my thanks to doug thornell. reverend al, jonathan la mere and kim atkins. "mtp daily" with chuck todd starts right now. if it's friday, president trump is pushing the country and his party to its limits after a wild week with the president is putting his own interests and maybe the interests of mr. putin at -- ahead of everything else. how much more can republicans take? plus the latest on the syria peace deal that is not a deal and is not making peace. as the president compares the deadly conflict to a schoolyard fight. and new reporting tonight on the latest unbelievable, unprecedented move by this

president awarding himself a no-bid federal contract to host the g7 summit of world leaders. welcome to friday. it's "meet the press" daily and good evening. yes, this was one of those weeks. i am chuck todd. how many more weeks like this one can elected republicans in capitol hill stomach? the president has lost control of the impeachment inquiry. he's copped to asking foreign governments to investigate his political rivals. his top diplomats are testifying to how he enlisted the state department in that effort. then his acting chief of staff admitted to a quid pro quo with ukraine and then tried to say we didn't hear what we heard him say. his withdrawal and ceasefire in syria are viewed as historic failure of u.s. foreign policy. and the white house's strategy on all of it is seemingly changing by the day. making it near impossible for republicans who would like to defend the president to credibly defend the president. how can they defend his conspiracy theories about the biden's secret self-dealing with the president is overtly

self-dealing? how can they defend denials of a quid pro quo after mulvaney's performance yesterday? how can they credibly claim he's not trying to interfere in the 2020 election after he's publicly admitted he's done it? and how can the republicans credibly -- including those who worked with this president are calling it a major failure. how can they do it? look. we know that if charlottesville, helsinki, mueller, family separations, you name it, weren't breaking points for the gop then, syria and ukraine might not be either. but while the president may have a group of fiercely loyal republicans in the house and more importantly still a group of loyal republicans in the senate, we also know that every single politician, republican or democrat, has a breaking point. today, for instance, former republican governor and presidential candidate john c e caseck it is. today, he came out in support of the president's impeachment and a trial in the senate. but who should worry president trump the most is mitch mcconnell because if republicans start to wonder if they'd be

better off with a president pence at the top of the ticket, mcconnell is perhaps the one person in washington who is even more transactional at times than donald trump. and moments ago, "the washington post" published a scathing op-ed from who? mitch mcconnell where he slammed the administration's decision to withdrawal from syria calling it a strategic nightmare. joining me now is my nbc news colleague jeff bennett. he's been covering all angles of the impeachment inquiry. joel pane, democratic strategist. and matthew, founding editor of the washington free beacon. welcome to you all. by the way, at the end of the show, we get to do conspiracy theory friday. where both 2016 candidates are leaving in conspiratorial lands. but i'm going to start with mr. bennett. mitch mcconnell's op-ed. first of all, let me put up a full screen of an important part of it here. the combination of a u.s. pull back and the escalating turkish/kurdish hostilities is creating a strategic nightmare.

mitch mcconnell writes for our country. even if the five day ceasefire announced thursday holds, events of the past week have set back the united states campaign against islamic state and other terrorists. invite the brutal assad regime and its iranian backers to expand their influence and we are ignoring russia's efforts to leverage its increasingly dominant power. jeff bennett, when mitch mcconnell writes an op-ed like this, he's also signaling to other republicans, here's my position. go for it. it's okay to say yours, too. >> you're right about that. he is giving other republicans cover to criticize president trump. republicans president trump needs on his side, especially as this impeachment inquiry continues a pace. what's so interesting to me about this op-ed, chuck, is that it comes after, of course, the house not unanimously but overwhelmingly passed approved that bipartisan resolution

condemning president trump's decision on syria. and as it moved over to the senate, mitch mcconnell said it wasn't strong enough. that he wanted language in there that spoke to the need to keep troops in the region. so here you have the senate majority leader saying that the bipartisan resolution that democrats passed doesn't go far enough. you had chuck schumer of course tried to bring that up on the floor and rand paul objected to it. >> matthew, i'm curious. it was interesting if you -- my producer pointed this out -- he mentioned obama three times. actually, never used trump's name in his op-ed. he's obviously still trying to walk that line. criticize the policy. is that -- is that effective at all by criticizing without saying his name? >> it might be. it depends. i mean, mcconnell is voicing concerns of many republicans. and just take a step back for a second. this policy, the policy of withdrawal from syria, is the reason that general mattis

