photo reportedly showing the terror suspects captured on the airport s cc tv camera. this new video posted online by a turkish newspaper taken from another airport secu camera purporting to show one of the attackers shooting a plain-clothed policeman who challenged him in the terminal. the police officers are being hailed as real heroes for their actions to try to stop the attackers. and today an emotional memorial earlier this the morning at theithe i istanbul airport for 44 victims. many people attending were airport employees. joining me is kelly cobiella in istanbul. an ammon mohyeldin in new york. kelly, this investigation moving relatively quickly but break down what you know about the russian-speaking ethnicity, if you will, of the suicide bomb s bombers. turkish officials will saying one of these suspected attackers was a russian national from the caucuses region of russia. a chechen jihad if you will. we don t have the exact name of this person or any of these attackers as yet only that this one individual was from the caucuses region and sources tell us had traveled to turkey from raqqah within the last month. the other two attackers according to turkish officials are both from that same general geographic area kyrgyzstan from one and the other from uzbekistan. we re still waiting on official conversation on names of all three and what their travel situations were if all three in fact did come from syria. nearly a dozen arrests between the two separate cities. we re not being told if those arrests are directly connected to the three attackers here at the airport. only these these are isis-related arrests and one other interesting note, one of those raids did take place in a neighborhood where turkish media is reporting the three attackers rented an apartment. this apartment rented, paid for in cash about three months ago. neighbors were suspicious because the people renting this apartment they said added extra security. they closed the window, never opened the curtains and they reported smelling a strong chemical odor coming from that apartment but, again, a lot of information we re still waiting for andrea from turkish officials. ammon mohyeldin. there s an incredibly dramatic heartbreaking story about a tunisian father who is one of the victims who had gone to turkey to try to stop his son from joining isis. why don t you pick up the story from your reporting. andrea, as we were continuing to learn more of the profiles of the nationalities of these who were killed outside the airport, ones v one of those stories has been remarkable as we learned and we have the nationalities for you on your screen. because this was the international arrivals all, you can imagine there were a lot of different nationalities, by our accounts there were about 19 foreigners and dual nationals. the other remaining victims of those 43 turkish citizens, many employees at the airport you saw that tribute today at the airport. but this particular story, this tunisian father, confirmed by the tunisian foreign ministry was a military officer who worked at a children s hospital in tunisia. he got word several months ago his son left tunisia, made his way to europe and ultimately to iraq, we ve been able to reach a family friend who confirmed the details of the story. among the aspects is that several months ago as his son traveled to iraq and ultimately joining isis he called his father and said he wanted to get out. so his father traveled to turkey and worked with tunisian officials at the embassy to get his son out of syria, turn himself over to turkish authorities and that s where he s been for the past several weeks. the father was on his way to the airport to pick up the mother who was landing at the time of the attack. he was at the airport, the mother was still on the plane, the explosion happened and the tunisian father, that military officer identified as dr. bayoud, was killed in the attack. we don t know the fate of his son. we understand he is still being held by turkish authorities because he was a member of isis. the mother is as well in istanbul, we re working on trying to get ahold of her. all we have confirm is this father going to save his son from isis ended up being killed in this attack that is believed to have been carried out by isis. the human tragedies that are a part of this horror story is just extraordinary. thank you. thanks to kelly, thanks to you, ammon. today homeland security secretary jeh johnson testified the istanbul attack had the hallmarks of isis. he addressed the heightened alert ahead of the upcoming holiday weekend. the american public should expect to see this july 4 weekend an enhanced security presence at airport, train stations and other transit centers across the country by tsa and state and local law enforcement as well as security personnel. we should not focus our attention on things like airports to the exclusion of other public places. is we re concerned and focused on public events and places across the nation. nbc news justice correspondent pete williams in the newsroom. people, what jeh johnson is saying, it s not just airports, there are a lot of soft targets, parades, sporting events and that they want everyone to be alert but we don t know of actionable intelligence no warnings at this stage. remember the brussels attack involved not only the airport but a subway station and we know what happened in paris. so they re well aware of this. airport security, the perimeter, is not the responsibility of the federal government it s the responsibility of the people who run the airports. the federal responsibility comes when you get to the checkpoint. so it s a shared responsibility but there s obvious concern because of ramadan because of what just happened in turkey and the previous attacks. and pete i wanted to ask you about what happened because many of our viewers may have watched earlier today when there was an alarm at joint base andrews, andrews air force base which you and i have flown in and out of countless times over the years. it s the size of a city in suburban maryland and there was an active shooter warning but it turned out to be a false alarm, bring us up to date. it couldn t have happened at a worse time. there was a drill going on that involved a security situation at the medical center someone inside the medical center who was unaware there was a drill going on looked out the window and saw two men with rifles who were part of the security drill. not knowing that, this person called 911. our understanding is the 911 call went to the local maryland prince georges county maryland police. so now andrews doesn t know whether it s part of the drill or whether it s something unrelated. they had to treat it seriously. the base was put on lockdown, vice president biden was supposed to go to the airport to the joint base to go to ohio. he was delayed. but it s over now and they all understand it was a mixed signal. no shots were fired. just underscores, we all react because when we re told by the military there s an active shooter situation we would want to communicate to our viewers, our readers immediately but everyone is on a hair-trigger. post san bernardino, post brussels and paris, post orlando that we are in a very tense climate in the states. and have been for years, andrea. and the message has been if you see something, say something. that s what the person inside did. saw people with rifles, made a call that s what we re urged to do, thin the base is in a tough situation and not knowing whether it s the real thing or not they had to treat it as though it was and you saw what happened. pete williams, always the voice of reason, pete, thank you so much. our daily reality check with pete williams. and donald trump is back in new hampshire today his winning streak last winter, he s igniting a firestorm afterboawa. kristen welker is with me now. hallie jackson in new hampshire donald trump, there s so much backlash after his speech yesterday, interviews he s done. let s talk about what he s said and are republicans chiming in and saying not so much? including mitt romney, but let s start with something trump has said in the last hour or so on the radio going after senator elizabeth warren. obviously she s been on the campaign trail for hillary clinton and she has come under fire from trump who has repeatedly gone after her on accusations she exaggerated her native american heritage. this is something trump has not let up on for weeks now and he doubled down on this line of attack. i think we have the soundbite we can play. let s roll it and talk about it on the other side. we don t have it yet. why don t you characterize it. he basically said, hey i have more native american blood than she does, basically going after her again on this idea that she is exaggerating her heritage. this is something that has not been seen as a step forward by trump for some in his party the latest of his controversial comments and that s why you re seeing republican leaders refuse to get behind trump. we talked about mitt romney reiterated the fact that he won t vote for donald trump and said his family wanted him to run this year in 2016. we ve also got utah senator mike lee out today with a diatribe against donald trump and why he won t support him right now. i wanted to play what howie car, who is introducing trump yesterday up there in maine and mocking elizabeth warren for the whole controversy over her having said years ago when she was applying for a faculty position that she had native american blood and listing herself as a minority and this is what it was an issue when she ran for senate and didn t resonate with the voters. this was howie carr, a conservative radio host, introducing donald trump yesterday. i heard hillary clinton and elizabeth warren campaigning. [ boos ] you know elizabeth warren, right? and andrea go ahead. in the room yesterday so you know how the media sits in the back of the room and after that moment from howie carr you heard people behind us yelling pocahont pocahontas which is the nickname that donald trump calls elizabeth warren, which many find offensive and several others echoing that war whoop as well. something picked up by members of the audience. now on top of all of this as though there weren t enough conspiracy theories out there already, let me give the backdrop here. donald trump was on a radio interview today with mike gallagher and he talked about this. former president bill clinton was in arizona flying on a private jet, private airport, so was loretta lynch, the attorney general, she flies on a small government plane, they both have secret service security details and it is, we are told, traditional that when bill clinton knows that a cabinet secretary or another protectee like ted cruz during the campaign is in the area, he ll say let me say hello because the secret service details talk to each other and say another unit is about to arrive. so he did say hello to loretta lynch, met with her for about 30 minutes, she said it was completely social, they talked about grandchildren but this has led to a lot of conspiracy theories that even before hillary clinton has been interviewed by the fbi to our knowledge that somehow this is bill clinton talking to loretta lynch about clearing hillary clinton of the e-mail investigation. so a lot of stuff out there and this is what donald trump had to say today on the radio interview. it was really a sneak. it was really a you know it was really something that they didn t want publicized as i understand. isn t that correct? i think it s so terrible. so horrible. i think it s the biggest story one of the big stories of this week of this month of this year. i ve been talking about the rigged system, how it s rigged and this is terrible. there s your example. you can understand why nothing has happened and you see a thing like this and even in terms of judgment, how bad a judgment is it for him or for her to do this? who would do this? it s a massive story now, it s all over. well, kristen welker, as a white house correspondent, you know how this kind of thing can happen. it does i guess fuel the spearsy theorists and shows it wasn t smart of either of them to have had a private meeting. there s no doubt the optics aren t great. i was speaking with an official moments ago who stressed the fact this wasn t set up. part of what you re hearing from republicans is that this was in some way arranged beforehand. it wasn t. as you pointed out, they happened to be at the same tarmac at the same time. it s protocol for former president clinton to greet someone like this, they talked about grand kids, that s what we re hearing from the clinton side but the optics aren t great, the fbi investigation obviously getting a lot of attention right now. secretary clinton having to answer a lot of questions about that on the campaign trail and even a democratic senator said this doesn t look right. so it s a problem of optics. now secretary clinton is off the campaign trail today but there s no doubt donald trump and the republicans will try to keep the story alive. thanks so much to kristen welker. hallie jackson, you ll have an interesting day up there. we all wish we were in new hampshire where it started so many months ago. coming up next major developments in the coalition s fight against isis in iraq. that s next right here on andrea mitchell reports on msnbc. now you can t spell nutriam i right?t nut, i mean whose to say it s pronounced nu-triton, anyway? my mixes contain delicious nuts, specially blended for your optimal nut-rition. that s right, i just changed a word in the english dictionary, forever. planters. nutrition starts with nut. trolling for a gig with can t blame you. it s a drone you control with your brain, which controls your thumbs, which control this joystick. no, i m actually over at the ge booth. we re creating the operating system for industry. it s called predix. it s gonna change the way the world works. ok, i m telling my brain to tell the drone to get you a copy of my resume. umm, maybe keep your hands on the controller. look out!! ohhhhhhhhhh. you know what, i m just gonna email it to you. yeah that s probably safer. ok, cool. keeping the power lines clear,my job to protect public safety, while also protecting the environment. the natural world is a beautiful thing, the work that we do helps us protect it. public education is definitely a big part of our job, to teach our customers about the best type of trees to plant around the power lines. we want to keep the power on for our customers. we want to keep our community safe. this is our community, this is where we live. we need to make sure that we have a beautiful place for our children to live. together, we re building a better california. breaking news, major developments in the iraqi coalition fight to retake fallujah. nbc news reports coalition air strikes destroyed nearly 200 vehicles believed to be carrying isis fighters who were trying to flee west to safety. a spokesman for joint operation command tells nbc news all of the militants traveling in that convoy were killed joichk me on the combined joint task force is colonel chris carver. thank you very much. what can you tell us. these are suspected militants, these trucks traveling out of fallujah looking as though they re trying to escape west. does it seem to be a significant air strike? thank you for having me, andr andrea we ve been watching these trucks. we watched them with intelligence and iraqis were watching them as well and as they gathered into these big convoys to try to escape, one convoy got into a fire fight with the iraqis. the air force came in and hit it and coalition air came in afterwards. we had multiple types of aircraft striking these targets over source so we the coalition know we destroyed 55 vehicles south of fallujah and east of ramadi we know we killed 120 vehicles, including three vehicle born ieds, the truck bombs they use to attack iraqi security forces. have you been able to do an assessment on the ground to make sure these were indeed isis convoy and not civilians? well, we watched with our intelligence platforms for a long time to make sure that those indeed were isis fighters. in fact, there was one portion of convoy that we were concerned that that there may be families involved and we didn t strike that portion of the convoy. we isolated that and shot at the vehicles where people had weapons, you could see military age males farmed in uniforms with weapons so we watched carefully to do that and the iraqis have been involved? the ground fight against these forces as well. to the fight outside of ramadi the soldiers got the isil fighters got out of their vehicles and ran away so we were destroying vehicles just parked on the road. it was a significant strike against them for their mobility and now iraqi security forces will hunt those isil fighters down across the desert. there was one report from an ngo, a non-governmental organization, preemptive love. that coalition says their team was caught in this air strike. do you know anything about that? yes and i have communicated with the director of that organization. he had a team that was out and it got close to where the isil convoy got in the fire fight with the iraqi security forces. the air strikes the coalition was bringing in were not near where this team was. but at night if you re an ngo worker trying to provide aid to the iraqi citizens and there are explosions going off and you hear aircraft you may not know where the strikes were coming in. but our strikes didn t come near where his team was and the most important thing is those individuals were policed up by anbari tribal fighters and no one was hurt from that group. that s a good thing. colonel to what extent is fallujah under iraqi, coalition control at this stage? well, the iraqis are firmly in control of the city of fallujah itself there s still fighting to the south of fallujah. they re fighting isil fighters in that area but the city itself is under control and we ve started to bring in what we call the hold force which will be the police and local tribal fighters who help security fallujah so if isis tries to come back the city will be defended and the iraqi army will move to its next target which as everyone knows is mosul. thank you so much, stay safe, thanks to the report from the field. thank you, andrea. coming up, the moon shot. vice president joe biden opening up about his son s battle with cancer. more of tom brokaw s exclusive interview with the vice president coming up next on andrea mitchell reports. after a long day, jen stops working, but her aleve doesn t. hey mom! because aleve can last 4 hours longer than tylenol 8 hour. what will you do with your aleve hours? parts a and b and want more coverage, guess what? you could apply for a medicare supplement insurance plan whenever you want. no enrollment window. no waiting to apply. that means now may be a great time to shop for an aarp medicare supplement insurance plan, insured by unitedhealthcare insurance company. medicare doesn t cover everything. and like all standardized medicare supplement insurance plans, these help cover some of what medicare doesn t pay. so don t wait. call now to request your free decision guide. it could help you find the aarp medicare supplement plan that works for you. these types of plans have no networks, so you get to choose any doctor who accepts medicare patients. rates are competitive, and they re the only plans of their kind endorsed by aarp. remember - these plans let you apply all year round. so call today. because now s the perfect time to learn more. go long. [bassist] two late nights in blew an amp.but good nights. sure,music s why we do this,but it s still our business. we spend days booking gigs, then we ve gotta put in the miles to get there. but it s not without its perks. like seeing our album sales go through the roof enough to finally start paying meg s little brother- i mean,our new tour manager-with real,actual money. we run on quickbooks.that s how we own it. mother in-law with a glad bag, full of trash. what happens next? nothing. only glad has febreze to neutralize odors for 5 days. guaranteed. even the most perceptive noses won t notice the trash. be happy. it s glad. i firmly believe we can do in the next five years what will ordinarily take 10. think of what that will mean. think of how many people you know who are saying, you doc who are saying doc, i want to make it one more month to see my daughter get married. vice president joe biden at his cancer moon shot event thinking about the efforts to break down barriers that slow research development and limit access to care. the vice president spoke exclusively and candidly with tom brokaw who is thankfully in remission after two years of treatment for multiple myeloma. 40 years after the u.s. first declared a campaign to cure cancer they hoped within a decade. everybody is calling this a moon shot but a moon shot means it s a singular effort. i think as you re discovering as you did wibaux, it s a moment. this is a moment. it could a b a unifier at a time when the country needs unifying. i hope so. what my family learned is we were always sympathetic to people who had cancer but we couldn t be empathetic until it invaded our family. i know you went through the same thing with beau. there s nothing worse than a spouse of child or parent being helpless and being able to deal with whatever that problem is. i often say there s a difference between understanding and empathy and it s hard to and people mean well. i don t know how many people say tom, i know what you re going through. how are you doing? how are you doing. after a while you feel like saying you have no idea what i m going through. i know you re trying to be nice. but unfortunately there s probably more people who when they say i know what you re going through in cancer mean it. but there s a lot to be said about what it made you able to do given your position and personality for others who were going through this because it was added incentive, however painful it was, and it was terrible painful. reality has a different way of intruding but when it intruded with you you had a value set, a family, you had something there the people i feel so badly for are the people who get confronted with this and don t have real support. they re just putting one foot in front of the other and nobody to turn to. . i think about them all the time. as we stand here, 1600 people are dying in america today. right now. and the projections are that if we don t get a handle on this we re talking about going to 12 million people this is a position where they contracted cancer. we re going to stop it. we re going to change it. i really believe it. i really, really believe. it joe biden and tom brokaw at memorial sloan sketerring last week in advance of the cancer moon shot events. tom said today on mo morning jo that he has interviewed joe biden 2340r years and when he watched that tape today he realized he has as he knows well and talks about lost two inches in height because of the multiple myeloma but is still fighting strength and still everyday om a different location is shooting his stories as special correspondent for nbc news. up next, no holds barred. the president unloads on donald trump, that s next on msnbc. i cannot support him after what he said about the judge. that was too racist for me. do you hope other members of your party do what you re doing now. i do. i think we should send a strong message to donald that racism and bigotry are not going to be tolerated in the party of lincoln. critic have come out and said this is a political move by you. r. i think i ve made myself clear, setting aside whatever the candidates are saying that america is a nation of immigrants. that s our strength. let s just be clear that somebody who labels us versus them engages in rhetoric about how we re going to look after ourselves and take it to the other guy that s not the definition of populism. president obama was hitting back at donald trump s divisive rhetoric, in their view, and disputing the idea that trump is a real populist. joining me now for our daily fix, chris sill liz a and sam stein. chris, it s working for him, though, is it not? this is his calling card. i mean, it let s say this. it has worked. that much we know. it quite clearly his appeal to be the anti-elites candidate, the guy telling it like it is, the guy not afraid of being politically incorrect that worked in the primary. there s no question that was at the heart of his appeal. i think it s an open question whether it might work in a general election with early results trending toward it s not. just a different electorate, andrea. the republican primary electorate in retrospect was prime for a message like this. tough on the military, tough on immigration, touting himself as a conservative. the general electorate that message isn t as naturally ready to sell. and while this is happening, people are beginning to dig more deeply into donald trump s promises. the winnipesaukee review of the millions he has promised to charity and they found less than $10,000 over seven years, sam that s heartily what far more modest incomed people would be given to charity. that was an incredible bit of reporting by the post. it s not just charitable giving. even the trade stuff, the fact that he manufactures his ties and shirts overseas in china has complicated the message. but the bio graphical details are distractions but if you think about it, the if you step back. the platform he s running on as a populist is premised solely on being against free trade deals. it doesn t include stuff liked a justing the tax code to help people at lower brackets, doesn t include the raising of the federal minimum wage, things that complement a traditional populist platform are absent from trumps. and that is also problematic in addition to the biographical stuff and inflammatory rhetoric. also i also wanted to play the radio interview with mike gallagher. this is trump on elizabeth elizabeth warren. she s a total do-nothing. she hasn t done anything. she talks a good game and she used her native american so-called phony native american status to get into institutions and to help her career and and i always say i have more native american blood in me than she does and i bet you do, too [laughter]. probably so. it s a total ruse. and she kept native americans out of the