Happens. Hillary clinton is currently leading donald trump by between 1 and 7 points in North Carolina, a state barack obama won in 2008 but lost in 2012. Theres also new polling out of arizona, another early voting state where trump is barely clinging to a onepoint lead. Among respondents who said they took advantage of early voting, four in ten, clinton is ahead by ten points. A bunch of new data on early voting. Well talk about it in just a bit. Arizona is a handful of reliable republican states including texas and utah where donald trump is already scrambling the map this year. In utah where the mormon electorate is especially unfavorable to trump his lead is down to 5. 5. Prompting the campaign to dispatch mike pence to Salt Lake City less than two weeks before the election to do damage control. Hes there tomorrow. Mitt romney himself a mormon won utah by 48 in 2012. Given trumps polling deficit his lack of ads it came as a surprise that according to the Washington Post trump has stopped holding highdollar fundraisers and relying on online donations which tend to be much smaller. Thats after Campaign Financial reports show more money spent than raised in the month of september. Reports add to growing speculation that donald trump is not in very deep psychological sense running to be president of the United States so much as hes running to build up a fan base for donald trump. With the advent of trump tower live, the campaigns new nightly broadcast streamed over facebook, rumors are swirling over a potential trump media empire to be launched after the election. In a radio interview trump flatly denied those rumors but listen to the way he talks about his supporters. Is this about you running for president or setting up trump tv and a media empire . No, i have no interest in trump tv. I hear it all over the place. I have a tremendous fan base, i mean we have a tremendous base, we have the most incredible people. But i dont have any interest in that. I have one interest and thats on november 8th. A tremendous fan base. Today the New York Times publhed extensive audio recordings that trump gave his biographer. He describes how he uses the media for free selfpromotion especially for his businesses. When Barbara Walters called two years ago, she said, donald, i want to put you on as one of the top ten most fascinating people. I could say no. And then i could advertise a project that im doing. Like doral or something. And spend half a Million Dollars on it or a Million Dollars. Or i can do the show and spend nothing and be on for a lot longer. On the very day those tapes went public, thats exactly where trump was, doral. His resort and golf club outside miami. The event was ostensibly a Campaign Photo op with a group of employees, many who are hispanic and support the republican nominee. It sounded like this. 800 acres in the middle of miami. If you look at the ballroom, that was brandnew that didnt exist. Its one of the great places on earth. We had a construction crew here of 1600 people. We rebuilt the whole place in 14 months. We did it under budget although i did increase the scope of the work because we decided to use the finest marbles. While trump was hanging out at his golf course with the finest marbles, Hillary Clinton was holding an event at Broward College on the second day of early voting literally across the street from an early voting site. This morning trump also took the opportunity to promote a big cant miss Campaign Event taking place tomorrow in a crucial part of the country. Im going tomorrow were going to be opening up the Old Post Office where we spent over 200 million and built the most Magnificent Hotel i think anywhere in the country on pennsylvania avenue right between the white house and congress. Trump campaign surrogate steve cortez joins me now. Under what possible logic could it be a good idea less than two weeks from the election to go to your Hotel Opening in the not particularly contested district of columbia . Chris, did you hear him say how great the marble is . Yes. And im sure theres wonderful things on the menu and finery in the details in the washington hotel, but just seems to feed into the narrative for people who think this guy is basically in it for himself. Of course im kidding. Let me be serious here. First of all, if anyone were to imagine lets presuppose that hes truly into this for building trump tv or future business efforts, this would be the most fanciful and wasteful expenditure he could possibly conjure. Hes spent 100 million of his own money. Clearly this is not a business investment. This is a dream for a better america, but to get to your specific question, why is he going there . You know why hes going there, i believe . Is he wants to show americans once again that hes spent his lifetime building magnificent structures and employing people. The clintons have spent their lifetime building ious and employing defense lawyers. And theres a clear contrast there and hes going to show that to the american people. So the idea is its either hes doing this for all the right reasons, he wants to be president because if this were a business proposition, its