment or not. >> do the republicans accept that the president is in big trouble or not? >> i think they know he's in trouble but their fortunes are tied to his -- how much trouble he is in ultimately and i don't think you'll see them break from him any time soon. >> fair enough. we're just getting started here tonight. we' we'll talk about a new reality for bernie sanders. front-runner? >> heidi hieitkamp. our producers watched the sunday shows so you don't have to. >> president trump facing stiff, new challenges after a failed summit in vietnam. >> why was the president unable to negotiate a break through? >> the president did give up a great deal. >> the president's view is he gave nothing away. >> they were not willing to walk through the door that he opened for them. >> they didn't walk through it. >> he can hold it open again. >> the president seemed to ab solve kim jong-un in the torture and death of otto warmbier. >> do you take kim jong-un at his word? >> the president takes him at his word. >> but what about you? >> my opinion doesn't matter. >> former lawyer and fixer michael cohen testified before congress about alleged illegal tiftd as president. >> this is a guy with zero credit bltd. >> mr. cohen doesn't have a great record of voracity. >> it's an impeachable offense. >> nothing that the president did wrong. >> nothing? >> show me where the president did anything to be impeached. >> do you think he obstructed justice? >> yes, i do. it is clear. >> they're trying to find a case for a problem that doesn't exist. >> there's no one that can factually say there's not plenty of evidence of collaboration or communications between trump organization and russians. >> do you believe they did it to try to help donald trump win? >> who knows why they did it? there's not one bit of evidence to show coordination, collusion, conspiracy whatsoever. s vacatio. so he stepped on the dr. scholl's kiosk. it recommends our best custom fit orthotic to relieve foot, knee, or lower back pain. so you can move more. dr. scholl's. born to move. want more from your entejust say teach me more. into your xfinice remote to discover all sorts of tips and tricks in x1. can i find my wifi password? just ask. 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[ ding ] oh, it won't do that. welp, someone should. just say "teach me more" into your voice remote and see how you can have an even better x1 experience. simple. easy. awesome. michael cohen spent three days on capitol hill last week but he is not done yet on. wednesday he'll testify yet again with the house intelligence committee. democratic congressman sean patrick maloney is a member of that committee. he joins me now. tha thanks for being here. >> good to be with you. >> let's start with why cohen needs to come back for another round here. what are some of the topics you feel you need still to need address? >> i don't want to get into specifics of what's being testified to and inquired about in closed session but i can tell you that there are significant areas of inquiry that we need to pursue that mr. cohen has been extremely productive and cooperative, very credible in my view and we're happy he is doing so and we'll get to the bottom of the central questions. he is a big piece of this puzzle. not the whole puzzle but a big piece of it. >> he, of course, did lie to the committee previously. is there residual anger about that fact or not? >> he has credibility problems and we are right to demand corroboration and credible because he's shown up with corroborating documents in the case of the stormy daniels payments. that's the kind of thing i'm looking for, i'm looking for key facts that can be corroborated but in terms of somebody who knows what was going on in the trump organization he's hard to beat. >> there were names named in the oversight committee and we know that chairman cummings wants to talk to some of those witnesses perhaps, alan weisselberg, for example. who would you like to hear about? you know, who do you think would be most valuable for the public to hear from going forward? >> well, look. chairman cummings did an amazing job in that hearing. the focus of that committee is going to be on the subjects that involve stormy daniels, some of the issues in open session. our focus is really more on russia and the national security threats to the united states. our focus is on the influence of foreign actors like the russians but others and so what i'm really interested in is what is the connective material? what do we know about who was coordinating with whom in the early summer of 2016? that's the heart of this inquiry. i think you will see us do that with felix sater on the 14th. michael cohen has important information on that but when you think about it not the central issue of whether there was a conspiracy to break the law between the trump campaign and the russians. >> i'm glad you brought up felix sater. the chairman thinks it's important for the public to hear from him in public. what is your sense of the first couple of questionings that you would like to put to him? >> look at. you have a project of trump tower moscow, might be the most lu lucrative in the trump organization. don't they think that's a weird thing to do, running for president and then you have the russians engaging in this presumably also untroubled by the fact. think about this. supposed to be legitimate russian business men engaged in a transaction and also unconcern ds that their counter party might be president of the united states. you think that screws up the transaction. point is, why was this financial entanglement occurring in early 2016 and why did the trump people feel so worried about it that they lied about? this is why michael cohen is going to jail is that he