Im not somebody who wants to go into war because war hurts economies and kills people. And standing o. While joe biden focuses on his crossover appeal to voters, mayor Pete Buttigieg gets a fox news crowd on its feet. I hope you will join me in making sure that that next era is better than any we have had so far. [ cheers and applause ] thank you, mayor and thank you a standing ovation. Good day, im Chris Jansing in for andrea in new york. President trump and a Rapid Response team of Top Republicans are dragging four term gop congressman justin amash through the mud. His signature cover punch strategy on full display, a reaction to a bakers dozens of tweets detailing key take aways after reading the mueller report. Among them, one that probably stands out amash writing muellers report reveals that President Trump engaged in specific actions and a pattern of behavior that should meet the threshold for impeachment. The president is directing anger at the New York Times, pushing back on a front page story that details how multiple transactions in accounts controlled by the president and his soninlaw Jared Kushner raised red flags. Joining me now Kristin Welker, Eugene Robinson and msnbc contributor barbara mcquaid, former u. S. Attorney. Let me start with you because i will put up congressman amashs initial tweets so you can see the points made that sparked the back lash. The comment on impeachable conduct. I want to go back two years to this interaction you had with him. Reporter congressman, if the comey memo turns out to be true will you call for impeachment . I have nothing further to add. Reporter whose word do you trust more, President Trump or james comey . I have nothing further to add. Reporter do you think the president may have obstructed justice. I have nothing further to add. Now, kristin, obviously, he did have something to add. Mitt romney sort of defended amash. But is there concern . And how much concern that others will even follow suit . Reporter i have been talking to folks at the white house. What a blast from the past to see that exchange. It was almost two years ago. Officials here at the white house make a couple of points. One, what you heard congressman Steve Scalise say he is the only republican saying that the president committed impeachable offenses. You dont see other republicans joining me. And this is someone who has been a frequent critic of President Trump. He has broken with his party a number of times. Thats why you have that sharp criticism from President Trump calling him a lightweight and a loser and accusing him of just wanting to make headlines. Will amash add fuel to democrats who are calling for the president s 350e7impeachment . That remains to be seen. How does the president feel about that . This is someone who even though it is the democratic primary that we are focussed on, he is very focussed on his own reelection and he sees all of this talk of impeachment as something he can use on the campaign rail to energize his core supporters saying im under threat here you got to get out to the polls. I think it cuts both ways. What we will be watching for is to see how democrats respond to this. This is not landing well with republican colleagues and leader Kevin Mccarthy said this yesterday. You have to understand justin amash. I think he only asked one question in all the committees that he has been in. He votes more with nancy pelosi than with me. It is a question whether he is in our republican conference as a whole. He wants attention in this process. So our friends at morning joe saw this on the 538 website. Amash who is a fiveterm congressman votes more than 60 pro trump overall. In this new congress, he has really been on board, more than 90 support. Mccarthy is just dead wrong on the voting record. Is he right that this is political . Is this principle . Some people are saying why did he wait until now to Say Something about the mueller report. What is your take . Justin amash represents a conservative district in michigan. And the idea that he would seek political advantage for himself in going after President Trump in this way is ridiculous. Its ludicrous and nobody seriously believes that m. The primary challenge against justin amash. Its one that aims migmash migh defeat. So this is clearly a principled stance and Kristin Welker is absolutely right. I dont anticipate some flood of republicans coming out to agree. If you were able to administer truth serum for the republican caucus, you would get some. What do democrats do . Democrats who have been sort of tentative about moving, taking that ultimate step, does this somehow encourage the process on the part of democrats . Does it give a little push to nancy pelosi . You are in congressman amashs backyard. I just dont agree with him. I dont agree with i think that the job that the president is doing i think he will want to help people with finding jobs and the economy. He read every single page. This is based on what he read, he believes that there is a case to be made for impeachment. If thats what he believes, then you need to stand up for what you believe. You are okay with it. Im okay with him doing that. My belief is i dont agree with it. I wonder if you can get a real sense. I understand this is very much going into the coffee shop or restaurant and talking to people. Do you get a sense that this will hurt him at home . Is he going to pay a political price . Its really hard to say right now. To have the conversations with people who supported him, you have some like the lady in virginia who says that she doesnt like