a poor business proposition. But youre excluding the third alternative, which it is a business proposition, a poor business proposition and he handling it terribly because hes incompetent at doing the one thing he says hes good at. Thats a possibility. I think hes far too smart for that and at 70 years old as a billionaire mogul. Well have to see the tax returns. Thats not on his agenda right now. I dont think anyone can doubt this. Even if you have the most malicious and nefarious view of donald trump you cant doubt that hes poured his body and soul into this campaign. Everyone who runs for president does that. No, no. Its incredibly special. If you were to compare his schedule to Hillary Clintons you would see a frenetic campaigner on one side, a man who could be my father all the time, yeah. I could never keep up his schedule versus Hillary Clinton who campaigns every few days. But you realize this is like one of trumps sons said this is a huge step down for him to run for president. Hes not doing it donald trump isnt doing anyone any favors for running to be the most powerful person on the planet, right . I disagree by saying a step down. The presidency is never a step down. Good, im glad we agree on that. I think he misspoke there, chris. Having said that, i truly believe this, i did, and i came to the trump train late. Im a convert to the trump train. I havent been drinking trump koolaid since the very beginning but ive become a true believer. I really believe this. This man, do you think that at this stage of his life, of his fortune, his career, he needs any of this . No, he doesnt. He is doing this because he sees that our country is gravely ill. We are economically and nationally sick i understand that thats the theory of the case for Trump Supporters and its what donald trump says and its possible that that is actually the case. The other theory of the case and its not just one that people opposed to him politically believe, but people that share the Republican Partys beliefs but dont like donald trump is hes fundamentally a narcissist who has become addicted to the attention, is sort of compulsively driven by attention and this has given him an outlet for that attention and crucially doesnt actually care about the party that he is nominally representing in two weeks. Thats an important point. Chris, to your point, and i will concede this to you, there are some people whom i respect who hold those views. I would counter that by saying that generally they are part of a washington establishment that exists for its own selfaggrandizement yes, i get that. We are the outsiders and the establishment cant stand what we represent. And by the way, im glad they cant because were not coming there around the edges. I can say i get that argument. Theres some truth to that. Youre talking about this wired part of the establishment. But the random mormon voters that wanted nothing to do with the guy are now part of the establishment have come to the same conclusion. Thank you. Congratulations the Campaign Just bought a bunch of copies of that book. Thats money in your pocket. Well, no, it isnt. Ive given away so far 85,000. Is that true . 85,000 in royalties so far this year and ill continue to give it away to anti proimmigration causes. Trying to make sense of hes going to this hotel. Hes at doral today. Weve got the tape saying hes going to his hotel tomorrow. Theres a sense in which it could be the case that the incentives of running for president and getting maximum attention for yourself sometimes align and at some point they stop aligning and you just keep going with the incentives for maximum attention for yourself. Thats the only incentive he has. So what you said poor steve cortez, what a horrible, horrible job to have to defend this man. And you can see how impossible it is at this point. Let me just note on steves behalf and steve believes in what hes saying and i dont doubt for a moment all the people you see on donald trump have not been drafted into it. Everyone has entered into it of their own i dont mean hes doing it against his will. Its a crappy job. No, so i think the point you were making about his need for attention, listen, he has kept upping the ante in terms of getting attention. The New York Times peace about michael dantonios interviews really brought that up again, this desperate feeling that if im not getting attention, that i barely exist. Hes like hes rowing the boat across a river and the Promised Land is on the other side but theres a hole in the boat and hes bailing, bailing, bailing, and hes bailing so much that he cant actually row the boat. So the Promised Land is never going to be reached. Its funny you said that because the way this gets understood in the Campaign Context oh, theyre not doing the blocking and tackling, the organizational operational things they need to do in this election, why is he going to his hotel. Thats called lack of discipline. If you were just lazy, you would offload that to someone else and let them do the work for you. His incentives are not aligned with the Republican Party. They are part of the time bu not all the time. I also wonder if