said it ended in january and we know now that those discussions with the russians about trump tower went on at least through the middle part of that year. an ens and so what was so important to lie about this? and anybody involved in changing that testimony who knew it was false is in real trouble. >> all right. congressman sean patrick maloney, thank you, sir. really appreciate it. >> my pleasure. all right. just ahead, the 2020 presidenti presidential candidates in selma, alabama. where in 1965 peaceful demonstrators were beaten by alabama state troopers. among those there today, bernie sanders who had some work to do to make up ground with black voters. casting directors will send me a video of choreography and say, "if you can be here in a couple hours, the job is yours." and then i need my phone to work while i'm on the subway, or streaming the video they sent me while i learn the choreography as best i can. they key is to hold the bar up top and not the pole, so that you have full range of motion. it's a little kooky. (chuckles) (vo) there for you when it matters most. unlimited on the best network now comes with apple music on us and a free samsung galaxy when you switch. only on verizon. so let's promote our spring ftravel deals, on choicehotels.com like this: (sneezes) earn one free night when you stay just twice this spring. allergies. or.. badda book. badda boom. book now at choicehotels.com. senator bernie sanders is about to speak at his second 2020 presidential campaign rally in chicago after his big announcement yesterday in brooklyn. according to his campaign about 13,000 supporters braved the cold weather to hear him talk about his family's middle class background. >> coming from a lower middle class family, i will never forget about how money or really lack of money was always a point of stress in our family. my experience as a child living in a family that struggled economically powerfully influenced my life and my values. i know where i came from! >> earlier today sanders along with other high-profile democrats december ended on alabama for the 54th annual commemoration of bloody sunday. here you can see them marching. check out this video. from hours before. when presidential hopeful senator booker left the stage in selma and there you see hillary clinton when's getting an awards embraces him with a hug. now watch what happens when sanders leaves the stage. clinton stood up to greet him. quick hand shake. and on to the next thing. all right. let's bring back our panel to talk a little bit more about this. so you guys probably know i covered bernie sanders in 2016 and mildly fascinated with the change of heart but, jake, i mean, he never used to talk about himself. right? frankly, if you talk to him or those close to him about how he feels about this he thinks a presidential race is strictly a contest of ideas and not personalities at all and asking him a question of a personality based question he would go off on you and make him ir tatdedri and interesting the message out of the gate is his story. >> he could talk ad nauseam of the senate. i don't think voters care about this. >> i would beg to differ on that. supporters liked him last time because of the policy issues and i would agree he had trouble connecting in the primary for that reason. >> right. you can't broaden appeal if you talk about the votes taken and policy -- everybody seems to have a different opinion about me. >> who wants to take it? >> i was in brooklyn this weekend. >> perfect. >> i think what's interesting is not just talking about himself more, something that the supporters and aides have been telling him to. he spends 20 minutes talking about policies like $15 minimum wage and then there's a pivot moment talking about himself and not about himself as a tool necessarily to connect and share openly. it is not something he's careful to do. he's showing that he's not like trump and a fellow new yorker who's a billionaire. who gets multimillion dollar and talking about the 25 cent allowance. there's a big democratic field full of people with large personalities and connect with voters personally and i think the aides pushed him strongly to do something he's uncomfortable doing and in chicago he's expected to talk about the activism he doesn't often talk about. >> right. >> a thing to see in a candidate that fell short is growth as a candidate, adding something to the toolkit and i think it's less about just talking about his personality and his backstory for the sake of that and more about connecting that with the policy lugss he always supported for a narrative that makes sense to voters. >> the point of the contrast with trump is a good one. he does, of course, though have remaining issues with african-american voters. i spoke to congressman meeks about this a couple of weeks ago. take a look at what he had to say about it. do you think bernie sanders understands the fundamental concerns of african-american voters? >> last time he clearly did not and did not get the vote he thought he would get. we have another set of candidates running now and so maybe that's what we need to look at and see and look at individuals' records and the reason why african-americans did not support him because for his whole history in congress he didn't do anything with the african-americans. you know? >> juana, you mentioned chicago and the site of his protests of segregation of housing while he was in college and kricritics s what have you done for me lately? >> i talked to the former ohio representative, state representative when's a co-chair of his campaign of this and she believes that the long history of activism is relevant. she and the writer and activist sean king introducing bernie sanders and king said don't tell me that what