colleges and places that she legitimate native americans who couldn t get a job because she had the position. that s amazing. she kept somebody out but she claimed she was native american and had she not have been she would haven t gotten into those institutions. there s a lot to unpack there, chris cillizza, first of all, she was a credentialed person applying for a faculty position at harvard. who knows why she got accepted or who else might have been applying but that s right. he has been going after one by one anybody who seems to be on the list of people that hillary clinton is vetting for vice president so you can see this is going to be attack and counterattack. you never know with trump whether this is a strategy or something he does but if it is a strategy it s a good one in that what does trump need to do before anything else? he needs to find a way to as much as he can unite the republican party behind him. that s not going to be everybody. what s your best path to doing that? attack the other guys who you know your party doesn t like. hillary clinton, elizabeth warren, those are right at the top of the list and so, again, if it s a strategy, i actually think it s probably smart and he should keep doing in the the runup to the republican convention next month. and we have this from mitt romney at the aspen ideas festival. sam stein, i want you to listen to this. mitt romney talking about woulda coulda shouldas. my wife and kids wanted me to run again this time, interestingly enough. i gotten a e-mail from one of my son s yesterday saying you ve got to get in, dad. you ve got to get in. which is kind of a strange thing to me that because running for president is a great and thrill i thrilling experience if you do it yourself. sam, it s not going to happen but it s interesting that they re still talking about it within the family. it always seems like a great idea until you do it and i don t think that you know, mitt romney is obviously coming off as a statesman right now but that s in the context of this current campaign. if he were to jump into the campaign itself, you wonder how his image would be tarnished by it. certainly donald trump is not going to let him have a free ride. if anything he d treat him like he treated jeb bush during the primary. so there s reasons why mitt is staying on the sidelines. i would just want to go back very quickly to the elizabeth warren stuff because i think it says a lot about trump s weaknesses as a candidate, in fact. i don t see how this actually helps him. it makes him seem petty. makes him seem like he can t handle criticism and in the broad strokes he s attacking a surrogate, not even a vice presidential candidate. which is sort of against the cardinal rule of campaigns. you never want to hit down. so i think he s wasting his time on it and he should be focusing his attention on his opponent, who is hillary clinton. and just for fun before i let you guys go, we wanted to show you yet another awkward hand shake. i don t know why these leaders can t figure out that was ottawa. it s tough! you think when you re commander-in-chief. this was the most walk ward embrace. but there have been they can t seem to get it right. it s the three-person hand shake. and i would say i spent most of my college years thinking someone was waving to me when they were waving to the person behind me so i m not ready to condemn anyone for awkward hand motions. without any hand motions, sending big hugs to both of you, thank you for joining us today. thank you. coming up, another big surprise in the brexit aftermath. more on that next on msnbc. after a long day, dave stops working, but his aleve doesn t. because aleve can last 4 hours longer than tylenol 8 hour. what will you do with your aleve hours? i drive to the hoop. i drive a racecar. i have a driver. his name is carl. but that s not what we all have in common. we talked to our doctors about treatment with xarelto®. xarelto® is proven to treat and help reduce the risk of dvt and pe blood clots. xarelto® is also proven to reduce the risk of stroke in people with afib, not caused by a heart valve problem. for people with afib currently well managed on warfarin, there is limited information on how xarelto® and warfarin compare in reducing the risk of stroke. you know, taking warfarin, i had to deal with that blood testing routine. i couldn t have a healthy salad whenever i wanted. i found another way. yeah, treatment with xarelto®. hey, safety first. like all blood thinners, don t stop taking xarelto® without talking to your doctor, as this may increase your risk of a blood clot or stroke. while taking, you may bruise more easily and it may take longer for bleeding to stop. xarelto® may increase your risk of bleeding if you take certain medicines. xarelto® can cause serious and in rare cases, fatal bleeding. get help right away for unexpected bleeding, unusual bruising, or tingling. if you have had spinal anesthesia while on xarelto®, watch for back pain or any nerve or muscle related signs or symptoms. do not take xarelto® if you have an artificial heart valve or abnormal bleeding. tell your doctor before all planned medical or dental procedures. before starting xarelto®, tell your doctor about any kidney, liver, or bleeding problems. xarelto® is the number one prescribed blood thinner in its class. well that calls for a round of kevin nealons. make mine an arnold palmer. same here. with xarelto® there is no regular blood monitoring and no known dietary restrictions. treatment with xarelto® was the right move for us. ask your doctor about xarelto®. . boris johnson, a presumed run front-runner to replace david cameron has dropped out of the race. i must tell you my friends, you who have waited faithfully for the punch line of this speech that having consulted colleagues and in view of the circumstances in n parliament i have concluded that person cannot be me. joining me to talk about what s next, dan balz is just back if lon donald. he was supposedly going to it can be tory leader because of his celebrity coming out of that brexit vote and now what? we what do we know about why he is not going to run for the office and stay as a member of the parliament. this is a little bit like shakespeare meeting house of cards the amount of treachery and deceit over the last few days over this leadership. the conservative party, it s astonishing. this topped it all when boris johnson announced right at the moment when he was supposed to get in that he wasn t going to. a couple things happened. one is that michael gove, who was an ally in the leave campaign with him and had been expected to be kind of his campaign manager or certainly his strongest ally surprised everybody today and said he was going to stand for leader of the party and that split the leave portion of the conservative party and johnson decided at that moment not to get in. that leaves it at this point as a fight between gove and theresa may, the home secretary and she was in favor of staying in the european union but in some ways i think he now emerges as the front-runner but this is a terribly, terribly, terribly messy situation that they ve gotten themselves into and the recriminations since johnson made his announcement have been unbelievable in what s going on within the party there. can i say we ve spent two years trying to come up with our nominees. they ve done it in 48 hours and this is it. those who have not yet announced won t be in the race so it s interesting how quickly the britts brith brits do all of this. this is david cameron, i think he s a little unleashed now going after the labor leader who has been disavowed by the labor troops but is still hanging in. this is cameron blasting corbin on the house. we all have to reflect on our role in the referendum campaign. i know the honorable gentleman said he d put his back into it. i d hate to see what happens when he s not trying. it might be in my party s interest for him to sit there. it s not the national interest and i would say for heaven s sake, man, go. wouldn t you love to have somebody in american politics just say for heaven s sakes, man, go. it hasn t come to that here but within the republican party there are a number of people who would like to see donald trump go but donald trump is standing strong. but this is one more extraordinary moment. jeremy corbyn, the leader of the labour party is under attack from his parliamentary colleagues but continues to say i m going stay where i am and stand firm. so both parties are just in terrible turmoil. and of course there s no redo on the vote. thanks for being with us today as you arrive safely home. coming up, the cia director has a blunt warning about isis and the homeland. you re watching andrea mitchell reports on msnbc. about kids. and when millions couldn t get health care, this first lady worked with republicans and democrats to fix it. creating the children s health insurance program, so that every child gets the health care that child deserves to have. now eight million kids are covered. that s the kind of leader she is. and the kind of president she ll be. i m hillary clinton and i approve this message. or if you re young or old.are if you run everyday, no matter who you are a heart attack can happen without warning. if you ve had a heart attack, a bayer aspirin regimen can help prevent another one. be sure to talk to your doctor before you begin an aspirin regimen. bayer aspirin. trolling for a gig with can t blame you. it s a drone you control with your brain, which controls your thumbs, which control this joystick. no, i m actually over at the ge booth. we re creating the operating system for industry. it s called predix. it s gonna change the way the world works. ok, i m telling my brain to tell the drone to get you a copy of my resume. umm, maybe keep your hands on the controller. look out!! ohhhhhhhhhh. you know what, i m just gonna email it to you. yeah that s probably safer. ok, cool. it would be surprising to me that ie similar is not trying to hit us both in the region as well as in our homeland. if anybody here believes that the u.s. homoland is is hermetically sealed and that daesh or isil would not consider that i think i would guard against that. cia director john brennan in an interview with pbs hour in anchor judy woodruff at the council on foreign relations warning isis could attack us here in the u.s. joining me now is malcolm nantz. thanks for being with us. what john bren nonsaid seems self-evidence but it s surprising and shocking to a lot of people that, yes, they could come here. we only have an ocean between us and hem. it s a little surprising that most people have sort of forgotten the lessons of september 11, 2001. we have been in a war with terrorism certainly before that date but clearly throughout the entire iraq war, afghanistan, the american public needs to understand that they are not immune to individuals who are self-radicalized and who may carry out a terrorist operation. we have been much better against groups that are organized, that have been infiltrated to come into the united states, isis aspires to do that. our law enforcement intelligence agencies have managed to stop that, you can t stop what s in a person s those go buy a gun and carry out the attack. we here in the middle of a political campaign where facts don t seem to be observed very closely. we know what donald trump has been saying, talking about i ll fight fire with fire. they can chop off heads, why aren t we using watt wither boarding? this is what john mccain had to say about that. according to the geneva conventions, it s a war crime. but perhaps more importantly than that if you re not into academics and history is it doesn t work. in summary, it s not the united states of america, it s not what we are all about. it s not what we are. it s not about them. it s about us. that s john mccain saying first it s illegally, secondly it doesn t work and third it s against american values. your comments as a professional on this issue. i absolutely agree with john mccain. i thought at the school that had the only authorized waterboard in the department of defense in mccain boulevard in coronado, california, which was named after him, his father and grandfather, all great naval aviators. john mccain went through torture in the hanoi hilton. he knows torture. it does not work. we teach thousands of people every year it does not work. it is just sadism that is satisfied that people who think it works, this is not an american value. we are not just having a debate about torture and what satisfies us. this is an honor crisis we re going through, when a presidential candidate believes george washington s own standing orders about the ethical treatment of prisoners is going to be violated we will throw away 240 years of our values. no one in the military, no one in government should ever believe that and if they do believe it they need go out and read some books. . i don t think i can add anything to that, michael nance, thanks for being with us. more here on msnbc. stay with us. getting faster. huh? detecting threats faster, responding faster, recovering faster. when your security s built in not just bolted on, and you protect the data and not just the perimeter, you get faster. wow, speed kills. systems open to all, but closed to intruders. trusted by 8 of 10 of the world s largest banks. i ve got a nice long life ahead. big plans. so when i found out medicare doesn t pay all my medical expenses, i got a medicare supplement insurance plan. 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[ male announcer ] you ll be able to visit any doctor or hospital that accepts medicare patients. plus, there are no networks, and virtually no referrals needed. see why millions of people have already enrolled in the only medicare supplement insurance plans endorsed by aarp. don t wait. call now. glad forceflex. extra strong to avoid rips and tears. be happy, it s glad. don t call it a comeback. michael phelps does it again, breaking another record as he becomes the first male swimmer to qualify for five straight olympics. at last night s trials in omaha, he won the 200 meter butterfly event, sending them to rio. the baltimore native has two more events as he looks to add to his 22 olympic medals. that was 22, 18 of them gold. that does it for us for this edition of andrea mitchell reports. peter alexander picks it up next here on msnbc. good afternoon, i m peter alexander here in washington, d.c. right now on msnbc live, a false alarm in joint base andrews near washington highlighting the tension over terror heading into this fourth of july week end. we do have, as reflected on the news, an unfolding situation at andrews air base which may require that i take a break from this session. homeland security secretary jeh johnson responding to this morning s temporary lockdown at the military base used by president of the u.s. and so many american troops headed overseas and returning home. the u.s. on alert after the attack on turkey s airport. turkish media is reporting closed-circuit tv images purportly of the terrorists. there they are on your screen. nbc news not yet verifying these images. the death toll has risen to 44. secretary johnson saying among the 250 injured was one american who suffered only minor injuries. the nationalities of the three attackers are russian, uzbek and kyrgyz. turkish authorities arresting 22 people in isis-related raids, 13 in istanbul. we have reports from istanbul from new york a
healthdown. several high-level republican sources tell nbc news they are pushing for an intervention to try to get the campaign back on track before it s too late but trump says things have never been better. it s never been so well united. we started on june 16 i would say right now it s the best in temples of being united that it s been since we began. a new setback for trump today. new polling showing a significant hillary clinton post-convention bump. a new fox news poll giving clinton a 10-point edge over trump nationally and she s expanding her lead in key battleground states. joining me, katy tur in portland, maine, where donald trump is holding a town hall. first of all, there s a reason for maine. maine, like nebraska has that purl electoral college rule where the congressional districts do the elections. they can pick up electoral votes. both campaigns are doing that, nebraska and maine but in any case the trump campaign, donald trump sounding not just defiant but confident today, is that the tone? is that what you re getting? that is what the campaign is trying to portray, this idea of an intervention is something the campaign is pushing forcefully back against saying donald trump doesn t need that. that he was portraying himself as the outsider candidate and for him to have to endorse paul ryan is not something that should be expected because he doesn t need the establishment. as you can see he draws big crowds wherever he goes, they re chanting trump, trump, trump, trump, so the campaign feels like they are doing okay and when you look at that polling in battleground states, you realize that despite the fact they draw these giant crowds, they are not doing so well. especially in the states that they need to win over. pennsylvania being a key state. to see him down that much in a poll in august has certainly got to be disconcerting but as you heard this morning, paul manafort tried to brush it off by saying that it s early, it s a post-convention bounce for hillary clinton and that the polls should even out. you have his supporters like rudy giuliani rejecting the idea of any intervention. let s play a little of that. i find the word intervention completely out of line. what was this meeting about? there wasn t a meeting. i meet with donald trump all the time, i spent two and a half hours with him. we talk about issues, sometimes we make changes. it s an evolving campaign. he s a new candidate that adds a little bit of more of a learning curve than would normally be the ca case. and also a week after that whole khan controversy with the family this is paul manafort saying there s no need to apologize. he s expressed his sympathy, he s expressed his support for what the family is going through. it s the same thing we re caught up in, what s the difference between i support you and i endorse you? we quibble over words but the sentiments are there and the sentiments he feels he s expressed. katy, i mean, in my recollection what he has said is that captain khan was a hero but he s not said anything at all sympathetic about the khan parents, the gold star parents. and that is something resonating with independent voters and voters not entirely sure about donald trump. i spoke with one voter yesterday who i ve been following consistently throughout this campaign season who was a pretty fervent supporter of donald trump early on and now says he just doesn t understand why he keeps getting into these fights, that these are unnecessary fights. doesn t understand why he wouldn t show more empathy for the family of a fallen soldier there are conversations being had behind the scenes from donors, party operatives, those closest to donald trump and his aides urging him to get back on message, to stay away from the unnecessary errors and to focus on hillary clinton, finding a way to attack her. finding a way to forcefully put forward his message. he hasn t been doing that and they re warning him he will lose this election if he doesn t do that. katy tur at a lively trump rally about to take place in maine. thank you, katy. a growing number of republicans are refusing to vote for donald trump. my next guest is one of them. joining me now, republican pennsylvania congressman charlie dent. congressman, thank you very much for being with us. as we talk today, there s a new franklin and marshall poll, a battleground state poll showing hillary clinton up 11 points in pennsylvania. pennsylvania is critical to donald trump s somewhat narrow path to victory through the rest belt. is this does this poll reflect what you re hearing in the district? thank you for having me on the show. i saw the poll came out, i haven t broken down the cross taps but it s clear to me that these recent comments have not helped donald trump s campaign. that s putting it mildly. i would tell you that hillary clinton probably has a strong advantage in the in philadelphia in the collar counties, close to 40% of pennsylvania s population, donald trump has strength in the western part of the state in what we call the upper t, he is strong there. but the point is that all these incendiary comments. all these unforced errors are hurting the campaign. it seems he s hell bent on losing a very winnable election to a very seriously flawed candidate in hillary clinton. i was on the campaign trail with her through pennsylvania into ohio so she just had the impact of that bus trip. somehow that perceived looking at it from a political expert? i don t know, she had the bus trip, i don t know if that did a lot to help her. i think that her bump in the polls is more a reflection of i think donald trump s reaction right now to the khan family s situation. i think that s what s probably driving it right now. this seemingly this chaos in the trump campaign is driving her numbers up. that s not why i m prepared to support donald trump for that and other reasons. and also the comments on foreign policy. on russia and yk, have to walk back the statement that russia won t enter ukraine when they ve already annexed crimea and they re in eastern ukraine. these are issues giving heartburn not only to me but many of my friends in the republican party. you look at the crowning foreign policy achievement of ronald reagan and george h.w. bush was a dismantlement of the former soviet union and to have the republican nominee seem like he s saddling up next to the this neo-russian imperialist trying to disrupt the post-cold war order that we led this order after the berlin wall came down, the soviet union collapsed it seems it flies in the face of what many of us as republicans have stood for. so what are you going to do? what s that? what are you going to two? whom are you going to vote? whom are you going to support? well, i m not supporting hillary clinton under any circumstances. i certainly believe that her mishandling of the classified material recklessly and negligently should disqualify her from serving as commander-in-chief and i ve expressed my concerns about donald trump. i might have to write somebody in. secretary robert gates is a fine man. there are plenty of other people but i feel like many americans, very unhappy with the choices of the two major political parties and we ll have to think about this as we move closer. i m not prepared to endorse our nominee. are you going to vote libertarian? would you consider supporting that ticket? supporting who? hillary clinton? no the libertarian ticket. oh, no. gary johnson. i have a lot of respect for governor weld, he s a good man. i don t know gary johnson. i think that ticket should be reversed actually. gary johnson has made statements, too, something like he wasn t going to smoke dope between now and the election. that s not particularly encouraging or inspiring but i m not there either. so a lot of my colleagues i know my colleague adam kinsinger was on some shows today stating similar things i have that and my other colleague i m one of the co-chairs of the center right group in congress, the tuesday group myself, bob dole, adam kinsinger and we have all taken the same position right now and we re going to have more conversations about how we deal with this moving forward but we re not prepared to embrace our nominee. there has been some reporting there are even people within the party who are talking especially after what trump said about paul ryan and upsetting reince priebus who s so close to paul ryan, there s even talk about a scenario where the party would invoke rule nine and try to take back the nomination and come up with another choice. is that complete fantasy? well, i don t know if that s possible or not, to be perfectly candid. this is a mystery to me. why would the nominee poke a stick in the face of the speaker. the titular head of the republican party? it makes no sense. paul ryan is going to win his primary by a huge margin, why pick a fight with him? why restart a fight with john mccain and kelly ayotte, two very important senators to maintaining our majority and why would he pick a fight with him? he talks about unity on the one hand but seems to involve himself in the speaker s primary, also again fighting with john mccain who he previously demeaned his service as a p.o.w. it s inexplicable and incomprehensible. if you re trying to win you wouldn t be saying things like this? congressman charlie dent from pennsylvania. pennsylvania is key among the battleground states. next to ohio, probably the most important place so you are a great thermometer of a window into what is going on. there thank you very much, sir, thanks for being with us. thank you, andrea. great to be with you. coming up. that proxy war, paul ryan s primary opponent thrown into the middle of the standoff between donald trump and ryan. he s joining me next on andrea mitchell reports only here on msnbc. guess what i just did? built a sandcastle? ha, no, i switched to geico and got more. more? 24/7 access online, on the phone or with the geico app. that is more. go get some mud. all that more has to be why they re the second-largest auto insurer. everybody likes more. mhm, i think so. geico. expect great savings and a whole lot more. at clorox 2 we ve turned removing stains into a science. now pre-treat with clorox 2! watch stains disappear right before your eyes. remove 4 times more stains than detergent alone. the search for relief often leads to this. introducing drug-free aleve direct therapy. a high intensity tens device that uses technology once only in doctors offices. for deep penetrating relief at the source. new aleve direct therapy. my name is jamir dixon and i m a locafor pg&e.rk fieldman most people in the community recognize the blue trucks as pg&e. my truck is something new. it s an 811 truck. when you call 811, i come out to your house and i mark out our gas lines and our electric lines to make sure that you don t hit them when you re digging. 