at this point, given his noted inability to deal with shame, humiliation and loss and what seem like epically deep psychic wounds that he carries around, he just wants to go and be in a place that he feels like he created and right. Go back to home. Go back to somewhere, something that he maybe can feel good about. Yeah, he did end todays doral event by just muttering rosebud over and over again. No, i think the fascinating several different pieces of the trump psyche revealed by what happened today and one of them is this decision not to hold more fundraisers. Whats that about . Thats very simple. Hes already in revenge mode. Desperate. He wants to get the Republican Party. And if it means blowing up the Republican Party, the democracy, whatever it takes, donald trump is going to try to get back some semblance of selfworth. And to me, the biggest lesson ive learned up till now with two weeks to go before the election and the thing i have to take myself back to kind of parse is just how powerful a personality can be when it is as not worried about norms or shame as a normal person. Like thats been the big lesson. Like, wow, you can really go pretty far and you can get away with a lot. At the risk of violating goodwins law, this is the big lie, thats why its so powerful. That most people will not accept the fact that you are who was it that said that eventually donald trump will go on television and insist he never ran for president . His ability to be so shameless, i think that its impossible for most people to parse. They assume that there must be something to his grandiose selfpresentation because who could be a con man on that big of a scale . Well yeah, go ahead. My question to you is the other thing you have to remember about this guy is hes not been a politician. Running for Electoral Office is deeply humbling, not in the way like im deeply humbled. You go and shake hands and beg people for your vote and you lose races. Hes not gone through that. So huh reacts this last two weeks is a totally open question. I think its pretty clear how hell react. Hell keep doing those things that make him feel like its somebody elses fault that this has happened and hell keep doing those things that serve his selfinterests. The clash of civilizations that really this represents is between selfinterest and a greater interest. Its between me and we. Thank god it looks like we is going to win because if it doesnt win, the planet isnt going to survive. And if trump i really believe that. I believe that were at a turning point here. And there are concentric circles of we, the we of the planet, the we of a whole bunch of stuff. Thank you both. The early returns from early voting. President obamas battleground states director on what early votes tell us about where this race stands two weeks out and why the odds democrats take back the senate are Getting Better after a quick minute break. Romantic momen can happen spontaneously, so why pause to take pill . Or sp to fina bathro . Is the only ily tablet dly use, approved to treat erectile dysfunc anytime the moment is right. So you c be ready of bph, like needinghe to go frequently,ry symptoms y or night. Tell your doctor about all your medicalondition and medicines, and ask if yourh. Y or night. Do not take alis if you take nitrates for est pain and medicines, and ask if yourh. Or adempas fort. Pulmonary hypertsion, as it may cause an unsafe drop in blood pressure. Side effects may include headache, upset stomach,ss. Delayed ckac or muscle ache. To avo longterm injury, get medical help rightway for an ereion lastin more than four hours. If you have ansudden decrease or loss in hearing or vision, or a symptoms of an allergic reaction, stop taking cialis and get medicahe right awa ask your doctor about cialis for daily use. Many men arent aware their th insan may cover cialis contact your health plan for the latest infmation. As Donald Trumps fortunes continue to slide, hes increasingly dragging the fortunes of Senior Republicans with him. The cook report saying that Senate Democrats are poised to pick up five to seven seats which would give them the majority. Races in the tossup column never split down the milled. One party tends to win the lions share of that. Theres not enough time for republicans to recover tossup seats in the states where Hillary Clinton is leading. Early voting is under way and trump wont be any help especially since his campaign doesnt have a ground game to speak of. Between the dnc and state Party OperationsCampaign Finance reports show democrats employ 5,138 staffers across 15 battleground states. Trumps campaign, the Republican National committee employ just 1400 staffers in 16 states. How well does that work for those who turn out for election day. Early voting data offers some potential insight. According to the Washington Post, the end of saturday, staffers celebrated 39,148 people had vetted compared to 33,187 in 2012. No wonder katy perry held a rally for clinton in clark county on saturday literally gave a ride to some attendees to some of the early voting spots afterwards. In a onetwo punch, president obama was in the same county the