price in serving our country. we can answer that question tomorrow resoundingly yes, absolutely! think about how generations of americans throughout our history have come together to meet the tests of their time, our parents, our grandparents, our great grandparents defended democracy. they built the great american middle class. they marched for civil rights and voting rights for workers rights and women s rights. for lgbt rights an the rights of people with disabilities. and tomorrow we face the test of our time. so remember, it s not just my name or donald trump s name on the ballot, it s the kind of in you believe we need to reform our criminal justice system so everyone is treated fairly, then you have to vote. and if you believe if you believe we should never write discrimination in to our laws [ cheers and applause ] well then, you know, you know, north carolina, you have to vote to get rid of hp-2. now, this is so energizing, we could keep going with a long i want to thank gaga because she s always stood for that fundamental principle of respecting everybody. [ cheers and applause ] i want you to know and spread the word, i do want to be president for all americans, not just some, not just the people who support me and vote for me. i want to be president for everyone because we all have a role to play in building that better future for our country and for each of you. so if you haven t voted yet, go to iwillvote.com. you will get all the info you need an you can still sign up to volunteer, right? go to hillary clinton.com or text join jo-o-i-n and we will welcome you to help make sure everyone gets out to vote tomorrow. because none of us want to wake up wednesday morning and wish we had done more, right? years from today when your kifds and grand kids ask what you did in 2016 when everything was on the line, you ll be able to say you voted for a stronger, fairer, better america. an america where we build bridges, not walls. and where we prove conclusively that yes love trumps hate. thank you. thank you so much, north carolina. god bless you. thank you all. [ cheers and applause ] there you have it, folks. if you can believe it this may be the last time that you hear from candidate trump and candidate clinton before one of them is president elect. welcome to our cnn special live coverage of this historic election. this is it, the big finale to the most brutal campaign in recent memory. i want to welcome our viewers here at home and around the world. i m poppy harlow in new york. it is just past 1:00 in the morning and for hillary clinton and donald trump it is a late-night fight for every single last vote. both candidates wrapping up duelling rallies. trump in michigan and north carolina. we have our reporters across the country and around the world for you as only cnn can do. as we count down the final hours until you go to the polls. start with phil mattingly in raleigh, north carolina. the final words, phil, love trump hate. here we are, the final words. it is interesting. that s a message that hillary clinton has had for a while. she shifted her message today, deliberately shifted her message today. take a listen to this. basically the point here is that hillary clinton for the last couple of weeks has been trying to tear down donald trump and his candidacy. that stopped today. today it is about the future and looking forward in to an optimistic candidacy and how to most importantly govern should she win tonight. it s a big moment for the clinton campaign to make that shift, to transition away from the constant trump attack. it s one her advisers tell me is a deliberate choice. that s how good they feel about where they are in the race but also the recognition about how damaging the race has been and the healing process it s going to take over the next couple of weeks. poppy? phil, tell us about the crowd. obviously it is big, as is donald trump s crowd tonight. i saw a lot of young people. she talked a lot about college and making it tuition free. who was she trying to target tonight, trying to get undecided voters in a state that is so critical for her and in a state where the early data on the early voting there doesn t look particularly strong for her. this is her second time in raleigh in five days and there s two good reasons for that. she is son the campus of nc state. the crowd is packed with college kids. we walked in and it was to capacity and there was a line 20 blocks around the campus. that s what the campaign wants to see. you nailed why. this is the purest of pure tossup states. you talk to clinton adviser and field staff. they have no idea how this will go. they feel okay about things. they felt they recovered in the early vote but this is a pure tossup that s why the message was dedicated to millennial voters today. these are the people clinton knows she needs to get out if the wants to win the state tomorrow. you heard the president pleading with the people of north carolina saying if you come out for clinton you will be what decides this election. that s right. you have seen surrogates all over the place make that point. in florida, nevada, a number of different states, in michigan most recently. it s been here where you nailed it talking about the early vote. those numbers were not where they wanted them to be. there s a number of reasons you could say that, particularly in the african-american vote and it s worth noting. there s been a recovery in the african-american vote over the last couple of days in early voting but a lot of ground to make up. mitt romney won the state in 2012. democrats need to flip this state and need millennial and hispanic and black voters to do just that. it did go for president obama in 2008. as you said anything can happen h. phil mattingly live in raleigh. thank you so much. we want you to listen to part of donald trump. he just wrapped up perhaps his last campaign speech tonight in michigan. let s listen. michigan now stands at the cross roads of history. when you step in to that voting booth today it s now today, there s one core question for you to consider do you want america to be ruled by the corrupt political class or do you want america to be ruled by you, the people? donald trump in michigan, a state that he thinks he can take out of democrats hands. we ll see if he can do that and crack in to the blue wall. we will see tomorrow when you go to the polls. in the meantime, the first in-prn election ballots cast in the town of dixville notch. who won? it is a tradition that dates back to 1960 when voters went for kennedy so, who won? well, poppy, the ballots were cast. the votes were tallied. clinton getting four votes. trump getting two. johnson getting one and one of the dixville notch residents wrote in mitt romney. so there you have it here in dixville notch, clinton is beating trump but you know, poppy, i have to point out, dixville notch is not the only town that participates in the midnight voting tradition. there is millsfield and there is a quirky law in new hampshire that says if a town has less than 100 people they can close the polls once the registered voters have voted. poppy, i ll point out that collectively in these three towns that participate in midnight voting here in new hampshire trump is beating hillary clinton. trump getting 32 votes and hillary clinton having 25. team clinton, rachel, paying attention to tiny dixville notch tonight, one of the advisers tweeting they like the outcome. yes, tweeting out they were happy about it. i m sorry. writing clinton campaign feeling very good about election day results thus far. they have a few more votes that need to be cast, though. that s right. he sent the tweet before those votes were tallied in harts location and millsfield. it is a coveted spot to wind, dixville notch s vote here. they are right in being proud of it but as i pointed out, trump is beating hillary right now in the polls that have been tallied on election day 2016 in new hampshire right now. new hampshire is again a really important state for both of them this time around. it could go either way. rachel, thank you very much. it s been leading up to this. it is officially election day in america. can you believe it? we will have every race and every result. stay with cnn until the last vote is cast. all-day live coverage today. election day in america right here on cnn. coming up, trump s campaign manager said he has six paths to victory. we will take you to the states that could prove critical. our nick valencia live tonight in florida. florida is perhaps the most critical of them all with 29 electoral votes in the balance. coming up after the break, we will break down the historic turnout in the state of florida. you are watching cnn s special election night coverage. as they swim out of the path and the seagulls they ll be smilin and the rocks on the sand. it s so peaceful up here. yeah. 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[ chuckles ] as you can see, sometimes progressive isn t the lowest. not always the lowest! jamie. what are you doing? -i m being your hype man. not right now. you said i was gonna be the hype man. no, we said we wouldn t do it. i m sorry, we were talking about savings. i liked his way. cha-ching! talking about getting that moneeeey! talking about getting that moneeeey! savings worth the hype. now that s progressive. whmy doctor.houldn t hamy dentist.veryday? definitely my wife. wait, i know what i want. make sparkling water at home. and drink 43% more water every day. sodastream. love your water. want a great way to help our children thrive? then be sure to vote yes on proposition 55. prop 55 doesn t raise taxes on anyone. instead, it simply maintains the current tax rate on the wealthiest californians to prevent education cuts that would hurt our kids. no wonder prop 55 is endorsed by the california pta, teachers and educators. because all of us want to help our children thrive. it s time to vote yes on proposition 55. 40% democratic and 38% of republicans. there was a huge surge in early voting but it also appears tore historic surge for hispanic voters, doesn t it? this is huge news, poppy, for the latino community. we have long expected the sleeping giant to make a difference. historic vote you are turnout not just in florida but across the country. here in florida specifically they could prove to be the most crucial the most critical swing state in the country. the break down here, you have older cubans who are more establishment republicans at odds with the younger cubans who could vote republican, adding to the complexities, you have thousands of newly arrived puerto ricans to the middle of the state. the i-4 corridor which is the most purple part of the state. you mentioned it has eclipsed the number tw in 2000. putting in to context in the last 16 years, you have 3 million newly arrived residents. that has to do with historic voter turnout. they know the significance of the state and have spent a lot of time here in florida rally. hillary clinton here with joe biden and attacking this character of donald trump. both expect to went this critical state. they both expect and want it and need those 29 electoral votes. nick, thank you so much. let s go to pennsylvania. they are getting a lot of love in the keystone state in the final day of the 2016 election. both hillary clinton and donald trump stumping there on election eve in full get out the vote mode. there s no early voting in pennsylvania. so locking in the 20 electoral votes there comes down to today. that s why they were both there today hillary clinton bringing with her president obama, first lady, former president clinton, her husband to the stage. and bon jovi and the boss. thunder road thunder road sara sidner is with us in philadelphia. where do i begin with those big name surrogates? who do you think made the most impact on the stage stumping for clinton? it s hard to say but every time michelle obama speaks she gets this loudest cheers although her husband did as well. what you are hearing her is introducing herself to the crowd, as if they needed it and then sounds like she is trying to hand the baton over to hillary clinton hoping that hillary clinton will walk in her husband s footsteps. so i m honored to be here on the stage on the eve of this historic moment. i m also emotional because in many ways speaking here tonight is perhaps the last and most important thing that i can do for my country as first lady. let me take a moment to thank you, to thank the people of this country for giving our family the extraordinary honor of serving as your first family. huge cheers from the crowd but of course the clinton campaign bringing out all of the guns, trying to make sure that people get to the polls, but trump not far behind them. he was in scranton and he s been going and burning this midnight oil to try to make sure his message gets out, even as we get in to the last few hours before the election. you are right five states for trump today alone and three for clinton. she is back on the plain to new york. trump heading back there, as well. tomorrow it is in the voters hands. sar sara sidner in philadelphia. thank you for being here. let me begin with you. good morning. five states, trump s final blitz. florida, north carolina, new hampshire, pennsylvania, many eume michigan, not ohio. he could be there right now. i think he ran out of daylight. he pushed it about as hard as he could. i am shocked by the schedule they both kept. i think i m in good shape and i m not sure i could have kept the schedule they have kept the last year. sally, hillary clinton did a radio interview and here s what she said whether or not she plans to speak to trump tonight. listen. i will certainly expect to speak with him. i hope that he will, if i am successful, play a constructive role in doing just what i said, coming together, bringing people who supported him to the table sally you want clinton to win. regardless of who wins tonight, to be a fly on the wall, to listen to that conversation, what do you hope it is like? i have to tell you, i spent the last couple of days around philadelphia with my family and my daughter. we did some door knocking to get her involved in democracy and teach her what is at stake. she is a way bigger hillary clinton supporter than i ever was and it was a tremendous, wonderful experience for the most part. i have to tell you the last day we were there, we were in a purple area of the philadelphia suburbs and, you know, not because we were just going about knocking on the doors we were told to knock but we had about five or six trump supporters approach us, approach our group with eight kids, six adults and, you know, yell at us. yell at us about how can we support pro-abortion candidate. she s a sinner. how can we support this crook. she s crooked. in front of our kids. i have to tell you having done this before in previous elections, i ve never seen that level of animosity, hostility, anger, vitriol. you hope the candidates won t be like that. i hope that if trump loses, by the way, if not i m popping xanax. if it comes to that, if he is conceding i hope he is doing it in a gracious way that says, look some of the anger, hostility, i contributed to, i m going to now heal. i m going to take an actual leadership responsibility for once in this election and i m going to put an end to that kind of anger. let s listen to the president. we heard from the first lady. let s listen to president obama in philadelphia. i m betting that men across this country will have no problem voting for the more qualified candidate who happens to be a woman. i m betting that african-americans will vote in big numbers because this journey we have been on was never about the color of the president but the content of his or her character. i m betting that america will reject politics and resentment, the politics of blame and choose the politics that says we are stronger together. taking from martin luther king jr. 56% approval right now for him. michelle obama very well liked. how much do you think, if she wins, if clinton wins the obamas in this final push have moved the needle? very important. obviously the final days as the polls have gotten narrower in many of the battleground states has turned to the issue of turnout. hillary clinton has had trouble with younger voters and african-american voters. whereas i think president obama brings a kind of fire power. 17 times he has campaigned for her. that is unheard of for a sitting president. closest was reagan and bush in 88 but even that was more tepid. usually incumbent presidents are saddled with either some scandal baggage or unpopular like president bush was in 2008. so they are away from the campaign trail. that s not been the case. almost as if he is running. aside from stumping until 1:00 in the morning, the candidates are making their message heard in the final hours. clinton and trump released these ads two minutes long but very different. here s a clip of both of them. look, we all know. we have come through some hard economic times and seen some big changes, but i believe in our people. i love this country. i m convinced our best days are still ahead of us if we reach for them together. the political establishment as brought about the destruction of our factories and our jobs as they flee to mexico, china and other countries all around the world. the only thing that can stop this corrupt machine is you. so overall clinton had a more positive tone. donald trump saw a little at though end there but more positive and focused on progress. what do you make of the strategies in the final hour. clinton has had so many negative ads. most using trump s own words against him. by releasing this two-minute, much more positive ad tonight, a couple of hours ago, clinton trying to create a more positive energy and a reck sill toir energy, as well. donald trump said his last ad is positive. it s a bleak message about the political establishment, the global power structure. he s promising to take pow per back on behalf of the american people. he is taking his own speech and running it in these commercials. listening to your panel talk about the experience, the fear around this election, though, this is exposed some uncomfortable truths about america. donald trump and hillary clinton did not create this hyper polarization we live in. they can choose to make it worse or better later today. people want more time. they will get more time. i have to get a break in here. coming up for us, the entire world waiting for the outcome of america s election. many people, especially in mexico. that is wherelav l . we are here at the angel of independence square. this is where historically mexicans have come to gather and witness the most significant moments in the country s history and there s talk of many people flooding the streets tomorrow night if hillary clinton wins. we will have more on this coming up after the break. i got the discounts dothat you need l safe driver accident-free everybody put your flaps in the air for me go paperless, don t stress, girl i got the discounts that you need safe driver accident-free everybody put your flaps in the air for me i can t lip-synch in these conditions. savings oh, yeah whmy doctor.houldn t hamy dentist.veryday? 