This afternoon, Hillary Clinton made her First Campaign appearance with another soontobe first lady soontobe former first lady, Michelle Obama. It was a buddy picture unlike we have ever seen. And tonight he is there anyone more inspiring than Michelle Obama . And the president have ms. Clinton is there anyone more inspiring than Michelle Obama . Ma i admire and respect hillary. She has been a lawyer, first lady of arkansas, first lady of the united states, u. S. Senator, secretary of state. [cheers] obama thats right. Hillary does not play. She has more experience and exposure to the presidency than any other candidate in our lifetime. Yes, more than barack, more than bill. She is absolutely ready to be commanderinchief on day one, and yes, she happens to be a woman. [cheers] in springfield, ohio, donald trump held his own rally back dropped by several women for trump signs. It was melania who stole the show this morning with two interviews. On Good Morning America, melania defended her husband and is missed the women who accused him of sexual assault. They are lies all the accusations should be handled in a court of law. To accuse somebody without andence is very hurtful very damaging and unfair. Do we still need to talk about that . I think American People need to hear about the problems that we have in america. They want to hear what we will do to make america better. Ets talk about jobs lets talk about secure our border. Thats what American People want to talk about. What do you need prayer for, if you will . Thats what we say and evangelical world. Important,s the most because if you have health, you can keep going, keep fighting, and do the best for the people of america. Have been saying that donald trump has to improve his standing with women to have a chance at winning. At this moment, where those efforts stand . Obamatoday, the michelle appearance is going to dominate. She has been on the trail some, but not a lot. Since this summer, donald trump has cut the gap in some extent nationally with Hillary Clinton. Some republican women have come home, but not enough. If Hillary Clinton continues on the trajectory she is on, despite donald trump occasionally talking about childcare, despite melania doing interviews in the last few days, the combination of the Clinton Campaigns relentless focus on female voters and the access Hollywood Tape will leave trump with, unless something dramatic changes, a very big gap with women that will make it mathematically impossible. There are longterm questions about the republican brand, damage being done to it. I am actually somewhat some rise somewhat surprised. I looked at the exit polls from 22012 when barack obama beat mitt romney by 11 points, 5544. According toon, cnn orc, is up by 13 with women. Quinnipiac, 15. Bloomberg, up by 14. She is not doing substantially better than barack obama did. Then again, barack obama won the election. Not surprised there has been a bigger fallout with women than there has. Mark over the summer, he was more like 20 points down. Some of that has come back. I think, if you look back at the Trump Campaigns work and their aspirations to appeal to women, africanamericans, hispanics, their efforts were so slow in starting, so haphazard. He is going to leave a legacy of no blueprint whatsoever, except in the negative sense, about how it about how the Republican Party can do better. A legacywill leave where he has put his surrogates, people around him they put themselves in the position but he has put them in a horrible position where they have had to defend him from largelythat are credible, only because he admitted on tape that he does these kinds of things to women. That tape will have a that tape will play for a long time. Newt gingrich, for a guy that close to an election, inexplicable. Another wikileaks disclosure giving fresh ammunition to impropriety in clinton world. As it is being called, bill clinton inc. A longtime aide to bill clinton appears to describe a system that generated a lot of money for the clintons. According to the memo, his Consulting Firm made a charitable donations to the Clinton Foundation, while at the same time hiring bill clinton to the tune of millions of dollars for speaking fees and consulting gigs. Those deals also included inkind services for the president and his family for hospitality, vacation, and the like. Cap and the like. Donald trump address these directly, and he mixed he minced no words. The lines between the Clinton Foundation and personal financers get blurred. We heard about doug brand bragging that he funneled tens of millions of dollars to bill clinton inc. Arrangementled the unorthodox. The rest of us call it out right corrupt. Emailhere is another that people are talking about today. This one is from 2014. It appears to show done been setting up a meeting between a client and john podesta. House seniore adviser thin. He is now chair of the Clinton Campaign. All of this pays into a plate of pay pay to play narrative that the Clinton Campaign has been trying to shut down. John, how well does the description of clinton world d play with voters between now and election day. John i have always thought that of money, philanthropic work, and policy were areas of real concern for the clintons as we move forward. These emails describe a messy, seedy bunch of business. It is the case that donald trump is a horrible messenger on this issue because of the problems with the Trump Foundation, and because the Trump Foundation is at least as corrupt, if not more corrupt. Also, there is the piece that i speculated might be shown, but has not yet been, which is did in the this influence policy . Both of these undercut this is a potent