next day. If theres a Single Person on earth who knows this data inside and out, its Mitch Stewart. Currently a partner at 270 strategists. I want to start with this before we get to the early voting data. Its important for folks to understand when you were sitting at your perch in the 2012 campaign and folks were running the operation in clintons campaign, youre not looking at the real clear politics or 548, you have internal data. What is that made of and what does it say and tell you that we on the inside dont know . You have a voter file that has all kinds of different Data Information on these specific individuals. Their vote history, likely candidate preference. All kinds of things that you can look at. What you get then from the county auditor or from the secretary of state are individual level returns. So you know exactly who voted early, and many times you know how they voted early, either in person or by mail. Then you can imagine that back to your existing database or voter file. And you know enough about those people you sort of profiled the them whether its through their age, their education level, their ethnicity to be pretty confident who theyre actually voting for based on the models you have. No, exactly right. You look at two separate data points. The first is what we call a preference candidate model. Every voter will have a score from 1001. Out of 100 Mitch Stewarts, barack obama would get 1 vote. Ten people would vote for barack obama. 90 for mitt romney. You look at that and then you also look at your turnout score. How likely are you to vote if somebody were not to remind you . You have a score of 1001 on every single voter in that state. What you want to do with early vote, in most states, you want your supporters who have a middling turnout score, folks you arent superconfident they will vote on election day unless you remind them. You want them to vote early. If somebody lass a high turnout score, irrespective if you remind them or not. You have the two scores. How likely am i to support the candidate that Mitch Stewart is supporting which would be barack obama you want people you are sure will vote for your candidate but in the middle of the propensity to turn out bau you can work on them in this sort of sustained fashion for this period and make sure they get in their own time and choosing. Thats exactly right. Not only do you measure your success from a field operation, you also measure your opponents success and who are they getting to turn out early . Are these getting out election day voters and just doing it early or are they reaching into the people who would be less likely to participate so theyre growing their pie . So you look at both. You can do Something Like in 2012, say in a state like nevada, your campaign basically knew who won nevada before election day. You will have 80 of nevadans vote early. We had about a 12point lead with 80 of the electorate in. The republicans would be literally like a 7030 win on election day to make up for that early vote deficit. Iowa is another example. Just 40 voted early and we had about a tenpoint lead. On election day republicans had almost an insurmountable gap to fill. You felt very, very comfortable with a couple of those states or you knew that this could be really, really close like florida. So it does provide you some assurance of whats going to happen on election day. But more importantly from a campaign perspective, it allows you to allocate resources more efficiently. So we stopped spending a ton of money in nevada once we realized that 80 of the electorate voted. We wind down the budget there and focus on a state like virginia where 90 of the state will vote on election day because theres very little vote happening there. Well check in on Elizabeth Warren who is speaking moments ago. Take a listen. No, i hope you heard donald trump in the debate when he said that he was smart not to pay any taxes. Thats right. He is smart and all of you who pay taxes are dumb. Everyone who pays taxes. To keep our roads and bridges working is dumb. Everyone who pays taxes to support our world class military is dumb. Everyone who pays taxes to support medical research and Scientific Research is dumb. Dumb because donald trump doesnt plan to pay. He just plans to use all those things you paid for. What kind of man does that . A selfish little sleazeball. A man who will never be president of the United States. You bet. Now, Donald Trumps been out there. He hasnt been hiding who he is. Hes been out there from the very beginning. Hes been out there and where has your senator, richard burr, been all this time . I wanted to look this up, make sure i got this right before i came here. Richard burr said make no mistake, i am fully supportive of donald trump. No dancing around that one. So donald trump called latinos rapists and murderers and burr fully supports trump. Trump called africanamericans thugs and donald trump and burr fully supports donald trump. Trump attacked a gold star family and burr fully supports donald trump. Trump praised Vladimir Putin and compared himself to dictators. And burr fully supports donald trump. Trump calls women