bernie sanders didn't do in 1960s doesn't matter but this is a lich that's been built lighting for people. they talk about the image of senator sanders arrested as a young activist chain linking arms and arms with african-american women protesting so they think that this shows that he's not a johnny come lately to the issues and had the interest of african-americans, at the front of his mind for a long time. whether or not that works with this electorate this time around isn't clear and things he didn't talk about in his 2016 bid whether that resonates with young activists who were critical of him is really interesting to see. >> he's often e quatdquated and class is why there's problems and offended african-americans that believe class isn't the only reason why there are issues. but brendan, i'm interested in your take. we hear from the president in the cpac speech socialism and trying to lump the democratic candidates under this label. bernie sanders embraces it. do you think that's a winning strategy for the president? >> yeah, well, we'll see. one of the things you talk about him becoming a better candidate this time adrianza, remember bernie sanders largely won the debate. the agenda of people like michael and i used to laugh at crazy bernie sanders, crazy socialist agenda, at this point the democratic party moved a long way, you can use the term however you want. things we laughed at and now that's where the party is and he has things going for him and think of him i think as the clear front-runner given that and the ability to raise money. >> $6 million in a day. all right. is it a state of emergency at the border? depends on which republicans you ask. as we go to break, what was for some the biggest news of the weekend. >> we want to bring a title back to d.c. i want to be on broad street on a boat, thing, bus, whatever it is. you know? have a trophy over hi head and have a trophy because that's what it is all about. limu's right. liberty mutual can save you money by customizing your car insurance, so you only pay for what you need. oh... yeah, i've been a customer for years. huh... only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ webut some of us turn outhose dreams...... into action... the bookers. the doers. the 'hit that confirmation button and let's go!'- ers! because bookers know that the perfect place to stay... is right there for the booking. be a booker at booking.com the world's #1 choice for booking accommodations. what do you look for i want free access to research. yep, td ameritrade's got that. free access to every platform. yeah, that too. i don't want any trade minimums. yeah, i totally agree, they don't have any of those. i want to know what i'm paying upfront. yes, absolutely. do you just say yes to everything? hm. well i say no to kale. mm. yeah, they say if you blanch it it's better, but that seems like a lot of work. no hidden fees. no platform fees. no trade minimums. and yes, it's all at one low price. td ameritrade. ♪ you wouldn't accept an incomplete job from any one else. why accept it from your allergy pills? flonase sensimist relieves all your worst symptoms, including nasal congestion, which most pills don't. and all from a gentle mist you can barely feel. flonase sensimist. i would build a great wall, nobody builds walls better than me. believe me. mexico can pay for the wall. just so you understand. >> the barrier wall or steel slats, whatever you want to call it, it's all the same. >> you could call ate steel fence. >> the wall, the barrier, whatever you want to call it, it's okay with me. they can name it whatever they can name it peaches. >> we're going to be building over 200 miles of wall. i'm going to call it a wall opposed to barriers or slats. >> or peaches. no matter what the president calls his signature border project he remains intent on building it. the house passed a resolution to block his national emergency dick la ration which 13 republicans joining the democrats. now heading to the senate. three republican senators said they would oppose the president and today in a sur vprise, rand paul became the fourth. >> there are so many republicans in the senate who have said that this national emergency is probably illegal, possibly unconstitutional. why are you on the different page from them? >> i'm wondering why they're on a different page. the president has the authority to do it. i wish some of those if they think this is the case maybe they should spend a little time with adam and go to the border and understand it. what we see happening -- >> and here's what mitch mcconnell said when i asked whether he thought the president's actions were lawful. >> do you personally believe that the president's emergency declaration is legal? >> that's part of what we were discussing today. >> what do you think? >> well, we're in the process of weighing that. the lawyer was there to make his arguments. there were counter arguments. it is a crisis at the border and seems to me the colleagues on the other side are in denial about that. and you can't blame the president for trying to use whatever tool he thinks he has to address it. >> so that was a definitive answer. michael, from mitch mcconnell, not so much. >> no, look. that is tough issue for a lot of republicans. there is no doubt in my mind that additional resources would be helpful at the border. there is a changing and dangerous situation down there. the president clearly exceeded the intended purpose of this act in making this declaration and so you're putting republicans in a position where they're forced to choose between add heens her acting on greater border security. >> we have two former spokesmen for two former speakers of the house. listening to kevin mccarthy there, it struck me. brendan, your