issue, and it is also awfully late. Mark its late, and i think most voters who here about this and process it takes thats the way it operates. We should say this is the way a lot political families operate in government. The difference here is the scale and background of the clintons. There are plenty of people in washington who arrange meetings for contributors all the time. Danger here is, if there is another disclosure, the press has become a nerd to the daily release of the wikileaks batches. We dont know if Julian Assange and others have a plan to drop Something Big and later, if the russians plan to send something overlay. Some clinton people said last week that they made a mistake, but the press does not care anymore. The press is primed to read this every day and look for things. If this is a big thing, it will get a big hearing. John although with the clock ticking, if you were really going to drop a bombshell mark you may not know about early voting. John you might not want to wait before the day of the election to do it. Mark did they early voting in australia . Do they have early voting in australia . John again, there is a lot to criticize here, but again, it still remains very remote from the real lives of real people. Mark and Hillary Clintons name has not come up much at all. Thats important. But wait john but wait, theres more about the campaign duet debut about Hillary ClintonMichelle Obama, after this break. Ms. Obama i know some folks have commented that it has been unprecedented for a sitting first lady to be so actively engaged in a president ial campaign. At that may be true and that alsoe true, but what is true is that this is truly an unprecedented election, and thats why im out here. Of michelleas more obama, the star of Hillary Clintons rally today in north carolina. , one of the best reporters in the business, and darren, Political Correspondent for the washington post. Of the body think language . I remember in 2008, bill clinton and barack obama did one event together and the body language was not that warm. It seemed warm to me today. It was. In theme out together class act, clinton arm and arm pose that you would see maybe with a Vice President , but very close together. Michelle obama made a point of saying that she considers clinton a friend. I think that was in some ways a nod to the perception that they do not have a particularly close relationship. It is certainly true that they dont have an enormous amount of experience with one another and that their relationship was not so great eight years ago in the election. Of the 2008 it has grown considerably deeper and warmer sense. I thought Michelle Obama really had substantive things to say today about what she thought clinton could do as president that go beyond a standard one democrat endorsing another kind of stump speech. Big i think one of the stories of 2016 is the reality that Michelle Obama is the biggest star of the democratic party. At a higherrming level than her husband, but she is not out as often as her husband. How much will we see of her between now and election day . Surprisingly large amount, even by the Clinton Campaigns expectations. Michelle tell you that obama wants to do as much as she is volunteering to do. They say they are not pressing her to do more, but she came to them with a number of proposals about things she wanted to talk about, including todays event as a side with Hillary Clinton. I think one data point that is d aling is that they booke really big venue today. It is a stadium that conceit 14,000 people that can seat 14,000 people. The way it was booked today, it was fewer than that. There was a capacity crowd of about 11,000. That is more than twice the size of the very two or three largest clinton rallies we have seen all year. Rallies at recent and we are two weeks from the election crowd sizes at recent rallies have been in the 1700, 2500, maybe 3000 range. Certainly not 11,000. Mark i wanted to talk about the wikileaks. Jennifer paul mary was on msnbc today, and basically everything she said was, the russians, the russians. Did you get the sense that they planned to keep that up as their answer for the next two weeks, or is something going to force their hand . Anne they dont think something has forced their hand yet. It certainly appears that with 12 days left, they think they can get it out by just continually saying, this is stolen property, stolen by the and has anybody taken a good hard look at Donald Trumps connection to the russians . All valid points, but completely beside the wind compared to the mounting pile of dirty laundry that we see in these emails area in these emails. Do not dispute the authenticity of the emails, they simply will not confirm it. John it is interesting to point out that donald trump went out again and giving Vladimir Putin raise on the campaign drill, giving the Clinton Campaign a little bit of a gift. To what extent is the Clinton Campaign fully aware have they gone all the way through John Podestas gmail now so they know what assange has and they will be prepared for what comes out . So, just, youd hope to know what the potential throat is thats out there. Really dont know from the outside is exactly when it was clear to the campaign that this material had been stolen, and exactly how much they knew about the size and t. Ope of that shift thef apparently never deleted anything. He had many years stored in his gmail. One hack, whoever did it was able to go back many years, spanning podestas time out of to when he was chairman and weighting of the campaign. There was a lot exposed, and you have to think that the campaign and lawyers have been going through that for months. We knew that