resigned in december. and that resignation, i think, probably gave something of a green light to president erdogan of turkey. the sense that the president's heart is not in staying in syria and of course he's said that multiple times. that probably led erdogan to say, you know what? i can call the united states bluff in syria and he did. >> that's what mitt romney essentially accused the president of doing. erdogan basically bullied you into doing that. >> you used the term signal. i'd use a different word. reflect. i think it's reflecting where a lot of republicans are on the hill. i think what mitch mcconnell was saying is this is where my caucus is starting to move to and i need to be ahead of my caucus instead of behind my caucus. i worked for harry reid and that is a move harry reid would make when he's got 20, 30 people in his caucus pressuring him to do that. one other thing really quickly. there's already a republican and democratic bipartisan inquiry going on in the senate with burr and warner. >> susan, ip want you to look a

this mash of elected republicans criticizing the president in the last 24 hours. some of them are predictable republicans you won't be surprised at. but a few are surprising. take a look. >> you don't hold up foreign aid that we had previously appropriated for a political initiative. >> senator admits said it perfectly. we're not supposed to use government power and prestige for political gain. >> massive you could call it tax-payer funded contract that the president's awarding it to his own property. is that acceptable for a sitting president? >> i'm -- i'm not happy with it. i don't know if it's a direct violation but i don't understand why at this moment they had to do that. >> what we have done to the kurds will stand as a blood stain in the annals of american history. >> when america leaves, we create a vacuum and when we create a vacuum, we create chaos. and that's what we're seeing right now. >> you saw there a couple republicans hitting him on ukraine.

a couple on the doral thing. by the way, kinsinger, that is the most bizarre thing. it's not just that he did it. that's not surprising. you're like you're going to pick yesterday to have done it? you put a lot of pressure on republicans struggling to support you as it is. >> you know, when you hear republican officials talking like that, they are also reflecting what they're hearing from their own voters. we'd had a usa today poll out today on syria and polarities of republicans said it was the wrong decision. republicans, 60% of republicans, said we have an obligation to protect the kurds. republicans said the isis fighters who are escaping from prisons that were guarded by the kurds pose a terror threat to the united states. so it seems to me that you don't just have the leaders moving. you have them reflecting something important happening. does that extend to impeachment? i don't know. i don't know if it transfers. but it's not something we've seen before in this presidency. >> jeff bennett, you know, the

president has been comforted by his political team because they've told him, hey, the base likes this move in syria. they're happy about this. they agree with you. stop these middle east wars. is that -- do -- do -- do other republicans say, who don't support the president's initiative, do they talk about their constituents supporting it? or not? >> they don't. i think right now because there is no sort of overarching policy from the white house, what you hear at least among republicans that i talk to, is a sense if not explicit of implicit confusion. they don't really know what comes next. they certainly know that this wasn't done in concert with the intelligence agencies, with the president's defense department officials, and so they do feel like they're out here on a limb. and what they're afraid of is having president trump, you know, cut off the branch behind them as they're out there trying to defend whatever position is. that relates to syria and a number of things. but in syria particularly, there is a lot of concern that it's

that the white house doesn't know what comes next. >> matthew, is any point -- i mean, i've sat here and you say there is a pragmatism there. if in mid-january, pence is doing better than trump in the polls, do you think that will matter to mitch mcconnell? >> one striking thing to me is the impeachment number now matches basically the approval number. right? so the people who are against impeachment is roughly where his job approval is, which is in the low 40s. >> some independents are moving against him, too. >> that's right. and the for impeachment number is in the 50s. so for trump's position, his job security to be threatened, his job approval would have to go significantly lower. >> i think they have to think they're going to lose their own job before they turn on him. isn't that the fair way? i mean, it's in their own political survival first. >> yeah. but i don't think they would think that until you see the bottom dropping from under this president's support. at this end of the day, these