811 is a free service. i m passionate about it because every time i go on the street i think about my own kids. they re the reason that i want to protect our community and our environment, and if me driving a that truck means that somebody gets to go home safer, then i ll drive it every day of the week. together, we re building a better california. donald trump heads to wisconsin tomorrow, the home state, of course, of house speaker paul ryan. after tweeting a shoutout to ryan s challenger in next week s primary, an unprecedented slap in the face of the highest elected republican. on wisconsin radio today, ryan was unphased. he s had a pretty strange one since the convention. you would think you ought to be focusing on hillary clinton, on all of her deficiencies. she is such a weak candidate that one would think we d be on offense against hillary clinton and it is distressing that that s not what we re talking about these days. trump continued his war of words with republican leaders when he pointedly used ryan s own words about him to say i m not quite there yet about endorsing ryan s reelection. today trump s campaign chairman paul manafort tried to smooth things over. he s tried to bridge the party together with paul ryan but ryan is running against somebody who is not going to win but nonetheless is a strong supporter of mr. trump s so not just in paul ryan s district, that gets the notoriety because he s the speaker. joining me is the man running for congress in wisconsin against house speaker paul ryan. thank you very much for joining us today mr. kneneelan. thanks for having me. do you have any pause? you just heard charlie dent, the conservative congressman, saying he can not support donald trump because of what trump said about the gold star family and also what he s said about russia and putin and ukraine and trump s lack of knowledge about what putin has done in ukraine and elsewhere. why are you supporting zplump. i m supporting donald trump because donald trump is against this trade deal, this transpacific partnership, this job-killing treat deal that is going to bring cheap labor into this country that will disproportionately hurt blacks and immigrants already here. and he s also against mr. trump is also for securing the border which mr. ryan is agai t against. so this identity politics and dividing the nation and using a muslim gold star family, you know, we all feel terrible that they lost their son and he volunteered to be in the army and so did so many other people but let s get back to paul ryan. paul ryan is the mercenary champion of this transpacific partnership, this absolutely job-killing district-leveling trade deal that gives up u.s. sovereignty, article 27 gives up u.s. sovereignty, it allows foreign corporations to bring their workers to the united states. that s a terrible trade deal and donald trump is against that trade deal. i m a business guy. i ve done trade all over the globe. i ve run fortune 500 businesses so i know trade. paul ryan name a time when paul ryan has worked harder for wisconsin or american workers than he s worked for his foreign doerne donors. paul ryan is taking food off american families table by his polici policies. the reason he has those policies is because the corporations that fund paul ryan want those businesses. let me interrupt you. he doesn t have foreign donors, if he did, that would be against the law. i didn t say foreign donors, special interest. you said foreign donors. my mistake. why isn t donald trump talking about them? why is he going off on all the other tangents? why isn t he focused on the economic issues key to the rust belt and wisconsin? i think he is focused on all these things. the media this is why the american people hate government and they hate the media. it s because we pick the this one thing and we ll continue to pick at it when, in fact, we should be talking about this. why are you asking me questions about this? why aren t you asking me questions about the trade deal. he kept it up for days and days. he was a candidate. you should be asking i ll decide what i want to ask you. what about the fact that mike pence has endorsed paul ryan? they re friends. if i had a friend i knew for 20 or 30 years, do you think i d endorse somebody who i don t know? he s nott endorsing an open border policy, he s endorsing his friend. and i give credit for donald trump saying endorse your friend, i don t have a problem with that. my message hasn t changed from day one. i would run on transpacific partnership alone. paul ryan with the votes to get fast track trade promotion authorities to sell our jobs to foreign countries, he absolutely worked on that. paul ryan owns it, he can t say he doesn t agree with it because when he did that, that contract was already written. it was already set up, that treaty was already set up. and are you going to be campaigning with donald trump tomorrow when he s in wisconsin? no. i m not. i m going to be here in the district. i m never going to say never that i would not be in green bay. i m never going to say never. but my intention is to be campaigning in the district and that s absolutely what i ve been doing. i ve been having the greatest conversations with people at their doors and they are tired of paul ryan s history, 20-year history, essentially why do you think the polling shows he s gotten a 84% support among the voters? i m not sure exactly who they polled because i m telling you, we are knocking thousands of doors and we re hearing otherwise. okay, the election is next week. we ll see how it turns out. thank you very much for joining us. thanks, andrea. coming up, breaking away. after more defections, is it too late for trump to bring his party back together? you re watching andrea mitchell reports only on msnbc. before te for the first time. gilman: go get it, marcus. go get it. .coach gilman used his cash rewards credit card from bank of america to earn 1% cash back everywhere, every time. at places like the batting cages. 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[ laughter ] number up with, this boy s got a future. nicely done. let me tell you what, i couldn t be more proud to stand with donald trump and we are shoulder to shoulder in this campaign. sometimes things don t always come out like you mean, right? and donald trump and i are determined to work together. we have different styles. you might have noticed that. mike pence today with an 11-year-old at a rally who questioned donald trump s language. that s a remarkable exchange and it shows mike pence and his ability to relate. trump s running mate doing what he can to right the campaign s ship after a week of bad headlines and party defections. republican congressman adam kinsinger, an iraq and afghanistan war veteran the latest to make the break saying he can not vote for trump after comments about a gold star family. joiningis bill kristol, editor of the weekly standard, an outspoken critic of donald trump. paul ryan, the house speaker, for the speaker of the house who is enormously popular in his district and among republicans to be opposed or challenges in snarky ways from the republican nominee is quite a first. it s i think it s something new but trump is corrupting everyone who has supported him and is working with him. i ve known mike pence very well when he was a washington congressman, mike and karen are friends, i have a high regard for him. if he had his way it would be a different looking campaign but he can t just say look, i m the vice presidential nominee, it would be better for the country if donald trump were president, here s why, policy, poll six policy. instead he feels somehow compelled i don t understand this. why does he have to say i m proud to stand with donald trump, shoulder to shoulder. he s not proud to stand with donald trump. i m going to say that as a fact. mike pence goes home at night and thinks oh my god. what did i get into? this guy is vulgarizing american politics. the attack on the khan parents is not inappropriate but despicable. i think mike believes that unless he s so rationalized it. paul ryan, why doesn t paul ryan just say i m withdrawing my support of donald trump, i m staying out of the presidential race ? i think it s important the house have a majority of republicans for the following policy reasons, paul ryan would be better than anyone else in the country in articulating those reasons. why does he feel he has to support trump? that s an honest question, not rhetorical. i understand it s party politics and he s the speaker and his members but really at some point doesn t sort of self-respect sort of rear up and you just say to yourself why am i saying things i don t believe? paul ryan does not believe donald trump should be the next president of the united states. and donald trump has begun to say something about the system being rigged which is something he s picking up from bernie sanders, clearly trying to reach out to those supporters but there is another implication here, i wanted to play some of that. i m afraid the election is going to be rigged. i have to be honest. it s a crooked system. it s a rigged system. we re running against a rigged system. now there is an implication there which is to insinuate or inoculate against loss and to then inspire your supporters to not accept the verdict if it is a hillary clinton victory and it reminds me of what happened in 2000 when people praised al gore for after the ruling even though he had won the popular vote for coming out and conceding in a gracious fashion because there could have been a different reaction from the public. and richard nixon in 1960 i read about that, too, who could have contest add couple states. precisely. it s one thing to say the primary process is rigged because that is complicated. there are cautions, super delegates, et cetera. that s a more of a legitimate gr intraparty fight. but when he starts talking about his defeat ahead of time by inventing the notion the whole system is rigged, that s bad for the country and bad for democracy. but, again, i m shocked. the washington post headline we were talking about it before the show began gop at new level of panic over trump then all these republican consultants and office holders, if only he would get his message straight, stay on message. pivot. pivot, focus on hillary. do these people what do they think late at night? do think they donald trump should be president? if not, don t they have some responsibility to say no? it doesn t mean they have to support hillary clinton. there s a libertarian candidate. i think there will be at least minor independent libertarian but there could be an independent candidate on some ballots, not a famous person but at least someone. the degree to which people have rationalized continuing to support donald trump while making themselves feel better by giving quotations either on the record or on background or nbc news or the weekly standard saying well, i m upset about this latest thing, that s kind of bad. has anything changed? 13 months that was year ago exactly, he said john mccain, p.o.w., doesn t have any respect for that, he s a loser, he prefers people who don t get captured. nothing s changed. nothing s changed. there s no new revelation about donald trump. let me ask you. what will you do? i asked charlie dent, he said he might write in bob gates. if it s a close election, close electoral vote as we approach election day, what will you do? in that case, a vote if you don t vote for hillary clinton it is a vote for donald trump so you can talk about. if you re a republican who votes for someone else, you re taking a vote away from donald trump. if i were in the clinton campaign i would want there to be speaking hard headedly an independent conservative candidate for republicans to feel they can in good conscience vote for. it may be a bridge too far to ask some republicans will vote for hillary clinton and they re friends of mine and that s fine. others feel they can t and you would want to give them another place to go. so i hope either the libertarian ticket gets its act together or another independent candidate on the ballot in at least some states and it could be a write in in other states, a conservative whom a republican could in good conscience vote for. bill kristol, thanks for being here. coming up, the fight against zika. florida launching an aerial assault against the disease and the pentagon confirms members of the military have contracted zika overseas. the surgeon general joining me next on andrea mitchell reports on msnbc. it s your grandpappy s hammer and he would have wanted you to have it. it meant a lot to him. yes, ge makes powerful machines. but i ll be writing the code that will allow those machines to share information with each other. i ll be changing the way the world works. (interrupting) you can t pick it up, can you? go ahead. he can t lift the hammer. it s okay though! you re going to change the world. now that i work there, i value dothe food even more. i feed it to yoshi because there are no artificial colors, preservatives and it s made with real chicken. i m so proud to make dog chow natural in davenport, iowa. jen stops working, but her aleve doesn t. hey mom! because aleve can last 4 hours longer than tylenol 8 hour. what will you do with your aleve hours? at clorox 2 we ve turned removing stains into a science. now pre-treat with clorox 2! watch stains disappear right before your eyes. remove 4 times more stains than detergent alone. the president and congress need to work together. they need to be a partner in this. this is not a state issue, this is a national issue. now if they don t, we re going to fund it. florida s governor rick scott calling for united front to prevent the spread of the zika virus. as we learn today 41 military service members, including a pregnant woman and seven of their dependents have been infected since january overseas. in this country, 15 cases have been linked to mosquito bites in south florida. just as the virus is spreading, there is a new warning from the obama administration, funding is running out. joining me now, the surgeon general of the united states, thank you very much for being with us doctor. tell us what you plan to do about the funding? is there a new appeal? the h.h.s has written a letter asking congress to come back, i m told they don t need to come back, they can just voice something pro forma but they won t. well, you re right, funding is an important part of this effort. zika is a public health interpret our country is facing but we can meet it if our public health agencies have the right resources. right now what is happening is the cdc and the department of health and human services are having to take money from other public health accounts and divert them toward zika. that s not good for other public health causes or a sustainable way to fight the zika virus. what about the spraying? how healthy that, is people are told stay indoors after you hear the planes. what about the health effects for people who are immune logically challenged the elderly, the young. what we know is there are a number of mosquito control measures that we have to take to address zika, these mosquitos aren t easy to kill so we ve been advising everyone to use mosquito repellent. it s also why insecticides is an important part of that strategy. aerial spraying has been used a number of times before in the united states, as recently as last year, in fact, in florida. this is something that is studied, that we understand the health impact of it and i believe that that it s important. there s a new vaccine develop ed. how quickly could this be put into play. we beginning trials. there s no vaccine or treatment. it s complicated because 80% of people who get the virus don t have symptom which is makes it more challenging to manage so we need a vaccine. that s why we were happy to start the phase 1 trials. the problem is that s just one step. we need phase two trials and further studies and right now the nih and bio medical advanced research and development authority are going to run out of funds to support vaccine develop developme development as early as august and that s why it s important to bring more resources. and what about your concerns beyond florida? what likelihood is it that it will spread beyond florida? we ve been concerned for many months that we would see local transmission of zika in the continental united states and we re worried about that. we ve seen many cases in florida. we ve had to issue travel guidance to pregnant women for a section of florida that s just north of downtown miami. it s important we take steps to reduce the mosquito population and that s also why it s important individuals take steps to protect themselves including staying in air conditioned spaces, wearing long sleeves and pants and getting rid of stagnant water because these mosquitos can breed in an area as small as a bottle cap. good advice from the surgeon general of the united states. dr. murthy, thank you for being with us. glad to be with you. coming up, more trouble for donald trump. new polling showing hillary clinton opening up a big lead in some swing states. more than that on andrea mitchell reports only on msnbc. using 60,000 points from my chase ink card i bought all the framework. wire. and plants needed to give my shop. a face. no one will forget. see what the power of points can do for your business. learn more at chase.com/ink every day is a chance to dop,s something great.. business. and for the ones they love, they d do anything. sears optical has glasses made for doing. right now, buy one pair and get another free. quality eyewear for doers. sears optical be the you who doesn t cover your moderate to severe plaque psoriasis. be the you who shows up in that dress. who hugs a friend. who is done with treatments that don t give you clearer skin. be the you who controls your psoriasis with stelara® just 4 doses a year after 2 starter doses. stelara® may lower your ability to fight infections and may increase your risk of infections and cancer. some serious infections require hospitalization. before treatment, get tested for tuberculosis. before starting stelara® tell your doctor if you think you have an infection or have symptoms such as: fever, sweats, chills, muscle aches or cough. always tell your doctor if you have any signs of infection, have had cancer, if you develop any new skin growths or if anyone in your house needs or has recently received a vaccine. alert your doctor of new or worsening problems, including headaches, seizures, confusion and vision problems these may be signs of a rare, potentially fatal brain condition. some serious allergic reactions can occur. do not take stelara® if you are allergic to stelara® or any of its ingredients. most people using stelara® saw 75% clearer skin and the majority were rated as cleared or minimal at 12 weeks. be the you who talks to your dermatologist about stelara®. at clorox 2 we ve turned removing stains into a science. now pre-treat with clorox 2! watch stains disappear right before your eyes. remove 4 times more stains than detergent alone. so guys with ed can. take viagra when they need it. ask your doctor if your heart is healthy enough for sex. do not take viagra if you take nitrates for chest pain or adempas® for pulmonary hypertension. your blood pressure could drop to an unsafe level. to avoid long-term injury, seek immediate medical help for an erection lasting more than four hours. stop taking viagra and call your doctor right away if you experience a sudden decrease or loss in vision or hearing. ask your doctor about viagra single packs. donald trump scrambling to get his campaign back on track following a string of bad headlines. new polling spelling trouble for trump as hillary clinton gets a significant bump in key battleground states. in new hampshire, clinton opening up a 15-point lead over trump. a new poll out of pennsylvania showing another double-digit lead for clinton, this one by 11 points. in michigan, clinton holding a nine-point lead and new this hour, a florida poll showing clinton with a six-point lead over donald trump. joining me now for our daily fix, chris cillizza, founder of the washington post fix blog, ann gearan and karen tim multi. chris, the battleground states, it s early, we re in august and there s time and the conventions were early. but this is not a good trend line for trump. no, the question here for donald trump is is this a convention bounce that hillary clinton is enjoying that will wear off and the race will move back to low single digits in a lot of these places or this lasting in some way and even if it fades slightly and it s a seven, eight point race in new hampshire, how problematic is that for him? remember, this isn t just about the two conventions, andrea, this is about the last six days donald trump has had which are i hesitate to say this because you never know but among the six worst days of i can imagine any candidate having so i think it s the convention bounce compounded with what he s done and not done in this last few weeks that we see where he is in polling. and karen timilty, you ve spent a lot of times covering republicans as well as democrats what are you hearing from inside trump world and the republican larger world? well, inside trump world you don t hear a lot because basically trump world consists of trump. there s a panic setting in among republicans not just because of the top of the ticket but look at those new hampshire numbers. those are bad for kelly ayotte, who is senator kelly ayotte running for reelection. she has an even bigger deficit. i talked to one republican political consultant yesterday who does races around the country and he says the first question for every single candidate is how do you deal with donald trump? how do you distance yourself where you need to without alienating his supporters. ann gearan, this iran situation was such an unforced error for this administration. they came out on camera, the president, january 17, they never explained that this other money was going $400 million. it s unrelated to the nuclear deal. why do it on the same day? it s a mystery why exactly they didn t need to do it that day, there was nothing in particular forcing their hand that we know of to do it that day. but also why hide the ball at all? they could have been up front at the beginning in describing the hole, the entirety of the money that was going to go to the iranians and how it was going to happen. there s nothing objectively wrong with the way this deal was structured financially when laid out has a reason, you can disagree, as many republicans do, with the theory of the case that any of it should have been paid at all but the way it was structured is financially fine. why not just lay it out there rather than waiting for the wall street journal to find it and then having it look like they were hiding it all along. and, in fact, hillary clinton responding to it at a denver nbc affiliate kusa interview yesterday. so far as i know it had nothing to do with any kind of hostage swap or any other tit for tat. it was something that was intended to as i am told pay back iran for contracts that were canceled when the shah fell. and i interviewed jim jeffrey, the former ambassador, he said he doesn t have a problem with the deal but the impression of the sigh mull tin nayty gives iran the opportunity to say we saw it as a sign of paying ransom. and you don t pay ransom for prisoners, people who have been detained for hostages, that has been a policy of this administration. they don t pay for americans held by isis. it s consistent policy but the practical effect is our hostages have been executed and the europeans who do pay ransom have gotten out. the subsequent wall street journal report which is that it was also a concern to the justice department that the timing of this was just too too coincident al and it gave iran a talking point which i think that more than anything is the real problem here for the administration politically. the optics are horrible. now, as the economic issues are front and center at the same time, chris cillizza, hillary clinton we two days ago i guess we reported exclusively this expanded map of where isis is and it was a cynthia mcfadden report on nightly news showing how isis has spread in the last couple of years. now libya being hit with american air strikes, the president going to the pentagon today. this is an area where hillary clinton arguably could be vulnerable. she was very aggressive in pushing for the military action against libya and there was by the president s own acknowledgment now a failure of follow-up. and if you say look at my record and compare that to my opponent s record which is what she is doing in this campaign, you have to own that record for good and bad. if you look at this campaign andr andrea, you would think hillary clinton would be ahead by 25 points just because donald trump has done so many things to hamstring himself is. self-inflicted wounds. talk about the supreme court. talk about foreign policy. he does some of this. he says, you ow, the world s a mess and it s on obama and clinton. that s not a bad message. the question is can he stick to the message? i tend to believe the donald trump that we have seen for this past 15 months is the donald trump that you get. that there s not suddenly going to be a more disciplined pivot happening. there s zero evidence that that s the case and i think more is the pity for republicans in that situation because this is a race on the dynamics of it, whether that s the economy, whether it s foreign policy, whether it s hillary clinton s own image problems is winnable for the republican party without a question. chris cillizza, anne gearan, karen tumulty, thank you all so much. kick start, women s soccer wrapping up their first olympic win and the u.s. men s basketball team have yet to compete but they are having a lot of fun off the court as seen in this video of the nba stars singing on their way to the olympics and not all the players are very happy about it. and i need you, and i miss you and now i wonder look at k. d.! if i could fall into the sky the new york knicks carmelo anthony apologizing saying he s not a morning person. more from rio coming up. stay with us. i d walk a thousand miles looking sharp, len. who s the lucky lady? i m going to the bank, to discuss a mortgage. ugh, see, you need a loan, you put on a suit, you go crawling to the bank. this is how i dress to get a mortgage. i just go