fat pigs and bimbos and brags about sexually assaulting women. And richard burr is like a puppy on a leash sticking right there with donald trump. You know, if richard burr is just going to be Donald Trumps lapdog, then let him go off and do that, but the people of North Carolina need a strong, independent voice to fight for the families of North Carolina. And that is deborah ross. That was Elizabeth Warren speaking in North Carolina just a few moments ago in support of deborah ross who is the Democratic Senate candidate challenging richard burr in a tightly contested race, yolking him to trump. As you just saw. P . P . H donald trump has spent his entire president ial xap both obsessed with Media Coverage and harshly critical of the press. His rhetoric has grown ever harsher in recent weeks as his poll numbers collapsed. These people are among the most dishonest people in the world, the media. They are the worst. Theyre trying to fix the election for crooked hillary. The media is entitled, condescending and even contemptuous of people who dont share certain elitist views. Reporters are ritualistic booed when theyre escorted into the trump rallies where they stand in pens and heckled while they cover them. This video shows the view from the press area. Reporters describe did vitriol they face at trump rallies as increasingly hostile with people flipping middle fingers at them. A trump rally in Cleveland Buzzfeed reporter rosie gray reported that two men outside the press pen were quoted picking up after one of the men said the word lugenpresser. Lugenpresser. You said it right. Thats right. The word that man there was so excited to learn, lugenpresser means lying press in german. And its the term the nazis used to demonize and the media and stir antijew hatred. While trump has traveled further into the factfree swamp and a cocoon where he doesnt like anything that he says is false. It must be cured if the party is to be saved. Well break down her diagnosis next. They also claim that, in fact, hillary did in fact have a romantic relationship with vince foster. That, you know, that was pretty much of an open secret in our circles. Lead story on hannity on fox news in primetime last night beamed out to million of viewers. A fixer for Hillary Clinton named jack rogan was recently featured as hillarys hit man in a National Enquirer cover story claiming that clinton is a quote and im quoting here a secret sex freak who paid fixers to set up elicit romps with both men and women. Hes an editor of the weekly world news that printed news of hillarys alien abduction complete with photographic evidence. Hannity gave rogan a primetime platform in spite of admitting the network could not verify his claims. Rush limbaugh claimed the Mainstream Media would not ignore this if it was about trump. Would you think that the National Enquirer allegation of a guy saying hes procured women for hillary would even make its way well, of course not, but if the story was about trump, it would. This less than impeccable source makes the rounds of the right, limbaugh, drudge, hannity. Championed by drudge and who today called into the limbaugh show to complain of what of all things, the Mainstream Media. These are vicious people. These are lying people. Theyre evil people, the press, the media. Theyre bad people. And nobody, nobody lies like they do. Joining me now catherine rampell. The only way to save the Republican Party drain the rightwing media swmp. When trump gets the trouncing that everybody expects, the Republican Party will regroup and say, whats our autopsy this time around . If theyre going to lay it at the feet of donald trump and say, you know, if wed only had a candidate with maybe the same package or policies but a little more empathic gloss, a little less boorish, less bigoted, hadnt been caught on tape saying he harassed women. Thats wrong. The problem is not donald trump, the problem is that a large share of their base believes completely bonkers bigoted things. Theyve been fed this again and again over year business the right wing what do you mean by bonkers bigoted things. Birtherism, data trutherism. Is that like large significant parts of fox viewers and conservatives and republicans that think that all the Economic Data is being juiced. The polls are skewed. Even the fox news polls are skewed these days according to the republican base. Beyond that, you know, that the weather numbers that we get are wrong. You know, that matt drudge had recently said that nobody should evacuate their homes when a hurricane was coming. Right, a liberal media conspiracy. It was a conspiracy. The numbers were made up, the projections were made up to gin up fear about global warming. The idea is that theres this sort of context tu wal environment in which trump has flourished and the environment is more important than trump because the environment is the environment thats so selfcontained and untethered from connections to external reality that you can have a candidate like this yes, basically the altright for years has created an alterne reality that has ultimately led to trump. You mean the right. The altright. I think i