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you know, i haven t heard anything in the last 24 hours, but we the reality we have seen russian meddling in the election for months now. it takes no leap of faith they can continue and likely will continue to interfere. it may not be on election day, although they have potential to cause mischief on election day but i think we can expect whoever wins the election they will continue to hack and dump information if they think they can weaken the u.s. president. unless we establish a strong deterrent we are likely to see more of this from russia. we appear to have dodged a bullet. that s one of the things that concerned me up to this point is that russia was going to start to do what they have been doing in europe and that is not only hacking and dumping documents but massively forging information. that would have been difficult to prove a forgery in the last few days of the campaign. we may have dodged that bullet, but i think we are likely to see continued there is a rigged system, folks. totally rigged. absolutely rigged a crooked system. issue of voter fraud. do you believe that russia and putin have already scored a victory in this election before a seingle vote has been counted some early votes in but by making americans less confident in the system as a whole? i think they have in part achieved that objective by giving americans less confidence in the result by sowing dischord. so yes they have accomplished some of their objectives. i think it is important for me american people to realize part of the reason they have been able to do this is because they have had a willing party in donald trump. if we had a typical election where the republican standard bearer shared the views about concern of the nature of the russian government, and spoke out against russian hacking rather than inviting further hacking it would be more difficult for the russians if you didn t have someone saying the election is rigged and all of this thing. that has so played in to russian hands. it is has amplified the mischief the russians wanted to create. as you know the way that pump puts it in response to what you are arguing he said wouldn t it be a good thing if the united states got along with russia. if there was a stronger relationship between the white house and the kremlin. he said that would be more productive than what he points to as a failed russian reset on the part of hillary clinton when she was secretary of state. your response to that? my response is would it be nice, sure it would be nice but that is fantasy land. this is someone who invaded his neighbor, seized crimea. he does expect if he says something nice to putin he will leave ukraine, 0 or stop bombing civilians in aleppo, yi don t think that will happen. stop bombing nato aircraft, i don t think that will happen. so we have tried to establish a productive relationship with russia. they are not interested. part of what putin believes is in order to drive up his popularity domestically he needs a bad guy to be against and the united states is that bad guy. frankly, i think trump is naive to think that a few kind words on his part will change that. i don t think that any commander in chief of the united states should be prepared to, as trump suggested, recognize russia s illegal annexation of crimea. as you point out, russia and putin have plenty of problems domestically, especially when it comes to russia s economy and what it means for their citizens. before i let you go, the white house has vowed the u.s. will respond to russian hacks but haven t made clear of how or when. you said unless russia pays a high price they will continue to meddle in u.s. affairs. i wonder from your perspective and where you sit, on the intelligence review, what should that retaliation look like, sanctions, counter hack, what would be most effective? what would putin listen to? i think what would get the kremlin s attention is if we work with countries in europe that have been the subject of similar meddling by russia and we impose additional sanctions on russia. their economy is their weakest point. a discussion of sanctions sets putin off. so plainly they are sensitive to additional economic pain and i would couple that with a cyberresponse so putin understands and it doesn t have to be something made public but putin understands he is vulnerable, too. this is no free lunch for the kremlin and if they are going to meddle this way they could be exposed in ways that could be bad for putin. i think in a overt and covert way we should respond. thank you for being with me tonight. pleasure. thank you. it s election day. 1:40 in the morning on election day. you are excited. you can t sleep. we re not sleeping. why bother trying to sleep? stay right here. coming up in our live special election coverage next. i m going to be the greatest jobs president that god ever created. there s only one of us on this stage that has shipped jobs to mexico because that s donald. jobs, health care, your money, your vote, the economy, issue number one among voters saying economist ben stein staying up late with us. he joins us. at planters we know how to throw a remarkable holiday party. just serve classy snacks and be a gracious host, no matter who shows up. do you like nuts? whmy doctor.houldn t hamy dentist.veryday? definitely my wife. wait, i know what i want. make sparkling water at home. and drink 43% more water every day. sodastream. love your water. we can t go back to the years of devastating cuts to public education. so vote yes on prop 55. prop 55 prevents $4 billion in new education cuts, without raising taxes on anyone, and with strict accountability. budget forecasts show if we don t pass prop 55 big cuts that hurt our kids are coming, and california will suffer budget deficits all over again. so vote yes on 55. because it helps our children thrive. it s the economy, stumd. seriously, it is the economy this election. the phrase made famous during bill clinton s run for the white house still holds true today. from jobs, wages stock market speaking to the stock market, the dow scored 371 points, the biggest gain after james comey cleared hillary clinton in the e-mail investigation. the markets read that as fafrlible for clinton s run. stocks jumped on the news, why? no, the markets aren t in love withic hillary clinton but they hate uncertainty. and trump is more of an unknown and comes with unpredictable on big issues like trade. meanwhile, the s&p 500 could fall 3 to 500 if trump wins. and deutsche bank stocks could also fall if trump wins. joining us, ben stein, lonnie chan, a republican who is not supporting trump. ben, are these predictions too dire? i mean, the u.s. economy has been through a lot. dare i say the fundamentals of the economy are strong? can i say that, harkening back to john mccain? but are these predictions too dire? way too dire. if the economy is extremely strong. and by the way, citi group doesn t have a crystal ball of predicting the future of stocks, neither dois deutsche bank. mr. trump s claim he is going to be the greatest creator of jobs god has ever created is non-sense. there is nothing in his proposal he has set forth that would lead anybody to believe that. nobody believes that, but god bless him any way: but the main thing is the economy is rather strong. people have dropped out of the labor force, and neither of the candidates has a good idea on how to get people back into the ligament force. there are good numbers out there. but ben makes the exact important point that those numbers don t for the people most this need, those are people who have been out of work so long they have given up looked. they are not even counted. when you look at the reality of this situation how helpful is a report like this for clinton? only to the extent it s been covered in a way to suggest that the economy and labor markets in particular are doing well. i think obviously the bigger concern sufficient got people as you have note who had dropped out of the labor force. you have got people in part-time work but want full-time work. so the measure of how the labor market is doing jenlely is not as rosie. big issue going forward is two candidates, both who put out policies that could be problematic. on the trump end you have got policies that would restrict immigration and restrict trade. on the clinton side it s unclear whether she would address the debt and the debt load going forward causes problems as well. when you look at the tax plans, they say ben stein that hillary clinton s plan, when it comes to taxes would reduce the national debt by $5.4 trillion in 20 years. trumps would add $20 trillion over 20 years. look, your concern is do you like anything about trump s tax plan more than clinton s even if you are not a fan of the candidate? yes, i do. i like the idea of reducing the corporate tax. there shouldn t be corporate tax at you will. it should be taxed to the owner of the corporation not taxed a the corporate level. and i like repealing the estate tax because i d like my son and graun daughter to get as much as possible. but i don t think there is anything going on in trump s tax plan that s going to lead to a growth in jobs. i i m sure he want a big growth in jobs. there is nothing going on that s going to lead to that. and nothing in mrs. clinton s tax plan that is going to lead to a growth in jobs. we have a fall in freight movement. that s a worrisome sign. corporate profits have been falling steadily for the last several quarters. i would like to have somebody address what we are going to do if there is a recession. it is a important point. this has been a bull run for the markets. over seven years. if history is a indicator, then ben stein may be right that we are on the cusp of another recession? yeah, and i don t think either candidate really has come out to address that particular issue. i mean it keeps clear that hillary clinton would pursue fiscal stimulus similar to what he we saw in the first year of president obama s term. donald trump, it s unclear exactly what he would do because a lot of his policy has been fuzzy. but obviously, the economy, i think, is while it has done better over these last several quarters i think it s still in a fragile state going forward. this is something unquestionably the next president is going to have to deal with. ben stein, do you believe that this election, regardless who wins is the death knell for the big global trade greechlts, trump says he would rip up nafta, hillary clinton liked tpp until it wasn t the gold standard until she was pushed a lot by the left. she said it was when she read the final draft, is the the end of the global agreements now in
use propaganda and the ability to reach out as terrorists are doing and try to incite, and match that up with the tremendous power that social media tools allow to make that easy and simple and effective and broadly applicable. so, given that this is a strategy, and given that it s aimed not just at the united states, particularly with respect to interference in our elections, but at western europe and eastern europe, for that matter, is there an effort underway to work with our allies through nato or otherwise? i ve been to the cybersecurity center in estonia, but there didn t seem to be a nato agreement that this is something we should be working on together to respond to. so is this an effort that is underway? speaking from my lens on things, there is a lot of interest in doing that and doing it more effectively and more comprehensively, but we have not cracked the code on doing it effectively yet. and so we need to keep the pressure on ourselves and our nato allies, who are like-minded in this regard, to keep improving our approach. and it s also got to be much broader than just cyber. thank you. director clapper, my time is almost up. but before you go, since this is the last opportunity we will have to hear from you, can i just ask you, do you think the dni needs reform? there is always room for improvement. i would never say that this is the ultimate. i do think it would be useful, though, if we are going to reform or change the dni or change cia that some attention be given to, in our case, the legislative underpinnings that established the dni in the first place, and then have added additional functions and responsibilities over the years, that congress has added, two hour kit bag of duties. to say that there s not room for improvement, i would never suggest that. i appreciate that, and i certainly agree with you, i think that if there is going to be this major reform, hopefully both legislators and others who have been engaged in the intelligence community will be part of that effort. i certainly agree the congress, no pun intended, gets a vote here, i think. thank you. i know that our time has expired, and i apologize to our new members that we won t have time because you have to go. but director clapper, since this may be, hopefully, your last appearance, do you have any reflections that you d like to provide us with, particularly the role of congress or the lack of role of congress in your years of experience? i have to be careful here. i don t think you have to be. i was around in the intelligence community when the oversight committees were first established, and have watched them and have experienced them ever since. congress does have, clearly, an extremely important role to play when it comes to oversight of intelligence activities. and unlike many other endeavors of the government, much of what we do, virtually all of what we do, is done in secrecy. so the congress has a very important and crucial responsibility on behalf of the american people for overseeing what we do, particularly in terms of legality and protection of civil liberties and privacy. at risk of delving into a sensitive area, though, i do think there is a difference between oversight and micromanagement. well, we thank you. we think the witnesses, and this has been a very helpful and director clapper, we will be calling you again. really? [laughter] this meeting is adjourned. and with that, capitol hill they are getting ready to get up from the table there, that is the director of the national intelligence, and james clapper has been sitting in that seat for the better part of two and a half, almost three hours, answering questions bread we have been watching the intel chief standing behind claiming that russia did indeed metal with our elections. so what exactly is the hard evidence? that was the central issue at this hearing on capitol hill, and we watched them leave now. this is outnumbered, i m harris hock wagner. kennedy, national security council staff member, right on time, under presidents bush and obama, gillian turner, and today s #oneluckyguy, cohost of america s newsroom , bill hemmer. glad to have you. bill: happy new year, happy to be with you. harris: 2017, all right, let s get to the news. the director of national intelligence and the head of the national security agency testified about russia s meddling in the presidential election. all of this as president-elect donald trump, who will be sworn in 15 days from now, continues to express doubts about russia s interference. and amid a report which the trump transition team denies, the president-elect is looking to revamp the intel community once he takes office. a short while ago, armed services chair senator john mccain asked chief james clapper if he stood by the previous assessment that senior russian officials were behind the hacking. based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts not only that only russia s seniormost officials could have authorized in these activities, general klapper, clapper, is that something you stand behind? actually we stand more resolutely on the strength of that statement and we made on the seventh of october. harris: chief intel correspondent joins us now live from capitol hill, good to see you, catherine. thank you, harris. witnesses testified this morning that the u.s. intelligence community is more confident today than it was back in october that the interference was directed by senior russian authorities. and they also testified that it was part of a multi-faceted campaign that included the theft of emails, as well as disinformation and the use of state news. they also emphasized that they never found any evidence that any of the vote tallies were changed, but other issues were harder to measure. they did not change any vote tallies or anything of that sort, and we have no way of gauging the impact that certainly the intelligence community can t gauge, the impact that it had on the choice of the electorate made. there is no way for us to gauge that. witnesses consistently testified to the senate armed services committee that the campaign was directed by senior russian authorities. there was only a single mention of vladimir putin by name, and that came within the last hour, and it was given by dni james clapper, who said something of this political sensitivity, the interference and meddling in the american election, could only have happened with his blessing. in time, three transition sources have confirmed to fox news that the trump team is considering a restructuring of the u.s. intelligence community, a kind of streamlining, in an effort to deal with what is described as the bloat in leadership and a politicization of the intelligence itself, as described to us as something that is very preliminary. though this morning the incoming white house press secretary said the report that was carried in the wall street journal was false. in effect, though, this did come up at the hearing a short time ago. yesterday the wall street journal indicated that the president-elect is considering changes to the intelligence community. have you at all as the experts in this field and engaged in any of these discussions? no, we have not. based on our reporting, we understand that the intelligence report that exceeds about 50 pages, the classified version, has been dropped off at the white house, and that if the president wishes to be brief, that will be happening today. then the president-elect will get his brief tomorrow, friday. a key question to really be following though in the next few days is that if this intelligence report was just finished this week, on what basis did the obama white house make the decision to impose sanctions on russia and then to expel 35 diplomats? all right, thank you very much, catherine, for setting us straight on many of the fact that we will talk about right now. so bill hemmer, i want to start with you. just basically with this hearing, i think we were all perched thinking that we would learn lots of new details. it might be contentious. this was friendly. bill: i thought the biggest headline was from john mccain when he said, we have no strategy. here s a guy who just came from eastern europe, and they feel a threat on behalf of moscow all the time. what senator mccain said was, our nation has no strategy to deter cyber attacks bid we have no strategy. talk about radio free europe, and lindsey graham almost made fun of it, suggesting it was outdated. harris: he did make fun of it. lindsay was in a mood. bill: answer this, russia and china present the greatest cyber security threat to the u.s., but iran is trying to increase and spend more on its capabilities. one was that written? april, 2016. that was nine months ago. what are we doing as a government if they have already recognized that this is an issue, what are we doing to catch up? i thought that last part was very well taken. are we going after capacity or intent? probably should go after both, because if they are doing a toss, we should return favor. harris: you know what s interesting, senator lindsey graham was in a mood. and he was, and he brought up the point of hitting russia back with what he called the rock. he said that he feels like president obama has just thrown a pebble. but that is not to stay the same as to label what is going on as espionage. he went back and forth with clapper about that. i understand, and i understand that senators graham and mccain are hardliners when it comes to these issues, and i said it before and i will state again, my worry is that if we keep focusing on russia, we are not going to focus on what is most important, which is our vulnerabilities and our cyber security, because if we are only looking in one place that means we are not looking everywhere else. harris: or anywhere else. kennedy: i thank this is a very valid time to have the conversations about our national security apparatuses and while hillary clinton bragged about 17 security agencies and intelligence agencies agreeing that russia was interfering with the u.s. electoral system, my question is, why do we have 17 intelligence agencies? harris: okay, so i understand what you re saying about not necessarily just focusing on russia, but it s interesting that there are reports i may be some in the transition team, particularly the top national security picks that are getting ready to be deposed on capitol hill next week, for lack of a better word, defense secretary nominee, general james mattis, said russia could be the most dangerous rival that we have. so is it true or not? mitt romney said so. gillian: i was just going to bring that up. remember when mitt romney said that in 2012 and he got laughed out of the room. well, he was right. a couple of things on the cyber front. one is the united states is much better on offense than on defense when it comes to cyber. we ve got some of the best folks who are able to penetrate systems around the globe, but for whatever reason, the government has been lagging behind for many, many years now. and in spite of all these efforts, in spite of millions, maybe billions of dollars spread across all these different intelligence agencies over the last decade, we haven t made a lot of progress. there was a cyber czar appointed that was supposed to help manage all of that, dear member at the beginning of the administration? sometimes it s not adding another layer of bureaucracy that cures the problem, and we do it with all of these problems. we ve seen it with the va. harris: how do we square this with the idea of what the president-elect has said about russia? he has a healthy skepticism, we learn today that the fbi i would welcome some more skepticism from the president-elect on russia. because james clapper, here s what he said. i think there is an important distention here between healthy skepticism, which policymakers should have, but i think there is a difference between skepticism and disparagement. which i think was a really key thing. bill: i think two major points on this, watch to see what the president-elect says tomorrow. watch his words after he gets his own briefing at trump tower. the second thing, am i the only one that thinks this hearing today may not be the best idea? where the foremost democratic government and the entire world. we have a new administration coming in in 15 days. and you allow in open public hearing to be the center of a partisan debate. perhaps not in the witnesses, but may be in the questions that were asked. is this the time to be doing that? can t you take some of this, if not a lot of it, behind closed doors and achieve the same end? and why are we speaking in absolutes? why is the director of national intelligence saying things like it can only be members at the highest level of the russian government. why? bill: he said it did not change vote tallies. he said there is no way to gauge the choice that voters made. okay. as an american but it has to be at the highest level! bill: let me just make the point. show me some evidence. i haven t seen it. it hasn t been made public. at what point will we harris: the very public nature that we are always talking about is coming back to the very first thought that i was expressing, it was decidedly friendly. you really can t tear into each other right now, we are talking about the same thing that we agree on being safe. we ll move on. republicans win the first battle in their effort to repeal obamacare. what their replacement plan may look like, and whether the repeal effort could backfire. and just two weeks from tomorrow, president-elect donald trump will be inaugurate inaugurated. the celebrity-filled loveathon that is in works to counter the big day, and whether it will make our nation more divided? 