to lendingtree. i calculate how much home i can afford. i get multiple offers to compare side by side. and the best part is. the banks come crawling to me. everything you need to get a better mortgage. clothing optional. lendingtree. when banks compete, you win. okay! that s the music of the olympic games under way in rio de janeiro. the u.s. women s soccer team beat new zealand 2-0 yesterday. a great start for team usa. still, a lot of concerns in rio from security to zika. just a day before the opening ceremony and our own ron mott is there joining me now. ron, great to see you there. first of all, the preparations and also there were a number of tweets and some booing for hope solo because of the zika mask and the sprays she displayed online before she got down there. local reaction, presumably, against the defensiveness and the protections by the u.s. women s soccer team. yeah and i guess, andrea, the booing was some people perhaps were offended by what that image might have said to the world about brazil and whether this country is infected with these mosquitos. we ve been here, some of us, for a week already. i have not seen a single mosquito yet but that does not mean we re not taking precaution, obviously. but back to the match yesterday and obviously hope got booed every time she touched the ball which was a lot considering she is the goaltender but it was a great match for the u.s. women. they re going for their fourth gold in a row and one distinction that they re working to achieve here at these games in that if they can win gold here in roe owe they will be the first women s team to win the world cup one year and then the very next year win olympic gold. that s never been done before. they are the favorite, obviously, the number-one seed in the world so the high expectations for the women s team. obviously unfortunately the men are not here in rio but the zika thing, we believe that may be over now that the folks in the crowd got their sort of frustrations out at hope solo because of her social media posts. and let me ask you about that yacht. the basketball yacht, the nba players don t seem to be staying in the olympic village. are you hanging out on the yacht with them? well, i wish. i m waiting on my invitation so i m checking the mail everyday at my hotel. they re not staying at the athletes village for a number of reasons. we re dealing with multimillion dollar athletic properties, if you will, brands, these basketball stars so they have decided to just stay, along with the women s team, at the in the port on this big cruise ship and some of the rooms have been outfitted with beds that can accommodate 6 10 , seven-foot frames and so they have to go through that one gangway all the way to the boat everyday. i m assuming they have to go through a lot of security to get there. i m assuming the process of getting in and out of there is a little bit annoying for the athletes but once they re on board i hear it s pretty decked out and pretty mice compared to the athletes village which has had sporadic problems here and there. while you wait for your invitation, i wanted to ask you about a really heart-warming new team, the refugee olympic team, first time, and the flag bearer has been announced. can you tell us? yes, the 800 meter runner from south sudan will be the flag bearer at the opening ceremonies tomorrow. it is a great story. this is a special story because these people have dealt with some of the worst things in the world. she s 23 years old and she will be along that parade of folks representing various countries and groups, michael phelps as you know representing the united states tomorrow with a very cool jacket, by the way. so this is going to be a big day tomorrow to start these events which have begun as we mentioned with the soccer. there s soccer again today but everyone s taking extra notice about tomorrow and looking forward to seeing that spectacle on television. andrea? ron mott, we can t wait. we ll be right back. only those who dare drive the world forward. introducing the first-ever cadillac ct6. now that i work there, i value dothe food even more. i feed it to yoshi because there are no artificial colors, preservatives and it s made with real chicken. i m so proud to make dog chow natural in davenport, iowa. takbbq trophies:hese best cracked pepper sauce. most ribs eaten while calf roping. yep, greatness deserves recognition. you got any trophies, cowboy? whoomp there it is uh, yeah. well, uh, well there s this one. best insurance mobile app? yeah, two years in a row. well i ll be. does that thing just follow you around? like a little puppy! the award-winning geico app. download it today. and i quit smoking with chantix. i have smoked for 30 years and by taking chantix, i was able to quit in 3 months and that was amazing. along with support, chantix (varenicline) is proven to help people quit smoking. it absolutely reduced my urge to smoke. some people had changes in behavior, thinking or mood, hostility, agitation, depressed mood and suicidal thoughts or actions while taking or after stopping chantix. some had seizures while taking chantix. if you have any of these, stop chantix and call your doctor right away. tell your doctor about any history of mental health problems, which could get worse or of seizures. don t take chantix if you ve had a serious allergic or skin reaction to it. if you have these, stop chantix and call your doctor right away as some can be life-threatening. tell your doctor if you have heart or blood vessel problems, or develop new or worse symptoms. get medical help right away if you have symptoms of a heart attack or stroke. decrease alcohol use while taking chantix. use caution when driving or operating machinery. most common side-affect is nausea. i can t believe i did it. i quit smoking. ask your doctor if chantix is right for you. that does it for us. follow us @mitchellreports. follow the show on facebook and twitter. chris jansing picks it up next right here on msnbc. thank you so much. can donald trump survive the heat of august? two hours from now he hits the stage in portland, maine, with doubts, defectors and also defenders inside his own party. his campaign today trying to push back on new battleground poll numbers in michigan, pennsylvania, new hampshire, all with one clear message clinton is winning and winning big. one big reason? check out these new numbers from fox news by 50 points 69% to 19% voters say trump s comments about the gold star military family he criticized were out of bounds. the drop in poll numbers were ex
we did discuss the wall. we didn t discuss payment of the wall. [ speaking foreign language ] joining me now is katy tur in new york kristen, first to you. she has not been very available. she gave her speech this week to the american legion and that was it. did some debate prep. probably more of that today and raised a whole lot of money. that was pretty much all we saw of her when she spoke to the american legion. we know what she was doing. she was fundraising. she brought in more than $140 million. her biggest monthly hall yet. the campaign is feeling they have a good war chest, but you re right in terms of the optics she sort of like donald trump have the air waves in that regard, but it s a double edged tword. so some extent, he s been getting negative headlines. the campaign doesn t think this is a total misstep having said that after labor day and on labor day, she s going to be out, in the big battleground state of ohio, cleveland, and. bill clinton s going to be in detroit and her surrogates as well. bernie sanders in new hampshire. it s all hands on deck i think after labor day. she s got joe biden and tim kaine in pittsburgh. big labor day for the democrats, and we get an airplane. that s right! finally! this is the latest of any psych that will we know of finally getting the press corps and the candidate in one place, one plane, traveling with her. and what we hope is that that would mean more access to the candidate. now, you and i have been talking about this for a while, the fact that hillary clinton hasn t done a press conference, an official one for about 300 days now. one of her top officials say, she is going to do a press conference soon. so we re hoping that s going to happen within the coming days, if not weeks. but the press plane does give us a little bit more chance to have access and ask her questions on a daily basis. obviously there s been a lot of headlines we haven t been able to ask her about. kristen, thank you very much. katy tur, donald trump getting his second intelligence briefing, and at the same time, we ve got the debates coming up, and all of this controversy over e the immigration policy as he for the first time, the first time we know of at least heads to a minority community in detroit to a black church tomorrow and now there is a script already ahead of the game, right? yeah, there is a script, but now we re told or it s getting reported that the pastor is going to be conducting the interview has new questions for donald trump that he is saying that donald trump has not seen, but the new york times came out with a pretty damning report last night, the script that donald trump was going to use in a pre-taped interview with this pastor that was going to play on and african american news network. the questions were given to donald trump in advance and the answers were vetted by a number of ministers. and they were the campaign was getting a bit of blowback from that by saying that donald trump doesn t know how to go to an african american community unless he is being scripted when he does so. and we, as an hour, not allowed to attend this church service that donald trump is going to be attending. we do know from what the campaign has told the new york times. there will now be an off the cuff remarks given by donald trump to the congregation and five to ten minutes. and he s supposed to be doing a neighborhood tour of some sort in detroit, but the details arounded that remain murky at this time. katy tur in new york, and kristen welker here, and it means baseball, barbecues, parades, and politics. and who better to talk about all of that than chuck todd? who popped up on the mlb network on thursday rather to discuss the state of the game as well as the race. it s been different. how different has this been? well, it s an anomaly. my favorite black swan election. it ll have an impact on how heed ya s relationship with politicians. i think the two parties were in the middle of a fracture where both are fracturing. high level of distrust of all institutions whether you re a pollation, whether you run a sports league. i mean, you know, commissioners are unpopular with fans in the same way political parties will unpopular. chuck todd moderator of meet the press, mtp daily, and mld that was fun. it looked slightly familiar. new jersey, the old msnbc headquarters. that s right. that s where it started and i walked in, everything was familiar. there was a lot of familiarity to it. went to the old commissary if you remember, you could go up the stairs to get there and all of that stuff. there was who was there in the old msnbc days as well. you can t go there. that was fun though. and the best show to do, brian kinney, he s data analytics. he is the big data guy on mlb. too much dodgers. we ll get nats in there too. a lot of praise for jason werth. we know how much he he s a hitter. always fun to watch him. now speaking of thinking man s hitters there s a transition for you. personal s analyst. we are going into labor day, and you ve got one candidate hanging back, but raising a ton of dough for the party more than the campaign, actually. and the other candidate goes to an intelligence briefing today and is for the first time going tow an all-black audience for what has been, you know, described as his appeal to african americans, but it s been anything but. after zig zags all over the place on immigration. how do you assess that? here s where we are. where we are is this, the dimming convention is gone, that is a fact. donald trump got a new campaign team. for the most part, they seem to at least have a plan that s put into place. they seem to be following some playbook, but trump is still trump, right? the immigration day. you know, you know, if his campaign team laid the ground work for him to soften walkback, whatever it was that they were desperately hoping he would do. that many latino leaders who kept an open mind thought he was going to do, then he slams the door, according to to the post because he saw the tweet by the mexican president. reminder that trump is trump. the most fascinating thing about the erosion here of her lead, she still had but it s her number that s moving. it s moving down. his number doesn t budge. we re going to do more on this on meet the press on sunday, but his, it s like noise. moves a point or two dr. her unfavorables are up. the numbers are going elsewhere, they re not going to trump. to so it s like 50-42, 44-24. he s not moving. some is undecided. a couple goes to stein and johnson combined. you know, some polls have shown him up a point, but some have shown him down a point where her just down five or six. so she s the fluid one here. and you have to be worried about one thing if you re trump. if you re number doesn t move, if you can t, you know, then, you know, you re basically hoping against hope that she so falls or erodes that that vote goes elsewhere. you have to hope that gary johnson actually gets stronger, not weaker. but it s maybe it s more than hope, look whom they hired as their new deputy campaign manager. he is a nightmare in clinton world. for 20 years, he has been personification look, with bannon and bossy here, i think trump is, he did you re going to fall into the rabbit hole of trying to just be so obsessed about clinton and so obsessed about going after them you don t put your own program you don t think about your own campaign. there s a lot of republicans who no longer in offense, a lot of republicans who went after the clintons over the years who obsessed over going after the clintons over the year, who basically ended up with egg on their face or they overreached or there s a lot of retired former republican officials who would quietly give trump advice and say those are rabbit holes, you get caught in them. after i feeling he now has if you have three people in the room. kellyanne conway, how do you win the election. steve bannon, i don t know if that s it. bossy and bannon, go after clinton, but that distract you? and that s something if you re trump you should you ve got to be concerned about. and i want to ask you something i want to ask you something just in the cultural arena which is what happened with the kneel down during the national anthem with kaepernick. i mean, i keep changing my own thagts about going going back to 1968 i m a first amendment person. i m not going tell anybody what their political view should be. you know, i think this is, this is a question up tow at this point, the only question is whether if he s in uniform, is it up to the san francisco 49ers, the nfl. this is between, in some ways this is between him and his employer. on the decision to make a political protest. you know, that s who he works first amendment is first amendment. i don t think any of us, who are we decide to say what he thinks or any of this stuff. plenty of people a l say, there s a better way to do this. that s your opinion. this is his he s got a first amendment right, the question about doing it at the football game, that s a conversation between him and his employer. and remember, those are private organizations and they may have policies or they may want to put policies in place that may seem to some curtail your first amendment rights, but if you re representing another institution and they re paying you to do that, sometimes that is the price that comes with that. so many complex questions, and so much coming up. labor day sunday, we have mike pence, bernie sanders. that s quite a combo. great show. thank you. and tune into mtp daily every weekday at 5:00 and on labor day weekend, of course if it s sunday, it s meet the press. you ll have an interview, mike pence and bernie sanders. be sure to watch. and coming up on wednesday, msnbc and nbc news along with iraq and afghanistan veterans of america are hosting both major party presidential nominees. hillary clinton and donald trump. back to back for a live televised prime time forum. focussing exclusively on issues that the next president will have to confront as commander in chief. all that mod rated by matt lauer. this wund, september 7th at 8:00 eastern. coming up here, voice of the voters. what they say, both candidates need to do in the next 67 days until the election. this is andrea mitchell reports only on msnbc. you can go ahead and stick with that complicated credit card that limits where you earn bonus cash back. or. you can get the quicksilver card from capital one. quicksilver earns you unlimited 5% cash back on ev-e-ry purchase, ev-e-ry-where. i shouldn t have to ask. what s in your wallet? fixodent plus adhesives. there s a denture adhesive that holds strong until evening. just one application gives you superior hold even at the end of the day fixodent. strong more like natural teeth. soon, she ll be binge-studying.. get back to great. this week 50% off all backpacks. office depot officemax. gear up for school. gear up for great. hillary clinton: i m hillary clinton and i approve this message. vo: in times of crisis america depends on steady leadership. donald tru: knock the crap out of them, would you? seriously. vo: clear thinking. donald trump: i know more about isis than the generals do, believe me. vo: and calm judgment. dond trump: and you can tell them to go fu k themselves. vo: beuse all it takes is one wrong move. donald trump audio only: i would bomb the sh out of them. vo: just one. hey julie, i know today s critic.need a sick day. dads don t take sick days. dads take dayquil severe: the. .non-drowsy, coughing, aching, fever, sore throatstuffy. .head, no sick days medicine. i m here because it is the home of democrats, because i believe today that in this country, there are millions of democrats who are just as unhappy with the way things are as all the rest of us are. this country needs a administration with a renewed dedication to the dream of an american. an administration that will give that dream new life. and make america great again. make america great again. where have you heard? that was ronald reagan with a theme that donald trump has adopted as his own 36 years later. now with the fall campaign about to kick off next week, what is the mood of the electorate? now is peter hard, connecting our nbc/wall street journal polls returning from meeting a focus group in wisconsin with revealing insights about how the voters view the nominees. and you would argue that actually hillary clinton in some ways is more like ronald reagan. she actually is the ronald reagan candidate. because in 1980, the american voters had decided i don t want jimmy carter with, we don t want four more years of jimmy carter. and the move was negative, everything that was there. the reverse is that they needed to know about ronald reagan. and to say he was safe. in, you know, like 2016 is just the opposite. the american public does not want donald trump as president. they ve made that decision already. all they re looking for is some reassurance about hillary clinton. i can live with her and i like her. and that s what we learned in the focus groups we did for the public policy center. well, and it was fascinating, lets me tell you that because i love the way you connect these focus groups and the answers you get, it s really the best touch toen for what people are thinking. this is when you ask people what is the scent, the smell of this campaign. let s watch. which scent or smell does the 2016 campaign remind you of? from chemistry class, sulfur. rotten eggs. garbage. i can t say on the air so i ll say dead fish. stinks. rotten eggs. skunk. skunk. skunk. garbage. garbage. manure. that s to put it delicately. tell me about the group, how it was structured. you were in wisconsin. well, what we wanted to do was look at what we call swing voters. we had four trump voters, we had four clinton voters, four undecided voters and what they told is they had in the past voted both democrat you can and republican in the last four presidential election. so these are the people that are up for grabs, and what we ve learned about them is something that you don t hear in the polls. and that is how much disgust they have with the election, but more importantly the sense of uncertainty about both candidates. and in fact you pick up on that with asking them to describe, let s go first to donald trump. what do they think of when you asked them about donald trump? a word or phrase to describe donald trump. okay, got to start again. real clean. erratic. devil. unpredictable. scary. brilliant. pompous. loose cannon. won the nomination fair and square. bigot. those are pretty tough. and then just to quickly play the contrast, hillary clinton. experienced. distrustful. liar. political. liar. dishonest. distrustful. liar. ice queen. liar. liar. so, if i m a campaign strategist, she is viewed by more people than not as a liar, he is viewed as reckless and erratic. that defines the problems that each campaign has right now. that s exactly right. and what it comes down to is hillary clinton has two advantages. people think he s competent and can do the job and she has the right temperment. the problem for donald trump, not the right temperament and knowledge to do the job. hillary clinton becomes quote, the safer choice, but in the end, she has to be more likable and she has to be more transparent than she has been. this campaign has been a campaign of keep away. keep away from the candidate, keep away from the voters. they need to reach out at this stable. they ve got 60 days to do it. and they need it not only to be able to win, but they need it to govern. and she needs to say, i understand your outrage and i am going to fight for that. right now, she s seen as part of the establishment, not part of the change factor. the great thing working for her at this stage of the game is president obama. his job rating is over 50%, people give him credit for the economy coming back. those two things are working for her. she needs to work for her own campaign. and if going back to the one of the things she said on a phone interview with anderson cooper where asked about the e-mails she said, you know, every time i try to explain it, i try like i m trying to excuse it. most recently with the kristen welker. so she said, i m not going to try to explain it because i don t it isn t excusable. it was a mistake and i m terribly sorry it happened, i m paraphrasing. she s got to come up with an answer. it s been a year and a half. and she has to come up with an answer on e-mails. and on the private server. because that s one of the big things hanging over her head. sure it is hanging over her head, but the fact is, you can t just suddenly erase it and everybody s going to say it s fine. what they really need to know is what she s fighting for and what she s going to do as president. right now, it s mush. i don t think that the voters can tell what she s going to do. with donald trump, they know what he s going to do and they re afraid of what he is going to do. she needs to provide that reassurance. we ve got three debates and forum next week and a lot of opportunities, but they re big ones, indeed. thank you so much. always. great to see you. and coming up, another kind of storm, not a political storm, but a real storm. the tropical storm hermine heading up this way. an update on the storm s track right here only on msnbc. meet . in person, we could read the room. on the phone, you re just a voice. yeah, i m good. for fast rewards, let s book on choice. this trip could really help us grow. should i stay or should i go? when it s time to go for business, book on choicehotels.com and get a free night when you stay with us two times. book direct at choicehotels.com burning of diabetic nerve pain, these feet learned the horn from my dad and played gigs from new york to miami. but i couldn t bea my diabetic nerve pain any longer. so i talked to my doctor and he prescribed lyrica. lyrica may cause serious allergic reactions or suicidal thoughts or actions. tell your doctor right away if you have these, new or worsening depression, or unusual changes in mood or behavior. or swelling, trouble breathing, rash, hives, blisters, muscle pain with fever, tired feeling or blurry vision. common side effects are dizziness, sleepiness, weight gain and swelling of hands, legs, and feet. don t drink alcohol while taking lyrica. don t drive or use machinery until you know how lyrica affects you. those who have had a drug or alcohol problem may be more likely to misuse lyrica. now i have less diabetic nerve pain. ask your doctor about lyrica. for four years. you named it brad. you loved brad. and then you totaled him. you two had been through everything together. two boyfriends, three jobs. you re like nothing can replace brad. then liberty mutual calls. and you break into your happy dance. if you sign up for better car replacement™, we ll pay for a car that s a model year newer with 15,000 fewer miles than your old one. liberty stands with you™. liberty mutual insurance. and now to breaking news, tracking tropical storm hermine wreaking havoc on florida s goal of course. leaving more than a quarter of a million people without power. it made land fall as a hurricane. the first to hit florida in more than a decade before it was downgraded to a tropical storm. now it could take up strength again, becoming a hurricane-force storm as it heads up the east coast. tracking it with our meteorologist on the florida panhandle. bill, let s start with you first of all, your latest forecast. andrea, this storm, you know, we may have had a land falling hurricane on the coast of florida, i think we could have more damage done in the mid-atlantic than we did down in florida. i ll explain why. right now it s moving through areas of the southeast coast, it s not doing a the love damage, it s a windy day and rainy day, maybe some dead tree limbs will fall down. that ll be the worst. no reports of tornados. so that takes us