elected officials are responsible to the people who elected them and plenty of them still support donald j. trump. >> chuck, also, the republican bitch that is going to follow trump has all been dirtied up by this as well. mike pompeo. that's the future of the republican party so i'm told. so i'm told. these people have all been really, really harmed by the president's actions. >> you know what we haven't talked about recently? it's funny you bring that up. mike pompeo for senate. >> don't you think the senate looks pretty good to mike pompeo right now some. >> does it still look like a viable path? >> he's -- he's from kansas. he's from congressional district i lived in as a child. he represent that congressional district. you know, kansas pretty red state. i think, you know, i don't see -- it seems to be likely he could win that senate race. and i think working for yourself in the senate and the people of kansas may sound more appealing than working for donald trump as secretary of state. as odd as that may sound historically. >> jim mattis got into -- was --

was at the al smith dinner. you know, when it's not a presidential year, you get people who are not presidential candidates at the al smith dinner. he -- i guess he decided to take after trump with barbs in a way we have not seen from a former secretary of defense. take a listen. >> it's been a year since i left of the administration. the recovery process is going well. the counselor says i'll graduate soon. a year -- according to white house time, about 9,000 hours of executive time or 1800 holes of golf. some of you were kind during the reception and asked me, you know, if this bothered me to have been rated this way based on what donald trump said. i said, of course not. i'd earned my spurred on the battlefield, martin, as you pointed out. and donald trump earned his spurs in a letter from a doctor. so i think the only person in the military that mr. trump doesn't think is overrated is who you pointed out, martin, and that's colonel sanders.

>> joe, it's interesting. a lot of people did not compartmentalize general mattis's comments. some on the left were angry. like, no, no, you're not allowed to make jokes. you need to go after him. >> sure. he's been doing the interview circuit and demuring with people like yourself but he wants to go unload at the al smith dinner. you know what's interesting? it's not just mattis. it's also these former diplomats this week that have decided now is the time it's safe to start to bail on the president. the fiona hills. the gordon sondlands. the people like that. that also has to be troubling to this administration because in the past, those folks would not have fallen out of lock step with the president. they see their own self-interest tied up in the president's -- >> i don't feel this way about the diplomats but when you see generals speaking in such a critical way of the president or the op-ed that mcraven wrote. do we have a precedent in recent

history where generals are so involved in making a case against a president of the united states? >> not since the iraq war. >> during the actual fighting of the iraq war saying that the bush policy was wrong. and, yeah, i think it is slightly harmful to civil military relations. i would say this. it's interesting about mattis. he is kind of using a trump tactic. which is trump loves you until you insult him. well, that's what we saw from jim mattis. he was fine until trump called him overrated and all of a sudden, he counterpunched at the al smith dinner. >> it was actually a clever retort. >> it was. >> if you like meryl streep. >> wow. good luck on twitter tonight. >> no, i like her. i'm just saying. >> yeah. you better say you like her. good luck. >> interesting, though. the president's been talking about the general's overrated. i know more than the generals. they're political. and he's kind of proving his point through forcing them and snuffing them out a bit. in a way, it's really interesting that's working out. >> there is not a two-star or

higher general ever that didn't have to play a little politics to get that second star. you earn the first one. everything else, you have to do a little politics that comes with it. jeff bennett, thank you, sir. have a good weekend on capitol hill. president trump claims that the kurds are very happy with the u.s. brokered ceasefire. let me get a fact check on that from richard engel who is on the ground in syria. later, the stunning revelation that the g7 summit will be held at a trump property. is this the administration resorting to a distraction? resorting. do you get it? we'll be right back. sorerting. do you get it? we'll be right back. good afternoon board members.

