That i spoke out forcefully against hatred, bigotry and violence. Threatening a Government Shutdown. We have to close down or government were building that fall. And going after members of his own party. Nobody wants me to talk about your other senator, who is week on borders, week on crime, so i wont talk about him. Is this the new normal . Plus, Hillary Clinton looks back on 2016 and how she might have handled this moment. Back up, you creep. Get away from me. I know you love to intimidate women, but you cant intimidate me, so back up. This is mtp daily, and it starts right now. Good evening. Im katy terr in new york in for chuck todd. Welcome to mtp dale yil. Its not our job in the press to tell the president how to lead the country, but it is our job to ask the painfully obvious question, is this how you do it . By going after who people vote for and how they get their information . By criticizing a war hero battling brain cancer while defending a controversial sheriff battling jail time. By trying to tear down the rules of government that require leadership through compromise, by threatening to shut down the very government that he and his Party Control if he cant fund a wall along the southern border . Here is another question. After last nights skovd effort rally, are how much credibility does this message have today . It is time to heal the wounds that divide us and to seek a new unity based on the common values that unite us. As long as we have faith in each other and confidence in our values, then there is no challenge too great for us to conquer. We have no division too deep for us to heal. Together we cannot fail. The president s comments today didnt happen in a vacuum. Theyre commendable. But are they credible . Right now were watching a president claiming he wants to unite the country while at the same time engaging in a slash and Burn Campaign to discredit anyone and anything that criticizes him or makes life harder, which in a plurlistic society like ours is going to be a lot of people and a lot of things, including the media. The only people giving a platform to these hate groups is the media itself and the fake news. Including arizonas republican senators like snon mccain and jeff flake. We were just one vote away from victory after seven years of everybody proclaiming repeal and replace. One vote away. I will not mention any names. Nobody wants me to talk about your other senator who is weak on borders, weak on crime, so i wont talk about him. Including the rules of gofr nance which were built to force people to actually compromise. The senate, we have to get rid of whats called the filibuster rule. We have to. And if we dont, the republicans will never get anything passed. Youre wasting your time. And including sometimes the entire government. The obstructionist democrats would like us not to do it, but believe me, we have to close down our government, were building that wall. That also includes the folks who run the other government branches, Like Senate Majority leader Mitch Mcconnell, who is privately doubting whether or not mr. Trump can salve age his presidency, according to the new york times. They report the president berated mcconnell in a phone call that quickly did he involved into a profane shouting match. We should note that a spokesperson for mcconnell does not deny the story but did say the two men are, quote, committed to advancing our shared agenda together and anyone who suggests otherwise is clearly not part of the conversation. Sam none berg was one of mr. Trumps First Political consultants. Hes also one of the few people who knows what its like to be hired and fired on the president on multiple occasions. Its an honor of sorts, i guess, sam. Sure. I want to talk about the jekyll and hide presidency. Donald trump today was on a teleprompter. He was saying the things that people wanted to hear from him. Last night, though, he kept going off the teleprompter. He was attacking everybody in sight. How does he have credibility today when he had a night like last night. If you compare him to monday night, here hes talking about the afghanistan troop surgery, he wants to he goes into a rally paid by his campaign which is he declared hes running for reelection. And those are hold on. You cant say today im going to be president and today im going to be a candidate. That doesnt work that way. Well, hes got to adapt. Ive told him everybody has told him he should adapt. He should pivot during the election too. Hes never done that. Why would there be any expectation that hes going to adapt . There probably shouldnt be. He got where he is acting the way he does and sefls thats a formula that works for him. And until its proven it doesnt, hes going to go out the way he wants to. Is he a president or a candidate. Last night he was a candidate. Is it okay to switch between the two . Occasional, yes, it is. I mean, look, barak obama i remember in his first year before the midterms he used to try to hold these allies as well, but when hes making comments whether or not we agree with him but to target if you want to talk about senator mccain, senator neighbor flake, if youre in arizona, thats not going to help get the agenda passed. Theyre going to have major problems at the election. That may be that you think that you can do one and then do the other, but lets be honest, if he last night went after two republican senators. He went after the system of government that forces compromise, which very far people, i think, would like to see go in this country. And then he went after those in the press saying that we dont love this country, which is just completely absurd, saying that we are stoking the fires of racism and hatred in this country. Given that, how does any of that unite this country . Well, thats a good question. He was elected under strange circumstances. Even though he had a humongous electoral win, it was a very contentious election and he doesnt, unfortunately, take criticism well. No. And even if you look at that press conference, that problematic press conference in trump tower, the question kicked off where he gives this inarticulate