sfwhu what s going to happen this weekend. we do have a tropical storm watch that s been extended all the way to new york city right through long island, back down to the jerzy is shore, tropical storm warning south of that. this is not done yet. the forecast out, the 11:00 update from the hurricane center takes it through north carolina this evening. off the outer banks. and usually these storms head out to sea after this. this is going to get blocked. it s not doing that. it s going to sit here and linger. the thing that gets your attention, off the coast at 50 miles per hour, then it goes up to 75 mile per hour monday morning. that s hurricane-force storm just off the coast. it s going to be like a hybrid type system. part tropical storm also part nor easter. you get the combination of those two. it s going to remind people i don t want to say sandy, it was a special storm and sandy was worse nanna what this was going to be. it s a similar hybrid system like that. the vafl mostly predicted to be along the coast or off the coast. the important something does this shift to the west and bring the heavy torrential rains into the coastal areas? we do not want that the to happen, that would also bring the higher wrinds towards the coast too. no matter what happens, the storage surge will be a problem. not so much today down to the carolina, when it gets to the hurricane-force sunday and monday. those are going to pile the water up on the long island shore all the way to the new york harbor, we could see major coastal flooding with this, and in some cases, you know, we may talk about people, you know, water getting near homes and stuff like that. people will be taking their boats out of the water, andrea this upcoming weekend. this is going to be a major story. not to mention, andrea, ruining millions of people s plans and businesses making money this weekend. and that s probably not going to happen. well, bill, thank you very much for the bad news and thanks for going into overtime for us today. we really appreciate it. and gabe gutierrez is in the florida panhandle where the hurricane made hurricane overnight. a lot of damage down there. reporter: hi there, andrea, well this is some of the damage we re seeing, it s really downed trees is the issue here in the florida panhandle. you mentioned more than 250,000 people were without power here in florida. more than 100,000 people without power right now in georgia. as the storm moves to the north and east. other news, governor rick scott has said that there is one fatality associated with hermine. and it was a man, a homeless man the governor says where a tree limb fell on the tent he was sleeping in and his body was found unfortunately. yeah, this storm went through the morning around 1:30 just to the east of us, in st. marks came on shore with winds of up to 80 miles an hour. yes, it has been weakening and it moves over georgia, but as bill mentioned, this is going to be a threat up and down the east coast. through the labor day weekend, back to you. thank you so much. gabe gutierrez, and the presidential debate moderators were announced today and lester holt, nbc nightly news anchor is going to moderate the first debate on september 26th. and martha and anderson on october 9th. and the final on october 19th will be moderated by chris wallace on fox news. all first time except for martha. and elaine quijano will moderate on october 4. we ll be right back. (vo) stank face. a universal expression of disgust, often caused by inadequate cat litter. if you or your a loved one suffers from stank face, the cure is tidy cats. it s new and improved with guaranteed tidylock protection that locks away odors. so you don t have to face one more stank face. tidy cats. every home, every cat. there s a tidy cats for that. what makes wendy s baconator different? while the other guys use frozen beef from far away. wendy s only serves fresh beef from ranches close by. so we don t have to freeze it. add six strips of thick, applewood smoked bacon. and wendy s baconar isn t just different, it s deliciously different. sorry ma am. no burning here. ugh. heartburn. try new alka-seltzer heartburn relief gummies. they don t taste chalky and work fast. mmmm. incredible. can i try? she doesn t have heartburn. new alka seltzer heartburn relief gummies. enjoy the relief. appealle le tto our sense instability or insecurity in the same way he s going to the fears was others in hopes that this will, i don t know, get him elected. i don t know. which one of you do you think he s appealing to the securities or appealing to a base that might he might be reinforcing that people have. i think he s trying to play on the insecurities. and that s my problem. you re basically telling us we were hopeless about you, but we ve been hearing that. we need sop white savior to save us. we re capable of doing that ourselves. tramaine lee speaking with detroit residents ahead of the visit there tomorrow. trump s first that we know inform this campaign to an african american community. he ll be appearing at a black church. joining me now for our daily fix, chris ioalyssa, ruth marcu and senior political reporter, perry bacon. thanks to all of you. first to you, ruth, if i may, donald trump has been saying what the hell do you have to lose and all of the really tough things he s been saying to african americans presumably, but not really because he s been speaking in white, you know, white audiences. then he goes to detroit and the new york times tells us that there s a whole scripted q & a, now the campaign says he won t stick to that. what does he hope to accomplish tomorrow? well, whatever i have to say, whatever he hoped to accomplish tomorrow, has been rather seriously undercut. by this very good new york times story. you know, it s pretty amazing, donald trump has gone for the last year, plus, winging it in front of essentially, almost entirely white audiences. this one with an african american audience, he couldn t talk to them. then when he does talk to them, it s in a very contained environment. and then it needs to be scripted. it s worst insulting and at best, not particularly per sidewaysive to which ever audience he s trying to reach. african american audience or the white audience worried about whether they re electing a racist. has he already succeeded in that we have the media, the mainstream media day after day saying, this is part of his appeal to the african americans as he appears in all white communities. up until now. i don t think so. i mean particularly with the script. i would say i was reading the script just now before we came on, before was offensive in a lot of ways, your communities are terrible, your lives are terrible, i will fix them. it s more polite in saying those terms. so i understand why he has the script, it s not as bad. my question would be, why michigan and why in front of a black church. to be honest with you, mitt romney lost michigan by 11 points. he had 6% of the black vote in 2012. it s really hard to see donald trump doing better, particularly with his birther remarks with the president, i was curious like what the strategies of the trip is in the first place. is he checking a box saying well yes, i did go to a black audience? partly that, yes, andrea, but i think that this appeal and his rhetoric on the hispanic prayer to the speech wednesday night in this latest it ration is not really aimed at convincing a large number of african american voters or hispanic voters before him. or even convincing a small number. i think he has reconciled with the fact that he s not going to get large numbers, if he hasn t, he should. i think it s really aimed at trying to reach out to white suburban, particularly women, who he will need in record numbers. he needs to win the white vote by a historic margin to make the math add up for him. it s as ruth points out, i think he is trying to convince those folks that he is not a racist because they may not like hillary clinton, they may hate hillary clinton, but they will not, that group of folks, white suburban particularly women are not going to vote for a candidate that they believe is a racist. so i think he s trying to erase that sort of mention from his name with all of this stuff. so it is box-checking for sure. and that said, then what was all this immigration tap dance of two weeks where changing, we re softening, not softening, we go down and act like a diplomat and down to arizona and throw out the red meat. it s like dr. jekyll and mr. trump all over the board, that is because he s trying to achieve the goal which he s not the first candidate to try to do it of appealing to two audiences of once. he s appealing and reaffirming his appeal to the base audience and especially in a rally setting that is going to ramp itself up, you know, deport hillary, she should be deported, and he is trying to broaden his appeal in those two things can work at cross purposing with each other and i think that s what we ve been sighing over the last week. and the reaction from even his own hispanic advisors has been pretty chilling. i mean, the comments they have made over the last couple days, potentially suggesting he hoodwinked them, he lied to them. the mexico trip certainly, it s hard to say that it worked in any way. the immediate yoovrge, considering the president of mexico immediately say, you misled the audience. i said i m not paying if that are wall. i don t think the mexico trip worked a the all. i ll be curious tomorrow the danger i think is, you remember romney went in 2012 and he was booed there. really strongly and i think in that sense, it was public and it sort of hurt him in some way, even though he was trying to make his appeal. the way it is set up for him tomorrow where it s kind of closed doors, not clear who can get in and he can avoid being booed and therefore present himself as trying to speak to a black audience while giving a message like chris said that is intended for white suburban voters. chris alyssa, the donald trump going into next week as hillary clinton recaps her own campaign on monday. i mean, the challenge for him going forward is in some cays the challenge for him since may 3rd that he has not taken advantage of. look, he had more than a month to reposition himself while hillary clinton was still fighting with benz for the nomination. yes, the numbers we knew shefrs going to win, but she still had five more weeks to run. he needs to find a message beyond throwing red meat to the base. i think that message could well be, we can t trust her, we need a change, you know, if you re angry, i m your vote. that is a message. that populism has appeal. unfortunately he is focussed much more on playing to win over ann koult enand sean hannity. they are already for donald trump. and all their listeners. he needs other folks who are not righting in his camp saying, and he struggles to reach them. chris alyssa, ruth, and perry. thank you all. and coming up on wednesday msnbc and nbc news along with iraq and afghanistan veterans of america, are hosting hillary clinton and donald trump back to back for a live televised prime time forum focussing exclusively on issues that the next president will have to confront. this wednesday, september 7th, at 8:00 eastern. and coming up, out of sight. why is hillary clinton only held two public events in the last two weeks? we ll ask clinton supporter minnesota senator joining me next. you re watching andrea mitchell reports on msnbc. squuuuack, let s feed him let s feto the sharks!sharks! yay! and take all of his gold! and take all of his gold! ya! and hide it from the crew! ya.? squuuuack, they re all morons anyway! i never said that. they all smell bad too. no! you all smell wonderful! i smell bad! if you re a parrot, you repeat things. it s what you do. if you want to save fifteen percent or more on car insurance, you switch to geico. it s what you do. squuuuack, it s what you do. this is todd hardy. a fitness buff, youth baseball coach-and lung cancer patient. the day i got the diagnosis, i was just shocked. the surgeon in dallas said i needed to have the top left lobe of my lung removed. i wanted to know what my other options were. and i found that at cancer treatment centers of america. at ctca, our experts examine a variety of therapies, treatments and technologies to identify a plan specifically for each patient. my doctor understood that who i am was just as important as what cancer i had. we talked about options. my doctor told me about a robotic surgery that was less invasive. we have excellent technology that allow us to perform very specialized procedures for patients who have lung disease. at ctca, it s all about what you can do. i feel fantastic now. exploring treatment options is at the heart of how we fight cancer. the evolution of cancer care is here. learn more about our treatment options at cancercenter.com/lung. appointments available now. staying in rhythm, it s how i try to live, how i stay active. and to keep up this pace, i need the right nutrition. so i drink boost®. 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. in three delicious flavors. i m not about to swim in the slow lane. stay strong. stay active with boost®. hillary clinton s campaign announcing it s biggest fundraising hall yet. raising $143 million in august for the campaign and the democratic party. this is a new record. while clinton has been behind closed doors with the wealthy donors, not talking to the press, donald trump has been dominating the air waves, but who is the best strategy? joining me now is the senator and strong hillary clinton supporter, great to see you. thanks for joining us. great to see you. we ve all been asking when is she coming out? she ll are have a plane, we ll be traveling with her. and maybe we ll even get some questions to her. but does she have to come out and be more available, more responsive, especially as the polling and our own focus group that we played earlier shows that people still have real questions about her integrity and the trust issue. well, i think you know, andr andrea, that hillary clinton has been going strong on this campaign for the last year and a half she s been everywhere in all these states, public events, town hall pms i m not concerned about that. what i am concerned about is today, her major announcement, i m very excited about what she s done on prescription drugs and the fact she s taking on this major issue, mylan, something we haven t heard much of anything from donald trump about. and she s out there with a proposal that works for people. she put out a mental health proposal, she s preparing for the debates. she has been raising money and said that true, you have to do that in politics. and finally, to be honest, these two weeks are in minnesota, people are at the fair, people are eating cheese curds, watching the butter carving contest. it s a time in politics where people kind of regroup and get ready for the fall. and so i don t see a problem with this. let me just give you the counternarrative. if she had done her mental health event in public with the q & a with other, you know, other opportunities. p. she had talked about the ep pen today and come out and done that in public, i would bet she d be on television, radio, all of the newspapers. because it s an online news release, it doesn t get as much play. obvious show what she s up against. the conspiracy theories, here is sam from the trump campaign speaking on radio today about hillary clinton s health. from what i ve been able to explore, watching her get in in or out of vehicles or planes, she just seems a little wobbly and a little frail. so she s got to counterthat is correct as well. you know, we ve been reporting that. her moredical records, but in s much greater detail than his. but, there s still a study these conspiracy theories. and we have to start with that. i saw that photo of a doctor coming out. i mean, that thing that doctor wrote, give me a break. hillary clinton has put out her medical records, i have seen her personally, you ve seen her personally, andrea, she is in shape. she is strong. she s just has a ton of energy. and i find this actually quite sexist when these guys are saying this. i think that that is not an issue at all and the american voters know that. and the fact that she s going to be out there again and she s been out here for the whole year. i find that just such a non-issue. what i do see is an issue a and what i hear is the fact that this ep pen drug went from $100 in 2009 to $600. they put some reductions in place, but this is epidemic across the country. the big drugs, the top ten drugs best-selling, four of them have gone up over 100%. insulin s gone up three times. drugs in canada are half as expensive of america and she put out and has been working on this all year. negotiation of prices under medicare part d, stopping with pharma from negotiating these deals, the bill i have with chuck grassley with generics where they keep them off the market. this will make a difference to people. not donald trump running around tweeting things. what s going to matter is a change in policy that helped the american people. and senator, before i let you go, you re a former prosecutor, you were the attorney general, i want to ask you about a legal that s broken today, brock turner, released from jail after serving half of a six-month sentence after being convicted of sexual assault. the judge has been roundly criticized. this was a case in stanford, he s a student athlete. and what about the sentencing guidelines and a case like this which is really causing an uproar? exactly. and i have someone that always believed in strong sense for sexual predators. people that commit these kind of offenses. ooichbt seen what happened with this case today. these are the stories we ve heard around the country. somehow those cases are treated differently. when in fact these cases are horrendous, you could see a the love repeat offenders with this type of offender group. you see victims that put themselves out there and are willing to come forward and they deserve justice. senator, thank you on all subjects. thanks so much. good to see you again. see you soon. and still ahead, history revealed, tom brokaw telling us what you never knew about this iconic scene marking the end of world war ii 71 yeergz today. this is andrea mitchell reports only on msnbc. and you re talking to your doctor about your medication. this is humira. this is humira helping to relieve my pain and protect my joints from further damage. this is humira helping me go further. humira works for many adults. it targets and helps to block a specific source of inflammation that contributes to ra symptoms. doctors have been prescribing humira for over 13 years. humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculis. 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. ready for a new chapter? talk to your rheumatologist. this is humira at work. i am proud of you, my man. making simple, smart cash back choices. with quicksilver from capital one. you re earning unlimited 1.5% cash back on every purchase, everywhere. like on that new laptop. quicksilver keeps things simple, gary. and smart, like you! and i like that. i guess i am pretty smart. don t let that go to your head, gary. what s in your wallet? and now for something very special from nbc s tom brokaw. wars these days don t end with silenting ceremonies. 71 years ago today the deadliest war in human history did. now nbc news has uncovered can long, unseen footage from the national archives giving us an unprecedented look at japan s unconditional surrender in tokyo bay on september 2nd, 1945. nbc s tom brokaw has the story produced by dateline producer andy franklin. reporter: world war ii in the pacific, four years of bloody hell, came to an end here. september 2, 1945. a solemn ceremony on the deck of the uss missouri in tokyo bay. a mighty warship and a peace to celebrate. the ship was packed with hundreds of sailors, marines, reporters, cameramen, and top military brass with legendary names, mccain. representatives of nine allied nations and supreme allied commander general douglas macarthur. just before 9:00 that morning, the japanese representatives approached the missouri. they boarded in silence. took their places. and the brief ceremony began. it is my earnest hope and indeed the hope of all mankind that from this solemn occasion, a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past. reporter: mcarthur was about to become the ruler of japan and the japanese people defeated and afraid did not know what to expect until this moment. i announce that my firm purpose to proceed in the discharge of my responsibilities with justice intolerance reporter: justice intolerance. with those words, one japanese delegate later said the deck of the missouri was transformed into a an alter of peace. the japanese foreign minister signed the instrument of surrender, followed by the army chief of staff. general mcarthur signed by witnesses saw his hands tremble. the allied nation signed as well. during witness to the end of the worst war in human history. world war ii finally was over. let us pray that peace be now restored to the world and that god will preserve it always. these proceedings are closed. at that moment, as if on cue, the sun came out, and as the japanese departed, a stunning aerial display. more than 2 now, allied aircraft flew formation over the missouri. in washington, president harry truman marked the moment. the thoughts and hopes of all america indeed of all civilized world are centered on the battleship, missouri. it was no accident that the surrender took place aboard the missouri. it was named for truman s home state. the previous year, when senator truman watched his daughter chrissen the missouri as it was launched into new york harbor. just weeks after the surrender, the ship was back in new york, welcomed by thousands, including president truman. he visited the spot where the war had ended. he sat at the surrender table to sign the guestbook. and described it as the happiest day of his life. today, with this plaque, now famous day. the missouri has anchored where world war ii began for the united states. mighty moe now stands proudly and at peace at pearl harbor. extraordinary. and only today the president is in hawaii after a historic visit to midway in the south pacific. the scene, of course, of one of the most decisive and horrific battles of the war. he was there only last night. and now to an update on tropical storm hermine barrelling up the east coast threatening to became a hurricane-forced storm off the mid-atlantic coast this holiday weekend. first made land fall in florida overnight. as a hurricane, leaving destruction all over the gulf coast. hundreds of thousand was people are without power due to downed trees and power lines. one person has been killed. and the threat continues now up the east coast where states of emergency are in place in florida, georgia, and north carolina. so stay with msnbc for updates as we continue to track the storm all weekend and we will be right back. at your desk? 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(announcer vo) so wherever work takes you, you can put your customers first. introducing one talk another way verizon connects your business better. learn how at onetalk.com. i m hall of famer jerry west and my life is basketball. but that doesn t stop my afib from leaving me at a higher risk of stroke. that d be devastating. i took warfarin for over 15 years until i learned more about once-daily xarelto. a latest generation blood thinner. then i made the switch. xarelto® significantly lowers the risk of stroke in people with afib not caused by a heart valve problem. it has similar effectiveness to warfarin. warfarin interferes with vitamin k and at least six blood clotting factors. xarelto® is selective targeting one critical factor of your body s natural clotting function. for people with afib currently well managed on warfarin, there is limited information on how xarelto and warfarin compare in reducing the risk of stroke. like all blood thinners, don t stop taking xarelto without talking to your doctor, as this may increase your risk of a blood clot or stroke. while taking you may bruise more easily, and it may take longer for bleeding to stop. xarelto may increase your risk of bleeding if you take certain medicines. xarelto can cause serious, and in rare cases fatal bleeding. get help right away for unexpected bleeding, unusual bruising or tingling. if you have had spinal anesthesia while on xarelto watch for back pain or any nerve or muscle related signs or symptoms. do not take xarelto if you have an artificial heart valve or abnormal bleeding. tell your doctor before all planned medical or dental procedures. before starting xarelto tell your doctor about any conditions, such as kidney, liver or bleeding problems. to help protect yourself from a stroke, ask your doctor about xarelto. there s more to know. xarelto. and that does it for this edition of andrea mitchell reports. have a great holiday weekend. stay safe. remember, follow us online on facebook and on twitter @mitchellreports. craig melvin picks it up right here on msnbc. hey craig. enjoy your weekend. right now trorm hermine barrelling through georgia and the carolinas at a good click as well. storm watches and warnings are popping up along the east coast at the start of this holiday weekend. at this the hour, right now, the storm has claimed at least one life after high winds brought down a large tree on to a homeless camp. blinding rain, dangerous flooding, major storm surges causing some major damage as well. and historic beach erosion too. hermine showing florida as a hurricane overnight. wiping out power to many and leaving behind a path of destruction. making it the first hurricane to hit florida in 11 years. wnbc meteorologist rafael miranda is with us now tracking this storm. and my understanding based on al roker this morning is that this is a storm system that s going to linger for a few days i, no? that s right, craig, unfortunately that is true. and the threat from hermine continues to grow this afternoon. not just for the southeast, but for the northeast as well. let s get to the latest winds are down now to 50 miles per