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with doral, we have a series of magnificent buildings. we call them bungalows. they each hold from 50 to 70 very luxurious rooms with magnificent views. we have incredible conference rooms. incredible restaurant. and what we have also is miami.

and we have many hundreds of acres so that in terms of parking, in terms of all of the things that you need, the ballrooms are among the biggest in florida and the best. >> welcome back. that was president trump at this year's g7. floating the idea of hosting next year's summit at a property that he owns. well, yesterday, after acting white house chief of staff made it official, "the washington post" noted that decision is without precedent in modern american history. the president used his public office to direct a huge contract to himself. now, democrats want to know how the government chose trump doral. they also want answers to questions the administration is withholding like how much the president stands to make off of this deal and how much tax payer money will be spent in the process. washington post political reporter, msnbc contributor david is following the story and he really follows all the stories when it comes to the trump businesses and properties. he's the go-to guy

federal government have been interacting. david, nice to see you. >> you too. >> here are the questions to things we don't have an answer for. i guess you seem to get some explanation as to what other sites did they look at? was it serious? >> very little. so they've said they looked at 11 other sites and they were all worse than doral. >> in miami? >> no, around the country. but they won't say almost anything about where they are. they won't say what they are. the only thing we know is one of them was so high in the mountains that if you wanted to have a meeting, you'd have to give the leaders oxygen. >> who would have proposed that? >> yeah. who put that on the list? like if your list was a campground at the top of mt. mckinley, then doral was the best place. we need to know who those other sites were to say anything about this process. >> well, and there's also some major security concerns with doral. look, it -- in miami, the easiest place to do this is like they did in georgia with sea island. it's a lot easier to secure all those world leaders. it's right there and it actually

touches salt water, which is why people mostly go to miami. doral is right on the miami airport flight paths. i think there's like 20 different flight paths that are going to have to be diverted. >> and it's a surrounded by office parks and neighborhoods and streets. easy to seal off. sea island is a great example. >> look what the french did. they did is in the riviera. >> that's the thing. this is such a security nightmare to put in the middle of a neighborhood where you're going to have the neighbors coming and going. it's -- it's not ideal. >> mick mulvaney went out of his way to say the president's not going to profit from this. well, okay. there's not losing money and there's profiting. right now, trump doral is basically because they lost the famous golf tournament due to the president's behavior, the golf tournament left that facility. it has lost its place in the golf touring tourism business. you'd go to pinehurst or you'd

go out there and hit the blue monster at doral. but that no longer is an attraction. >> right. the resort from what we've seen, we've seen trump organization documents. it's in pretty sharp decline from 2015 to 2017 rkts just two years, the net operating income, basically profitability dropped 70%. and trump's name is driving away people that might have come there otherwise. in fact, the trump organization representative blamed trump's name as the cause of this decline. >> what -- is there an agency, like if the pentagon did a no-bid contract, what would happen? i mean, i believe we've had instances like this where a pentagon official who used to work for a company somehow orchestrates a no-bid contract. >> right. in this case, if you own a company, if you are a pentagon contracting officer and you gave a giant no-bid contract to yourself, that's illegal. you'd go to jail for that. those conflict of interest laws, by design, don't apply to the president. but we always had sort of an honor system that presidents would never want to -- >> well, correct me if i'm

wrong. the conflict of interest laws that apply to every cabinet agency, the only two people they don't apply to is the president and vice president. >> that's why. >> this is why the only way this works is if the president signs an executive order saying the president and vice president have to do this, when barack obama could have done on his way out of office and forced him to withdrawal that. but he chose not to do that. is there an entity to investigate this outside of congress? >> no. i mean, the state department often takes part as a leader of the planning of this. so you can see at some point inspector general, state department asking why did we spend so much money? how do we settle on the prices we paid? that's way in the future. the question, are they really going to do it? how much is the contract going to be set at? congress is really the only entity that can do it. >> right now, how important has basically the federal government been to mar-a-lago? >> so, trump, the federal government is so slow at releasing records, we don't really know that much about how much money they've spent every

time. but we can tell for the first few trips trump made, the government paid tens of thousands of dollars per trip to mar-a-lago. and not just for people -- for the secret service to get sandwiches. they charged the government $546 a night per room. >> that was government rate? >> they picked the highest possible rate that the government would pay and charged that per room. >> so it's technically government rate but it's at the highest end of government rate. >> exactly. then there was the famous case where the trump staffers barricaded themselves off in a bar and drank $1,000 worth of liquor and charged the federal tax payer for it. so the federal tax payer paid $1,000 liquor bill. so when the trump organization says trust us. >> what does that mean when they say cost, right? >> no idea. i think it's more indicative to look at their actual behavior, right? not what do they say but what do they do? we end up with a thousand dollar liquor bill and $546 a night hotel rooms.