answer is because he was put on the defensive. And sometimes hes just age to not get over thing. I have that same problem too, unfortunately. Saying respectfully hes the president. Exactly. Whether its right or wrong, and he sometimes it hurts him and it hurts his agenda. And the problem is is that its not going to help if they cannot get dlibls from are the voters they will sufficient at the ballot box. Or do they believe that dlt can go out, he can blame everybody but himself and still maintain his base. With some of the base it works like that. Polling has shown and it doesnt matter go on if he doesnt get anything done, that its congresss fault and on and on. At the end of the day, he was elected to certainly he was elected as an outside personality. Hes a unique person, but if he cant deliver the goods, nobody can win. And the voters will give you you know, they will punish you for it. So do you think the voters are going to turn against trump at some point if he cant get anything passed . Its way too early to know that. I think that if the election were held today, it would be very problematic for republicans. I dont see how it wouldnt be. On the other hand, the way its made up and the country is a large and more esoteric conversation you can go into, i dont think they would be hurt as much at the ballot box as the democrats because of gerrymandering and things like that. Is anybody in the white house telling the president and if so is he going to listen to anybody, is there anybody that can get through to him . If the president is going to if the president will hear you out as long as its done respectfully and constructively. Everybody has asked me that. But hes going to do what he wants to do. Its his decision. Hes president of the United States. Ive worked for other people in very powerful positions and theyre still going to do what they want to do. Sometimes he doesnt understand or its not told to him that saying Something Like this does not help you in the senate. Mitch mcconnell is almost as powerful as the president of the United States on capitol hill and thats the reality whether you like it or not. He controls an agenda. One of the president s greatest achievements is directly because of Mitch Mcconnell which is neil gorsuch. So this begs the question. Does he want to be the president , does he want to lead this country, get things done for people or does he just want to exact revenge on his rivals . Look, i was with him early on from 2011 to 2015. It wasnt helpful to his career in the public career to act like a conservative and go to these rallies and things like that that he did. He is worried about the direction of the country. The problem is, and it is a problem. Im sorry, mr. President , is that, you know, you can go in to get big changes done in washington, but there is certain ways you cannot change the way washington operates. And its not constructive or productive. So what does he really believe in . Well, the president believes in taking you want to go over the taking care of the veterans, securing the border, health care, tax reform. He doesnt really understand healthcare reform whatsoever. He does understand the senate plan and the house plan would lose millions of people, millions of people would lose their coverage. He campaigned on making sure everybody would be covered. That doesnt square to see at the end of that Health Care Debate he just wanted to notch a win in his corner. The republican view is were concerned about highsing premiums. Premiums but hes an independent president. Thats for sure. He could have run as an independent third party candidate. He ran in a very contested primary, 17 candidates, and he was able to go on a message which had democrat elements and it had independent elements, ross per oh elements. What was that message you had for the president . What was the message . Yeah. The message was to be like democrats, to be antigovernment cronyism. Learn how government works. To operate the goth as a business. And thats, you know, somebody was talking about today, one of the major problems well look back in this first year is the transition. They didnt really concentrate on the transition until after they won the election of the it was something thats had a lot of problems. And then they started out and they agreed to this paul ryan plan of going after obamacare first. Imagine if they had started with infrastructure, and this is hindsight 2020. Yeah. It would have been much different. It would have put the democrats on defense. I think you and i had that conversation a number of times. Maybe you were the one that gave me the idea. I dont know. Curious. Sam, thanks core coming in and talking to us. Joining me now is james fal lows, National Correspondent for the atlantic. Zwrams, you went on quite a tweet storm last night in reaction to the president s speech in phoenix. You talked about all the things youve seen president s do, all the ways youve reacted to president s speeches and yet you had never seen anything like that. Its true, because there is a certain gravity, a certain responsibility that comes with the unique responsibility and the unique opportunity of being the president of the United States. And as your previous guest was saying, of course other president s have had times when theyve spoken off and on teleprompter, theyve been candidates, theyve been, you know, theyve been there as commander in chief. But there is a certain kind of constant i of tone they have kept. And its interesting as well that when some of them went informally unscripted, say ronald reagan, it was with a sunny message, jimmy carter for whom i worked, it was sort of a pieous message, george w. Bush, it was an earnest message. Whenever donald trump is off the script, its angry. Its self magnifying and angry and thats what we saw last night. Your reaction to sam just now saying that on one day he is being a president and the next day hes a candidate. Last night was just a campaign speech. The problem is when you are president during those four years or eight years or however long it is, every sing sell second of the day you have the