respect and for people to respect our privacy, this, of course, reporting a report in the washington post that he sent more explicit images over the internet. criteria sten welker, katy tur and hallie jackson. kristen, first to you. we have been in touch with people close to huma abedin, close to the clintons. we can t overemphasize how important huma is to hillary clinton. how crucial her role is in this campaign, in the state department before that. having started as an intern in the east wing of the white house when hillary clinton was first lady. one point hillary clinton referred to her as her second daughter. that s how close she is to huma abedin. first, to some of the reporting this i m just getting, andrea, i spoke with a friend of huma abedin and want it is protect her privacy andomething he asked for and says she was out on long island, has been there since saturday along with other clinton aides and been there with her son jordan, other family members, as well. i m told this is something she does every year about the time that secretary clinton goes out there to engage in fund raising or vacation. and that the timing is coincidental. that this was not planned. that she just happened to be out there when this story broke. but you can hear the sadness in the choice of clinton world. obviously, as you point out, this is someone who s very close to secretary clinton. considered a body woman back in 2008. one of her top advisers now. you have been out on the campaign trail, andrea. every single day you re out on the campaign trail, she is right by secretary clinton s side. helping her to make some of the most important decisions and so this is something that s clearly going to be difficult for not only huma abedin but for secretary clinton and all of her closest aides. covering the state department, she was with us with hillary clinton every step of those 112 countries and, you know, million-plus miles. going to katy tur now and hallie in new york, katy you were a reporter to abc i think when this whole story first broke, the first it ration of this. there was the congressman weiner, the sexting scandal, high profile in new york. the denials and then the acknowledgment. of course, then the attempted comeback to run for mayor. they even doing a documentary. a reality tv if you will day in the life of. and then another scandal and now this would be the third if this is established that this actually happened, katy. it s very hard to separate the political from the personal here. reporter: absolutely. and he was someone who was a rising star in the new york political world before any of these scandals took place. as we know he took a hit afterwards, had to go dark for a little while. the mayoral run was supposed to be his comeback and he was doing realtively well in that race. and then the second scandal hit and that just took him out of his out of the race completely. and that was supposed to be the one that he, you know, lernled from, recovered from, moved past and he was starting to get back into the political spotlight a little bit more recently, weighing in on twitter here and there, and going on some talk shows to give his commentary for what has been a, you know, a wild political cycle. for this to happen again, it s just a tough situation for the family. obviously. and it has only exposed what s been a tough situation for anthony weiner, as well. let me add he has according to the washington post acknowledged that he and the woman involved this new incident, quote, have been friends for some time. she has asked me not to comment except to say that our conversations were private, often included pictures of her nieces and nephews and my son and always appropriate, he said in his quotation, at least in the new york times. excuse me, the new york post. and hallie jackson, donald trump has certainly had his own share of, you know, issues in the last week on immigration, an issue of substance. but in the past, he has raised this issue so this is certainly ripe for the opposition as they go forward in this campaign. reporter: he has. you know, it s interesting. andrea, donald trump tweeted about anthony weiner in the past, negative things and members of trump s family. you have seen him in these online i don t want to call them flame wars but trump is not shy about chiming in online about the former congressman. what folks i think have been wondering today is will donald trump talk about this, also? is this off limits or not to trump as he s installed this new campaign team that s and has been looking to get him sort of back on the straight and narrow at least a bit. what we have seen is donald trump even in these past of weeks getting online and twitter saying what he wants to say even if it doesn t fit the narrative the team wants him to push. will trump tweet about this? if he does, what kind of an impact will it have. the sense already i think you are hearing from some in gop circles is that it s not going to have necessarily much of an impact for trump s campaign but it is something to take the focus at least right now off of donald trump. indeed it is. and just to show you a little bit of this is a documentary that the family agreed to. it was being shot by a former staff member they explained later. and a lot of people wondering and clinton world, as well, why they agreed to this kind of intimate documentary portrayal of their marriage, even after all of the controversy. let s watch. punch line is true about me. dy the dumb thing. i did a lot of good things, too. running for mayor is the straightest line to clean up the mess i had made. this is anthony weiner calling. i m the one running for mayor. why do you think you deserve a second chance? a second chance, a third chance. but now, huma abedin making the decision to cut the cord, at least after struggling to hold this marriage together. i think when we for people who don t know huma abedin, she comes a very traditional family, a family very devoted to marriage and family. trying to hold this together, but certainly people in clinton s inner and outer circles, people who knew all of the players involved, wondering, you know, you can say opposites attract but they re so different. anthony weiner, the public very brooklyn kind of guy, not just religious dissimilar, you know, backgrounds, but the fact that she came from a very traditional pakistani and then saudi raised muslim background and traditional family and here there was this interfaith marriage, very much part of the clinton world. and you did see her really stand by him and i think you asked the question about this documentary. why did they agree to it? it was supposed to be his comeback story. you see that in the beginning of this documentary. there is hope, there is optimism. and i think she certainly shared that particularly in the beginning of when he was launching his mayoral bid. he was up in the polls. but then it sort of all fell apart and there s a moment in the documentary she looks into the camera saying this is like living a nightmare. i think you see them start to really struggle with the reality of what s going on and ticipate that the struggle is one she s been dealing with not only the first scandal broke in 2011, andrea, but particularly after this second time. that was so painful for her. now, of course, she has been out on the campaign trail and you see that same dedication to hillary clinton. she is, again, by her side always. but as you point out, this is something that could again become fodder for secretary clinton s challenger and that s part of what makes this so difficult and painful as well, i think. thanks to you, kirsten welker and katy tur and hallie jackson in new york. meanwhile donald trump s top surrogates struggling to keep up with the mixed message on immigration and still insisting that donald trump is sticking to his script. he s been completely consistent in the principles that he s articulated. nobody was talking about illegal immigration when donald trump entered this campaign. he was attacked from day one. so what he has said is very consistent, chris. number one, this is important. the signature piece of the legislation and campaign is build the wall. no amnesty. no citizenship. no more sanctuary cities. this is a guy consistent on no amnesty, no legalization for folks coming to the country illegally. that s always been the underpinning of his policy with the building of the wall. joining me now is conservative columnist ann coulter out with a new book, in trump we trust. congratulations on your new book. thank you. first of all, we wanted to talk to you about immigration and your take on where he is going with that. obviously, news that has just broken about huma abedin. i don t know if you have a comment. no. i m surprised it took so long. it s hard to figure out what happens in anyone s personal lives but it obviously has a political impact which is why we re talking about it today. on immigration, are you satisfied now from the latest signals that donald trump when he has the speech on wednesday is going to come out as clearly as you would like him to come out on the whole question of deportation and what to do about people who are here he said he was that he s clear about what he s going to do about criminal undocumented workers. but in one definition, anybody who s here illegally has broken the law. so are we talking about deporting 11 million, 12 million people as he promised to do in the primaries? no. i think he has been consistent. really pretty much from day one. he s going to protect the borders and not dissolve, you know, american sovereignty. i think he actually the only thing he was totally consistent this week in all of his speeches. there was the one interview on hannity and we get sick of all legislators hearing. i think he did it for me. when i have a criticism for him, the mainstream media remembers i exist. this is constructive criticism, which is, it is only in the case of immigration i mean, the famous cliche, a cliche and true. hard cases make bad lawn. we always instantly not we but rubio, mcconnell, the rnc, the democratic party instantly to the hardest cases. as if we re discussing speeding laws and first let s figure out what let s rearrange the solar system to deal with a man rushing his wife to the hospital. well know. the basic principle is build the wall. no one here illegally, staying here, working illegally has a constitutional right to be here and we ll decide who gets to stay and who goes on the basis of when s good for america. i mean, the one thing, he s new to politics in some ways, on details, and often rhetorical issues, but the one thing that s his life shot through with is putting americans interests first. how do you decide who stays and goes when you have millions and millions of people? there are millions of people, arguably been here 20 years with families an meet the definition he laid out in the interview down in austin last week who are solid citizens? do they all get to stay? you know, where do you draw the line? you re doing exactly what people like me always complain about. and that is focusing on, you know, these specific cases. look. for even the most law abiding illegal alien as i described in my book in trump we trust and covered much more in my last book and even for the most law abiding illegal immigrant, say an illegal immigrant that doesn t need language classes for his or her child, that one child will cost the taxpayers a minimum of $12,000 a year to educate. what taxes do illegal aliens pay? they pay sales tax. well, in the highest sales district in the entire country, you would have to have an illegal alien purchasing taxable goods in the amount of about $125,000 a year just to break even on what it costs americans for that. what paying back taxes means, this is alleged to mean, means we give each a huge earned income tax credit. we give illegal alien about $30,000, depending how long they ve been working here in taxpayer money which, you know, okay, maybe americans are going to want to do that. but i think we ought to be honest about it and we ought to check with the american people whose taxes are being used to pay for illegal aliens to stay here rather than to fund their social security, medicaid and their medicare. but the point i think trump is making from the beginning is consistent with all of this. he fell into the cliches of the amnesty crowd of rubio and that s to put americans interests first. when s best for america? we have been through a tough time now. we had 9/11, two wars, we have had a disastrous economy outside of new york, l.a. and washington, d.c., outside of wall street getting bailouts. people are really suffering in america and i think america needs a little now time. this is a very appealing message that transcends political parties. now, after that austin speech, town hall meeting, this is rush limbaugh, not mainstream media i don t think, rush limbaugh s reaction. i think you have probably seen this. let s play it for the audience. first they tried marco rubio. they tried the gang of eight. they tried jeb bush. they tried any number of people. to convince they tried me. they sent emissaries to the southern command. they tried everybody they could think of to try to convince the republican base to support some form of amnesty. for illegal immigrants. who knew that it would be donald trump to come out and convert the gop base? to supporting amnesty. on the same week ann coulter s book comes out. poor ann. so wanted to give you a chance to react to that. his point is that this is, quote, amnesty. the same policy that jeb bush and marco rubio and others had supported and had been in the bill that was voted down. yeah. this is a take off from my joke on hardball the night before saying the shortest book tour ever. if trump were coming out for amnesty, we call in the business a joke. that s a repetition of the joke. the next day. but no. i don t think he is coming out for amnesty. he did the same thing, the perfect analogy is to when trump was on with chris matthews and he was pushing him on, well, if you re against abortion, then there has to be a punishment. when s the punishment going to be? what s the punishment going to be? he s getting used to this stuff. he said, yes, some punishment. you don t have to get into the details of what the policies are. you give us the direction you re going in. we want to know are we not going to be doing, for example, what the obama administration is doing now, and that is fighting to release and not deport illegal aliens who have just committed homicide like this illegal alien in omaha, nebraska, who murdered 4.0 gpa student sarah root. that s what we faced with right now. we have our administration flying in nonrefugees of central america, somehow syria has become our problem. if latin america is america s problem, why isn t europe taking care of syria? how did the entire world become our problem? i don t see, you know, england and germany reaching out to take refugees from central america. we have turned our country into a charity ward when i think it s time to put americans first. that is clearly donald trump s principle. he fell for the nonsense of about he was pushed in a question, pushed, pushed, pushed. when about the hard case? let s spend all of our time talking about the hard case and never develop a speeding law. one case of the man rushing his wife to the hospital and 80 mirp miles per hour in a 60 zone. we ll burn that bridge when we get there as i like to say. ann coulter in trump we trust, thank you very much. thank you. thank you for being with us. back to hallie jackson at trump tower. i believe you have a new statement from the trump campaign. reporter: let s be clear. this is from donald trump, andrea, delivered to the new york times regarding what you started your show talking about, the news of a separation between top clinton aide huma abedin and her husband anthony weiner. here s trump telling the times. huma is making a very wise decision. i though anthony weiner well and she will be far better off without him. trump continuing, i only worry for the country and that hillary clinton was careless and negligent in allowing him to have such close proximity to highly classified information. who knows what he learned and what he told? it s another example of hillary clinton s bad judgment. it is possible the country and the security have been greatly compromised by this. again, those are donald trump s words to the new york times as he begins essentially talking about huma abedin and then, andrea, quickly turning to try to link him to national security in this statement. nbc news asked for independent con if i mags and not received it from the campaign and following up. thank you so much, hallie jackson, for the update on the breaking story. next, jennifer granholm co-chair of hillary clinton s transition team responding. mastery is a journey of continuous improvement. come triumph, or trial, tennis legend serena williams moves forward, and with the chase mobile® app we re on the same path, offering innovative, and convenient ways to bank. easy-to- use chase technology, for whatever you are trying to master. now that i work there, i value dothe food even more. i feed it to yoshi because there are no artificial colors, preservatives and it s made with real chicken. i m so proud to make dog chow natural in davenport, iowa. back to the breaking news today involving the clinton campaign, top aide huma abedin announcing her separation of former congressman anthony weiner. supporter and former michigan governor jennifer granholm joins me now, vice chair of the transition committee. both campaigns have. right. protocol, they re both nominees and the final 70-plus days of this campaign. regardless of which team you are on, it s a big i don t know to transfer power. let s talk about when s more than a small distraction here. yeah. as we are four weeks out of the debate, the trump, donald trump telling the new york times now that this is probably, you know, a good thing, this separation, but then suggesting that anthony weiner may have had access to classified information through his wife. that is ridiculous. that is ridiculous. i mean, i think that donald trump and everyone else should respect the privacy of huma abedin who is, as you know, an utterly graceful, wonderful human being who s going through a terrible situation. and who s tried to keep her marriage together. so i say let us respect their privacy and it s nonsense about classified information. how do you explain this, if this is established what we know is that the new york post printed photos indicated that there was inappropriate behavior here. we don t know this ourselves. all signs point to it and following by this announcement that huma abedin after all of these years of trying to hold things together is first broke in 2011 and there was denial and he was still in congress, he eventually resigned, he tried the comeback running for mayor. people outside questioned and people close to the clintons questioned why put yourself out there running for mayor in, you know, the media capital of the world. and then, of course, another instance and then are you asking me to explain and get into his head? i have no idea. i have no idea. there s a political fallout from this. i m certain he has his own fallout, i can t imagine that this brushes on to the clinton campaign. it is a private matter. it should remain a private matter and donald trump should focus on his debate prep. at the same time, huma abedin, the closest adviser and the person with her every single day. yeah. and this has to be a tremendous struggle and distraction for the campaign. oh, i have no doubt that it is a horrible i mean, huma is like family, not just to hillary clinton but to that whole campaign. she is like the glue. i m sure that the whole campaign is hoping that people respect her privacy and grieve with her over what s happening. they re all very supportive of her. now, you were involved in debate prep in 08. i believe you played sarah palin! sarah palin for joe biden. let me show you a clip of the real debate and how do you prepare anyone to, you know, how do you prepare them to anticipate what is unconventional candidate. pailen is best analog for donald trump on the other side. let s watch how the other debate started. we welcome governor pailen and senator biden. nice to meet you. can i call you joe? thanks. can i call you joe? you couldn t have anticipated this. i did not anticipate that. but, you know, you have to be become the person. you have to embody that character. and she was an outsider. she, obviously, didn t know the ways of washington. joe biden knows the ways of washington, knew what was very steeped in policy. she was not. so there s there are interesting analogies here. david plouffe said yesterday you have to prepare for donald trumps. the donald trump who, you know, ridicule ed marco rubio and jeb bush in debates and called them names and is it the donald trump more appropriate and which one shows up or both? i think both will and it s interesting for them to use a couple different play to play donald trump because i think that he could be at any given moment one or the other. but she is so great at preparing and anticipating and the team is really great. my guess is, i don t have inside information on this, all being very closely held, my guess is that they re going to try out different versions on of donald trump on her and she will be preparing. jennifer granholm, governor, thank you very much. you bet. great to see you. the tragic death of nba star s dwyane wade s cousin in chicago. she was gunned down while pushing her baby in a stroller. she has three other children. it s drawing new attention to the city s gun violence epidemic. a live report coming from chicago next. ps you stick with. over time, they get even better. that s why more people stick with humana medicare advantage. we work together with you to find the best plan, however your needs might change. because great things are ahead of you when your health is ready for them. humana medicare advantage. the plan people stick with. still using tampons and pads? 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(announcer) victoza® is not recommended as the first medication to treat diabetes and is not for people with type 1 diabetes or diabetic ketoacidosis. do not take victoza® if you have a personalr family history of medullary thyroid cancer, multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2, or if you are lergic to victoza® multiple endocrine neoplasia or any of its ingredients. if you get a lump or swelling and call yin your neckight away or if you velop any allergic symptoms including itching, rash, or difficulty eathing. seris side effects may happen, including pancreatitis. so, stop taking victoza® and call your doctor right away if you have severe pain in your stomach area. tell your doctor your medical history. taking victoza® with a sulfonylurea or insulin may causlow blood sugar. the most common side effects are headache, naea, diarrhea, and vomiting. side effects can leato deh, which may cause kidney problems. now s the time foa better moment of proof. k your doctor about victoza®.ms. it just hurts to hear kids saying they want their mom and their mom won t be in their lives anymore. only through spirit, only through pictures. that s only way they can know their mom. for the rest of their lives. only thing they have to go on is what they had. it s just heart breaking. it s really oh god! it s heart breaking! nykea aldridge s mother speaking out about her daughter s death. she said she forgives the suspects in the case. police have charged two brothers in the death of the 32-year-old mother of 4 who was shot and killed while pushing a baby stroller with her 3-week-old child friday afternoon on chicago s southside. aldridge, the cousin of nba star dwyane wade is not believed to be the intended target of the men. kevin tibbles joining me with the latest. kevin, there s no words to describe the pain and the suffering and this is one horribly human example of the terror of this violent epidemic on the streets of chicago. well, what a way to describe it, andrea. horribly human. the absolute grief in the woman s voice describing the loss of the mother of four young children. taken as she was apparently on her way to investigate, registering some of her children to go to school. and now it s all taken away. yes, she was the cousin of a famous basketball player, and perhaps that is one of the reasons why people like you and me are focusing on this today. but the grim reality here in the city of chicago, that phrase that we hear every single time the southside, or the west side or the southwest side, these sorts of things are thrown around and it should be pointed out that they have been thrown around some 550-odd times this year already. in terms of murders here in chicago. and while people seem to be able to take to the streets and talk about it, it we are all still waiting to see what actually can be done to get the guns off the streets. in spite of the fact chicago has very tough gun laws. but the conversations that i have had with police officials, while chicago has tough gun laws, they point the finger at the regions around chicago, indiana, for example, and they say that guns are just brought in by the gangs and that s the situation that faces this city today. and has for years. kevin tibbles in chicago, and thank you so much for all of the reporting you have done on all of this. thanks, kevin. reporter: sure thing. coming up, back to politics after the break. make them lighter? the lubricants that improved fuel economy. even technology to make engines more efficient. what company does all this? exxonmobil, that who. wee working on all these things to make cars better and use less fuel. helping you save money and reduce emissions. and you thought we just made the gas. energy lives here. they automatically shrinkers add an itethe prices jet carts, of millions of other products. very impressive. whew. it s got a littleick to it. i m sorry, i can t hear you? ni shirt cra. at jet.com, we re always looking for unbelievable money saving innovations. someone s hacked all our technology. say, have you seen all the amazing technology in geico s mobile app? mobile app? look. electronic id cards, emergency roadside service, i can even submit a claim. wow. yep, geico s mobile app works like a charm. geico. expect great savings and a whole lot more. what i ve seen up here, i mean, first of all, this guy s a choke