former boss trying to strike a balance with the president arguing you don't know what i'm doing in private to try to help what's going on here but kevin mccarthy has taken this a step further in that he is -- he was trying to convince his members that there was nothing wrong with the president declaring a national emergency. when you and i both know if barack obama tried to do this they would have been screaming in the hallways. >> we have had this conversation before s. there hypocrisy? otherwise. when president obama did a bunch of things outside of bounds democrats were happy to do it. in fact, criticizing the president here they're talking about how excited they are to take steps on day one of the next democratic president. ultimately this is going to be determined in the courts. when president obama spent money he didn't have an appropriation for, when john boehner was speaker, he took him to court and sued and won. >> do you think that sets a precedent for if the president is sued this time around? >> yeah. i would think so. and i think ultimately this issue is not going away, unfortunately. this is a long tail whether it's from the court case or spending fights to come. if the president does continue to go forward with it, expect democrats to try to defund it in the next spending bills and this fight is going to be with us for quite a while. >> very cheerful. jake, this obviously the president said he'll veto this. the reality is it's largely irrelevant and not decided in congress and putting republicans in the senate in a tough spot. >> it does. you could tell my mcconnell to read the tea leaves -- >> one of my favorite parlor games. >> that is to me mcconnell saying on this one we have to unfortunately let the chips fall where they may and people vote how they need to vote and i won't strong arm anybody. that's how i read that. i think senate republicans, the sense i got and the body language, maybe you got a different one, it was the white house can't really do anything on this issue to say, on this one follow us because they followed the senate republicans followed the white house on nearly every other issue and this is a precedent setting issue where congress feels like i think a lot of republicans feel like, okay, we need to put our foot down and put a stake in the ground and say you can't just because you don't get your way on capitol hill like under obama we have to take action here so i think that's the vibe that i got this week. >> largely a free vote at this point. 13 republicans that voted for it in the house. far short of what you need to override a veto. there's no override level and that frees up members to vote for it or against it, the consequences are lower. >> for people not in this every day like we are and they look at the difference of the senate and the house on the issue, how would you explain the difference between house and senate republicans on this? >> house republicans are up every two years, more concerned of a primary challenge than every general loss. they're in districts of president trump is popular. senate republicans up every six years. a handful in states where there's a real potential of losing to a democrat. and they are able to communicate with a statewide media and build a statewide profile in a way that a house republican can't. if they have a principled position against this like rand paul, they can tell the constituents about that in a compelling way. >> we'll see if it extends to other difficult questions for the republicans in coming weeks. thank you so much. just ahead, the green new deem with 2020 on the horizon, it's a focal point for members on both sides of the aisle. former senator heitkamp tells us if it's a viable plan for her party to run on. e ♪ ♪ a sock-a-bam-boom ♪ who's in the room? ♪ love is dangerous ♪ but driving safe means you pay less ♪ ♪ switch and save ♪ yes, ma'am excuse me, miss. ♪ does this heart belong to you? ♪ ♪ would you like it anyway? [ scatting ] ♪ would you like it anyway? when i went on to ancestry, i just put in the name yes, we are twins. of my parents and my grandparents. i was getting all these leaves and i was going back generation after generation. you start to see documents and you see signatures of people that you've never met. i mean, you don't know these people, but you feel like you do. you get connected to them. i wish that i could get into a time machine and go back 100 years, 200 years and just meet these people. being on ancestry just made me feel like i belonged somewhere. discover your story. start searching for free now at ancestry.com. welcome back. joining me now, former democratic senator from north dakota, heidi heitkamp. senator, it is great to see you and have you on the program. >> thanks, kasie. >> so, i want to start by asking, primarily about the future of your party. let's start with the green new deal. this is something that the president has harped on and i know north dakota a place that relies very much on energy production. what is your sense of how talking about the green new deal is going to play into this primary process? do you think that some democrats are making a mistake by embracing it as enthusiastically as they have? >> i think we have to say what does this mean? democrats embracing a movement towards stopping war dcarbon emissions in the future and addressing climate change? that's a winning strategy. it's a lossing traenlg to say all one way. we'll move too quickly from fossils, disrupt the economy and they're going to lose in the argument that you will be able to do this in the time period that's been laid out. so, if we -- if you want to look at it the president ignoring climate, that's bad on his side. the democrats as a huge problem needs to be address but they want