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i think the incoming president has a pretty good handle on the gravity of the change in this law. you watch his reaction so far, in mid-december when he was on his think you two are, we are going to repeal and replace obamacare, but we ve got to be careful, we ve got to do with the right way. he repeated that again yesterday. he knows that if an american patient, let s say, is harmed by the changes in this law, the they are going to be on the front page of every newspaper in america. they are going to be on every web site across america, and they are going to point the finger and blame republicans. so you break that thing, you bought it, and that is what they really have to be thinking about. so we are hearing these warnings from democrats, chuck schumer, repealing isn t going to make america great again, it will make them sick again. obvious he from nancy pelosi as well. kennedy: then why don t you help out republicans? charles schumer also said that you can t take the good parts and leave the bad parts, while there are so many bad parts. that means you have to leave the whole thing by his logic. there are a lot of republicans, including the president-elect, who want to keep parts of it. i happen to disagree, i think you should scrap and replace. all at the same time so you don t have that giant leg. where people really could be hurt if they don t have coverage and they are left out in the cold. you really can t do that to people at this point. i think both sides realize this. but i m sorry, the president-elect has, his head and heart are in the right place when he saying the republicans and democrats have to come together to find something that helps people that is far less expensive and far better. that is the message that resonates. when he had the president behind closed doors saying don t help republicans, don t rescue them, that is partisan politics. you are screwing around with people s health care, their health, and their lives, and that is unexceptional. no easy answer here, harris, but we would hope as all these politicians stand up there with her partisan politics that they would put the country first. harris: you know what is interesting, too, put businesses first as well pray to have a business person who was about to take the presidency. and you talk about the salience of understanding how deep this issue is, do it right, but remember where he spent some time where hillary clinton didn t, and that was the rust belt. he has not just the understanding of the depth and the seriousness for individuals, but also for businesses in this country. he s got to get it right for them as well. kennedy talks about a lag, and my big worry here is you can t avoid a leg. remember when obamacare was finally passed, it took something like two years before even round one of implementation started. that was the fastest that they could legally get some of these programs implement it. it became a tax in the supreme court, basically. but the point is there is no way to avoid that, and we could argue about how many millions of people have health insurance today who didn t a few years ago, but it s millions. and what are you going to tell those people who are now looking at you as the new president and promising that things are going to be better and cheaper and faster? he s not going to be able to get it done. he s not. bill: the democratic senator from west virginia said why is president obama coming up here and only talking to democrats and why is mike pence only talking to republicans? the wild card is the incoming president. we don t know what he s going to do in terms of selling this to democrats. no republican voted for obamacare. zero. can he make a plan that s palatable to some of these moderate democrats? i don t know after obamacare, though. just how to protect from a filibuster into go along with the rules, every democrat voted against it, and g.o.p. senator rand paul. that would be true if we were starting from scratch it would be different. but remember for democrats this is now a platform issue. we know what doesn t work, if we are starting from scratch we are starting from a completely different place, and i think they re a pointy of people who have been analyzing this who know what not to do now. bill: the wall street journal says voters tend to punish politicians you can but don t solve problems, even if they did not cause them. i m telling you, there is a wild card. last word there, a lot of praise for president obama from the pentagon, calling him a leader who decisively fought terror, kept our country safe, and neutralize the iran nuclear deal. but did he really do all of these things? tech: at safelite, we know how busy your life can be. oh, thanks. bon appe-cheese! okay. new pantene doesn t just wash your hair, it fuels it. with the first pro-v nutrient blend, making every. .strand stronger don t just wash your hair fuel it fuel your hair. because strong is beautiful. hello there. the pentagon heaping tons of praise on president obama at an awards ceremony in virginia, how lovely. an announcer telling the audience he kept our nation safe and decisively countered terrorism. don t tell lies is that. here is mr. obama addressing the audience. you ve shown that when it comes to fighting terrorism we can be strong and we can be smart. not by letting our forces get dragged into sectarian conflicts and civil wars, but with smart, sustainable i m a principled partnerships. that s how we brought most of our troops home. that s how, even as we suffered terrible things at home from boston to orlando, no foreign terrorist organization has successfully planned and executed an attack on our homeland these past eight years. kennedy: other achievements, the pentagon saluted president obama for include neutralizing iran s nuclear threat, decimating al-qaeda s terrorist network, putting us on a path to defeating isis, strengthening israel s military, and improving our country s military ability. bill hemmer, there is a lot of back patting going on here, and it seems that we are dismissing quite a few important facts. bill: i hope all those things that you just said are correct. and accurate and stay that way. i think for this administration the legacy of the war overseas and here at home will be judged not today, but for years to com come. absolutely, this is certainly something that will take historical perspective, but you look at what is happening in the middle east, and it certainly doesn t look like a rosier place than it did eight years ago. bill: not just the middle east, i think it has branched out, gillian, you know how many countries where isis has bred and operating in northern africa and southeast asia. this is something that will take a generation, and again, i hope the mayor it is there. for all of us, and for the rest of the world, but i think the answer is inconclusive. maybe even a multi-generational answer. it might take decades, because i don t think the threat of radical islam, whether in the form of al-qaeda or isis, is something that is on the wane around the world. the opposite, i think it is on the rise. not by way of justification, but rather explanation, i think where the pentagon gets this logic from, and this is something i ve heard a lot of the military top brass touting lately, is that isis is on the wane in iraq and syria, meaning where they formed the caliphate is shrinking, which is great. the problem is that of the same time, and i have said this before on the show, at the same time they are enjoying a massive expansion across the rest of the globe. so how you actually calculate their foothold versus their global footprint is a couple of different calculations. isn t it also true because that is where they are facing the most opposition, particularly from us and our allied forces in iraq and syria? that makes a lot of sense. and just real quickly, and i nodded and agreed wholeheartedly based upon the facts here, generalization lay, how long that will take. we just were learned that the state apartment has declared osama bin laden s son a terrorist, and has added him to the terror watch lit watch list. that is a whole new generation of hate. you also have, what happens in syria if isis truly is defeated there? and don t tell that to turkey, who has undergone a series of terrorist attacks, including the one that killed dozens on new year s day. but when you praise president obama for keeping our nation safe, and you kind of look back to the election, bill, you can probably cite the polls, american people don t feel safer than they did eight years ago or ten years ago. i just look back at some of the polling back in june, 2016, and it clearly showed that people are more concerned now than they were when president obama took office. bill: it s a real threat, and i understand the reason why they have that fear and concern. i thought it was a little sad on new year s eve that you had the country of turkey, where all these young people have been gunned down during a new year s eve party, and how little attention we seem to give it now. i think the idea there, or the thought, is that we are moving into a new phase where we accept it, and that s bad and that s wrong, and that s dangerous. whether it s here or somewhere else. i just thought we almost did not justify, perhaps, the loss of life. the way that we would have even a year ago. this new normal here is something that bothers me. but you also try to find a balance of not letting it affect your life so much that you are paralyzed by fear, and i think that is what people are trying to find that very fine line. absolutely. california bracing for a trump presidency. listen to this, by hiring former attorney general eric holder. the role he will play in fighting the incoming administration, and what that could mean for the entire country. that s next. a heart attack doesn t care what you eat attorney general eric holder as an ally for potential battles against the incoming trump administration. lawmakers announcing they have hired holder, along with numbers of his private firm, as an outside counsel for the state. california s assembly speaker with this statement. while we don t next yet know the harmful proposals in x-men administration will pull forward, thanks to donald trump s campaign, cabinet appointment, and twitter feed, we do have an idea what we will be dealing with. this team will be an important resource as we work with the governor and attorney general to protect californians. and protection might include illegal immigrants. many sanctuary cities and counties in california vowing not to cooperate with possible deportation plans under a trump presidency. they have been gearing up for this, we have been hearing this type of talk from leaders in california since donald trump was elected president, bill hemmer. bill: boy, talk about partisan with a capital p. we are really coming to an era where it s going to get more intense. the dnc has hired john nothing or come a long time operative, who is now now the washington post writes about the spirit he will be joined by two clinton veterans and outspent the campaign focused on trump, researching his background, monitoring his statements, and trying to drive negative media coverage of his candidacy. already this is happening. and we are 15 days away from the inauguration. buckle up. they are gearing up for a fight, kennedy. kennedy: having lived in california for the better part of 25 years, i will tell you it s not just democrats that live there. there are a lot of independence in that state, and they are certainly underserviced by the state legislature. and by the governor and attorney general. and what they are doing, this is completely politicized. what about looking out for the good things that might happen as a result of a more competitive business environment? what about the companies who fight the good fight not just with federal regulations, but with high stake, corporate taxes? a lot of state regulations in california, as well. and they still slog it out. and god bless them for doing that could work. and you know, why not talk about some of the good things that might happen as a result of this? bill: i think the bigger point is that the dnc is setting up a war room to take on donald trump. i don t know when the last time that happened. ever? let me push back on that, bill. because i would say that is the reason that the dnc and any of these political fundraising organizations exist. in a way i want to push back against all of you and say, this is not news. this is the way the political system works. if you don t like it, that is understandable. bill: this is how it s written in the washington post. trying to drive negative media coverage of his candidacy. [cross talk] from a p.r. perspective, did you not see the ads during the campaign? of course there is a worm of people thinking about how to describe the opponent in the negative way. let s talk about some of the areas that will be areas of concern. this is the state of california! immigration is going to be a key, and climate change is going to be a key, because a look at this as a man who, during his campaign, called climate change and some other words a hoax. i guess, didn t we learn from the democratic party that they knew that they had friendly people in the media who they could put messaging out? to me, this is just an extension of that, that they are going to now from a position of legality with an attorney in eric holder, go after those topics and those people that they don t like. doesn t trump have friendly voices on the media that he can call on the side and have interviews with? bill: every morning of this week around 7:30 a.m. there is a stream of twitter feeds that comes from the president-elect. and those twitter feeds are driving the news content of the day across the cable landscape, across is a good? it s different. so you feel the democrats feel left out and they have to raise their game? i think that s all the democrats have at this point and they are not doing a thorough self-examination. we hear about all these issues because it is politicized here, is politicized with obamacare, when you hear about the people? and doing what is best for the people of california. bill: for now you are correct, that might be the only power they have. by the way, you have a governor there that is concerned about his legacy, because he is concerned about climate change being part of his legacy. if they are so concerned about climate change, one of the utilities in california says that they are going to switch as much as they can to solar because it s clean. and your utility bills are going to go up 56% bridwell, that is really looking out for the little guy. we ve got the scientists, we got the lawyers, and we are ready to fight. that is a bottom line. moved to texas. two weeks from tomorrow, donald trump will become the country s 45th president, but some big-name liberals liberties are having a hard time letting go. so much so they are putting on a big shindig at the exact same time as the inauguration. grapes at their sour wrist? sour grapes, we debate that. in exactly two weeks from tomorrow, president-elect donald trump will be inaugurated and at that very moment competing for attention will be a celebrity-filled loveathon. that s going to air on facebook live. think of it as a jerry lewis-style telethon for the digital age. celebrities participating include jamie lee curtis, and her husband, christopher guest. along with jane fonda, tim robbins, patricia arquette, and john abbott out. it is part of an effort to raise at least $500,000 for the aclu of southern california, planned parenthood, and earth justice. can i say something about the guy who created this? he s 23 years old, alex godin, and he did this he says the day after election day. i woke up like a lot of americans feeling pretty crabby. on november 10th. i looked for an opportunity to do something. he is an entrepreneur who sold his company, dispatch, to meetup.com. the election was november 8th, he woke up november 10th. [laughter] where does he live? what state? is marijuana legalized in that state? now, now. may be live here in new york city. i don t know. but it took them two days to get up from election night. and he woke up feeling pretty crappy . bill: owner home to people watch that facebook live. i m going to watch to see chris for guest, i love him. he s so hilarious, he s the best. bill: i plan on being there, and i love them, they are great. you never forget them. these are wonderful and historical american moments that i cherish. and i can t wait. but how can you pass up a lovefest? bill: i remember after the george bush-al gore deal in 2000, it was a long, rainy weekend here in washington, d.c. i remember the democracy speech four years later at the start of the second term, a cold, cold day in washington, d.c. i remember standing next to an african-american man from louisiana with a paperthin purple jacket on window barack obama was sworn in, and tears streaming down his face to see an african-american president be sworn in. it was a moment. i remember watching joe biden run up pennsylvania avenue in 2013. so who knows what will happen this time around, but it will be something we will never forget. that was lsu purple, you know. bill: you are exactly right, go tigers. they are going to have to do better than jamie lee curtis, aren t they? they ve got jane fonda going as well. is she wearing her helmet, is she bringing that, to? from the good old days. it appears to be a little tone-deaf after the story we did yesterday, the commercial advertisement that they put out speaking out against donald trump. i just wonder what else they have to be doing. beagle rather than watch the lovefest, people should just rent best in show on netflix, that is one of christopher guest s movies but he is so funny. a mighty wind is also funn funny. and try to think of all the titles now. and that was a free promo. bill: or you can just wait for two days, right harris? harris: i think that the dude who created this, i just laugh. i woke up the next day and it s two days later. who gives up their career to sign on to this? i don t know, but they should all just shut their pie holes and focus their energy and creative pursuits that many people can enjoy. because when you make good movies and when you make funny shows and great music, it doesn t matter your political stripe, you can enjoy that. but when you do this you alienate at least half of the country. just write a check and get a buddy to shut up. you think of any people will watch on facebook live? no, but it s love. how can you question love? we are very close, we are tight like that. more outnumbered in just a moment, please stick around. liberty mutual stood with me when i was too busy with the kids to get a repair estimate. i just snapped a photo and got an estimate in 24 hours. my insurance company definitely doesn t have that. you can leave worry behind when liberty stands with you™ liberty mutual insurance
if you are talking about a way for us to actually win and not just bust the blue wall, you are assuming we are winning states that mitt romney and john mccain both lost to president obama including iowa, ohio and florida. of course north carolina the first time. here s the important thing and momentum and enthusiasm matter. in addition us closing the gap from 12 points to being ahead or being tied. by the way, let me ask you this. have you had a poll move 13 points in a week? have you had a poll move 13 points in a week? that you didn t wonder something must be wrong with the poll. i m not wondering at all. we can t play that game. i can t have your network calling the race over because of the abc news washington post moving and say that may not have been right. i didn t hang my hat on that poll then or now. a lot of people in your network did. i want to make the point that the lines are clearly going in our direction and i think the most fascinating numbers in abc washington poll are not the horse race numbers and they show hillary clinton s unfavorable ratings are high and donald trump is trusted more than she is by the american voter and most importantly, something we have talked about, the attribute that goes to empathy and compassion with voters and the question of who cares more about people like you. clinton and trump were tied on that. that s remarkable and all the trends are going our way. job creation and politicians. that plays well in the upper midwest. you concerned that you go to wisconsin and you go to nevada and joe heck, the senate candidate has not decided what he is going to do. new hampshire is another state thaw brought up. i m going to can the question. are you concerned that you may come up short and in new hampshi hampshire. three of the leading republicans and in each of those places may be holding you back somewhat. and whose fault will that be? mr. trump endorsed kelly ayotte and endorsed john mccain and has been gracious. he has done his part to unify the party by becoming president. you don t think he could have done more? it s time for republicans to come home. i like governor pence s message. mr. trump went to wisconsin for a great event with senator johnson and governor walker. anyway, i wanted to say this to you. for a president trump to have a republican senate. like missouri and north carolina where donald trump is ahead of the senate candidates and in terms of the gubernatorial candidates, trump is ahead of the republican gubernatorial candidates in indiana, missouri and new hampshire. one final question. in the early vote on one hand we have seen good news on your side depending on the racial make up and good news on different make ups. there is one part of this that to me doesn t look good for your side. while african-american turn out may be down, hispanic turn out is on the way to record breaking. how much does that concern you in. it all concerns me because that s my job. we top the make sure we invested early in the absentee ballot and early voting. if you have to go through the budget and decide where to put your resources, we like the early returns that we are getting in the states where we are on par or ahead of where governor romney was in terms of early returns. we are keeping a close eye on that, but you have the states like pennsylvania and new hampshire which are day of voting. there is absentee voting of course. you will see mr. trump and governor pence in those states. we are happy with what we see with requests for absentee ballots. do you acknowledge that the hispanic vote is on the way to a record high, did that make it more difficult some. not necessarily. there will be millions of votes cast in florida and we feel good about mitt romney got 27% and a little