artist. this guy s a lie why are. this is a tough business. i know you re a tough guy, jeb. i know. we need to have a leader that s real tough. you will never be president of the united states insulting your way to the presidency. i m at 42 and you re at 3. i m doing better. doesn t matter. you started over here and moving further and further. pretty soon you ll be off the end. don t worry about it, little marco. gentlemen. you want to gentlemen! i have given my answer, lying ted. i have given my answer. donald trump in the primaries, the brash reality tv star persona, insulting, attacking the rivals in the debate season. with the first general election debate four weeks away, which donald trump will show up to challenge hillary clinton? joining me now lawyer and political analyst ben ginsburg, a presidential debate adviser. i don t know if you can put on a different hat, but which donald trump do you think will be showing up? how does hillary clinton prepare for that? does she have different stand-ins, different people playing different donald trump persona? yes, probably. there s going to be some preparation for asymmetrical warfare. they re talking different way about immigration, different way about communities of color and outreach. so that you can see that there is something of a moderating tone that is coming in to donald trump, probably poll driven. thanks to kellyanne conway s presence. but how that comes out on the debate stage will probably enhance the ratings for all of you. well, here you had ann coulter just within this hour talking about donald trump as a policy novice. i want to play a little bit of that for you and ask you how does that work on a debate stage. let s watch. trump isn t a politician. he s getting used to some of this stuff. he said, yes, there will be some punishme punishment. you don t have to get into the details of the policies. you give us the direction you re going in. if you re out there for 90 minutes, we don t know yet whether there s a break, where he can go and talk to ivanka or whoever else is advising him, he has to be able to call audibles. yeah. you do have to be able to call audibles and it is important to remember how different the format that the presidential debate commission at least now envisions. it s not one minute answers. in fact, there s six 15-minute pods on single subjects that are designed to get into some depth on policy issues. and so, if you re preparing a candidate for that sort of a format, it s very different from what the primary debates were like, especially because it s a one on one debate and not multiple candidates on the stage. and you don t have the audience participation. at least, not supposed to be cheerleading one way or the other. one risk because of gender, frankly, let s watch what happened in 2000 when rick lazio against hillary clinton for the u.s. senate seat in buffalo with our own tim russert moderating, well, made a critical error. well, i would be happy to. when you give me the signed letters. right here sign it right now. we ll shake on this, rick. no. i want your signature. i think everybody wants to see you signing something you said you re for. i m for it. i haven t done it. you ve been violating it. do something for america. america is looking at new york, why don t you show some leadership? it goes to trust and character. the reaction among women voters in new york, i remember from the time from focus groups was, that was like my ex-husband coming and asking me why i haven t paid such and such a bill. didn t go over well, let s just put it that way. no. there s a performance art to these debates as well as a substance debate. that very same year, al gore getting into george w. bush s personal space in the town hall in st. louis was an example of two males even sort of creating a mistake by not getting the performance art right. mitt romney and barack obama in their interchanges on the town hall debate were not as smooth as i think the people who were helping either candidate wanted them to be. so in addition to an increased emphasis on policy and being able to explain where you are, you need to be able to prepare a candidates to be cognizant of how they look at different moments and situation in a debate because that s how you cam off to the american people. ben ginsburg, been there, done that. that s why we love debates. thank you, ben. coming up, final draft. keeping up with donald trump s recent politics shifts. it s a very specific moment, the launch window. we have to be very precise. if we re not ready when the planets are perfectly aligned, that s it. we need really tight temperature controls. engineering, aerodynamics- a split second too long could mean scrapping it all and starting over. propulsion, structural analysis- maple bourbon caramel. that s what we re working on right now. from design through production, siemens technology helps manufacturers meet critical deadlines. i think this ll be our biggest flavor yet. when you only have one shot, you need a whole lot of ingenuity. i ve got a nice long life ahead. big plans. so when i found out medicare doesn t pay all my medical expenses, i got a medicare supplement insurance plan. 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doctors offices. its wireless remote lets you control the intensity. and helps you get back to things like. this. this. or this. and back to being yourself. introducing new aleve direct therapy. find yours in the pain relief aisle. are you happy with the hi hires? i go with the flow based on what the campaign wants to do. i think kellyanne is doing a phenomenal job. i don t know steve ban nonto tell you the truth very well. i don t know steve bannon to tell you the truth very well. that s the quote of the campaign, the rnc chair. now, what happens going forward with this campaign? chrrisihririsihris siz la joini. sorry. this is a lot of breaking news today. here we go with who s in charge of campaign of the donald trump campaign. chris, what is your take away from the way the new campaign has taken over and tried to shape up this immigration speech which is coming on wednesday? well, there s i feel like it s like trump and bizarre-o trump. right? there s the new trump, a kellyanne con way creation. talking to the communities and soothe the nerves of the idea that he s a racist of suburban voters, particularly white female voters and also sort of trump original recipe and sort of on twitter saying that hillary isn t as smart as people say she is. she didn t pass the bar. his comments, his initial comments about the death of the woman related to dwyane wade. the nba star. so it s very hard to get an accurate reading on it because it changes moment to moment sort of, you know, there s the online presence, the offline presence. there s a lot of different donald trump s throughout right now. and donald trump has tweeted again today trying to take advantage of what happened in chicago, the tragedy in chicago, and his tweet is that inner city crime is reaching record levels. african-americans will vote for trump because they know i will stop the slaughter going on. does this resonate? the african-american voters i have talked to are this does not resonate with them. they see donald trump using some of the really stereotypical language to talk about african-american lack wage and used dwyane wade s cousin and spelled his name wrong and then corrected it and some people feel he doesn t understand who he s talking to and only pointing to failing schools and insecurity and things like that, not talking about kind of the success of historically black colleges and jobs and other things that i think african-americans could talk about and would want him to talk about goes to the idea he is not hitting the mark, now, of course, there are some african-americans who are supporting donald trump. just in this morning, late last night, donald trump decided donald trump said he is going to go do an african-american church in detroit so it s really interesting to see what that conversation is like. and whether or not the people in that congregation will back him. there s been a church that was in north carolina that endorsed donald trump for president. that was an african-american church. so there are people that some of this really resonates with but the vast majority of african-americans i have talked to just don t agree with the way he s casting black life. and, up until now, you know, very cleefly, chris siz la, he s only spoking about this issue to all white audiences, most recently in iowa. i hate to be cynical but i think donald trump understands he doesn t get more than single digits of the black vote and trying to keep up to 26%, 27% of the hispanic vote and mitt romney got and he all said was a disaster for him. he has to win the white vote by a historic margin only if suburban white women do not think he is a racist. thank you so much. thank you both very much. and coming up, all of the president s men and women, who s brushing up their resumes for the most coveted jobs in the next administration no matter who wins? using 60,000 points from my chase ink card i bought all the fruit. veggies. and herbs needed to create a pop-up 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governor s mansion on who would be in the new first clinton administration. if you will. if there is going to be a second one. so both campaigns meeting with dennis mcdonagh last thursday. chris christie on one hand. ken salazar for the democrats. this is what is contemplated in an orderly transition of power no matter who wins. that is right. when s different this year, andr andrea, for reasons, there s a law to formalize the process and starts it earlier than it used to start. used to be that the day after the election in a frantic sort of chase to try do get as much done before inauguration day. by all accounts it never works that well and this new law to make it a thoughtful, longer process and also on the democratic side, because hillary clinton has had such a persistent lead in the polls, i think that there s just by human nature a little more measuring of the drapes going on than there might be if it s a close race, nip and tuck. people aren t sure who emerges as the winner and particularly on the democratic side, this kind of jockeying, this parlor game started earlier. on the donald trump side, arguably, because he s such a newcomer to politics and government, he might be much more reliant on cabinet officials, at least in the first instance than he might otherwise be, right. i think that s totally true. i think when s tricky with donald trump and goes back to what you were just discussing on the show a few minutes ago, he s a mercurial figure, not clear about what he s looking for and he did say he didn t want to choose from the foreign policy establishment because they got us into so many messes overseas so i think for the republicans, it s less certain how this is all going to shake out. there s a second element here on the republican side which is that at least on the foreign policy side so many republicans have publicly disavowed trump and whether they ve said they re gong to vote for hillary or not vote it s kind of changed the situation for her, as well. i mean, she hypothetically would have the option of choosing from a bench of republicans who have come out against trump and very unusual. and we also know that there s a big impetus to have more women in the cabinet, in some of the big jobs. we have had women secretaries of state and seen that now for decades. the first woman as defense secretary, michelle flournoy and maybe treasury between the two diplomatic burns. former deputy secretary of state. well, andrea, you re deeper in the parlor games than i am. i ve mentioned some of those names but not all of them and you re absolutely right and the issue with the state department is because hillary clinton was secretary of state, there s a sense that she might not go for a sort of another celebrity figure, a major political figure like she was or john kerry is. she might want a trusted, reliable person she knows well and bill burns, former deputy secretary of state and nick burns, a close adviser to her, an undersecretary of state, would both fit that bill. but you re absolutely right. at the pentagon, michelle flournoy s name perhaps the most clear name come out in this whole process of guessing. guessing game beginning already. thank you so much, mark. and we have much more ahead. , g. i am proud of you, my man. making simple, smart cash back choices. with quicksilver from capital one. you re earning unlimited 1.5% cash back on every purchase, everywhere. like on that new laptop. quicksilver keeps things simple, gary. and smart, like you! and i like that. i guess i am pretty smart. don t let that go to your head, gary. what s in your wallet? a universal expreson of disgust, (vo) stank face. often caused by inadequate cat litter. if you or your a loved one suffers from stankace, the cure is tidy cats. it s new and improved with guaranteed tidylock protection that locks away odors. so you don t have to face one more snk face. tidy cats. every home, every t. there s a tidy cats for that. yoyeah, i do.e? you guys are working on some pretty big stuff over there, right? like a new language for crazy-big, world-changing machines. well, not me specically. i work on the industrial side. so i build the wellworld-changing machis. i get it. you can t lk because it s super high-level. , i actually do build the machines. blink if what you reoing involves encrypted data transfer. wait, what? wowwww. wow? what wow? there is no wow. that does it for this edition of andrea mitchell reports. follow the show online. stephanie wu picks it up next here on msnbc. stephanie? thank you so much, ea. you know what we re covering today. were beginning the hour with more breaking news on this big story. long time hillary clinton aide huma abedin just announced she is separating from former congressman anthony weiner after the new york post reports of another sext iin ining scandal. appears to be an inappropriate photo of him next to a child and the post says is his young son. our nbc reporters are following the reaction from the campaign trail and including donald trump. he s already weighed in, issued a statement in the past hour. and i want to take you first to kirsten welker covering the clinton campaign. you have spoken with a close friend of huma abedin. what did you learn? according to this friend of in
which was actually him sitting there with four women who have accused bill and hillary clinton of various kind of sexual misconduct or mistreatment. you know, if the clinton campaign has been saying run his campaign however they want. however he wants to run his campaign and they ll run their campaign the way they want to run it. the question is, how much of this outside circus can be brought on to that formal debate stage tonight? i think the regardless of what happens on the debate though, i think the republican party has to decide what they re going to do with the legacy of donald trump and what he has made their party stand for. just trying to manage mitt romney, had hillary clinton been in nominee or john mccain doing this sort of thing. had hillary clinton been the nominee in 2008. the republican party doesn t think of itself as this party. at least anymore. and now, they are. in fact, in down ballot politics. starting tomorrow morning. regardless of what happens in the next couple of hours tonight. hearts and mind, support, lack of support. chris matthews is standing by in st. louis. with a supporter of hillary clinton. chris? thank you. i ve got senator claire mccaskill with me. very popular here, obviously. let s, okay. you know how politics works. one thing leads to another. people stop giving money. stop running ads. is this a dynamic that s not going to be stopped, that can t be stopped by trump? i think that truch is angry and defiant. anybody who thinks this man is in a mood to make an apology, doesn t understand what s going on here. this is desperate. it s dark. to quote michelle obama, if you want to know what hillary clinton s going to do tonight, when they go low, we go high. i think she will be poised and strong. she will not allow herself to get drug down into this chaotic, nasty kind of campaign that frankly, i think is the most depressing that i ever remember anybody running in my lifetime. we usually went aspirational politics and presidential policies and this is as bad as it gets. you think the fact it s a town meeting, apparently, independent people, nonpolitical people. i would say i ll ask you, would they be squeamish talking about the sex stuff in wouldn t they say that s not what we want to talk about? i would say that s correct. they want to talk about affordability of college, whether or not wee going to get the environment to the point we re not worried about agriculture in missouri. the mod rarts are going to have a role here, too. they re going to ask some of the questions. but i h say this. if donald trump thinks doing this defiant, defensive ugly thing before this debate is going to gain him a lot of women s votes, he is sadly mistaken. you were attorney general. you were an attorney general. you know what, i just watched the courtroom drama. they always argue what s relevant. we pick a president of the united states. not just the head of the government, they re head of state. the person of the country. is it relevant, their personal lives, their personal sexual behavior, behavior with other people of other genders. is it relevant? was it relevant under clinton, under donald trump? so it relevant to know about the person s life in way of sex? how they handle them in terms of crisis is relevant. when you look at how donald trump has handled himself during this campaign. he doesn t listen to his advisers. has no int luck eventual curiosity about the policies he has to have a grasp on. he is incapable of showing humility or apologizing to a family who lost their son in the war. this is a guy who time after time fails to rise to the level, the bare minimum you d have to have to lead the most powerful nation on the planet. this is not someone we want to show off to the world. this is embarrassing. can we he win missouri? yes, he can, but after this? i don t think after this he can. i think it will be absolutely a 50-50 proposition in a tate he was ahead by ten points just a week ago. here, unbelievable. back to you, brian and rachel. thank you, chris, thank you, senator. andr andrea mitchell has a statement in reaction to this scene we have just witnessed from the clinton campaign. andrea. it s a reaction also of course to the announcement from jason miller. that these women are going to be here in the debate hall tonight. according to the truch campaign. this is titled the clinton s statement on quote trump s latest act of desperation. we re not surprised to see donald trump continue his destructive race to the bottom. hk understands the opportunity in this town hall is to talk to voters on stage and in the audience about the is that matter to them. and this stunt doesn t change that. she continues if donald trump doesn t see that, that s his loss. as always, she s prepared to handle whatever donald trump throws her way. that is the statement. the reaction now from the communications chief from this campaign. they expected something, they did not expect it to be this visceral, this in their face. i do thot believe they expected him to bring these women, his expresswaccuser, bill clinton se kuzers to this hall. i have to tell you, they have done lot of focus groups on the issue. clinton manch. from their focus groups, they say at least that most women in their focus groups at least relate to hillary clinton saying she has stayed with her husband. they have worked through their problems. they ve been married for 41 years. that was central to both bill and hillary clinton s speeches a t the convention in philadelphia. so, they were fairly confident that they could get past this. as to how hillary clinton is prepared to address this t trump tape, she s expecting that would come up early in the debate from mod rarts, from the audience participants, from trump himself or she would bring it up and she s prepared to say this is a pattern of behavior, that this is thot a surprise that the years of tapes from the howard stern show indicate his kind of language, behavior. a kind of behavior that joe biden says rises to the level of sexual assault. that was from joe biden, not this campaign. she s prepared to compare it to his treatment of the former miss universe. that s her tactic coming in. andrea mitchell in the debate hall. under an hour to go this will this thing starts. steve schmidt was making a point before we had to intersuspect for what we didn t know was going to be videotape of that scene we saw. steve, how corrosive is this both to your mood, to the party you were discussing when last we poke to yund to this just event spectacle? look, the republican party s the third older political party in the world. one of this country s great institutions. one of globe s greatest institutions. it s devastating to the republican party, but this is corrosive to our civics. it s krocorrosive to our countr. what we are going to see tonight is a disgrace. if you re a parent who cares about civics and you want to have informed children, you have a 10, 11, 12, 13-year-old, ideally, you would like them to be able to watch a presidential debate. you d be advised as a parent to send the kids to the bedroom and turn the tvs off tonight. and that s saying something rather sad. i think also, brian, what this pos is a massive hypocrisy inside the republican party. think about people like jerry fall well jr. people who claim to be leaders in the country who are apoll gists for this behavior. in this fusion of religion to political conservatism is a toxic element in our politics and i think this hypocrisy is on display for all to see. i think mike pence, who is a very conservative, former member of congress, very conservative governor, but i think a good and decent man. i think sincerely, espouses his beliefs when he says i m a christian. i m a conservative. and i m a republican. in that order. well, if that s true, how does mike pence stay on this ticket? unless, that s the middle of the lineup, a career politician proceeds at all. so, in the next days, republicans who in their heart, believe this is wrong, believe he is unfit, but have taken the root of saying look, he s a misoxygen nis and said racist thinks. football that the military aides carry behind the president, but i support the nominee of their party. i think they re out of runway on this. so, we re going to see here for 90 minutes later tonight is unlike anything that s ever been seen on a debate stage in a presidential election. and you just have to think back to benjamin franklin s answer to the woman who asked dr. franklin, what have you given us after the constitutional convention and he said a republic, if you can keep it. in the degradation of our civic life ha comes from this campaign, i think it would make the founders roll oaf in their graves. thank you. during the next part of our conversation, we ve compiled a list of prominent republican defectors who have in the last 48 to 24 hours announced they are leaving, taking their support away from donald trump. it is sizable. there are names on it you will recognize. it matters and it s been heard loud and clear in trump tower and elsewhere. eugene robson has joined our table. pulitzer prize winner with the post. you joined after the tape surfaced. i was watch ng the green room. this is, this is an amazing and disturbing spect cal so far. you know, we should be honest, we don t exactly, we can t predict what the debate will be like, but we think we have an idea. if going there. what does the republican party stand for at this point and at which points, does the paerts draw a line? that could be tomorrow and we ll just have to see how this goes. i think chris matthews is right that trump has decided to go scorch to earth and that if you know he is on this sort of very low plane now taking low by the video that was released on friday and he probably figures the only way he has a chance so to bring hillary clinton down with him. you know, the obvious problem is there s no allegation against hillary clinton. there is past behavior by bill clinton. no credible allegation that hillary clinton did anything i get i think what trump is trying to do, but i cannot imagine it will the lengthening of that list of defectors from the trump campaign. perhaps before the evening is out. we are many missing woman formation. nicole wallace has left to nicole wallace doing some reporting. yes, she is. ever the gop operative turned working journalist is on the phone with someone and will be, we ll be back with more including this conversation about what if something forces a change in the republican ballot in top of the ticket? bottom of the ticket? the ticket. can you? will you? how would that work? ben ginsburg is the one guy in the country you would want answering that question. we have him. he s among our guests standing by. paula jones is a loser, but the fact is, she may be responsible for bringing down our president and that statement was a bad statement to have been made and it s proven to be false. so which statement? paula jones in the deposition. that was donald trump in 98. paula jones, among the women plank flanking him. part of his in quotes debate prep. saying at the time that she made, a loser and made false ak sixths against bill clinton, now he s introducing her because that s how he s prepping for the debate by having her attest to why he s a better choice because of these allegations, which he conceded are false. james carville standing by to talk to us. often of counsel as part of our coverage. james, this was part, probably the worst component you had to deal with in running a clinton campaign. the thing about it is, it was a different clinton. that was bill. this is hillary who s going to be on the stage. should be talking to tom brokaw, since these allegations have come out to remind people that bill clinton left office with one of the highest approval rayings ever. almost the party s nominee. was confirmed as secretary of state by a huge senate majority. but only thing i find shocking about this is this some were shocked he would