would say that theres a selfidentified white nationalists of the altright. Its larger than that. I dont mean to paint all conservative leaning journalists with the same brush, those that are pedalling crazy conspiracy theories saying that obama was not born in the United States, there sort of thing. Thats part of the issue because theres tons of conservative journalists and writers and folks at fox. There are places that people have integrity. Theyre opinionated with an ideological ax to grind but who doesnt have one. Phil klein has been reporting on obamacare, conservative, doesnt like obamacare, is embedded in the facts of what obamacare is, theres subject matter, knowledge, theres expertise, all these things. Thats a very small group of these folks with a very small and my concern is that Republican Leadership has been playing along for years with these conspiracy theorizers. Theyre controlled by them. Theyre terrified of them. Look what happened to eric cantor in his primary race to david bratt when basically right wing radio decided to take him on. So i think there are two issues going on here, why they havent been willing to take on the crazies essentially. One is that they desperately need the imprimatur of these places because theyre influential, handy is influential, drudge, whoever else, if they tick them off, theyll potentially lose those voters. To some extent the conspiracy theories have served their interests, in the short term. The popular mandate of the first black president , maybe that was useful to their cause in the near term, but in the lo run it stoked a lot of racial resentment. The same thing with clinton voter fraud. It has been extremely useful. But in the pretext by which they passed actual pieces of legislation that made it harder for actual populations that actually vote for democrats in large numbers to vote. Yes, and in the long run it set the stage for a president ial candidate to explain to his many voters that the election will be stolen from them. Today a large share of republicans in particular believe that that election will be stolen. I think that its absolutely the case and youre seeing it in its sort of death throes now. Karl rove in 2012 saying its not over. But then they just went back to the script. The big question for the right is do they go back to the script or is there some kind of reckoning and catherine rampell, thanks for joining me. The bonus thing 1 thing 2 the bonus thing 1 thing 2 tonight without commercial break in the middle. Where he or she stands on their own nominee for president. Because there are distinct categories. Those who have always backed donald trump like for instance senator jeff sessions. There are a select few who have maintained never trump like senator ben sask, Charlie Baker and a handful of congress members. There were those who decided relatively early to oppose, mark kirk, lindsey graham, Susan Collins and those who stood with trump until october through all the nasty statements, banning an entire religion, but finally threw in the towel after the infamous audio of trump bragging about grabbing women by the genitals. That list of late trump unendorsers includes john mccain, kelly ayotte and Senate Candidate joe heck of nevada. The supporters who heard trump on that bus bragging about Sexual Assault and defiantly proceeded to unendorse trump and call for him to step down only to then days or weeks later reendorse trump. This crowd has supported and opposed in disgust before reendorsing him, john thune, deb fischer and mike crapo. Then theres pat toomey. Who will be in charge of the nuclear codes. Pat toomey has his own answer. And thats thing 2 tonight. See, for the entire general election, senator pat toomey has simply refused to say whether or not hell support the gop nominee. He wont endorse nor will he rule out voting for donald trump. He wont give a simple direct answer one that every single american has to answer for themselves all of which made for an interesting debate last night. I know you have been waiting for this debate. In fact, i know youve been waiting for this moment to say whether or not you will vote for the nominee of your party. So is it yea or nay . So, jim, unlike katie mcginty, im not a hyperreflexive ideologue who thinks he has to give blind obedience to his partys nominee. So i guess that means you havent been waiting for this debate . I have refused to endorse donald trump. Katie mcginty says thats supporting donald trump. That doesnt make any sense. Look, im not going to badger you to Say Something that youre not going to say, but dont you think your constituents, the people of pennsylvania deserve to know if youre going to support the nominee of your party . I dont think my constituents care that much how one person is going to vote. Theyre going to make their own decision. Iraqs elite counterterrorism troops trained by the u. S. Are at the tip of the spear in the fight against isis. We join their commander, Major General al saudi, theyve had two years to dig in for this battle. But general al saudi has an advantage, american ground power. American troops are on the ground in iraq right now coordinating air strikes and aiding iraqi forces as they move to retake the second largest city. The battle more mosul has already claimed the life of one u. S. Service member. 