bit better in florida. a lot of voters would surprise you and the number of people who are excited about the trump message with job creation and renegotiating deals and make us more safe and prosperous. people of all backgrounds want change. there is only one clear choice. i have to ask you this. there was an incident today that some supporter of donald trump s yelled at the media pen a pretty horrific thing. take a listen. you are an embarrassment. the guy yelled you sell out for a few scheckles. you were asked about the jew sa chant that he had. donald trump is not doing this, but it is surfacing supporters with a lot of anti-semitic rhetoric. what is your campaign doing? it is not a lot and i would not be part of this campaign and you know it. it keeps showing up. in arizona it keeps showing up. the first amendment right. you can sound like a fool and hear people sound that way every day. the fact is that in the case of arizona, i checked the with the head of security and he plus the guys on the ground in arizona tell me they removed that protester. i didn t hear that covered in the news or whatever he is saying idiotic things that do not reflect the campaign or the candida candidacy. donald trump said he will be the president of all people and even those who don t agree with him. with the outbursts like. that. i think she is corrupt and lied and you should criminal investigation. the rhetoric that has been thrown at the media, i have been experienced it in ways i have never experienced about. i m donald trump s campaign manager and i don t appreciate the death threats. it s not fun to have a death threat. i get it completely and think everybody should tone it down. that includes everybody. i am yet to hear hillary clinton distance herself from the antipolice rhetoric. she ignores it like she didn t hear it. six more days and six very, very long days. i will see you victory night. be our guests. see you victory night. joy reed is host of msnbc. kasie hunt. a slew of new polls and the post important is wisconsin. donald trump s path still has to breakthrough the blue wall of the industrial midwest. when you look at the three states, wisconsin, michigan, pennsylvania. romney and mccain went searching for them and here comes donald trump. they realize i can win all the toss ups and not get there. in wisconsin, it is the market et poll. the good track record. plus six. clinton and romney won the state by seven. even obama won by seven. wishful thinking in retrospect. you say it looks like 2012. the other thing is what ron johnson is behind and the senator and republican by only a point. the polls can be off within a poll and the comparisons are real because it s the same people. ron johnson is running five points ahead. that toll me that are johnson had a nice come back. that are is probably max. the five-point marker is as good as it gets for the candidate running above trump. the fact that trump predicted that he will be five points behind. what s interesting now, you are a michigan native and say keep your eye on michigan. he s another that has been saying you guys don t know what s happening here. trump can carry really well in the midwest. we haven t seen the cracks yet. it s hard to believe it is closer. i think it s possible that there is a surprise lurking in michigan and we are not picking up on it. if there is an x factor in polling where white working class voter who is voted democrat in the past and are excited to vote for trump. that has been the question mark all the way along. some of this is my sense for having covered bernie on the ground. i had republicans raise flags about it and at least one democrat who tried to raise flags in the past and vanish wrong. still it seems to be a place that has come up with for repeatedly. there could be something going on. there is a reason of nervousness in team clinton. not about michigan, but what it takes to win. they need a good turn out and overall early vote has shown maybe african-americans turn out. that doesn t help you in michigan and wisconsin. that doesn t help you. it still exists and the reason democrats had the white whales. republicans have them. you and bill both. the reality is that pennsylvania, wisconsin and michigan will go democrat and keep going democrat because those big cities. those big urban centers go for the democrats and the suburbs go for the democrats and you have a state like ohio and the reason they are more viable is you have a smaller african-american population. whether or not you have the robust turn out when the first black president and the reelect happened. you can t compare that. barack obama running in 8 and 12, the first black president potential existing. you are never going to get that back. i keep wondering i should we use 2012? not quite. it may be too long away. we go back to 2000 which is a generic race and michigan, i believe it was like plus 4. it s not as democratic as people think. who was the governor? detroit is a lot smaller. you know what michigan is lacking and what pennsylvania has and ohio has. it s big suburban centers with a lot of well educated white voters. they are not voting for donald trump at the moment and that exists to a lesser degree in michigan. oakland county by the way, a county that used to be a republican county is likely going to end up voting for her. two non-college whites in the congress. you have to remember that when they talk about the suburbs in the 80s and 90s. now what you are seeing is a lot of african-americans and a lot of others are moving out and it s the city that is expensive. gentrification is pushing a lot of af kanch americrican-america. they have college educated white voters and nonwhite voters. ohio has less of all of that and they have the largest non-college educated white populations and an ache% white population. trump can win ohio, but not michigan. something we are starring to stumble into the result and may throw up a bunch of cnn polls and they have problems with the nevada numbers. let me throw them up. really said don t believe the numbers and the clark county split is so wrong which it is. the florida poll looks like what others look like. pennsylvania and cnn has at four. that would surprise people and clinton had 48 and 44. arizona with 49 and 44. taken together it is starting to look like 2012. all together. here s the funny thing. it is an extraordinary year. it is extraordinary. a week from now if you looked at the results, it can look like an ordinary race. the democrat could win and the senate could be democrat and the republicans might hold the house and it would be an interesting question if we were all too call the up in the drama and we had an ordinary election. we didn t have an ordinary election and may have stumbled on an ordinary result. i think the martians could be confused. you get to that because they are shifting underneath. white women shifting and a higher i hhispanic turn out. this will be important november 9th as we unpack the election. we look into the states and the map will look within the states. you guys are sticking around. coming up, trump and the establishment and how the grass roots movement stumped the elites. how the filmmaker is warning about what could come next. live in studio next. stay tuned. new bikes aren t selling guys. what are we gonna do? how about we pump more into promotions? nah. what else? what if we hire more sales reps? nah. what else? what if we digitize the whole supply chain? so people can customize their bike before they buy it. that worked better than expected. i ll dial it back. yeah, dial it back. just a little. live business, powered by sap. when you run live, you run simple. but dad, you ve got.tes are probably gonna double. allstate. with accident forgiveness they guarantee your rates won t go up just because of an accident. smart kid. indeed. it s good to be in, good hands. teachers, nurses and firefightes support prop 51. prop 51 will upgrade libraries, science labs, and classroom technology and relieve school overcrowding creating more opportunity . . . and better learning for students help students succeed vote yes on 51. want a great way to help our children thrive? then be sure to vote yes on proposition 55. prop 55 doesn t raise taxes on anyone. instead, it simply maintains the current tax rate on the wealthiest californians to prevent education cuts that would hurt our kids. no wonder prop 55 is endorsed by the california pta, teachers and educators. because all of us want to help our children thrive. it s time to vote yes on proposition 55. teachers, firefighters and nurss support prop 51. prop 51 repairs older schools and removes dangerous lead paint and pipes ensuring classrooms are safe for all students. for safe schools vote yes on 51. he said clinton s e-mail saga is enough to get her impeached democrats are hoping to keep fine gold on top and it will be tough for democrats to take back the senate without flipping wisconsin. up next, filmmaker michael moore talks with me about trump s grass roots appeal. [beeping] take on any galaxy with a car that could stop for you. simulation complete. the new nissan rogue. rogue one: a star wars story. in theaters december 16th. military failure and success, incumbent charisma and challenger charisma. on six of these measure, the white house goes to trump. the professor said trump can start measuring with six days to go. he is sticking to that prediction and hasn t been wrong in the last eight presidential elections. he is a professor of history in american university and he is correctly predicted the results of every presidential election using this matrix since 1984. i will say i know you are not a supporter of donald trump and i think you ran as a democrat back in the day. what is it and what is the missing seventh key for hillary clinton that your system says is going to keep her from the white house. all right. you have gone through the keys and you are right. my predictions are nonpartisan. ninth predictions. five democrats and four republicans. you can t be more nonpartisan about that. they took a pasting in the mid-terms. incumbency since obama is not running. third party. gary johnson is polling way above what any libertarian has done. he might be fading and the lack of policy change given the gridlock in the second obama term. it goes term boy term and the lack of a big splashy foreign policy success in the second term like dispatching bid laden and number six the fact that hillary clinton is not a once in a generation charismatic candidate like a kennedy. i never hedged a prediction. it sounds like you might hedge. you want to hear it? let s hear the hedge. i m not locking at a crystal ball and i m not ben carson. i m basing my predictions on history. and they go all the way back to 1860. in donald trump we may well have a history-smashing candidate who so much of the american people regard as unfit for the presidency who have done a dozen things that would have driven any other candidate out of the race. when herman cain was in the nomination, that drove him out of the race. donald trump has been accused of sexual harassment by 12 woman and openly bragged about assaulting women and continues on. he is the only candidate ever to question the peaceful transfer of power. he could break the pattern. he can break the pattern, but there is a chance that hillary clinton basically gets this last key and it goes to the third party. what is your level, what is the level on your key for a third? the collective 30 party vote and at a 5% frethreshold and that mt be the that might flip it for you if it did fade? check, as usual you are right on point. obviously we don t know what gary johnson is going to poll. it s just gary johnson. my typical methodology they will use is to take the highest polling numbers for a third party and cut it in half. that worked invariably. gary johnson was polling about 13%. he is about 6 or 6.5. and it shows he is in decline. i don t know what gary johnson is going to do ultimately. i am not going to change my predictions before the election. if he ends up less than five, that s one less key and that would mean what? your system works and clinton wins? the system works if clinton wins. that s right. we will be waiting to see and maybe it s all about gary johnson s number to find out the future of your keys. anyway. always good to see you, sir. same here, chuck. still ahead, michael moore joins me in his new movie trumpland and whether the nation can come together after this devicive election. stay tuned. eyes open? good. because it s here. cue the confetti. say hi to xiidra, lifitegrast ophthalmic solution. xiidra is the first prescription eye drop solution approved to treat the signs and symptoms of dry eye. so give your eye doctor a ring, and your eyes just might thank you. one drop in each eye, twice a day. the most common side effects of xiidra include eye irritation, discomfort or blurred vision when the drops are applied to the eyes, and an unusual taste sensation. to help avoid eye injury or contamination of the solution, do not touch the container tip to your eye or any surface. if you wear contact lenses, remove them before using xiidra and wait for at least 15 minutes before placing them back in your eyes. are you ready to do something about your dry eyes? talk to your doctor about xiidra. tv: oh, it s gonna get crazy! internet videos. this is black friday that is insane. i would never do that. at chevy, you can avoid the chaos and get great deals on the most awarded lineup. i like that. bam! it s awesome! you don t have to camp out at the chevy dealer two days in advance. i love it. (laughs) wow. and you don t have to wait until black friday. find your tag and get 20% cash back, or, get 0% financing for 72 months on select remaining 2016 silverado double cabs in stock. find new roads at your local chevy dealer. business worldwide. filmmaker michael moore has been warning about a trump ground swell for months. now moore has a new documentary about michael moore in trumpland. it is part soliloquy and part focus group. he speaks to a theater full of trump and clinton supporters in ohio and sets out to see if there is such thing as middle ground to be found between the groups of voters. every beaten down nameless forgotten working person who used to be part of the middle class loves trump. he is the human molotov cocktail they have been waiting for. the human hand grenade they can legally throw into the system that stole their lives with them. who are doesn t like the supreme court system on gay marriage. you don t support it. anybody else? sir, then don t get gay married. right? michael moore joins me now. i have to say i loved the idea of what hyou had to do. it is what the two candidates should be doing and what many in the media should be spending more time doing. you put them together. how did they interact? people were with each other. that room was about a 30 trump people, one half hillary and the others were not going to vote. why do they trust you? i am them in that way. i am trump s demographic. an angry white guy over 35. on that level. you would like to throw a molotov cocktail at washington. yes, i have known that feeling. let s blow this up and start over. not violently, of course. i understand mainly because my friends who lost their jobs and the people who suffered some of them for decades because it started in the 80s, i understand why they are angry and i understand why they want to do that. if i can bring them in the room, maybe there was common ground and maybe i can convince them to not use the ballot next tuesday as an anger management exercise. we played the gay marriage excerpt not because you pointed to a couple of people who raised their hand. nobody really did. i feel as if one way we will look back on this election and it s the end of another long time strategist and he believes this too. our divide had been social issue based and we are seeing the year that trade shakes up both parties. do you think we are headed to a new divide based on and this is the end of the cultural wars. a lot of liberals are saying after the election even if hillary wins, the other side. there are pockets on both sides. the big issues are over. they are not going to go to the map on gay marriage or pro choice. that s over. that s good. we are moving into the future now. the issues are going to be economic-based. does the government help me as a working person, as a family member or are they more concerned about wall street? trump has been able to speak to people i know when he goes after hillary for the peaches to goldman sachs or against ford motor and say if you build the cars in mexico, we will put a tariff on them. there are obama trump voters. mostly they thought mitt romney didn t understand their problems and didn t identify. the same people who voted obama in iowa will vote clinton. do you think there are enough in michigan. that will flip iowa. are there enough of those guys in michigan? i think and i want to warn everybody, do not trust these numbers. look, i m in michigan. on the morning of the primary in march, all the polls on this network and all the networks, everybody missed bernie. they have 8 to 25 points and she lost 12 hours later. i think that there is so much despair in the state and so much anger at the system and when people hear clinton, they hear bush. when they hear bush, they hear clinton. that has been their life and that s the system. he has been able to manipulate and it s a conjob to my friends and people i know in michigan who are thinking of voting for him. i am not sleeping basically because i m spending this week and last week in these brexit states and talking to people in michigan and ohio and pennsylvania. it s interesting that you call them brexit states. the angry used to be the middle class and now they are people that work two jobs and are struggling to get by. if hillary clinton is elected, what s your advice to her on connecting with this? whoever wins has to reach out to this angry other side. if she wins, does she have this theater? should she have a theater of just trump supporters? she will win them over because what she does is all things that help them. she will make sure that the women are paid the same as men. she will support legislation that has a family leave and a paid maternity leave and support the things that help them. she will fix the pipes in flint so people are not drinking poison water. they will see that and go you know what, i saw it in the republican tone and i had trump people who said they will think about it. they didn t me they were voting for hillary, but he said you showed the picture of her holing that baby when she was out doing research on her health care plan and they said you made her look like a human being. she is a human being. a wonderful human being. her problem is she plays by her own set of rules that means she helps her friends before she helps me. the perception that the media created. she had been through so much abuse. she is thinking to herself, i want my private life to be private. it ended up exploiting and her favorite show is the good wife. i know everything about her. the opposite of what she wanted to happen, but people have to get a reality check. we are talking about e-mails versus everything that he is going to do to blow up the and wait until the president trump is elected. the way you tell the person, clinton, bush. clinton, bush. pick clinton over trump. they say oh, yeah, but bill clinton signed nafta. why should they believe that? you are picking the right clinton this time. you are picking the clinton. she is going to you find her a better clinton than bill. absolutely. no disrespect to him, but she is a woman who had to go through the first feminist of the 60s and 70s. she had to suffer. she walked through the fire. that are scar tissue is going to the memory of what it has been like to be the minority and be the person who has been harassed and attacked. all the things that is in donald trump, she lived that. she is going to sit in the oval office and the first thing on her mind every day is let s make sure we don t hurt anybody, especially the children and the family. the i totally believe that as someone who never voted for her. i m a bernie voter. i m excited to vote for her on tuesday. it s getting views. it s quite a few people are watching this. number still in the country. i m stunned by it and happy. if people watch it, especially people thinking of not voting, that s the worst thing. if you are thinking of not voting. michael moore. thanks for having me in person. my politics sports obsession. wait until you see how i turn tonight s game seven into a very important election night-related issue. we ll be right back. game seven of the world series is tonight between the cubs and the indians. as predictable as any guy as a time cubs fan when she is not a yankees fan, clinton has every reason to root for the cubs. when the national league teams win game seven, the party in power holds the white house. the yankees won and so did are now. the same two results. the yankees and ike dominated the 50s. in 1960 it was the pittsburgh pirates who won that heart stopper and a democrat, jack ken see did the same. it was the national leg s cardinals in and linda johnson. the tigers won game and richard nixon took the white house. the oakland a s and all of their long hair and the american league won in seven and nixon in a landslide. there have been plenty of gamel the same year, believe its and plenty of presidential elections but never in the same year. so what do you do? i guess you hope history doesn t repeat itself. have a great time watching this game tonight. i know i am. well, if you want to sing out, sing out and if you want to be free, be free cause there s a million things to be you know that there are and if you want to be me, be me and if you want to be you, be you cause there s a million things to do you know that there are least the rage from pro trump. all these republicans, late. they went ten months without the trump tattoo and they re all going to the tattoo parlor going, yeah, put it on me. put on it me. is this