they knew that there was a risk out there. We did not know exactly what it was. Itk we talked about earlier, but we would love to see you enunciate it. We have seen weeks of these emails come out. The batch produced on strange produced front page stories in your paper. What about that memo caused people to make a bigger deal about it and previous emails . E it through a lot of lines quite explicitly. Band, that, you have done one of bill clintons most trusted and loyal aides, appearing to fingers at bill clinton saying, look, how come have someying that i of this overlapping business has far morenton than i do and has even greater exposure. If you consider it a risk, he has greater exposure than i do. That is an extraordinary thing for someone in his position, and frankly who owed his position to build runs in to say to bill clinton to say. One interesting aspect raised the profile of it and caused us to write about it in the detail that we did. Here you see john podesta trying down a little bit and say, coolidge a little bit, i dont think thats the kind of like you want to use, and band is saying, thats exactly what i want to say and i want to defend myself. Mark , more on wikileaks. We talk about russia and the future of cyber warfare, after this. There has been a lot of discussion around wikileaks, but few people who really understand the methods, context, and meaning behind the hacks and hackers that have been meddling in this years election. Are documentary, i talked with two of those people, and what they had to say was super scary. [video clip] john friday morning, washington, d. C. Wikileaks and the russian relationship. Trying to explore this very question. So, your First Encounter with this story was what . Of russianseen a lot activity going around, but the big moment of change came in june of this year, when a rowdstrike first came out with convincing evidence that there were Russian Hackers that were behind the attack on the Democratic National committee. Dimitri, how are you . Good to see you. Come on in. I got questions. Ive got questions. Had called us. They did not know if they had a breach, but they saw some signs on the network. They called us in, and within a couple hours, we noticed there were two adversaries on the network, which we tied to ,ussian military intelligence and the other group we tied to the successor of the kgb. I actually think they did not. Lan to start leaking us going public accelerated their timeline. They panicked and said, we need a distribution channel, why not go to wikileaks . Because wikileaks is wikileaks, its like having something up here on the front page of a newspaper. Then we realized this was oldstyle russian information work. Exactly. Its information operations. Thats how russians think about cyber. How do we use it to weaken our opponents psychologically . To try tos not just influence the election to favor one candidate or the other, but influence the entire process. Do is createed to enough chaos, maybe in the Voter Registration rolls area did you show up, sorry, your name is not on the list, that happens two people behind you. Putinsplays into overall objective, to weaken the american presidency. , in my believe, is not to influence the election, but to actually discredit the entire process. Is to showhis motive that he has more Nuclear Weapons in his arsenal, and to show that he has to be dealt with with some respect. Its all about propaganda. Thats how the russians think about that. The government is not prepared for the Propaganda Campaign that is about to unfold. John today, Vladimir Putin said it was rubbish that russia was behind donald trump, but there is no doubt in this point, among most experts, that russia was the one who drove this hack and somehow those documents made its way to wikileaks and Julian Assange. You can watch the circus on showtime. Up next year, though, we will take a closer look at this issue of cyber war and how it might flareup on election day, with one of the guys you just saw, david singer. First, these words from our sponsors. Is there anyone who really thinks in full seriousness that russia is capable of influencing the choice of the American People somehow . America is not a banana country, is it . America is a great power. If i am not right, please correct me. That was russian president Vladimir Putin speaking about a banana country, dismissing concerns that his government is meddling in the u. S. Election. During the break, you saw a segment with david sanger that was built for the circus, produced in conjunction with bloombergpolitics. We are joined by the man himself, david sanger with the times d. C. Newsroom. Also, stephen leavy. Thank you both for coming. David, update us on related sense of what on your latest sense of what the u. S. Governments posture is on retaliating against russians, or taking some measure against them continuing . So far, the discouraging of their activity was limited to public statements they have made , including the one joe biden made a bit more than a week ago now, threatening some kind of covert action to stop them. The fact of the matter is, we had not seen public sanctions. If there has been covert action, it has been subtle. So far, the only thing we have seen is the revelation in the aboute of some emails their actions in ukraine. No one is convinced that that if therican action, that u. S. Did something they were hoping it would be a little bigger than that. There is some debate on whether or not the administration should act before the election, because if you do act before the election, that gives the russians a chance to act back on the day of. So its possible that you are not going to see real retaliat