Transcripts For MSNBCW The 11th Hour With Brian Williams 20180829

With full results, including a match up for governor in the sunshine state. The 11th hour begins now. Good evening once again at our studio headquarters in new york. Im ali velshi. It is day 586 of the Trump Administration and its the last major primary Election Night before the mid terms. Were tracking key races in arizona and florida, both considered key battlegrounds not only this november but also in the 2020 president ial election. Among the latest headlines, trump pick republican congressman ron desantis is the projected winner in floridas republican gubernatorial primary. But the big surprise is the democrat hell face in november. Bernie sandered backed tallahassee mayor Andrew Gillum. Steve kornacki is standing by with all the details. Hes going to join us in just a few minutes. The upcoming general election will be a big test for donald trump who is reportedly now warning his supporters that there will be violence if his party loses the midterms. Well have much more on all of that just ahead, but first we have brand new reporting tonight from the Washington Post on the president s latest attempt to get rid of attorney general Jeff Sessions. Youll remember sessions recused himself from overseeing the russia investigation. The post is reporting that President Trump, who levied extraordinary public attacks on attorney general Jeff Sessions in recent weeks, has privately revived the idea of firing him in conversations with his aides and personal lawyers this month. According to three people familiar with the discussions. At least twice this month, trump vented to white house advisers and his lawyers about the, quote, endless investigation, end quote, of his campaign and said he needs to fire sessions for saddling his presidency with the controversy, according to two of the people. His attorneys concluded that they have persuaded him for now not to make such a move while the special counsel investigation of russian interference into the 2016 president ial campaign is ongoing, the people said. The first adds that one such discussion occurred in early august during the trial of Paul Manafort, his former Campaign Chairman. The early august reference coincides with this tweet that the president sent on the second day of manaforts trial. This is a terrible situation and attorney general Jeff Sessions should stop this rigged witch hunt right now before it continues to stain our country any further. Bob mueller is totally conflicted, and his 17 angry democrats that are doing his dirty work are a disgrace to usa. And just last week, there was this. Are you going to fire sessions . Ill tell you what. As i said, i wanted to stay uninvolved, but when everybody sees whats going on in the Justice Department, its a very, very sad day. Jeff sessions recused himself, which he shouldnt have done. Or he should have told me. Even my enemies say that Jeff Sessions should have told you that he was going to recuse himself, and then you wouldnt have put him in. He took the job and then he said, im going to recuse myself. I said what kind of a man is this . Now, the wall street journal reports there is an effort on capitol hill to urge sessions to resist efforts to remove him and stay on the job until the midterms. Both the journal and nbc news report that five republican senators, john cornyn, senator john kennedy, tom tillis, ben sasse had breakfast with sessions to urge him not to quit. That day sessions released a statement saying, quote, the actions of the department of justice will not be improperly influenced by political consideration. Meanwhile, other Senate Republicans who once warned trump against firing sessions are now openly signalling that there may no longer be opposition to such a move. We need an attorney general that can work with the president , that can lead the department of justice. This relationship is beyond repair, i think. Its a pretty deep breach, and heres what im suggesting, that hes not the only man in the country that can be attorney general. The president has lost confidence in Jeff Sessions. Senator graham also added this caution. We wont have a real attorney general unless theyre highly qualified and will do their job. Thats the deal. Muellers team is now getting ready for the second trial of Paul Manafort who was convicted of tax fraud last week. The second trial is supposed to take place in washington, d. C. And was supposed to start on august 17. But today the judge delayed Opening Statements by a week when manaforts attorneys said they needed more time to prepare. Manafort is charged with conspiracy and money laundering. Hes pleaded not guilty. The news of the delay came one day after manafort held talks with prosecutors to try to resolve charges in that case. Were also getting new word on the extent of muellers team. Muellers team continued to ask questions about cohens ties with the russians after the president was put into office. They were asked if cohen kept doing personal business and insight on why he was not asked to work in the white house. Peter baker, chief white house correspondent. Peter whitehouse youre in the white house so much, were just going to call him peter whitehouse. Josh kirsten is also at the white house, and cynthia, a member of the Justice Department. Cynthia, lets go to you. This talk about firing Jeff Sessions shouldnt be too much of a surprise if youve seen the president s tweets. Hes been mad at sessions for a long time. What do you make of him actually discussing firing him with people in the white house . I agree with you its not exactly news. Hes been trying to bully this guy to resign for a long time. I think its a sign of frantic behavior. Look at the position hes in. Manafort is convicted and is about to be convicted again. Cohen has flipped. Immunity has been given. His white House Counsel has given 30 hours of testimony to mueller. I think he feels the walls closing in and is in just a panic and does not know what to do. If he does go ahead and do it, i will tell you i think its grounds for an obstruction count, because all of his tweets, all of his statements to don mcgahn that he wants him to fire him, all of his statements to fox news and certainly what we received from the Washington Post tonight. All of that is evidence of a possible obstruction count. Its not that different from, lets say, pardoning manafort is evidence of an obstruction count. According to the Washington Post, his attorneys Rudy Giuliani and jay sekulow advised him that it could be interpreted as such an action to obstruct justice and thwart the investigation. Already a major next of the inquiry, people said. Theres been discussions of sessions possible