realistic solutions, solutions that don't disrupt the economy. >> it is interesting. i hear the lessons learned a little bit in how you talk about this. i'm interested what you took away from your loss in 20 -- in this -- in 2018 in this past election. you were somewhat of an unlikely democrat in the first place. some people were surprised to see a democrat winning in north dakota. but obviously something changed from the time when you were able to pull that off and this more recent election. what lessons did you take away from your loss and what has changed? >> it is interesting because if you looked, looked at two of the most important initiatives that passed in the last six years for the fossil fuel industry was the exportation of crude oil, which i led in the senate and got across the finish line in a year and the passage of a tax credit for carbon sequestration and utilization to we could advance new technologies to attack climate but also look how the fossil industry could be part of the solution. neither of those really made a whole lot of difference because i was branded as a democrat. i was branded as somebody who didn't care about those jobs. you know, it goes back to secretary clinton saying we're going put a lot of coal miners out of work. that is frightening to anyone. and i think we have to start understanding that if we're going represent working people there are a lot of working people who work on oil rigs and who work in coal mines and the fossil fuel industry, they need to hear where this role is going to be moving forward in this economy. and that is a mistake i think the democratic party makes is they want to address climate which is important. but you absolutely have to address jobs. >> it is very -- no, please. hillary clinton and that quote, i'm fairways scinated you bring up. right now in the primary process you have bernie sanders running at the democratic socialist coined of unpoll jetically. and --. or do you think amy klobuchar's strategy is the way to go? >> i don't think we should look at this as strategy. the most important thing we need to do is lay out a public policy plan for the american people. could we do better in both categories of making healthcare more affordable, attacking climate change? you bet. and we need all ideas to the forefront. and i think it is going to be the ideas that the american public see as realistic and as rational and responsible that are going win. it is up to these candidates to make their case. and i think that there is a lot of room for more candidates to get in and for more discussion on these issues. we've let this whole green new deal medicare for all kind of dominate the political discussion that. political discussion needs to be a lot broader. and i think a broader discussion about solutions is where the democratic party ought to head if they plan on being successful in 2020. >>, very interesting message. former senator hyde heitkamp. thank you for coming on tonight. >> thank you so much. >> when we return an update on al where a pair of tornados n ann skap kip al where skap kip when heartburn hits, fight back fast with tums smoothies. it neutralizes stomach acid at the source. ♪tum tum tum tum smoothies. also available tums sugar-free. half of small businesses fail within 5 years.ne. and more people than ever struggle with debt. intuit is here to change this story... with giant solutions like turbotax, quickbooks and mint that give everyone the power to prosper. intuit. proud makers of turbotax, quickbooks and mint. ♪ 'cos i know what it means ♪ to walk along the lonely street of dreams ♪ ♪ here i go again on my--- you realize your vows are a whitesnake song? i do. if you ride, you get it. geico motorcycle. 15 minutes could save you 15% or more. before we go we want to go back to the breaking news out of lee county, al. the coroner told me this hour at least 14 people were killed including children after tornados ripped through the deep south. a search and rescue operation is under way and the death toll is expected to rise. nbc is in smith station, alabama with more. >> we have just learned that at least 14 people were killed in lee county, where two tornados touched down. among them an 8-year-old girl. also numerous injuries. we're getting a look inside of this town. and if you can come over here. take a look. this is a gas station, which was once a gas station. extensive damage. walls are no longer here. the roof was ripped off. the owner of this gas station tells us that the propane tanks, they were collecting them from across the interstate here. one of employees was actually inside of the gas station when the tornado came through. he came outside and he took cover over here but this cement wall and that actually may have saved his life. he suffered some cuts and bruises. but is okay otherwise. we're told that emergency workers are going house to house, door to door right now assessing the damage. and seeing if people still need help. kasie? >> tammy leitner in smith station alabama. thanks very much. that's it for us tonight here on "kasie dc." back with you next week from 7:00 to 9:00 eastern. up next a special nbc documentary, "this happened: on account of sex." which explores whether now might be the right time to revisit the equal rights amendment. for now, good night from washington. \s \s "this happened" "this happened" i am woman, hear me roar. >> i know we have still not shattered that glass ceiling. but someday someone will. >> call it an up rising. and a revolution. >> 2018 is proving to be the year of the woman. >> record number of female candidates running for office. >> women across this nation smashed barriers. at least 110 women won their congressional races.

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