what aimash had to say but would consider him if they go on. You also get those who say absolutely no. This is the end. You are blocking President Trump and his agenda and they dont like the fact that he is taking this step. Local republicans here in michigan have really kind of repeated and mirrored what you heard from President Trump saying amash is doing this for attention. You had one official say that amash committed a fraud by running as a republican candidate. There is not a lot of good will for him among republican establishment. Among the people that i have been talking to, there is much more nuance there. People understand that this is a principled position for him. They understand that he believes this strongly. One gentleman said i disagree with this completely. You get a little bit of a mix of reaction as you talk to people here. I want to turn to the banks story. Big front page. They say some of the transactions link the Trump Foundation to these question marks that set off alerts in Deutsche Banks computer systems. Now the new big story is that trump made a lot of money and buys everything for cash. Where did he get all of that cash . Could it be russia . No. I built a great business and dont need banks, but if i did, they would be there. I guess thats what he wants the explanation to be and thats what he wants to be the end of this. This is just more fake news fraumpt New York Times. The president defiant. He has described himself as a counter puncher and thats exactly what we are seeing here. We reached out to white house officials about this and it is the president himself who responds first. He sees himself as his own best communications person. The Trump Organization is also responding to the New York Times and effectively saying they were not aware of any transactions that raised red flags. Deutsche bank saying at no time was an investigator prevented from escalating activity identified as potentially suspicious. Firurthermore furthermore, the suggestion that anyone was reassigned. President trump is going to be heading to the Battle Ground state of pennsylvania a little bit later on today. As you know, sometimes he takes questions before he leaves. So we are going to try to get some more from him on all of this. Barbara mcquaid, the story suggests that the folks at Deutsche Bank were kept from escalating it. They got no response did they feel like action was taken. We know the president s finances are getting a closer look in new york. This shines potentially a little more light on how some of his companies, some of the cushner related companies operate. Do you see dangers here for the president . Certainly, there are red flags. Congress has served a subpoena on Deutsche Bank to get bank record and try to get a better understanding of President Trumps entanglements with russia. We know he has filed a lawsuit to prevent that disclosure. He is clearly very concerned about what those records might show. So we know that Deutsche Bank paid 600 million settlement in january of 2017 for allegations that it was laundering russian funds, more than 10 billion in russian assets. So i think there are certainly some red flags here. It appears that the President Trump is quite desperate to prevent the public from knowing what is in the records. This makes me think back in the good old days three years or so ago if a member of a cabinet or top adviser to a president found himself in the middle of a story like this it would go on for days and affect the things they were able to accomplish. Jared kushner is the quarterback for so much of the white house agenda, immigration, middle east peace. Do the optics of this matter at all in this world . Apparently not. Apparently, this would have been a huge story front page for days if not weeks. And now its just another day in crazy town. So i think this potentially is a very significant story. Deutsche bank had not only that problem in 2017, its under current investigation in europe for money laundering. And at some point, the flows of money, russian money through Deutsche Bank to wherever that money ended up and however it swirled around at some point will be traced. Thats something that the president seems anxious about. Always good to see you, my friend. Out there on the road for us. Thanks to all of you. Coming up, out foxed . Mayor Pete Buttigieg rattled President Trump in his fox news town hall slamming the president and name Checking Network hosts. How did the audience react . Youre watching Andrea Mitchell reports only on msnbc. G andrea reports only on msnbc. Theyre americas biopharmaceutical researchers. Pursuing lifechanging cures in a country that fosters innovation here, they find breakthroughs. Like a way to fight cancer by arming a patients own tcells. Because its not just about the next breakthrough. Its all the ones after that. Listen to your mom, knuckleheads. Hand em over. Hand what over . Video games, whatever you got. Lets go. You can watch videos of people playing video games in the morning. Is that everything . I can see whos online. Im gonna sweep the sofa fort. Well, look what i found. Take control of your wifi with xfinity xfi. Lets roll now thats simple, easy, awesome. Xfinity xfi gives you the speed, coverage and control you need. Manage your wifi network from anywhere when you download the xfi app today. How would you handle the insults and the attacks and the tweets and all of that . The tweets are i dont care. We need to make sure that were changing the channel for this show that hes created because it matters. Its mesmerizing. It is hard