a risk? are they hedging their bets? i think they re being foolish and a little cowardly. i think what happened is they were sort of comfortably sitting back. they were voting for trump and never talking about it. then the access hollywood video came out. there was that crazy weekend. not crazy, an appropriate in my response as saying i can no longer support trump. they had not imagined the deluge of activists. i ll just take back lash. 98% will vote republican at the end of the day and said, it went back the other way. now they just look silly. what good comes out of this for any of these late trump supporters if he doesn t win? i don t see any upside to be honest with you. i m trying to find it. i didn t either but i was like, hey! i do think that a lot of these, they ve always been in a difficult spot. john mccain is probably the best example of this. because for the most part, they ve the republican base has been animated by trump. it is like you can t win with him or without him. what are you going to do? he has so far stuck to, he came out and stuck to, in the wake of that access hollywood tape. he has not flipped back. you re entitled to one flip and not two flips. that s my general rule in politics. he is farther ahead. i feel like nothing epitomizes this more than david saying i can t tell my 15-year-old daughter. look her in the eye. then gets outcurse of the fbi which i think caused a lot of republicans to think, wait a minute. this fbi thing might make trump win. so he scurried back on the trump train within 36 hours literally of the fbi thing. and marco rubio who has been on record saying that trump is dangerous. that he had no business having his finger near the button. then he flees to the trump side. do you know what he got? nothing. his poll numbers have flat lined. he is in a virtual dead heat. patrick murphy is not a great candidate and he is within a point of rubio. a good point. it hasn t gotten i think a big distinction is to say, look. my problem is with donald trump. i m a republican. but i think a trump administration would be better for the country than a clinton policy. that s very different than saying once you re for trump you start down the slippery slope of rationalizing everything he says and does. saying as he man of good character. that you didn t have to do. my colleague wrote, once start for trump, somehow they start going down the slope. but they take themselves by becoming rationalizers instead of reluctant voters. i think he tweeted before the fbi news that he had gone back. and i think that s because he wants to be able to investigate hillary clinton with a clean slate. and i think he may have been thinking about a house leadership race. and i do think, can you be anti-trump and be in house leadership? thank you much. after the break, the future of the news. stay tuned. imy moderate to severeng crohn s disease. i didn t think there was anything else to talk about. but then i realized there was. so, i finally broke the silence with my doctor about what i was experiencing. he said humira is for people like me who have tried other medications but still experience the symptoms of moderate to severe crohn s disease. in clinical studies, the majority of patients on humira saw significant symptom relief. and many achieved remission. humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened; as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. before treatment, get tested for tb. tell your doctor if you ve been to areas where certain fungal infections are common, and if you ve had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections, or have flu-like symptoms or sores. don t start humira if you have an infection. if you re still just managing your symptoms, talk with your gastroenterologist about humira. with humira, remission is possible.
e-mails. and then the letters comey sent to the hill, one saying we found more e-mails on anthony weiner s laptop that could be pertinent to our investigation, we need to look at those, and then his follow-up letter a few days before the election in which he said, we ve done that review and we haven t had anything. hillary clinton herself has said she thinks that first letter in late october changed the course of the election. so, the inspector general is going to look at that and a couple of ancillary things. there have been allegations that an fbi deputy director should have taken himself off part of this case because of some connections to the campaign or his wife s connections to the political to politics in virginia. some allegations that an assistant attorney general for legislative affairs passed information along to the clinton campaign, and other employees disclosed nonpublic information. the foeklecal point is the two actions by the fbi director, the letter to the hill in late october and november. thanks so much. former clinton campaign senior adviser joel benenson weighing in on today s news of the inspector general review. here s what he told my colleague katie can tur a few minutes ago. the real question here, is it appropriate for the fbi and the fbi watchdog to investigate behavior they think violated fbi practices in the course of conducting investigations and engaging in public conversation about that? i think that s appropriate. no one s trying to get a do-over in the election. that s not going to happen. nobody says it s going to happen. but when public officials abuse or potentially abuse their authority and their office, that investigation there s not a statute of limitations that says when the election is over we re not going to go back and look at the behavior of a prosecutor who was advised not to do this 11 days out, who was criticized by former fbi professionals from both parties for doing so, to look into that. for more on all this, i want to bring in stanley pottenger, former civil rights attorney at the department of justice. thank you for coming in in a hurry. i know you had to rush to get here. let s talk about the reaction. we just heard joel benenson. we actually heard from republican congressman jason chaffetz say he supports this investigation. you served at the justice department. first of all, are you surprised the inspector general would get involved or does this seem seem, in your view, an appropriate use of time? yes, it s unusual. but the entire episode he s investigating is unusual. the thing pete williams talked about is the thing to keep in mind. are you investigating the substance and the prosecutorial, the answer is no, apparently. or are you talking about how it was handled, the publication of documents. that is appropriate for the i.g., the inspector general to use. apparently, that s what he s going to focus on. what he s focused in part on carefully. i would not be surprised if you find that james comey defends his position pretty effectively. the inspector general right now, i don t know if you know him, a man named michael horowitz, started as assistant attorney in new york, moved to the department of justice. many years in doj. in 2012 he becomes the i.g. he s appointed by the president, president obama. it s my understanding, is it a ten-year term for the inspector general? i think that s right. it may be. i know there s a ten-year term for the director of the fbi. typically there are very few ten-year terms. this could be. we ll check that. my question was going to be, what happens now? so, donald trump, takes office next week. he can replace this inspector general or is he going to continue with this investigation no matter what? if he has a ten-year term, he can only be replaced for cause. there s no indication there is cause. if he doesn t have a ten-year term, he will be replaced. the new attorney general, presumably jeff sessions, will have to decide, does he continue it with the existing staff, shut it down or change it? that s why we have more questions right now than answers. in terms of how quickly all of this could play out and whether let s assume he stays on this investigation, the inspector general, what he does, what are the possibilities in terms of reprimand, punishment? i mean, what can happen with an i.g. report? that s a really good question. the answer is very little because the he s investigating the people who actually do the prosecuting. it isn t likely they re going to turn around and prosecute themselves if he recommended there was something. the truth is, i don t think he s looking a prosecutal crime. he s looking as who the department and then presumably the public and press what happened. that means what he s doing is basically a report to the public about what happened, but not something that will involve criminal prosecution. joel benenson said last hour that he doesn t think any of this will impact what happened. i mean, the past is past. the election is over. i want to play some sound, though, if i can, from hillary clinton. this is at a party with donors. she was talking about the impact she believes that comey s letter made right before the elections. take a listen. . don t take it from me, take it from independent analysts, take it from the trump campaign, take it from nate silver who s point out that swing state voters made their decisions in the final days breaking against me because of the fbi letter from director comey, and nate silver believes, i happen to believe this, that that letter most likely made the difference in the outcome. again, this investigation does not look at that. pete williams said it s not going to look at whether everything that happened impacted the election or not. in your view, as former assistant attorney general, do you think it? you said the election s over. apparently it s not over. everybody is talking about it. until the 20th, news will start to turn to events instead of speculation. don t think it will make much difference. i was sorry she cited nate silver. i like him. i read it. he missed it. he missed this elections. he missed brexit. he doesn t have a record right now that says his polling is hitting the buttons. i m want sure that helped her make that claim. now, do i make her for making that claim? not at all. you know, she s handling this as well as she can having lost a surprisingly lost the election n her view. i don t think it will make a difference by the time this is over. in terms of the new investigation? yeah. i think we ll learn something more but we have this big flip-flop. you remember in the summer everyone was singing the praises of jim comey because he had exonerated republicans. republicans were mad. excuse me, democrats. democrats were singing praises. right. then when he lost, democrats were furious with him. i think the american public understands that to some extent our perspective is warped by the results we want. that s true for both sides, democrats and republicans. thank you for your analysis. thank you for coming in quickly, former assistant attorney general. almost promoted you. in the civil rights division of the department of justice. nice to have you. turning now to the current commander in chief, president obama and a parting tribute for vice president joe biden scheduled for this hour. nbc news senior white house correspondent chris jansing is live at the white house. chris, i said the words, so now we can say this is happening, but all day we ve been waiting because it seemed like it was a bit of a surprise for joe biden? reporter: yeah it s supposed to be a secret, is what we re told. it s hard to imagine how within those walls and given the small number of people who were involved in the planning of this that joe biden doesn t suspect something. already people are gathering there. we are told that those seats are being reserved for family, for friends. chris dodd, the former senator from connecticut has been spotted. you can bet there will be dignitaries there as well as as well, not the least of whom will be the president, mrs. obama and, of course, vice president biden and his wife jill. this is something that is sort of a story many people have found to be tremendously unexpected. these two men who would seem to be so very different, who came so very close over the course of the last eight years when they have served together. they ran against each other in 2007. generations apart. first-term senator from illinois and a senator for, i think, it was, seven terms, six youngest when he came in in 1972, joe biden was from delaware. he left to be the fourth most senior senator. when he said he would do this. when he said, i ll become your vice president. the only ask he this is i wanted to be the last guy in the room. he didn t want to be one of those vice presidents who was merely ceremonial. and pretty much, he says, the president kept his word. he relied on him pretty heavily, we re told, for that first term for his foreign policy expertise. he was chairman of the foreign relations committee for a time, he was chairman for a time of the senate judiciary committee. but it s not just policy where we have seen all those pictures of them huddled in the oval office. they have become just really good friends. in fact, the way time magazine put it was, the great american broman krechlt. not just a bromance, but the great american bromance. there have been plenty of photos and videos of them, everything from running down the halls of the white house. no one quite knew what they were running to, to some of the most emotional times they ve ever had. it was the president who delivered the eulogy at the funeral of joe biden s son, beau. they were together in the rose garden when joe biden announced he would not run against hillary clinton for president of the united states. a very close friendship, not just between these two men, but between their families as well. they ve spent a tremendous amount of personal time together. in is a time for the president to say thank you, to say more about what vie presidece presid meant to him. he had a chance to start that at the farewell address, calling out the scrappy kid from scranton who became delaware s favorite son and drawing who is familiar who follows joe biden, that air gun he gave in that moment, but we re expecting a tribute and an emotional time for everyone who was involved, as we have seen many members of the white house staff and the president and first lady, vice president and dr. jill biden as well acknowledging that it s become much more emotional to them as their last days near. chris, if anyone saw that andrea mitchell interview a couple hours ago on her program, the emotion was right there, as joe biden she spoke with joe biden and the vice president expressed his love, he called it love, for president obama. again, what we re waiting for right now is we think a surprise for the vice president. although hard to know if he really could if it could be kept quiet in the white house. but it is president obama who will be basically hosting a farewell for vice president biden. if i can ask, we know a little bit i know a little bit has been reported about joe biden s next move and his plans after the white house, after being vice president. i read he ll be working with a couple universities. what more do we know? reporter: he said he s been made a lot of different ofrsz. it s interesting. he seems to be in the same head space as a lot of the senior staff. i know people don t necessarily believe this, that the president, the first lady, the vice president, all these members of the senior staff, jill biden as well, haven t had a tremendous amount of time to lay down in stone exactly what they re going to do. obviously, when you have come from this stage, the world is your oyster. joe biden is very open about this, his goal for many, many years, for decades, really, was to become president of the united states. that does seem to be behind him at age 73 now, but he is going to do some teaching. as he and others have said, they re going to do a little bit of sleeping. something they are very much looking forward to do. spending time with his family. you know, he did go back throw himself back into work after the death of his son, beau. he was out for a while but has been really key for a lot of the issues that have come up in this last year or so of this administration. he s continued to work very hard. so, there s some time for him to spend with his family, with jill biden. you know, when you think about where he came from, again, you know, for somebody with a long career in the senate and how different they were, somebody with that experience coming into politics as opposed to barack obama, who comparatively was a relative newcomer and people who seemed to have very different approaches to things. the fact they have become so close, i would not rule out i ve had some conversations about this, but i would not rule out the possibility you will see him and barack obama working together on some of the initiatives that eventually are decided upon by this president, where he wants to have influence moving forward. it s not as if a key is going to turn, another family will move into the white house and these folks are going to scatter to the wind. many of the senior officials will continue to work with obama, either on private staff or as part of his library foundation. those things haven t been announced yet but they will happen. i think there s going to be a long time for joe biden to continue in some way in a different kind of public service, kate. chris, stay there. don t move. i want to bring in also lynn sweet, washington bureau chief at the chicago sun times, that being the president s sort of adopted hometown newspaper. nice to see you. how are you? good afternoon. good afternoon. as we wait and look at this room where we expect the president to come out, and we re not quite sure what to expect, but we have been told by the pool note that it will be in honor of joe biden. talk about lynn, talk about their relationship and talk about what you think we might hear out of the president. well, the relationship really started in iowa when they were running against each other in that democratic primary. and it was not a hard decision in the end for the obama team to select biden as vice presidential candidate. the announcement was made in springfield, illinois, where obama had kicked off his campaign. and the relationship not only between the president and vice president, but between dr. jill biden and first lady michelle obama has also rypiened through the years, too. they ve worked on their joining forces initiative. i m sure they will chris kroris all four of them, throughout their lives. not only with biden with his cancer moonwalk and the various enterprises. i would bet there will be a lot of humor, a little ribbing, a little, you know, this isn t a towel snap sort of joking, but those two right, chris, they have a little bit of a schtick when they re together? chris, we haven t gotten any word on timing. we were told 3:00. but there was a lot of secrecy around this whole event. reporter: then we got 15 minutes late. i don t know what s going on behind the scenes. i keep checking my iphone. there is this sort of ribbing that goes on. when you look at some of the memes of them together, the pictures of them together, there are a lot of pictures that pete sousa and other white house photographers have taken where it seems like they re holding hands, where they re laughing. they love to laugh together. they ve had a lot of light moments ago. and they re also both can, as we ve seen, you mentioned the andrea mitchell interview with vice president biden and the president in chicago, they can also get emotional. we ll watch for that. very clearly, you know, the yin and yang, mr. cool and mr. emotional, that s been fascinating to see how that goes because joe biden is someone who wraps someone he barely knows into a bear hug. when you think of it, we couldn t have we couldn t have done a formula of two men who have gotten along better. i think the age difference has helped, too. i think the idea that biden knows what it takes to run for president and he knows the senate and he knows foreign policy. so, he came in with the skill set, very helpful to the president. thank you, both, for waiting with us here. i apologize. i thought my mike was down and i was speaking over you guys. apologies for that. i want to take a quick break, ask lynn and chris jansing to stand by with us. the white house running a little behind schedule. we re waiting for this big event for joe biden, to honor joe biden, being led, we understand, by president obama. so, as we wait for that, we ll take a break. want to bring you one little piece of news before we go to break. the senate, the full senate has just voted to allow a waiver for mattis, general mattis, who has now been nominated, of course, for department of defense secretary. he had to get a waiver because it s so recently he left the military, the senate had to approve of him having the potential for being department of defense secretary so soon after leaving the military. that has just happened. that vote just took place in the senate. it was approved. it doesn t mean he s now the secretary. it means he can be. and they can vote on that later. we ll take a quick break and we ll be right back. everything your family touches sticks with them. make sure the germs they bring home don t stick around. use clorox disinfecting products. because no one kills germs better than clorox. trubiotics a probiotic from one a day. naturally helps support both your digestive and immune health. feel a difference in two weeks or your money back. take the trubiotics 2 week challenge. so, let me first ask, any reaction at all from the trump cache ca camp to this? nothing yet. i just checked his twitter feed during the break sure. wouldn t be surprised if he would react later today. we reached out to transition officials and yet to hear from them. we ll pass that on as soon as we get it. bottom line, in the waning weeks before the election, before this case was, in effect, revisited by the fbi, before that announcement on october 28th, donald trump basically said he wants to investigate the investigation. he called it collusion and corruption of the highest