>> david, who is probably at this point now the unofficial accountant of the trump organization, thanks for coming on. sharing. making us smarter about this. up ahead, it was one of the most jaw dropping moments in a series of jaw dropping moments yesterday when the white house acknowledged it pressured ukraine to investigate a conspiracy theory about the dnc server. going to break that down and what it means coming up. going to break that down and what it means coming up. so you only pay for what you need. wow. thanks, zoltar. how can i ever repay you? maybe you could free zoltar? thanks, lady. taxi! only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪

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tonight in 2020 vision, even with the democratic primary being overshadowed by the impeachment inquiry and the situation in syria, joe biden hasn't been having a very good week. fellow candidates weren't treating him like the front-runner. kind of ignoring him at times. then his cash on hand situation didn't look like that either. biden's campaign spent almost $2 million more than they raised last quarter. it's not supposed to happen in the odd-numbered year. you're supposed to wait for that to happen in the even-numbered part of the campaign. but compared to how much cash on hand his competitors have, and you see why we that's not a lot. sanders has nearly $34 million. warren, 25 million. buttigieg, 23 million. part of the reason for the biden's campaign shallow pockets is sluggish fundraising. they spent nearly thousands on private jets. biden says, though, he is not worried.

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we've all agreed on a pause or a ceasefire in the border region of syria.

and it was unconventional what i did. i said they're going to have to fight a little while. sometimes you have to let them fight a little while. then people find out how tough the fighting is. these guys know right up here. these guys know. right? sometimes you have to let them fight. it's like two kids in a lot. you got to let them fight and then you pull them apart. but it was unconventional. >> welcome back. that was the president last night likening the deadly conflict in northern syria to a playground fight as he was touting his administration's supposed deal with turkey. a deal that turkey won't even call a ceasefire. a deal that at least for a time today appeared to already be broken. fighting broke out along the turkey/syria border today with gunfire and grenades being heard. nbc news chief correspondent richard engel joins me now from northern syria. richard, this idea that -- that just let the turks and the kurds fight it out and they'll realize this isn't a good idea doesn't

seem like -- doesn't seem like a picture of reality on the ground. give us a picture of the reality on the ground. >> well, we're talking to kurdish leaders. we're talking to kurdish people and, frankly, they are listening to president trump. they are listening, hanging on every word because they know their fate right now is still in the united states' hands. and they are disgusted. they think that president trump is treating what is happening to them like some sort of joke. they have been insulted. they have had this entire conflict brushed off as some sort of two kids fighting in a sandbox. the kurds here right now, they say they are facing ethnic cleansing. that they are being driven off of their lands. they're being bombed. there are horrific images that are coming out of the hospitals. hospitals that they fear they could lose control over. and president trump says that

they're terrorists. that these are just kids in a sandbox. what is happening here, 250,000 kurds have already left. they have to now navigate through dangerous terrain that is controlled by different forces. all of which are against the kurds. be it, rogue elements of the -- the -- the regime that is hunting them down or elements of the -- of kurdish -- of turkish militias. so to have the president insulting them and then being dismissive and acknowledging that this fight because the president seems to be acknowledging he allowed this fight to go forward. he could have stopped it but he wanted to let it go on a little bit so they could get wounded enough to realize that they would accept his brilliant ceasefire. people are listening to this here and they are absolutely disgusted. >> what -- what about on the ground today? is turkey abiding by whatever vague promise they seem to make to the vice president and the