for anybody to look away t. Is the nature of grotesque things that you cant look away. If you want to make a splash in a crowded field of democrats, maybe a nationally televised town hall on the president s Favorite Network could help your cause. Take it from mayor Pete Buttigieg who was very well received by the audience. Certainly, it got the attention of President Trump who tweeted that fox was wasting air time on mayor pete. I want to get the inside scoop from msnbc contributor. Monica alba, nbc news political reporter in pennsylvania. Nbc News National political reporter. Jeremy, mayor pete got a standing o last night on fox news. Then he was taking heat from some progressives for even appearing on the network. As you know Elizabeth Warren put out a whole series of reasons why she refused to go on the network. I wonder is this a lost opportunity for democrats . Whats their strategy here . I dont think that it ever helps a Political Party to pick fights with individual Television Networks or journalists. Maybe in some isolated cases it really revs up the base. Remember, the Republican National committee tried to do this with msnbc and nbc four years ago. They ended up having a debate on cnbc. It faded into the wind. So i think what might stay is some of the things that he said and how he handled these questions, right . That is the crucial thing is the message. Its not the medium. Its the message in this case. In mayor petes case, what he has done is kind of cracked the door into that whole disaffected trump voter world where there are people who are just not going to vote for trump again. The question is whether or not they can stomach the idea of voting for a democrat. A lot of them are not quite there yet. By going on fox, that is one way to reach them. Its not the only way, of course. You combine that with his language and his really i think warm attitude toward them, this kind of welcoming posture he has taken saying im not writing you off or discrediting you. And more importantly speaking their language in terms of issues like faith i think thats really important because the democrats look at the last few democrats who have won elections. Barack obama, bill clinton, they have done so by getting a larger share of the white evangelical vote than Hillary Clinton got. And they talked about faith which is something that mayor pete does. He didnt shy away from the controversy, by the way. He actually went after some of the fox news hosts on their own network. I want to play that. Especially when you see what goes on with some of the opinion hosts on this network. When you have Tucker Carlson saying immigrants make americans dirty and laura ingram comparing Detention Centers to summer camps, then there is a reason why anyone has to you might think that is kind of a bold move from mayor pete. Are there persuadables not just in that studio audience, but in the larger audience who actually were watching fox news last night . And he could win them over. This is still the primary. We havent had a vote cast yet. I have seen some democratic numbers. Its a small slice of independents and democrats that make up the fox audience. Lets not forget that Research Shows the vast majority of committed republican fox news viewers believe Global Warming is not man made. Its still in an election that could matter as the last one did with a handful of votes in various select states. I think that this is where you want to be if you are a candidate like Pete Buttigieg. Meantime, joe biden you spent a lot of time with him, kicked off his campaign in philadelphia. Key Battle Ground, a place where he has been popular, a place democrats have to win in 2020. Trump going there today. Bidens message was one of unity, a different path for all voters. Take a listen. If American People want a president to add to our division, lead with a clinched fist, a closed hand, a hard heart to demonize your opponents, spew hatred. They dont need me. They have president donald trump. A different path. Different path. You just wrote about this, about different strategies for nbc. Com. Tell us about it. Its interesting. The sense you got watching joe biden speak at this rally is that he can only fast forward this entire Election Campaign to the general election and to the race with donald trump he would. He also recognizes that he has to get through Bernie Sanders and some of these other Democratic Candidates first. You did see him focus primarily on trump and begin to speak to the divide. You need to be the angriest candidate to win the nomination. I think democrats want to unify the nation. We also see every time the president engages with joe biden, the Joe Biden Campaign cheers because this really helps this idea that he is the most electable candidate and donald trump is afraid of him. The question has been is donald trump going to be impulsive or strategic as he goes after other candidates . Everything he has done is showing that perhaps he is worried about joe biden because joe biden is winning over the kind of voters donald trump knows he needs in order to be reelected. Its hard to sugar coat the numbers in places like pennsylvania, michigan, wisconsin. Polls show those rust belt states slipping away from the president. What are we expecting tonight . Reporter exactly, chris. Folks i talked to here have been lined up taking shuttle buses to the rally behind me. Some camped out overnight. These are the voters that you guys are talking about here in central pennsylvania who hope to hear a message from the president that focuses on the economy. They hope he a