order. said it was a disgrace. of course, his position changed late in october. i was with him just as that announcement was made. he was in manchester, new hampshire, at the time. it was almost as if the cork on a bottle of champagne just popped. the room went nuts when he said it. he started his remarks saying there was critical breaking news he wanted to announce. in the days, he s part of the way he recast his view of fbi director james comey. take a listen. i have to give the fbi credit. that was so bad what happened originally. it took guts for director comey to make the move that he made in light of the kind of opposition he had where they re trying to protect her from criminal prosecution. you know that. it took a lot of guts. i really disagreed with him. i was not his fan. i tell you what, he brought back his reputation. he brought it back. he s got to hang tough because there s a lot of a lot of people want him to do the wrong thing. what he did was the right thing. bottom line is we ve heard nothing new from donald trump about the inspector general from the doj saying they re going to open up a review into the handling of this situation here. what s notable is in the days after he was elected, donald trump on 60 minutes and elsewhere was asked whether or not he thought james comey should keep that position, whether he would ask him to resign his position as director of fbi and he said he hadn t made up his mind yet on that issue. pete alexander following that for us. thank you so much. president-elect trump s pick for cia director, mike pompeo, was on the hill today for his confirmation hearing. one of three hearings that happened today. nbc news intelligence reporter joins us for more on that. we had simultaneously three hearings going on. what were the fireworks? what were the headlines out of pompeo? pompeo was very polished. kind of a love fest. he s a former trial lawyer, former army officer. he did very well. but he, without hesitation, endorsed the findings by the u.s. intelligence community that russia was behind the hacking, which trump has had trouble doing, president-elect trump. and he said that if ordered to engage in torture, he would refuse such an order. he s one of several nominees who have said that, even though donald trump during the campaign talked about wanting to waterboard. none of the people who work for him say that s legal. that s interesting. potentially a split with his own boss. exactly. in terms of other headlines out of it or anything i moon, you said it was it went fairly well for him. is there a sense this committee will approve him or was there any glaring, obvious senator saying, i ve got concerns? no, nobody expressing concerns about his nomination. he was asked about this dossier that everyone s asking about. you know, unverified information damaging to donald trump. if there was something worth investigating, would he follow those leads? would the cia under mike pompeo investigate those things? he promised, yes, they would. thank you so much. appreciate it. we re continuing to wait that that shot in the bottom right corner of your screen is the white house. that is the state dining room. that s where we expect president obama, we expected him about 15 minutes ago, with some sort of a potentially surprise event, although now we re talking about it on tv, so i don t know how much of a surprise it will be. but a tribute to vice president joe biden, his good bud y his friend. we ll bring you that as soon as it starts. back after a quick break. 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®. ltry align probiotic.n your digestive system? for a non-stop, sweet treat goodness, hold on to your tiara kind of day. get 24/7 digestive support, with align. the #1 doctor recommended probiotic brand. now in kids chewables. hei don t want one that s hadch a bunch of ownersd car? just say, show me cars with only one owner find the cars you want, avoid the ones you don t plus you get a free carfax® report with every listing it s perfect. start your used car search at carfax.com we continue to wait for this live event at the white house. that s a picture from inside the state dining room. we re expecting the president, the first lady and joe biden, the vice president, and dr. jill biden, to be in that room in what is billed as a tribute for vice president biden. earlier we were told was a surprise to him. not quite sure what the holdup is. they re running a little late. we ll bring that to you soon. meantime, as the vice president prepares to leave, earlier today my colleague andrea mitchell had a chance to have a wide-ranging, fascinating interview with him. here s a portion of that. reporter: looking back now, president obama said that he could have defeated donald trump. could joe biden have defeated donald trump? oh, i don t know. i don t know. i don t want to speculate on that. reporter: in your heart of hearts, the criticism is there was a lack of an economic message. that s your ballpark. pennsylvania, the rust belt. look, i don t reporter: regrets? no, no. look, i you re i m about to hurt your reputation, you re a friend. but i know my family. you know of my relationships with my family. and i just wasn t prepared to do it after i lost my son. and so, i i have no regret in the sense that did i make the wrong decision. i made the right decision. and but do i regret that my point of view is not going to be reflected in the next administration because we have mr. trump? yeah, i do regret that. one of the big issues is, he said, drain the swamp. now, he is yesterday he repeated that he is not going to release his taxes ever and says he doesn t need a blind trust. he s going to just turn it over to the sons. has he done enough, the government of ethics, which is nonpartisan, says what he s done is meaningless. i don t think he s done enough and he may sink in the swamp. if you don t drain it, you sink in it. look reporter: look, you re one of the with all due respects, sir, one of the poorest guy to ever emerge, got a house, i don t know what other assets you have. can you he said he could run his business as well as run the government. the laws no doubt that he could, but you shouldn t run both. are you going to be president or are you going to be a businessman? you don t do both. he ran for the most coveted office in the world. the most important office in the world. the thing that the american public looks to most for their security, opportunity, guarantees, focus on your job. that s the job. i found it bizarre to talk about, well, i could have made a $2 billion deal, i could have done both, but i decided not to. as if you re doing me a favor mean, the country a favor. i just think it s look, this is a place where the public s going to decide whether or not the failure to divest, the failure to meet what were considered to be the basic minimum ethical standards of disclosure, and if the public turns around and 50% say, no problem, or if 80% say, this is a big problem, that s the only thing that will alter the outcome. andrea mitchell joins me now. andre andrea, congratulations. it covered so much ground, i don t know where to begin, as we wait for this event to start at the white house. i thought some of the most touching moments of the interview was towards the end when you asked him to reflect back on his career and how he got started. and you know, the terrible hardship he suffered as he was starting his senate career. the fact when he start his senate career, he had not been sworn in. when his wife and child were killed in a car crash, his two boys were injured as toddlers, and he was bereft, deciding to stay home with his children in delaware and not be sworn in. he said he was surrounded by the support of republican and democratic leaders, mike mansfield was one, i know, who persuaded him he had to do this and his sister, frankly, stepped in and mothered the children and he commuted for his entire career, commuting daily back to delaware, you know, the amtrak senator. but the fact is, this is a long career and one with a lot of ups and downs, and obviously the tragedy of beau biden. he said he had no regrets about the decision not to run for president. the fact was he knew with his family that that was the right decision for him at the time. he wouldn t discuss whether he could have defeated donald trump as president obama opined that he could have defeated trump. obviously, a reflection on hillary clinton. he wasn t going to go there. but he did talk a lot, defending the intelligence community, saying that what they had been told by the intelligence community was that they included that basically unvetted smear campaign, the opposition research, the two-page synopsis of that as a separate item in the briefing materials for both the president, the vice president and also for donald trump, controversily, that they did it they told he said, we asked them, why did they do it? i m not sure if you played that part of it. he said they told them that they thought they would have been derelict in their duties since it was in the press, bei ining circulated. a lot of people in washington had seen it, as well as abroad. there could be impacts on foreign policy if that information came out unvetted. we did not have a chance to air that part of it just now. to me, that sounded like some of the most newsy part of the interview, andrea, because we hadn t had anyone plain why that wasn t included in the briefing to begin with. i think that s likely what general clapper, what the dni clapper said to donald trump last night in that conversation. right. let me ask about his future. and this idea of a cancer moonshot. i know you asked him about that. what s your sense is he going to ease into retirement and dabble into that or is he full is he going to be working full overtime on that? he s all in. he said he is going to be doing foreign policy at the university of pennsylvania. there hasn t been a formal announcement but it was overheard saying that on c-span and teaching at university of delaware, his alma mater. he has a lot to look forward to. it is the end of this chapter of public service at his age. you saw the younger generation, cory can booker in what he did at an unprecedented way, a lot of people in washington are saying that s the opening of of the 2020 democratic primary campaign. so, you ve got the next generation already looking at what comes next. but there is going to be a lot more from joe biden. as from president obama, he said, i m going to be with you every day. i ll be with you as citizen in his farewell address. i asked him how president obama had described joe biden as his brother and he said, i don t just like the guy, i love the guy. we are family. and then he said that michelle obama is the finest first lady in american history. now, there s obviously you know, he said, we ve had a lot of fine first ladies but she is the greatest one in history, which obviously that is a reflection on the other first lady who just ran for president. as we watch this room, i can t help but wondering what was happening behind closed doors because this was supposed to be a surprise that was supposed to happen about 40 minutes. the white house state dining room where we think we ll see president obama come out and deliver some kind of tribute to joe biden. as we wait, if we have a couple more minutes because we haven t gotten any guidance from the white house, can i ask you about the news breaking. about the inspector general who says he s going to launch an investigation into parts of the way that the clinton e-mail investigation was handled by the fbi and by the department of justice. you covered the clinton campaign. we ve had a couple of clinton former aides on with us saying they welcome this decision. they must be elated that at least someone s looking at what happened. elated but, of course, there s still a lot of anger and resentment. they, of course, hillary and bill clinton do blame fbi director james comey for the timing of that letter, both letters. the one reopening the issue 11 days before the election and the one two days before the election, clearing her. not really reopening the investigation. in fact, it was technically never reopened. just reopening the issue. and they do blame him. but this is also going to be looking into what loretta lynch did with bill clinton and trying to clear up that 35-minute conversation on a plane in phoenix. she regrets it. she thought it was going to be a hello. once bill clinton sat down, they claim about golf and grandchildren, nobody substantive, it did mean she was recusing himself, taking herself out of the operational decision-making about the clinton investigation. that gave james comey a great deal more prominence, leverage, decision-making. all of this will be looked at by the independent watchdog, the i.g. depending on the findings, and obviously it s too soon to discuss what the findings r but nothing was going to change the election. that s a done deal. is there are legal implications and ethical implications and there could be a slap on the wrist if anyone behaved badly or even more strongly if there is something behind the scenes that we don t know about. but this would be the first inquiry into what happened. for the clintons to be blaming comey and all of that is controversial because there s a lot of other issues out there. other democrats saying, you can t pin it on just one thing. was it vladimir putin? was it wikileaks? you know, the hacking. was it original the decision to have a private server, which clouded the first months of her campaign and then all the way through? her response to that decision rather than dealing with it quickly and not apologizing from march until september. we didn t hear her say she was sorry about it. so, all of that could have had an impact, the lack of an economic message, some have said, the failure to go to wisconsin, failure to campaign more aggressively in other parts of michigan and in pennsylvania. other decisions that they made, polling and speechwriting decisions, spending so much time on debate preparation rather than on retail politics. the fact that the news media, as joe biden said to me today, focused so intensively on things that sounded a lot more exciting, like, you know, whether someone had been groped rather than on hillary clinton s college tuition plan, you know, the failure to cover issues substantively in a lot of media, the access that donald trump had during the primaries to, you know, live coverage of his rallies that other candidates didn t can, so many factors went into, it i don t think we ll know what influenced the campaign. andrea mitchell on such a busy hat. i appreciate that. we got word while andrea was talking, we got word from the white house that any minute president obama is expected to appear in that room. we were going to try to fit in a commercial, but we re not going to do that because we re afraid we ll miss it if we go to break. sasha and malia, obama, i understand, just walked in and have been seated in the room. we believe michelle obama will be there as well as dr. jill biden. again, this, if you re just joining us, is billed as a tribute to joe biden, led by the president. we have been guided earlier that this might be a surprise for joe biden. we re not quite sure what we re going to see here, but that makes it even more fun. chris jansing remains with us on the white house lawn. chris, if we see the president coming, we ll pause. any guidance at all about why today and what this marks? reporter: no. we asked the question repeatedly, but clearly this is something that is highly unusual but really speaks to the relationship between these two men that is far beyond professional but personal. the fact sasha and malia are there. they don t do a lot of public events. they ve become friendly not just with the bidens but their children and grandchildren. when they talk about family, they mean it. and thunk aboink about in the f his farewell speech in chicago on tuesday, the president mentioned only by name his immediate family and joe biden. think about the moments when you think about that iconic picture in the situation room when osama bin laden was gotten, who was sitting next to the president of the united states, joe biden. so, this tribute to him is something special. we don t know that obviously, he knows there is something going to happen. maybe it is something within this event, we were speculating s there some sort of special award that could be given to him. will there be surprises in terms of the people who are there. i can tell you this white house has kept a very tight lid on it. you were mentioning lynn sweet it-s with us in washington but she s with the chicago tribune sun-times . forgive me. we ll talk with you right after the event. let s observe what happens here. [ applause ] ladies and gentlemen, the president and vice president of the united states. [ applause ] [ applause ] [ applause ] don t want to embarrass the guy. welcome to the white house, everybody. as i have already delivered my farewell address, i will try to be relatively brief. but i just wanted get some folks together to pay tribute to somebody who has not only been by my side for the duration of this amazing journey but somebody who has devoted his entire professional life to service to this country. the best vice president america has ever had, mr. joe biden. [ applause ] this also gives the internet one last chance to talk about our bromance. [ laughter ] this has been quite a ride. it was eight and a half years ago that i chose joe to be my vice president. this is somebody the people of delaware sent to the senate as quickly as they possibly could. elected at age 29. for more than a dozen years apiece, he served as chair or ranking member of the judiciary and foreign relations committees. domestically championed landmark legislation to make our communities safer, to protect our women from violence. internationally his wisdom and capacity to build relationships has shaped our nation s response to the fall of the berlin wall and the iron curtain. to counter-terrorism, iraq, afghanistan. and for the past eight years he could not have been a more devoted or effective partner in the progress that we have made. he fought to make college more affordable and revitalize american manufacturing as the head of our middle-class task force. he suited up for our cancer moon shot, giving home to millions of americans touched by this disease. he led our efforts to combat gun violence, and he rooted out any possible misappropriations that might have occurred, and as a consequence, the recovery act worked as well as just about any large-scale stimulus project has ever worked in this country. he visited college after college and made friends with lady gaga for our it s on us campaign against campus sexual assault. when the pope visited joe was even kind enough to let me talk to the holiness as well. [ laughter ] behind the scenes, joe s candid, honest counsel has made me a better president and a better commander in chief. from the situation room to our weekly lunches to our huddles after everybody else has cleared out of the room, he has been unafraid to give it to me straight, even if we disagree. in fact, especially when we disagree. and all of this makes him, i believe, the finest vice president we have ever seen. and i also think he has been a lion of american history. the best part is, he is nowhere close to finished. in the years ahead, as a citizen, he will continue to build on that legacy internationally and domestically. he has got a voice of vision and reason and optimism and love for people, and we re going to need that spirit and that vision as we continue to try to make our world safer, and to make sure that everybody has got a fair shot in this country. so, all told, that s a pretty remarkable legacy. an amazing career in public service. it is, as joe once said, a big deal. [ laughter ] [ applause ] it is! [ applause ] but, we all know that, on its own, his work, this list of accomplishments, the amazing resume, does not capture of the full measure of joe biden. i have not mentioned amtrak yet or aviators, literally. [ laughter ] folks don t just feel like they know joe the politician, they feel like they know the person. what makes him laugh, what he believes, what he cares about, where he came from. pretty much every time he speaks, he treats us to some wisdom from the nuns who have taught him in grade school or an old senate colleague, but of course most frequently cited, catherine and joseph sr., his mom and dad. no one is better than you, but you re better than nobody! bravery resides in every heart and yours is fierce and clear. when you get knocked down, joey, get up! get up! [ laughter ] get up! [ applause ] that s where he got those broad shoulders and that biden heart. through his life, through trial after trial, he has never once forgotten the values and the moral fiber that made him who he is. that s what steels his faith in god and in america and in his friends and in all of us. when joe talks to auto workers whose livelihoods he helped save we hear the son of a man who once knew the pain of telling his kids he lost his job. when joe talks about hope and opportunity for our children, we heard the father who rode the rails home every night to talk his kids into bed. when he sticks up for the little guy we hear the young boy who stood in front of the mirror. studying the muscles in his face determined to advantavanquish t stutter. we hear a kindred spirit, another father of an american veteran, someone whose faith has been tested and has been forced to wander through the darkness himself and who knows who to lean on to find the light. so that s joe biden, a resilient and loyal and humble servant. and a patriot. but most of all a family man. starts with jill. captain of the vice squad. [ laughter ] the only the second lady in our history to keep her regular day job. [ cheers and applause ] jill says teaching isn t what she does, it s who she is. a few days after joe and i were inaugurated in 2009 she was back in the classroom teaching. that s why, when our administration worked to strengthen community colleges, we looked to jill to lead the way. she has also travelled the world to boost education and empowerment for women, and as a blue star mom, her work with michelle to honor our military families will go down in history as one of the most lasting and powerful efforts of this administration. of course, like joe, jill s work is only part of the story. she just seems to walk this earth so lightly, spreads her joy so freely. she reminds us that, although we are in a serious business, we don t have to take ourselves too seriously. she is quick with a laugh or practical joke, disguising herself as a server at a party she once hosted to lighten the mood. she once hid in the overhead compartment of air force two to scare the senior staff. [ laughter ] because why not! she seems to have a sixth sense of when to send a note of encouragement to a friend or a staffer, a simple thank you or a box of macaroons. she is one of the best, most genuine people i ve met not just in politics but in my entire life. she is grounded. generous, caring and funny. that s why joe is proud to introduce himself as jill biden s husband. to see them together is to see what real love looks like. through thick and thin, good times and bad. it s an all-american love story.