34yearold chief petty officer was attached to a navy s. E. A. L. Team advising troops. He was in a vehicle and telling other members of his team he had spotted a roadside bomb when he was killed. He leaves behind a wife and a 7yearold son. The stakes of this battle with both american and iraqi troops in harms way are clear and progress has been steady in first week of the operation. Iraqs Prime Minister says the offensive is going faster than planned. U. S. Command says iraqi forces are making solid progress. But the attack on mosul is turning out to be a total disaster. We gave them months of notice. The u. S. Is looking so dumb. Vote trump and win again. That tweetrompting this response from secretary inton. I was so appalled when donald trump tweeted that the new effort under way to push the terrorists out of the key city of mosul is already, and i quote him, a total disaster, and that our country is again a, quote, looking dumb. Really . Hes declaring defeat before the battle has even started . Hes proving once again he is unqualified to be commander in chief of our military. We are right now as a nation in the midst of choosing someone to command the most powerful, most deadly military on earth. It is not just mosul or the fight against isis that will be in the new president s portfolio. Right now the u. S. Is, get this, conducting air strikes or missile strikes with special ops, troops the on the ground in at least six different countries. Yemen, libya, somalia, afghanistan, iraq and syria. That is what the next president will inherit in our era of constant war. Thats whats front of mind for military members and their families and it should be front of mind for every voter. This car is traveling over 200 miles per hour. To win, ery millisecond matts. Both on thtrack and thousands of miles ay. Withhe helof at Red Bull Racing c share ctical information abevery ch of the car fr virtuly anywhere akes are gting war undetoodake as b2ed t clicks. Akes. Gicause one knows like eedat t. Sn. Theres one thing that trumpers and nevertrumpers have in common. Obamacare. Back in may trump and a group of gop senators met and agreed that obamacare will reemerge as an explosive political issue before the november elections. That could be a millstone around Hillary Clintons neck. So with the vent news that obamacare premiums in the exchanges digital plans are going up by more than 20 on average next year trump stood before his doral golf course in miami this morning flanked by about 200 of his employees and tried to make the point that obamacare is a disaster for them. You can say all of my employees are having a tremendous problem with obamacare. You folks, this group, is that another statement, this is horrible because of obamacare. Except the vast majority is not on obamacare because their health care is provided by their employer Donald Trumps a resort. It seemed to catch a local camera operator by surprise. Id say 99 of our employees are insured through the hotel, through our insurance and maybe theres a few that are insured through obamacare. But very, very few. I would say and i havent gone flu the records, but over 95 , without a doubt. A short time later on fox news trump was asked how his employees are hurt by obamacare. A moment ago at your event in florida were watching it live here in new york, you said that its costing jobs within your business itself. Specifically how . Obamacare, i must be honest with you, because its so bad for the people and they cant afford it. Im at Trump International doral in miami and we dont even use obamacare. We dont want it. Joining me now political reporter for the New York Times and msnbc contributor. The Perfect Moment to me for two reasons, one it displays Donald Trumps general level of sort of policy expertise. And number two, most Americans Still now in 2016 dont know what obamacare is, couldnt tell you what it is, or who it affects. Its become this kind of culture war issue or symbolic thing. Can you put a creche in the Public Square . You know, and if you called it trumpcare, it would probably poll better or call it like powellcare, its the social with president obama that drove down the approvals. Obviously for some people the premiums are going up, it will be a hardship, but much more than the exchanges. The guarantees on coverage and parents plans. Youre saying the bill itself, the law itself. You can stay on till youre 26 theres a whole lot of laws about pushing the cost down and innovation in medicare and medicaid delivery and Health Systems and integrated care and theres no lifetime maximums, yada, yada, but a tiny percentage of voters are in there. But if were dealing with a candidate who had any grasp of Public Policy or the idea of how to talk to voters 13 days before an election, we might see someone who could frame could make that argument. Very clearly. This is a horrible day for sort of obamacare and ergo Hillary Clinton. Trump cant help but make everything either, a, about himself or he doesnt much knew, know about obama, the language of this man is deplorable. He didnt seize the opportunity to break it down to the public. Everyone is there asking him questions about it. He could have walked them through it briefly. To me it remains so we were talking about theres 3 of the people who are roughly insured should get their insurance through the exchanges. 