secretary of state? >>ish. sort of. they are not using their major conventional weapons. they are -- there have not been massive air strikes or artillery bombardments. but turkey has much longer objectives here. first of all, it has militias on the ground. radical militias. and i'm not sure if this part of the story is really breaking through because it is so important. you have a nato country with a giant army that is using shock troops, arab, radical militias that officials say contain former al qaeda and isis members. those are the forces i was talking about that the kurds while they are trying to escape are in some cases having to bribe their way through militia check points to get out of the country. it's unclear if they are going to stop fighting even though they're under some turkish guidance, some turkish control. and turkey is a longer play, which is once this five-day ceasefire is over, then they

take full control of this so-called safe zone. this part of syria that president trump seated to turkey. and then they're planning this resettlement campaign. turkey's president erdogan today talking about pushing one to two million refugees who are almost all arab refugees in turkey and resettling them here. and if you watch turkish television today, it was all full of the kind of new houses they're going to have and the mosques and the schools that turkish contractors are going to build. by the way, turkish contractors hope that europe is going to pay for all of this and that's why turkey has been threatening europe. merkel saying if you don't pay for this, we're going to send the refugees up to europe. and turkey is already talking about having a $27 billion construction project. they want other people to pay for and they settle all these people on top of the kurdish area while president trump insults them and talks them -- talks about them like they are kids having a little dust up in

the sandbox. >> richard engel, it's obviously no dust up in northern syria. be safe out there, sir. thanks for that report this evening. with me now is brett mcgurk. he's now an nbc news senior foreign affairs analyst. you've heard the first -- you've heard richard sort of first-hand account of -- of at least a pause is probably even too strong of a word. but some suspension of -- of -- of hardcore military efforts by the turks. but where -- where are we, brett? and is there any way to turn this around at this point? >> well, first, richard is quite courageous to be there and it's great to have that firsthand reporting. look. i think you got to listen to what the turks are saying. erdogan today said he has an arrangement, agreement to clear an entire safe zone. it's 450 kilometers from the river all the way to the border of iraq. 30 kilometers deep.

that includes all the kurdish areas of syria. all the christian majority areas of syria. u.s. officials claim that what was agreed to is much narrower in scope. i would tend to listen to the turks here because -- >> can you believe you're saying that? can you believe you have to say it that way? listen to the turks, not to our american officials. >> the truth of the matter is when president trump announced to the world last december that we were leaving syria and he arbitrarily cut our force reportedly in half, which is already a small force, we lost all of our leverage and influence. and he really threw it out the window on this call on october 6th. so president erdogan is heading to russia to see president putin in four days and i suspect they already have lines on a map that they've divvied up and the president of the united states is pretty much irrelevant here. and our influence is just rapidly receding as we leave our bases and blow them up or hand them to the russians. so our ability to influence this situation is extremely limited. and it is deeply troubling when

president erdogan announces to the world, as he did again today, that he plans to clean out this entire area and repopulate it with two to three million people, as richard just reported. and united states appears now to have ratified this plan. i don't think trump understands any of this. i don't think he knows what he's doing. i think diplomats are trying to scramble to buy some time in what has been a cascading crisis with americans in harm's way. and there's some merit to that and i wish them all the best. >> look. you've stuck -- you stuck on this job post-obama to see this fight against isis through. what -- how -- what was the most effective way to keep the president from disrupting this operation before it finally did get disrupted last december? what was working at the time? what was mattis pulling off? what was tillerson pulling off at the time to keep trump from doing this then? >> well, a couple things. first, the campaign was in decent shape during the transition. we had a good transition.