attention of the world and of the entire country as being the president of the United States. And so, yes, there are different modes. You can have things that are more or less informal, but your words are always watched. They always have a certain weight. And if youre attacking the leader of your own party in the congress, if youre attacking your host state senators, if youre saying the press is illegitimate, that these are very, very bad people, very sick people as trump was saying last night, those inevitably come from the president. So every second youre on that jobl, the secret service protects you and you have the weight of being the president. And the taxpayers all pay for that. He says that he wants to unite the country. He says it over and over again. He says how his rallies have more love in the room than anywhere else in the country. Does he have the credibility when he says i want to stop the divide and i want to heal . Just as a matter of performance and sort of the eq you read from a person, the times when donald trump is talking about unity and were all in this together he has been either reading from a piece of paper saying i said this a couple of days ago or reading from the teleprompter. Whenever hes playing to the crowd going for it, its this old the crooked media, the swamp, these people are against us, they dont give me a chance. And you can see which one is the real him. So, yes, he has occasionally said the words of unity, but its very hard to connect tomorrow to his essence for me. Is it even possible to unite this country. I have a little contrarian take on that. My wife and i have been traveling around to smaller towns. If you ask people about National Politics they will say they love or hate trump, hillary, republicans or democrats. If you dont ask them about National Politics, they will say were working together on the School System or working together to get these refugees settled, working together to invest for our kids. So theres a way in which the country is really divided and the level of National Politics, my impression is the rest of the country is sort of day by day, the way its been for quite a while. So thats the strange, you know, cognitive disdense were in right now. We keep saying how unprecedent the behavior of donald trump is and how weve never seen this from a president before, but ultimately his behavior is nothing different than what we saw during the campaign. In some ways its taper, in some ways its wierld, but for the most part its the same. He still won. I are agree. He won under these strange circumstances, lots of things all going in one direction and you reported in the entire campaign as i was chronicling as dozens of other reporters were, this is the guy we saw for the previous two years from his announcement on the escalator talking theyre sending rapists and things of that sort. Very few surprises from donald trump except that he is entirely consistent with his past self. The surprise, i think, has been from the republicans in congress. They have not stood up more yet for the standards that predated trump and that we hope will post date him too. And the open question, which nobody has an answer for, frankly, and if you say you do, i dont know where youre getting it from is whether or not he can survive any of this. James fal lows, thank you so much for joining us. Yeah. Im not going to make you answer that question. Dont worry. Go ahead. Thank you. See you later. Thanks so much for coming on. And coming up, the president took aim at a familiar target during his phoenix rally last night. Well fact check his claims about the media next. Im. Im so in love with you. Whatever you want to do. Is alright with me. Ooo baby lets. Lets stay together. Super cool notebooks. Done. Thats mom taking care of business, but who takes care of mom . Office depot office max. Order online and pickup in store in just one hour. Taking care of business when heartburn hits fight back fast with tums chewy bites. Fast relief in every bite. Crunchy outside. Chewy inside. Tum tum tum tum tums chewy bites. For years, at t has been promising fast internet to small businesses. But for many businesses, its out of reach. Why promise something you cant deliver . Comcast business is different. We deliver superfast internet with speeds of 150 megabits per second across our entire network, to more companies, in more locations, than at t. We do business where you do business. Welcome back. As we mentioned, President Trump returned to Campaign Form last night in phoenix, which meant returning to an old stand by, launching baseless attacks on the media for assorted perceived sliets. The president made several false statements on policy and issues, a lot of which you can find online on politifact. So right now were going to narrow our fact check to just those claims about the press. So here is what i said, really fast. Here is what i said on saturday. Were closely following the terrible events unfolding in charlottesville, virginia. This is me speaking. We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence. Thats me speaking on saturday. Yes. That was President Trump on saturday. But he left out three little words. Were closely following the terrible events unfolding in charlottesville, virginia. We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence, on many sides. On many sides. On many sides. Theres more. Roll the tape. But they dont report the facts. Just like they dont want to report that i spoke out forcefully against hatred, bigotry and violence and strongly condemned the neonazis, the White Supremacists and the kkk. Okay. Here are just a few headlines that debunk that comment from President Trump. And then mr. Trump went after the coverage of his phoenix speech in real time. Look back there. The live red lights. Theyre turning those suckers off fast, ill tell you. Theyre turning those lights off fast. Cnn does not want its failing viewership to watch what im saying tonight. And how you saw all three networks carrying that live, including cnn. And finally, an old classic. I hope theyre showing how many people are in this room, but th