do this. this is consistent with everything we know about donald trump. with his entire campaign. not shocked at all. its effectiveness is dpoipg to backfire. james, on the question of the effectiveness, i feel like a little bit disconnected from the story because i feel the political analysis we re working from, a scorched earth tactic, the button that says do not push. what i don t understand is why this works against hillary clinton. why this makes people who might otherwise vote for her not. why it makes people vote for him. just as a political professional, do you see it? no, i don t. again, all of this does nothing here. all of this we went through. i feel like i m on larry king live almost. since 1998. everything, we ve had rall dating elections. everything that you can imagine. i think what it is, honestly think that trump is tired. he s overweight. he s angry and he s just lashing out and you have to let this guy do that. i think she s going to have a very good debate tonight. remember, there are going to be people in the audience, real people with real questions and real concerns and i think she s going to go to that. she ll defend her marriage and she should and you know, it s just as all from 1998. it s almost 20, 18 years old. doing my math correctly. and all of this does nothing new here. bill clinton might be one of the most popular people on earth. just find it very difficult to believe that any of this is going to have any positive effect for trump. just an angry guy who s lashing out because he had a horrific last few days. more than that, probably last ten days between the debate and all of the stories, the tax story and now this story. it s just been a very difficult time for the guy. he s exhausted and he s mad and he just flailing away out there. that s all that s going on. one of the things we ve seen with trump is that he doesn t have a lot of verbal discipline. not a lot of message discipline, even when he has something in mind he wants to say, it often comes out garbled or slightly off target in terms of what he s aiming at. everybody saying that he s not going to go after hillary clinton for what bill clinton did. in terms of his marriage and other women. he s going to go after hillary clinton for the way she responded to those accusers and everything. i don t see him as a laser guided munition here. i see him as a guy that just throws stuff and sees what happens. if he gets up there tonight like giuliani did today and called bill clinton a rapist and starts making those blunt ak sigss on twirt, that surrogates are making, should hillary clinton defiend him or wait until it s over and a start talking about something else? first of all, all of this was exhaustively went into by ken starr, bho took a ga zillion dollars. how does anybody know what donald trump is going to do? do you think trump really knows what he s going to say? of course we don t. he doesn t even know. he is a tired, overweight old man who s losing. and he will lash out. he doesn t know the questions that are coming or anything like this. the idea that we can predict what he s going to do or come out of his mouth, i think is fallacy. but he s going to do something, they are going to shock people, that s the nature of what he is. i think if she just gets out of this debate and people see her and say she s a nice lady. she knows what he s talking about. i think that s going to be a great, great win. i think she s going to interact with these people very well. but i m very optimistic. james, go to a safe room to watch tonight. don t have anything dang row around you. you know, i ve been through this. a gazillion times. and i ve seen, i ve had effective opponents come against us. for some reason, i just can t get very excited about donald trump. the guy is unleashed. he s not disciplined. politically, i don t know if he s business smart. politically, he s very, very stupid. and i think my candidate is going to do very well. i m very optimistic for her. to our audience, you should hear james on the subject of lsu football, but we ll hold that conversation for another time. appreciate it. talk to you at the other end if we all make it through this. chris matthews in st. louis. chris? thank you. i ve got joy reed, our colleague here. the former rnc chair. i think i agree with everything. especially what james just said. calling him an old man, overweight, all the other he threw at him. he s angry and he s going to show it. almost like he s coming in with a suicide vest tonight. ready to blow the whole house down. sxwl. when the war is lost, it matters who s in the bunker. it matters who s who this bunk we are the general who s losing. in virginia not far from an mamt is courthouse. there s something in way you lose. and donald trump is losing. angry and the people in the bunker with him are people like david bossy. u bannon. people like giuliani. even kelly anne conway. they ve decided to lose ugly, fight ugly and not just fighting the clintons. they ve decided to strap the vest on and torch the republican party. all income has exploded. they ll defend her. remember how he defenned her on the rose lawn? bill will say something. you don t deserve to be on the same stage with my wife. they make the attacker look bad. i think it s going to be joseph welsh moment when she will say tonight until this moment, i did not know how low you would go. have you no decency. i think we re going watch something like that tonight. you very well may see that, but what the calculation of the trump campaign is making in talking to some of the folks around the campaign is that fine, you go there. and we can take it low. and still have the responses they think they need to keep this campaign going. i don t get the logic behind that. i don t why they think tht the appropriate path, but they really believe that there s a larger audience for what he s doing, having this press conference before this debate. whatever may transpire in the hall tonight, there s an audience for that and they ll vote in november. we re looking top line. they ve gone way deep. i can tell you why i think they re doing it. just talking to people in the orbit of the trump world is that they know there s more out there. and they have decided they re going to bring more, too. this is more this is mott the end of what trump world has decided to do to the clintons. they ve decided to run out of the playbook of the people who are veterans of those 90s clinton wars. they want to go to the women, bill clinton, they want to destroy the clintons. this is rage politics. they don t have tlg there, they ll have the release of more documents that raises good, fresh questions about the whole hillary clinton narrative. they re not doing this as a campaign. they re not doing that. it s not a campaign. back the you. a quick break as we near the final half hour before start time and the audience. senator mccaskill kill among them starts filters in. get iting a good seat here. quickly becoming the night that was. in the strangest presidential race in memory. you see members of the press have filtered in. members of the audience filtering in. hallie jackson has news for us in st. louis. hi there, brian. yeah, we are it s burning up here. the telephone at least. getting some information now from a source close to the campaign. this is somebody who supports donald trump and the early reaction upon hearing the developments tonight were in just a phrase, what the hell are we doing? this person called it dismaying, not understanding why this is happen ng the strategy here. particularly when as this person said, the backs are up against the wall as donald trump s back is tonight. clearly, the campaign is leaning this this strategy. you are seeing these tweets. i don t know if we have them from kellyanne conway, a series, which is she is tweeting at hillary clinton. talking about the women we expect to see at some point in the hall here tonight. looking around, this is a small room. we know that the family members will be in the front closer to where this town hall is is happening. we expect the guests almost all of whom have arrived an looking around are here. i m looking at maybe eight empty seats behind me to the side of where we are. we have not seen the women in the hall yet, but that is the expectation. so it s sort of a remarkable moment here, getting reaction from others in the republican party. top operatives. some not repeatable on television. i guess in a couple of word, buckle up. you re talking to people who are trump supporters who were blind sided by this, are having a very negative reaction to it. negative to the point of pro feign. so it seems like this is coming, this is what just happened came from a very small subset of trump world. so, let me clarify just a couple of that sourcing because tha a good question. the reaction so coming from one source that i have talked to close to the campaign outside of the campaign. any trump loyalist, somebody who does vehemently back very, very v vocally back trump. it is somebody spothing the nominee, but not this decision at this point. thanks for the clarification. absolutely stunning. thank you. let s bring in ben jins berg, all you need to know is he is former general counsel to the republican national committee. also held every other prominent legal job with every other major campaign in the last few years. these days, he is with jones day in washington. ben, i m not going to ask you about what you think is happening to the party of your political lifetime. i am ging to ask you what if what is left of the party structure decides there has to be b a change in this ticket. what if mike pence decides what have donald trump trump is, how do you change a ticket this close to the election. the republican national committee is empowered to name a nominee. there s a process where the number of votes that each rnc member will cast is weighed. the committee would have to convene. and whoever it is would have to get 1,237 votes just as if we were in cleveland. so, the early vote would be in and cooked and counted. that wouldn t be affected, but folks still use paper ballot, perhaps they would make stickers to replace the old name and programs, you would hope that electronic ballots could be kreked in time. yes. and brian, interestingly enough, most state, people are voting for members of the electoral college ant not the candidates. at least from a majority of states, but not all. the electors are pledged to vote for the party s nominee, so if the republican national committee took the action of naming a new nominee, then actually, the electors when they meet on december 19th, could con dpirm that person. in terms of your experience here, you re not just a tactician. and a tech atechnicrat. given what you know, do you think there is any reasonable chance that mike pence won t be the vice presidential nominee or that donald trump won t be the presidential nominee of the republican party on election day? well, no, i don t. but with all the caveats that everyone gives about this year, you never show. but coming, trying to come up with a new nominee 30 day out and have that nominee be successful is not on precedents is really, really difficult. as we ve seen the nominee, the suburban with secret services wife melania, ben, thank you, please remain of counsel to us. yeah. one of the two candidates is in the building. we re within a half hour of the start. another break, we ll be right back. welcome back. that s wash u in st. louis. a multiple holster of multiple debates. few are going to have the audience. this one s going to end up having at least initially until we figure out what we ve got here. we can see the stool, the highchairs there that each of candidates will be on. can t tell if they re different heights, but you also see those regular folks in those prime seat on stage. very close to the two candidates. this format is to a certain extent a test of empathy and capacity of display of human emotion and having those people so close to where the candidates are sitting will be a really important dynamic from terms of whether they succeed tonight. left podium there will be donald trump on the right, hillary clinton. anderson cooper from cnn. martha raddatz from abc. pentagon and foreign apairs correspondent will be our moderators tonight. hugh hewitt has been one of the people we ve turned to throughout our political season and i ve got to tell you, i reacted with surprise when i heard the news that you had decided over this past weekend, that you needed to part company with the nominee of your party after this video came out. talk about that decision. well, i think it s evidence now that donald trump isn t going to win and it would be in the best spres of the country, the party himself and his family, to step aside. perhaps that will turn around tonight. i don t think so. the display tonight, i don t want to fool myself. there are millions of americans applauding, but i suspect there are tens of millions who are more dismayed. i also anticipate donald trump will unleash a pliserring attack on the media s double standard and that would include a full throat t condemnation of years of surprise attacks on republicans, but not on democrats. i think it s all going to get his dwindling base and i think it is diminishing by the hour. more and more excited so that false positives will be registered within trump tower. i will say though, if you go back to victorian england, there was a particular train of men who would go and take bodies and sell them to medical schools. called resurrection men. this is kind of resurrecting the 90s. they did not enjoy a great reputation and this, i don t think is going to play well in america when bill clinton was asked to impeached, repentant in a vague way, but enough for most of america to move on. i just, i tell you, i, the general reanchor among the media people is dismay and can t possibly help him, but i wonder, i know millions of his supporters are cheering tonight for what they think is going full gone dor, but i think it could be as mor dor. i would love to go back to victorian england right about now. with the state of our discourse. especially if they don t get the next hugh, i wanted to give you a chance to talk about your weighty decision because i know you love your politics and party. that this was not inconsequential to you and i know we ll be talking to you after this event. to your viewers yourks may have seen two men approach the terror of the circle. by now, they are almost household names. we ve seep them do this enough times. on the left is former clinton white house press secretary, mike mccurry and on the right, long time republican, hang on. oh. we re not going to list nn yet. frank farncough. what they re going to do here is have i they re going to lead the same sort soft standard set of rules they usually do. they ll likely go to the university president. we ll have the introduction of fam members ch mod rarts will address the audience. then awkward few u minutes where nobody knows what to do then the debate will start. what he went through this is hugh hewitt. but i noted when he put out his tweet, sort of resending, it s a huge deal what he thinks inside of republicans. yoef state his importance within the party. he withdrew his support over the weekend ch that s what s going on. that s why my phone s exploding. this is what s happen ng the republican party. this is the bottom dropping out. that is what it looks like. people like hugh pull their support. there he is. people that i know from the bush campaigns. who were never behind trump. i remember jeb bush saying to me, that trump had basically scammed the gop. he felt sad for everybody including folks like you u, who fell for it. i wonder what you foal about the people who never took the step you took. i was never never trump, but i was very supportive of him after he got the nomination. i know wayne gruden tonight, one of the american evangelical luminaries, great, great scholastic academic teacher. withdrawals or call on leaving, their gradations here. saying i ll never vote. 50 tomorrow and might be 100 if this settles the way i think it will settle. i think you might even see paul ryan do a cromwell to the long parliament. you ve done enough damage, go. he go, but the damage is amiss. all right. these as i ve said at the top, no ordinary time. later by doris kearns goodwin. another break for us. our final break. when we come back, we ll stretch over the top of the hour and be underway in st. louis. there is the democratic nominee with her husband and daughter, hillary clinton arriving in the vip entrance now and coming in to the debate venue, second to arrive, frank, the republican member, the senior partner of the republican presidential commission on debates continues to lay out the ground rules. our historian, michael beschloss is always with us during moment of high drama in politics and for this country. and michael, my first question to you is about your country. it is krocorrosive enough when number one and two least liked candidates are running against each other in opinion polling and now, this. and now, this weekend and now, the event tonight and now, what we re about to witness. well, as you know, brian, we live in a country that is enormously resilient and will be resilient once again, but we are see i seeing things tonight we have never seen before. certainly not a debate on a debate night. donald trump s press conference in the conference room. what it is said, he is about to say in this debate, if it s true, this is going to be the first tv debate in american history in the fall where parents will not want their children to watch what used to be thought of as this great exercise in dmok issy and you know, one irony brian is that when tv debates began, presidential debates in 1960, one hope was that this would elevate presidential campaigns and what people said then was that it will reduce mud slinging because no candidate would dare to say nasty things to the other to his face. in a setting like this and that was said even more ironically about this town hall format when that was developed later on. did decorum die first? which came first? i think it s the chicken or the egg. i think they both dieded essentially at the same time. what we re seeing is probably the cull min nation of that. tonight. i hope that s not true. one of the things we ve been talking about here tonight, both on camera and off and all the breaks, is this phenomenon that we re seeing of republican elected officials and leerd rs dropping their support for donald trump and the various explo pla nations. for so many pushing against their own? nothing like this. feels as if i m just a broken record, but i m one more occasion saying we ve never seen anything like this. this is a month bf a presidential election. you have the spectacle of all these republican leaders bailing on donald trump. the party apparatus reports at the rnc, there are people saying we re not going to work for the presidential candidate. only for the house and senate and governorships and for this all to happen just on the eve of a crucial debate. if you read about this, you would throw it against the wall because it would seem too improbable. thank you very much. i know you re going to watch with us. we re going to need your advice and counsel when it s over. look at the scene on the right hand side of your screen. this is the trump family taking their seats. those women are the women that were flanking donald trump at the event. then dick durbin and then jack danforth. dean of public servants in missouri. certainly for the republican party. it was jack who became an early fan of youns thomas, who he encountered in life an politics. any way, the people you see at a debate. let s bring in lawrence o donnell. just as we re just getting twartds the top of the hour and the start of this evening s contest. lawrence, what s your take on this late strategy by donald trump to bring out all of these accusers of bill clinton s and put them with his family there in the front row and also, what s going to happen in terms of that tape from friday bleeding into tonight s contest? it seems he s going through with that his strategy was, he s basically announce ed twitter, which is he s now apparently no longer running if for president. he is running for a position in history and the position he s fighting for is political sexual scandals, he is the one who s not as bad as bill clinton. that is the only status he seems to be trying to achieve here and one of the iron any of these women choosing to appear with donald trump tonight, no matter how credible their stories may be, is that they have chosen to sit beside someone who on friday, was revealed to be an admitted sexual assaulter, that is an admit ted sexual criminal. and it is one thing for them to oppose hillary clinton based on their own experiences. that s one thing. it is a completely different decision to say i m going to sit beside donald trump and anounts to the world i m voting for him and to do that, two days after donald trump revealed himself to the world to be an admitted sexual criminal. we ve also got the awkwardness and i think we ve got a clip of this. which is that donald trump like all of us, was around for the first round of bill clinton sex scandals and accusations there in in the late 90s and as this happened during the middle of the clints presidency, he was one of the people who commented on it at the time in particularly sympathetic terms toward hillary clinton. watch this. i think she s gone through terrible times. i think she s been through more than any woman should have to bear. everything public. i mean, women go through this on a private basis and cant take it. she s on the front page of every newspaper every week. i think she s a wonderful woman. donald trump speaking in 1999 about hillary clinton and how she bore up under the strain of her husband s behavior. now, he s turn, into her chief prosecutor on that subject. i just wonder if that sofrt thing is something that, if trump s own past on this subject getting drug with him tonight. yeah an we ll be seeing a lot of that tame. bill clinton made a lot of mistakes and one was the decision to befriend trump when he moved to new york because donald trump said the other day in his excuse that bill clinton said worse things to him on the golf course. imagine, any other democrat standing on that stage tonight would not have a spouse who played golf with donald trump and had the answer for that possibility. as you re speaking there, we re seeing bill clinton. arrive. along with melania trump and i believe three of the trump children. they re all shaking hands. everybody looking pretty sober and serious this evening. we have previously seen warm interactions. that is not what is happening here this evening. chelsea clinton, the clinton son-in-law. you see ivanka and eric and donald trump trump jr., the executive director of the presidential commission is speaking. again, rules for the people who have shown, there s two kind of people at tonight s debate. spectators and the people who the gallup polling organization has identified in the st. louis metropolitian area as being genuinely undecided. here s martha raddatz and anderson cooper. thank you very much. we re honored tor here. also the commission on presidential debates for sponsoring this. this is obviously a town hall format tonight. a chance for the americans on this stage and thousands of people who have sent in questions online to ask questions directly to the candidates. after they ve asked their questions, they ve promised to remain silent and i know you ve heard this before this evening, but no outbursts of any kind. we want to keep this focused on the candidates an the people who are asking the questions here. we appreciate your cooperation and we ll start shortly. great to see you all. raddatz and anderson cooper, both experienced with presidential debates. both have moderated at least primary debates in the case of and anderson cooper and a general election vice presidential debate in the case of martha radda raddatz. i m not friends with all that many people in our business. not a person that has a ton of contacts in our business, but i know martha and anderson a little bit. i have a tremendous amount of admiration for them an they re both very good at this kind of work. i also do not envy them. their position this evening. this is going to be just an incredibly difficult thing. to do. the pressure here is palpable and it s always true with something this important, but particularly tonight with the emotional nature of the stakes here. having been raised on both sides. i, too, know them both a little bit. i, too, concur with what you said. both have one thing in common. that is they are awfully proud of their work in dangerous place, war zones ash the world. they will need the situational awareness and cool and calm tonight. we re a minute and a half away from the top of the hour. inside the official moment of awkward silence, where the mod rarts are preparing, their backs to the audience. chris matthews down in st. louis. chris, your last thoughts. the characters, courtroom drama, may well be that donald trump will point the finger at the former president. point to juan ta broderick and say you ra p ped her. this could get very raw. you can say the same about kathleen, you groped her. paid paula jones a million dollars to settle a suit over sexual misbehave. this could get really raw. i m telling you, as you said, these moderators are going to have one rough time tonight keeping it minimally civilized. we ll be watching from the sight in st. louis. and immediately after this is over, we re coming up on the top of the 9:00 hour in the east. if you ve been with us before, you know that s kus marly the time the other networks come on the air and start their coverage an their analysis. and then it s usually a matter of minutes from the top of the hour. when we re underway. and our coverage officially is underway. 9:00 eastern time. it s 8:00 p.m. on the campus of washington university in st. louis, missouri. if there s ever been this much tension, genuine tension, with a dark tinge before a presidential level debate, we can t recall it. this is the first town hall style of this political season. mr. trump has the lekturn and high stool on the left. secretary clinton on the right. we believe there