i have recused myself in the matters that deal with the trump campaign. that statement by the attorney general on thursday came after the washington post revealed that sessions met twice last year with russian ambassador sergei kislyak. sessions scrambled to clarify. in retrospect i should have slowed down, but i did meet one russian official a couple of times and that would be the ambassador. sessions met with kislyak on july 18th, after speaking with a group of ambassadors in the republican convention and he met again with the russian ambassador at his office on september 8th, just three days after president obama took a hard line on russian sanctions in a g-20 meeting with vladimir putin. since the election, trump and his surrogates have repeatedly denied any contacted between the campaign and russian officials. i m telling you it s all phony, baloney garbage. all of the contact by the trump campaign and the associates was with the american people. you are not aware of any contacts during the course of the election. how many times do i have to answer this question? i have nothing to do with russia. to the best of my knowledge no person that i deal with does. but the sessions reversal is one example of a growing list of admissions, dragged out of the trump administration after reporting on contact between trump associates and russian officials. there is now former national security adviser michael flynn who had publicly denied he had discussed sanctions and phone conversations with kislyak in december. after reporting detailed phone calls, flynn reversed himself and was forced to resign. jared kushner, reports disclose he was part of a december meeting with kislyak at trump tower. then there s mr. trump s former campaign chairman paul manafort. in july he denied that to appease the russians. the campaign fought to have the republican platform not include weapons for ukraine. it did not come from the trump campaign. i don t know who everybody is, but i guarantee you. nobody from the trump campaign wanted that change in the platform? no one. zero. but former trump policy adviser j.d. gordon tells abc nbc news that manafort was not forth right with us. gordon says he was in the room and told the committee chairman that the amendment was a, quote, problem for the campaign. gordon also met with the russian ambassador at the convention and then there s carter page, a one-time trump policy adviser who was also at that meeting. he has changed his story about meeting with russian officials. i had no meetings. no meetings. but on thursday, page s answer changed. did you meet sergei kislyak in cleveland? did you talk to him? i m not going to deny that i talked to him. by the way, we contacted paul manafort last night and he told us, quote, he has always been forthright with us and had no knowledge of the platform change until the sunday after the convention so he could haven t authorized the change. joining me is senator marco rubio. republican of florida. welcome back to meet the press, sir. thank you. good morning. good morning. you traveled with the president on friday down to florida on air force one. and on saturday morning the president went on a tweet storm accusing former president obama of illegally having him wiretapped. do you have any insight? first of all, did the president talk to you about this on friday and do you have any insight on what precipitated all of this? we never discussed that, number one, and i have no insight into what exactly he s referring to, and i would imagine the president and the white house in the days to come will outline further what was behind that accusation. i ve never heard that before, and i have no evidence or no one s ever presented anything to me that indicates anything like that. in the days to come you guys are going to ask him and i imagine he ll answer it. for what is it worth, as a member of the senate intelligence committee, if there was a wiretap on donald trump s campaign isn t that something that you would have been made aware of? the term wiretap is thrown around very loosely by a lot of people so we have to understand exactly what they re talking about. i don t have any basis, i never heard that allegation made before by anybody, and i ve never seen anything about that anywhere before. but, again, the president put that out there and now the white house will have to answer to exactly what he s referring to. it s such a serious allegation. it is either, if it s true, it s an extraordinary political scandal and if it s not true, it s an extraordinary political scandal. fair? well, if it s true, and i just hate speculating about these things. this is the president of the united states on your behalf? clearly, if that were true then there s no doubt that it would be a very newsworthy item with a lot of discussion about it, and if it s not true then obviously one would ask themselves why would you put that out there. what was the rationale behind it? i didn t make the allegation and i m not the person that went out there and said it. i ve never said that before. i would not say that to you today, and i have no basis to say that. if the president and the white house does they ll lay it out over the next few days and we ll be interested to see what they were talking about. are you concerned that the president has a credibility problem? we can go back to the birther business, 3 to 5 million illegal votes and now this wiretap thing that you say you re not aware of. this is the president of the united states. can we take him at his word? first of all, i would say the president has gotten elected and in many ways he s doing what he told the people he was going to do. a lot of this outrage is donald trump is doing what he said he would do if he were elected and you see that reflected in the public polling where a large number of americans are saying he s doing exactly what he said he was going to do, and that s what people are mostly focused on. is the president s style different than mine? absolutely. is he an unorthodox political figure? absolutely. that s what people voted for and that s what they wanted in this election. wherever those facts lead us and we ll allow people to make judgments based on those facts. given that there have been reports that the white house reached out to your chairman of this intelligence committee richard berg of north carolina. some democrats are concerned, including mike warner are concerned that the credibility of the intelligence committee s investigation is now at peril because of this. is there a point, and i know you believe you guys can do this. you have tweeted that you guys can do this yourselves in the intel committee. is there a point that it might be better for the political process to take politics out of this and have a special prosecutor, whatever youant call it, and put this sort of out of congress right now? not now. i certainly don t think we re at that point at this moment and here s why. the job of the intelligence committee is not to be a law enforcement agency. the job of the intelligence committee is to gather facts and evidence to go through counterintelligence programs and intelligence programs and understand all of the evidence and the facts that s out there about how the russians did this and why they did this, et cetera and put this all in a report and that s our job to gather facts and i ve told everybody i m not going to be a part of a witch hunt and i ll also not be part of a cover-up. i want to put the facts out there wherever the facts lead us and that s what the senate intelligence committee will do. i will tell you this, if it s not what we do and if it s not the product we produce i will be among the first people out there on this program and out there that i did not sign my name on the report because it gave irrelevant facts that the american people deserve to know. we re a finder of facts, a collector of facts and we will put that in the report and people will make those judgments based on those facts. right after the fbi director comey briefed the intelligence committee, i believe it was about in fact, it was exactly february 17th, you tweeted the following. i am now very confident senate intel committee i serve on will conduct a thorough bipartisan investigation of interference of putin influence. i understand that was what you were briefed on, but what gave you more confidence to tweet that than before that day. first of all, because i m interactive with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle and what i have very strongly is every member of that committee is interested at arriving at the facts and the truth. no one is looking at this from a political angle and everybody at the end of the day understands what the job is, understands that the credibility of the committee is on the line and we want to arrive at the truth. everyone in there is prepared to go where the facts lead us irrespective of what the implications will be politically. i am very confident of that. i remain confident of that. if that changes then i will be the first out there to say hat committee is no longer capable of doing their job and we re not at that point, thankfully. you said you re not going to participate in a witch hunt and that is words that the president has used to describe all of this. the more he does that, is that an irresponsible use of phrase right now? i don t know why. he obviously feels very strongly that he s being accused of things that he hasn t done and there s hysteria in the media and he has the right to say. he has every right to defend himself and that s what he s doing. my use of the term has to do with the following and that is i want to go where the truth is irrespective of its political implications. wherever the truth is where we re going to go and everyone else needs to be committed to that principle, as well. and i believe in the intelligence committee that we are and if that changes, as i told you, i ll be the first among them to say it. do you believe the intelligence community s assessment that the russians interfered in this election and did so to try to benefit donald trump? well, i ve never doubted that the in from back in october i ve been telling people, i was in the middle of my campaign, and i refused to talk about wikileaks because it was the work of a foreign intelligence agency trying to influence our elections. the key is not just to understand what they did, but how they did it because they ll try to do it again and again, not just to influence elections and to influence political debates in washington, d.c. i want to make sure that we don t spend so much time focused on things that may not have happened that we don t focus on the things that actually did happen because they re happening now in france. they re happening now in germany and it will happen again in this country if we don t learn from it. senator marco rubio, republican of florida. thanks for coming on and sharing your views. always a pleasure, sir. thank you. thank you. on thursday before attorney general jeff sessions recused himself from any investigation involving russia and the trump campaign, chuck schumer from new york joined a growing list of democrats calling for sessions to resign. on friday afternoon president trump released that photo and called him a hypocrite. on this , senator schumer joins me now. good morning. good morning to you, sir. there are so many tweets to keep up with. happily talked with putin and his associates and took place in 03 in full view of press and public under oath. would you and your team, that s you challenging them under oath. let me ask you this, this morning the president s press secretary came out and said the following, reports concerning politically motivated investigations immediately ahead of the 2016 election are very troubling. president trump is requesting that as part of their investigation into russian activity the congressional intelligence committee exercise their oversight authority whether executive branch powers were abused in 2016. is that a fair ask of this administration? well, look, president obama has flatly denied that he has done this, and either way, chuck, the president s in trouble if he falsely spread this kind of misinformation, that is so wrong and beneath the dignity of the presidency. it is something that really hurts people s view of government. its civilization warping, and i don t know if any president democrat or republican in the past has done this. it shows this president doesn t know how to conduct himself. on the other hand, if it s true it s even worse for the president because that means that a federal judge independently elected has found probable cause that the president or people on his staff have had probable cause to have broken the law or to have interacted with a foreign agent. that s serious stuff. either way, the president makes it worse with these tweets. is he trying to divert this here? yeah. the president denied this. i don t have any doubt that president obama has been telling the truth. if they want to investigate it, sure, but the real point is we need a special prosecutor to investigate what went on in the trump campaign transition and presidency. let me ask you let me start with that, actually. please. do you no longer have confidence in the intelligence committee to do this on the senate side to conduct this investigation? let me answer that in two parts. first, the intelligence committee has congressional oversight, and yes, i have doubts about chairman burr. he first denied that they should investigate and when pushed by mike warner he said, okay, we ll investigate and then of course at the administration s request he went to the president and said something is wrong. that s taking sides in the investigation. the faith i have in the intelligence committee is in mike warner and the democrats. they ve been holding burr s feet to the fire and they will look for another alternative if chairman burr doesn t pursue this. there is another point to this. people mix up the two. the other is, of course, whether the law was broken and whether the trump campaign was complicit in working with the russians to influence the election. that needs a special prosecutor. rod rosenstein, he s a career man, he will be before the judiciary committee for his nomination for deputy attorney general. i am urging him at that hearing to say that he will appoint a special prosecutor to look into this because it s on the executive side that any investigation is done and any criminality is put forward. let me ask you about this specific charge, what you were just talking about with president trump, this idea that there may have been a court order surveillance of some form or another. you re part of what s called so many gangs on senate side and you re one of the gang of eight on intelligence matters, the most sensitive intelligence matters. you re briefed on this. is it fair wouldn t you have been briefed if the fbi had gone to a fisa court to get surveillance of a foreign government involving the trump campaign? wouldn t you know this? i don t comment on classified briefings. it s fair to say can you why not, if you know this information why not share it at this point? as i said we have a problem of trust and it goes to what you just quoted of ben sasse. you cannot comment on classified briefings and i m not going to violate those rules. okay. so sorry. but we are to sit here and wonder and ponder. well, no, if we have a special prosecutor they will get to the bottom of all of this and that s what we need. a special prosecutor is much better than letting a lying department person do it for three reasons and this is in doj guidelines. first, a special prosecutor has much more freedom day to day, who to subpoena and what documents to look at and the path of the investigation. second, the special prosecutor can only be fired for cause. so if they re hitting some real stuff they can t just be gotten rid of by sally yates was gotten rid of by the trump administration when she didn t do what they wanted and third, they have to report to congress so we really need a special prosecutor, and i m hoping that rosenstein will agree to that and make that say he s going to make that happen at the committee meeting. i know our committee members will be asking him about it. let me ask you this. congressman adam schiff, the top-ranking democrat on the house intelligence committee has implied that the fbi has not been forthcoming in their various briefings. you get these briefings. would you is he correct? do you believe the fbi has not been forthcoming on what it s doing with the trump campaign? well, let me just say this. the fbi is the premier investigative agency here in our government, and i believe that they will do their job and get to the bottom of this without political interference. right, but do you believe they have been withholding information from congress? well, there are certain kinds of information that can t be given to congress that, you know, or all of congress that s classified or that can t be released and there is a prosecutorial sort of way of doing things that you don t comment on ongoing investigations. so in this case, you wouldn t level the same criticism that congressman schiff has? i m just saying i am i believe they will get to the bottom of this. i hope they will, and if they don t, they ll be it will be a real dereliction of their duty. you have full confidence in the fbi right now? i gave you my answer. senator chuck schumer. democrat from new york. thanks, chuck. thanks for coming on and sharing your views. coming up, did the obama white house really leave a trail of bread crumbs about the trump/russia connection? for investigators to find a bit easier? i ll ask james clapper. brought to you by keytruda. to learn more, go to keytruda.com. needs a stable fo. a body without proper foot support can mean pain. the dr. scholl s kiosk maps your feet and recommends our custom fit orthotic to stabilize yo fndation and relieve foot, knee or lower back pain from being on your feet. dr. scholl s. hi, i m frank. i take movantik for oic, opioid-induced constipation. had a bad back injury, my doctor prescribed opioids which helped with the chronic pain, but backed me up big-time. tried prunes, laxatives, still constipated. had to talk to my doctor. she said, how long you been holding this in? (laughs) that was my movantik moment. my doctor told me that movantik is specifically designed for oic and can help you go more often. don t take movantik if you have a bowel blockage or a history of them. movantik may cause serious side effects, including symptoms of opioid withdrawal, severe stomach pain and/or diarrhea, and tears in the stomach or intestine. tell your doctor about any side effects and about medicines you take. movantik may interact with them causing side effects. why hold it in? have your movantik moment. talk to your doctor about opioid-induced constipation. if you can t afford your medication, astrazeneca may be able to help. 