we were about 30 kilometers from rocca. we did a strategic review that was very professionally done with mattis and tillerson and the team. a number of options were presented to president trump. we could let the russians take rocca. we could send in 15 to 20,000 american troops with an option that was preferred by turkey. or we could arm the syrian kurds to take rocca. president trump said arm the syrian kurds. i think that was right. also, there was times where erdogan was threatening things and there was a phone call with president trump and erdogan in the 2017 timeframe in which he was very clear. don't cross our lines. so something obviously he's made clear in december he wanted out of syria without thinking of the strategic consequences. and the consequences are quite dire. look, i've been to syria 20 or so times. used to go every couple months. where richard is standing, that is the isis califate. these towns nobody's ever heard of, these were the main supply lines for isis. and isis fighters, isis munitions, isis explosives were

pouring over the syrian border when isis had the califate and planning major attacks in europe and against the united states of america. so isis right now given where this is going is going to reconstitute its networks. it won't be the scope we saw in 2013-2014 but'already happening. and our ability to keep that from happening is unraveling because the force we built of 60,000 syrians and it's not just kurds, it's arabs, christians, many others. 60,000 is now basically fracturing apart as they come under pressure from turkey, from russia, from iran. and the americans are evacuating their bases. so it's a strategic disaster. >> and, brett, have we lost all leverage with turkey? i mean, does turkey even care if they get kicked out of nato? >> they know they're not going to get kicked out of nato because there's no way to kick anybody out of nato. but the fact of the matter is they've bought the russian s 400 system and we threatened sanctions and they weren't sanctioned. >> our nukes set in their country. >> no. it's a big issue.

look, i was just in the middle east and heard from very senior middle eastern leaders. you know, the turks bought these russian missile systems and nothing happened to them. why shouldn't we buy them? but more importantly, president erdogan is going to see president putin and that's where this will be decided. and if you're not -- in the middle east, if you're not at the table, you're on the table. and so we have just seated all of our ability to influence the situation with the russians, isis, the iranians, and everybody else now pouring in. >> well, i think that's the phrase people need to hear. if you're not at the table, you're on the table. it looks like we're on. brett mcgurk, thank you, sir. >> thank you, chuck. >> up ahead, the conspiracy theory that's getting credence from the white house. and now, as a former opponent is into one as well. plus, why i'm obsessed with what freedom of the speech is and what it is not. h what freedom of the speech is and what it is not

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true. banning political ads favors incumbents and whoever the media chooses to cover. >> and with that, zuckerberg just relinquished total responsibility for what's said on his social media platform. it's all a matter of free speech to him, right? except it's not. free speech does not mean consequence-free speech. consider, for example, us. the national broadcasting company. according to the fcc, broadcasters are responsible for selecting the broadcast material that airs on their stations, including advertisements. in fact, we have an entire department that reviews ads before we put them on television. for factual accuracy, among other things. we're held liable. so zuckerberg can masquerade as a defender of the first amendment all he wants but in reality, he's thinking about something else. apparently, profit. think about what facebook is saying here. if you hide a lie in a political ad, you can get away with it on facebook for a price. and facebook can get away with

abdicating its responsibility for disseminating it. zuckerberg clearly thinks you can yell fire in a crowded theater, at least on facebook. and who ultimately gets tangled up in this web of lies and money and money and misplaced priorities? i'll give you one guess. multiplc for your business. when you've got public clouds, and private clouds, and hybrid clouds- things can get a bit cloudy for you. but now, there's the dell technologies cloud, powered by vmware. a single hub for a consistent operating experience across all your clouds. that should clear things up. at outback, steak & oh no, it's gone.ck. phew, it's back with lobster mac & cheese. it's gone again. oh, it's back with shrimp now! steak & lobster starting at only $15.99. hurry in before these three are gone again.

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did he also mention to me in the past that the corruption related to the dnc server?

absolutely, no question about that. but that's it. that's why we held up the money. >> welcome back. some of us are still lifting our jaws off the floor if there are any hinges left in our jaws on the mulvaney performance yesterday. putting aside what he said about withholding military aid, that is him saying that he discussed corruption related to the dnc server with president trump. what is that corruption? it's a conspiracy theory that claims the dnc servers are in ukraine. they are not. anyway, still with us susan page, joel payne, matthew continetti. we literally know, susan, this conspiracy is made up. this idea that crowdstrike and the president says they never called the fbi. they called the fbi. it's a -- it's something that has just made it into the ether webs. >> it is not only a theory for which there is no evidence, it's