80 of them are subsidized, more or less, were talking about 1 of people that get the full heft of this subsidy increase. There are 7 Million People who are not on the exchanges but are buying plans, individual plans or small plans so theyll also see the premium hikes. This is the a small percentage of voters. This law as controversial as the day it passed is actually a thing out there in the world which i have to say continues to astound me. Because i dont think that was the expectation. I think president obama was not great about selling it in the early years. Thats one problem. They tried to rectify that. I do think that the reason the focus is on the exchanges is that the exchanges are the broken part. And the interests that want to kill obamacare would not want to focus on the parts that are very, very popular, such as you cant be denied coverage for a prior condition and if the conditions were such that you could focus on the popular part, it would probably be a different conversation. Kind of weird that none of the democrats or the gop has managed to really steer that conversation in the president ial election. But heres what i want to ask you as a political scientist, i sort of feel in the long run that the sort of lines of politics and policy should converge, right . If theres something that theres a lot of scare tactics and it will destroy america and turn us into this socialist monster and the thing happens and its not that but maybe has some broken parts but opinion would converge on it but instead a Health Reporter called it like roe v. Wade, theres no convergence on the sense its just as polarizing. People have their fixed views about these things despite the fact that its an operating thing that you can empirically assess. That goes back to nicks point when obama did something that fdr couldnt do, something lbj couldnt do and William Jefferson clinton couldnt do and he passed obamacare and put his name on it. He took the negative. They put his name on it. Exactly. But he never framed this. We saw it with the stimulus package and the Affordable Care act. Theres still so much confusion and misinformation from the very beginning were still sort of seeing how this has played out eight years after the fact. Theres fascinating science that shows peoples perceptions of what it is and what it constitutes and who it helps are crazy skewed. People perceive the stimulus bill and obamacare to be aimed at black people that its not true which accounts for the hatred and resistance to it. Who benefits from it. Hes done very few racially targeted policies. You know, he is under the for better or worse, but you know all what is it, all tides lift all boats . Yes, so theres going to be certain segments of the population that are disaffected good or bad but this is not a racially targeted policy by any stretch of the imagination. But that doesnt mean the perception of it perception becomes reality. Democrats thought this would be a real boon to them. Bill clinton said pass it, people will love it. That will be a political boon. Thats not been the case. Its not the kryptonite that republicans believe. Republicans keep thinking obamacare is so terrible. You want to reject this. Look at the demographics. Not getting republicans rich. There are certain republicans who are destitute and they realize a small segment realize that this is actually whats been keeping them afloat. Thats true. So many people are one injury away from yeah. But also like with people on the exchanges, the people benefiting the most are not High Frequency voters. Thats huge. Their benefit is needed, i think. Thanks for joining us tonight. Thats all in for this evening. Make sure to stick around because its veep night on msnbc. Rachel maddow has an exclusive interview with tim kaine and mike pence will join brian williams. That is true. Almost a little weird, but thank you for the preview. It is, in fact, Vice President day here on msnbc. Vice president or would be Vice President day. Chris matthews this afternoon had an interview with our current Vice President of the United States, joe biden. Joe biden is now into a third day of explaining what he meant when he said he wishes he was in high school and he could take donald trump out behind the gym because he wants to get in a fight with him, basically. Donald trump today responded that he, too, would kind of like to go get in a fight with joe biden, although he described his hypothetical fight with joe biden as happening somewhere in a barn rather than in a gym. So okay. Thats happening. In addition, though, to that exclusive interview with the sitting Vice President of the United States, im talking with Chris Matthews here tonight on msnbc, we would have also have the would be next Vice President of the United States