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. i don t know where to begin here, but tom friedman, it was jarring, president trump accusing president obama, and obviously, i guess it was an attempt to distract, but i don t know how this distracts from the russia story. it was beyond jarring, really, when you think about it, chuck. this is such a serious charge. under normal circumstances it would be a six-column headline in my paper and i think any other paper and a serious person before he made such a charge would have brought together the congressional leaders and briefed them on it, and brought together the intelligence community and the fact that he lobbed this on twitter at 6:00 in the morning is shocking. i think we have to keep one thing in mind, the big picture. e bipicture, chuck, is russia is not our friend. vladimir putin is not our iend. he has very specific goals. he wants to fracture nato. he wants to fracture the european union so it won t be a threat and he wants to destroy the ability of the united states to lead a western alliance. right now in moscow they must be clinking vodka glasses because for less than the cost of a mid 29 they have thrown the west into complete disarray. it doesn t matter what you think of their intentions was, look at our country right now. what the russian intentions are and what happened during the election are two very different things. it s not just the russians who want to interfere in our election. lots of countries want to interfere in our elections, lots have tried. remember the chinese and al gore? the point was there someone inside the trump campaign that was working with them and did the president know about that and were they successful? and i think on those latter two questions we have no idea. no evidence. there s no evidence. i just heard chuck schumer suggest exactly what he did. we know that this is the case. there s nothing there. especially this recent discussion about jeff sessions which is the kind of height of the ludicrousness of this, okay? if jeff sessions really was a mole working for the russian government he probably would have found a better place to have met with them than his public senate office surrounded by his aides so the meetings are not necessarily what matter. they don t prove anything. the one thing i will say this on these meetings is there any substance? they do have this pattern of oh, yeah, i forgot i had this meeting. as many in washington have suddenly forgot, mr. schumer, for instance about meeting with russian ambassador. but there is a difference? i don t know. you don t think there is a difference between those two? no. if you headed to a meeting and a bunch of ambassadors head to you, you wouldn t remember that? that i understand. after the mike flinn situation do you not try to correct the record? i agree, there is no evidence, that s why we need a special prosecutor and independent commission and we need to see trump s taxes. there is an awful lot of smoke not to be a fire and you ve had three people resign. the idea that i ll forget about a meeting with russians when there are news stories every day coming out about how russia has tried to influence what s happening in our country is kind of breathtaking, and i ve got to side with marco rubio on this. look, he talked about he wasn t going to talk about it because he understood that russians are trying to influence our election and will continue to try to do something about it. this is a threat to our country, right? and the idea that russia is different from other countries, russia is very different from other countries because we have a history of the cold war with russia that apparently we thought was over because we have a short history lesson and view of the world and putin paused and clearly, they are clearly trying to influence and dominate the world than we ve seen in a long time. i would be sympathetic to your argument if over the last eight years i would have heard it from people in your position. the problem is, for the last eight years when the russians have been exactly the same, putin has been anathema, he has been screwing us in the middle east, to put it plainly, he s ben interfering in everything is blunt talk now. thank you very much, donald. but honestly speaking, the part of this is this is partisanship. if we could have a normal discussion about russia with obama and trump? fair enough. take partisanship away from it and put it to a special prosecutor then and take politics out of it. a special prosecutor doesn t fix it either. the problem we have at the moment is if you did what trump said and he put it all out there, there would still behalf of the country that didn t believe it was true and we have no faith in the public institutions. how do we restore the faith and how does congress do it? special prosecutor is not a good idea. their goal is to get someone in the end and they will follow any rabbit hole that they can go until they re not investigating the thing that they began with. you do believe congress and the commission? think maybe we are at a point where you need a rob silverman type commission that we had in iraq intelligence that is bipartisan. i don t know what kind of powers would have, congress would have to decide that, but i neutral arbitrator because we need to know if there was wiretapping going on. just for the record, some of us took russia very seriously. during the last eight years. just to put that not in the white house. i m not talking about the white house. some of us in the press. my point and what worries me is this, government moves at the speed of trust, and right now there is so little trust. we have a completely polarized environment and somehow we have got to restore that because i don t see how the president will be able to solve any of these big issues, immigration, debt, health care at the level of polarization that we have right now. i think we ve exemplified it here a little bit. we ll pause the conversation and pick it up, i have a feeling on the other side of the half hour, but coming up is a man who may know more than anyone about russia s efforts to interfere with the 2016 election. it s james clapper. he joins me next. you totaled your brand new car. nobody s hurt, but there will still be pain. it comes when your insurance company says they ll only pay three-quarters of what it takes to replace it. what are you supposed to do? 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i would certainly hope so. obviously, i can t speak officially anymore, but i will say that for the part of the national security apparatus that i oversaw as dni, there was no wiretap activity mounted against the president-elect at the time or as a candidate or against his campaign. i can t speak for other title 3-authorized entities in the government or a state or local i was just going to say, if the fbi had a fisa court order for surveillance, would that be information that you would know or not know? yes. you would be told this. i would know this. if there was a fisa court order. something like this absolutely. at this point you can t confirm or deny whether that exists. i can deny it. there is no fisa court order. not to my knowledge. of anything at trump tower. no. that s an important revelation at this point. let me ask you this, does intelligence exist that can definitively answer the following question, whether there were improper contacts between the trump campaign and russian officials? we did not include evidence in our report and that s nsa, fbi and cia with my office, the director of national intelligence that had anything that had any reflection of collusion between members of the trump campaign or the russians, there was no evidence of that in our report. i understand that, but does it exist? not to my knowledge. if it existed it would have been in the report? this could have unfolded or become available in the time since i left the government. at the time, we had no evidence of collusion. there s a lot of smoke, but there hasn t been that smoking gun yet. at what point should the public start to wonder this is all just smoke? well, that s a good question. i don t know. i do think, though, it is in everyone s interest. in the current president s interest, in the republicans interest in the democrats intere interest, in the country s interest to get to the bottom of all of this because it s such a distraction and certainly the russians have to be churdling about the success of their efforts to dissension in this country. so you feel your report does not you admit that your report doesn t get to the bottom of this? it got to the bottom of the evidence to the extent of the evidence we had at the time. whether there s more evidence that s become available since then or there are ongoing investigations will be revelatory. i don t know. ? there was a conclusion that said that it s clear that the russians did so and in an attempt to help donald trump? do you believe that? yes, i do. what s not proven is the idea of collusion? that s correct. when you see this parade of officials associated with the trump campaign and first they deny any conversations and now we re hearing more. does that add to suspicion or do you think some of this is circumstantial? well, i can t say what the nature of those conversations and dialogues were, for the most part. again, i think it would be very healthy to completely clear the air on this subject, and i think it would be in everyone s interest to have that done. can the senate intelligence committee what are we going to learn from their investigation, do you think, that will move beyond what you were able to do? well, i think they can look at this from a broader context than we could, and at this point i do have confidence in the senate intelligence committee and their effort. it is under way in contrast to the house intelligence committee and we just last week agreed on their charter and importantly in the case of the senate intelligence committee this appears to me to be truly a bipartisan effort, and so i think that needs to play out. if, for some reason, that proves not to be satisfactory in the minds of those who make those decisions then move on to a special prosecutor. the new york times earlier this week, and as i was introducing you, this idea that they sort of left a trail, maybe lowered classification can you walk us through how that would work? did they lower levels of classification? was that a fair read of what was done in the last few weeks of the administration? actually not because of the sensitivity of much of the information in this report our actual effort was to protect it, and not to spread it around and certainly not to dumb it down, if i can use that phrase, in order to disseminate it more widely. we were under a preservation order from both our oversight committees to preserve and protect all of the information related to that report in any event. let me ask you one other final question in the infamous dossier that was put together by this former british operative named christopher steel. why did you feel the need to brief the president on that at the time? we felt that it was important that he know about it, that it was out there, and without respect to the veracity of the contents of the dossier, that s why it was not included as a part of our report because much of it could not be corroborated, and importantly, some of the sources that mr. steel drew on, second and third order assets, we could not validate or corroborate. so for that reason, at least in my view, the important thing was to warn the president that this thing was out there. the russians have a term, an acronym called kompelat that either they will generate, if it s truthful or contrived, and it s important, we felt, that he knew of the existence of the dossier. have you done this with other presidents? have you had to brief them about unverified intelligence? yes. i had occasion in the six and a half years i was dn ito tell president obama certain things and we could not validate or corroborate, but we thought he ought to know it was out there. james clapper, i have a feel on do you expect to testify on capitol hill about these things? i don t think there s any doubt. we ll see you on tv some time soon and thank you for coming on and sharing your views? thank you very much, sir. when we ve come back, we ve seen almost weekly demonstrations against president trump, will they translate into democratic votes or will they turn to the left? we ll get that answer a lot sooner than you think. that s next. but with my back pain i couldn t sleep or get up in time. then i found aleve pm. the only one to combine a sleep aid plus the 12 hour pain relieving strength of aleve. and now. i m back! aleve pm for a better am. welcome back. data download time. can all of the anti-trump momentum that we re seeing on the left result in actual election victories for democrats this year? well, there are three special elections coming up. two of which may help us answer that question. the montana at-large congressional district vacated by the new secretary ryan inky zinke and the georgia 6th congressional district that includes the northern suburbs of atlanta with tom price. let s take a look at montana, a state that s very rural, in other words, this should be trump country. those are all groups that they did well in november. this is a seat republicans have held since 1997. thing is montana isn t like other places and while they hold the senate seats, the democrats doold the her senate seats and the governor was elected with donald trump on the ballot. the democrats can win here. might give them hope for other rural places. if the republicans win maybe that the trump army is still with them. the story in georgia s 6th congressional district is different. it s more diverse, higher educated and well-to-do, and it s been trending more and more blue over time. john mccain and mitt romney each won the district by double digits over barack obama in 2008 and 2012. donald trump only beat hillary clinton by 1% in 2016 even though price won his reelection by 23 points. so it is the kind of place that it might be showing signs that it is slipping away from trump s version of the republican party. so if the democrats win there it will say something, but if they can t win there, then it starts to raise questions about whether they have any hope at all in 2018. but guess what? if they win one or both they will suggest they have real momentum going into next year s midterms and i can tell you this, house republicans will start panicking this year if they see those results come in badly for them. when we come back, the story the white house hoped everyone would be talking about this sunday morning. k through your allergie. introducing flonase sensimist. more complete allergy relief in a gentle mist you may not even notice. using unique mistpro technology, new flonase sensimist delivers a gentle mist to help block six key inflammatory substances that cause your symptoms. most allergy pills only block one. and six is greater than one. break through your allergies. new flonase sensimist. dtry align junior probiotic.th digestive balance? so she can have a fraction dominating. status updating. hello-yellow-belt kind of day. get 24/7 digestive support with align junior. the #1 doctor recommended probiotic brand, now for kids. yet up 90% fall short in getting key nutrients from food alone. let s do more. add one a day women s complete with key nutrients we may need. plus it supports bone health with calcium and vitamin d. one a day women s in gummies and tablets. yes. but i have to ask myself, would we be talking about this at all if at all if he had not tweeted that out? we d talk about the russia angle. talking about sessions. right. but he actually made two pieces of news here this morning, not just he said there s no court order and assuming he was not careful with the words, it sounded fairly categorical to me, but the other one that was there is simply no evidence of collusion, at least while he was there, which was until very recently between the trump campaign and russians. what we talking about for the last three weeks? so this is waking up at 6:00 a.m. in the morning, tweeting out one of the most damming accusations one president could make after another, and then talking about arnold schwarzenegger. that is not and then 18 holes. nonpresidential, nonadult behavior. that is juvenile. the fact we have a president engaging in that is deeply disturbing. he s going to have to go to europe very soon and interact with other european leaders, world leaders, what do you think if you re a world leader in the meeting what do i say? what would he say about this meeting? he s everywhere we look. we talked about this before. i quoted my friend, there s a difference between formal and moral authority. this president has formal authority, but no moral authority. that s going to hurt. it s like like you have to wonder, is he playing us? right? we spend all this time talking about this, and it s like, you know, is he really bait and switch? is he die baht call in the way he plays this? it s hard to think sort of this was not thought out, so is he playing the american public? by the way, though, we have reporting, so tuesday night went well for him. right. wednesday went well. right. hi apparently is angry that sessions rescued himself. this is the part of donald trump now that never gives an inch. he can t look at the reaction of the speech and understand how much it helped him to stay on script and sometimes and not tweet about schwarzenegger. put down the twitter account. there were polls after the speech, 82% who watched it thought he looked presidential, and the words in it, i mean, it was it was uplifting. it was a good speech laying out the policy agenda, putting the burden on democrats to work with him and get some of his agenda done, and then, yet, we re talking about twitter again. no discipline. it s got to drive people in the white house crazy. coming out of that it does. both presidents would roll in into momentum. for the week. you talked about districts that are up, you can t beat something with nothing, and unless the democrats have c candidates, i believe, for pro-growth, patriotic, and want to build the country one community at a time, there s no reason to believe they re going to take huge political advantage. john wrote a good column here getting at this. he said this, just in general about the democratic party, because democrats and liberals opposed every appointment, every policy, every word from the trump administration, they damaged their effectiveness as a political force against it, in danger of limiting the ability to bring the stock trump voters they need to grow us illusioned by the side. do you believe that? absolutely. they are doing themselves damage by constantly calling on everybody to resign. they go to death con 5. house republicans did it all the time. ridiculous then, right? it is ridiculous on the part of all of them. congress needs to be taken seriously. congress just needs to start passing bills. congress doesn t actually need to play a game. this is where i don t get chuck schumer or nancy pelosi. don t, you know, vote against every nominee. don t go against everything the president says. why not try to work with the american people to pass an agenda and get reelected? this is where i put the political hat head on, not the serious grownup hat. the political hat. you know, you can make the same argument about the tea party and what republicans did, but they were crazy like foxes. you have to generate energy among your base for fundraising, but also this, the problem in midterm elections is not just the presidential election voters changing minds, but the problem with midterms is there are different electorates. there s different turnout in midterm elections. if democrats shrink and give energy to the base, it s a good thing. i have to pause it here and sneak in a break. president trump calling for an end to trivial fights right before starting a trivial fight. we ll be right back. coming up, meet the press end game brought to you by boeing, working to build something better. and while it s okay to nibble in public, a lady only dines in private. try the name your price tool from progressive. it gives you options based on your budget. uh-oh. discussing finances is a big no-no. what, i m helping her save money! shh! men are talking. that s it, i m out. taking the meatballs. hi, i m frank. that s it, i m out. i take movantik for oic, opioid-induced constipation. had a bad back injury, my doctor prescribed opioids which helped with the chronic pain, but backed me up big-time. tried prunes, laxatives, still constipated. had to talk to my doctor. she said, how long you been holding this in? (laughs) that was my movantik moment. my doctor told me that movantik is specifically designed for oic and can help you go more often. don t take movantik if you have a bowel blockage or a history of them. movantik may cause serious side effects, including symptoms of opioid withdrawal, severe stomach pain and/or diarrhea, and tears in the stomach or intestine. tell your doctor about any side effects and about medicines you take. movantik may interact with them causing side effects. why hold it in? have your movantik moment. talk to your doctor about opioid-induced constipation. if you can t afford your medication, astrazeneca may be able to help. yet up 90% fall short in getting key nutrients from food alone. let s do more. add one a day women s complete with key nutrients we may need. plus it supports bone health with calcium and vitamin d. one a day women s in gummies and tablets. meet the press endgame is brought to you by boeing, always working to build something better. back now with endgame i teased it. let s hear from the president on tuesday night. it was something that s back now with end game, and i tuesdeased it. let s hear from the president tuesday night. something quoted a lot in the last 24 hours. the time for small thinking is over. the time for trivial fights is behind us. and then, of course, after president trump accused president obama of wiretapping him, he did, as you pointed out, threw in schwarzenegger, he s note voluntarily leaving the apprentice, but fired by pathetic ratings, not by me. sad end to a great show. the only thing missing was #sad. right. you brought it up, it s you do, shake your head at it. you do. the president doesn t have message discipline. that s what was said. we talked about the democrats before. when you talk about wanting to win again in the midterm, they need to do something that s going to appeal to those people who voted for donald trump. talking about russia, calling on people to resign is not going to appeal to them, anger, i think, you ll agree with this, anger doesn t actually win elections. doesn t anger work in midterms? cornell put on the political hack hat. is that the only reason democrats are in washington? to win and have power? by the way what? no, no, no, they ve been look, they have promised their voters some things that they would like to get done, and, by the way, who better to work with than donald trump who loves to make a deal? by the way, this guy is one of the least ideological presidents ever in the white house. you know, chuck, a few more mornings of 6:00 a.m. tweets, and people will take away his football, and i mean, the nuclear codes. yeah. mitch mcconnell said my job is to make sure that the president obama is a one-term president. they are there for the power. that s not a good thing, but both sides play it. of course, no, i m not suggesting otherwise, but if you did care about policy goals, you got an opportunity in donald trump. and power in anything. and i have to turn off the cameras, but you can keep debating. that s all we have for today. once again, three hour show packed in one hour. back next week, i promise, if it s sunday, it s meet the press. okay, continue. go ahead. you can see more end game and post game on the mtp facebook page.