a theory that's been debunked. it's been debunked by robert mueller in a two-year investigation. >> by tom bossert, his own homeland security advisor. >> who told the president that. president trump has been talking about this for two and a half years. this is not a new conspiracy theory that he's concocted. this is one that gets the russians off the hook. it gets the suggestion that he wasn't legitimately elected off his plate. but it's not true. and yet it is the quid pro quo we know he put out for the ukrainians in that phone call. >> he's put his presidency at risk. >> indeed he has. for me during that press conference the most striking line was when chief of staff mulvaney said get over it. >> that was probably the one part of the press conference that trump loved. >> and i think that represents the white house attitude right

now. this is the get over it presidency. the question is, though, ultimately it has to face the voters. are voters willing to say, okay. it's becoming harder, i think. >> i was just going to say it also is like a use of valuable resources on national security, resources and time to talk to the president of the ukraine, to use all of this might of your national security apparatus to chase this conspiracy theory. that has not gotten enough -- >> he's not alone. hillary clinton was interviewed by david plouffe. she has her own theory about a candidate in this race for president. take a listen to this sound bite about -- she appears to be talking about tulsi gabbard. take a listen. >> they're also gonna do third-party again. and i'm not making any predictions, but i think they have got their eye on somebody who's currently in the democratic primary, and are

grooming her to be the third-party candidate. she's a favorite of the russians. they have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far. and that's assuming jill stein will give it up, which she might not, because she's also a russian asset. yeah, she's a russian at set. i mean totally. >> joel payne, is jill stein a russian asset? this is not a factually proven thing, number one. that's an awfully rough charge on tulsi gabbard. >> i think we're all throwing around the term "asset" a little too freely. there is a belief that jill stein was leveraged last cycle to work against the interests of hillary clinton and to work towards the interests of the russians and to president trump. that's actually a pretty well acknowledged theory out there. so that's more what she was talking about. less about tulsi gabbard and more about the fact that the russians have an interest in the

election. >> tulsi gabbard responded. she just gave tulsi gabbard oxygen that a candidate like tulsi gabbard desperately needs. thank you, hillary clinton. you, the queen of waur mongers and personification of the rot that has sickened the democratic party for so long have finally come out from behind the curtain. from the day i announced my candidacy, there's been a concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. we always wondered who it was and now we know it was you. wow, afraid of the threat i pose. this is a congresswoman who decided to visit bashar al assad in syria. so it's not as if she hasn't raised suspicion about why are you hanging out with assad? but there's -- this is without evidence. >> if you're going to call somebody an american, a member of congress, someone who has served in our military, if you're going to call them a to present some u have an evidence. but there is some concern about

jill stein did and that will hurt the democratic chances in 2020. >> some of this comes with the right being obsessed with tulsi. the right wing and twitter world has a love affair of some sort with tulsi gabbard. at least trump world does. >> that part of the right is noninterventionist and so they like tulsi gabbard? >> is that the only reason they like tulsi gabbard? >> but i mean they don't -- well, now because she wants to remove all the troops. nonetheless, i think there's sometimes a mistake. even though putin and some other americans have coincidental interests, that is they both stand for the same thing, there's an assumption that they're in cohoots. >> jill stein being at an rt thing was real evidence. tulsi gabbard is another story. >> this is a problem for the

democratic party because there's a small part of the democratic party that actually believes in tulsi gabbard's foreign policy. >> yeah, but there's a large majority of the american public that believes barack obama was a muslim. >> i've got to go. conspiracy theory hour is over. thank you all. i'll be back monday with more "meet the press daily." justin amash this sunday. good evening, ari. >> we're not calling it conspiracy theory hour. i always think of it as meet the press daily. >> we got deep, brother. we got deep. >> you got deep on debunking the conspiracy theories which is good to do. we'll be watching you sunday. >> thank you. >> always good to see you. we have a very special show for you this friday night. fallout over the breaking story we brought you here on "the beat." donald trump's man admitting on television and backtracking but is the backtracking making it