removal, but decline to talk about the talks. The president agrees with us that it should not be taken until after the investigation is concluded, giuliani said, and sekulow referred questions to giuliani. Is so, peter, lets talk about this, and lets talk about one example of what we heard from a senator, which was from Lindsey Graham, who had said before what did he say, there would be holy hell to pay if trump decides he wants to get rid of Jeff Sessions . Now he says, hey, there are lots of people in america who can do the job. This guys time is up. Exactly, hes now getting signals from senator republicans that it would be okay if he does as long as he waits until after the midterm election. A year ago when he first started talking about firing sessions, it was a public forum that actually stopped him with a pretty nasty roar of protest. They basically said dont do it. There will be only hell to pay, as Lindsey Graham said. Chuck grassley, chairman of the judicial committee, said i wont have any time to approve a successor, meaning he wont get a new attorney general. Today many republicans sending a softer signal saying, well, it is a bad relationship. Hell have more of his choice there. That is one that may encourage him to follow through where a year ago he chose not to. Josh, let me ask you this, though. We have had reports that the president might want to replace the white House Counsel don mcgahn because don mcgahn doesnt think the president should be discussing, considering or taking action on pardoning Paul Manafort. Obviously if the president is thinking of getting rid of Jeff Sessions, thats directly related to the mueller investigation, which means mcgahn could go or be forced out, which just forces the white house into a little more of a crisis than its already in. Right. Our sense has been that mcgahn had been contemplating leaving for some time. The white house decided to stay on in part to see through what is president Trumps Supreme Court nomination of brett kavanaugh. So in order to have that opportunity, i think the sense was that mcgahn wanted to provide some continuity there. So i dont think there would be a need to fire him. Folks are thinking that towards the end of the year, he might voluntarily depart, anyway, and one wonders with the big shift of leadership at the white house whether the shift in the last year or so would be disturbed. The president s Legal Advisers telling him dont get rid of manafort, dont get rid of Jeff Sessions. And sessions last year offered to resign and the effort to resign was sort of thwarted, or the request was dropped at mcgahns insistence it would be a bad move. Sessions, too, has sort of been frozen and hasnt taken any action. So the sense is that maybe towards the end of the year or after the elections, maybe that equilibrium would drop down a little bit. President may be more aggressive and take some of the steps, and maybe them counciling him against it will depart the scene. What josh said is interesting, but this breakfast may be interesting. The five senators who apparently are encouraging Jeff Sessions to fight this, to stick around, which may have led Jeff Sessions to issue, i think, a surprising statement. Most of us wouldnt expect sessions after sort of caving all this time to talk back to the president and say the Justice Department will not be unduly politically affected. What do you make of that, the idea that Jeff Sessions seemed, at least momentarily, emboldened . Well, afterwards ben sass had comments on the senate floor saying he would not vote to approve any attorney general who was going to be a political hack of the president. And that does give some of us some hope. But more senators need to stand up and say that and just say, we will not vote for anyone until the end of the mueller investigation. Its hard for a person like me who really disagrees with almost everything Jeff Sessions has ever said in his entire life to realize that hes whats standing between constitutional norms and the president of the united states. And we really need him to continue to stand up like that. And so i can only applaud those five senators for speaking some truth to power to him and to try to encourage him to stick with it. Peter, cynthia, josh, stand by for a second. I want to go to Steve Kornacki. As you can see on the bottom of the screen, we are now getting those results in arizona. Steve, tell us what we know. This is the way it works in arizona. They come in in giant bunches. What you see right now, Maricopa County in the phoenix area, more than half the votes in the entire state comes out of here. What youre looking at is the early vote, the vote that was cast before election day in Maricopa County. The vast majority of the vote is mcsally. Is cast early. What you are looking at is the vast majority of the vote that will come out of the largest county in arizona. So this is a very significant chunk of all of the vote that will be in the primary. You see mcsally running very comfortably ahead. Kelly ward, joe arpaio, together, they are getting 48 , but they are splitting it up so much, that mcsally took a 23 point lead right there. We can tell you when kelly ward ran against mccain in 2016, she did better in the same day vote than she did in the early vote. The issue there was so much of it was early vote and it just didnt erase much of it. She was sproblly probably 5 points off of the early total that mccain had gotten. In the same day, ward and arpaio would probably do a little better, but this is the start that mcsally certainly wanted to see. That was the total you certainly would have expected. Let me ask about arpaio. Is he bigger in other counties . Maricopa county is where he was the sheriff for years. Thats his base. Potentially in the more outlying areas, his brand of conservatism, his style of conservatism might fare better potentially. But that was the issue, mcsally wasnt just that she was ahead, it was that this ward arpaio sort of trump wing of the party, that the vote would be split up like that. We have five points better somewhere. Maybe ward does five points worse. Together theyre sitting in the high 40s. That would be enough combined to give mcsally i can show you here, this just came in as i was talking. This would be the early vote here, mcsally in the early vote. We would have again, here you go. You were asking where joe arpaio will do better. Arpaio potentially would do better. When i say how big maricopa is, this luj looks huge. You add these up and youre looking at about 7,000 votes right there. Add these up and youre looking at about 200,000. Arpaio is winning a big piece of real estate. Realistically we have about 27,000 votes in maricopa for the early vote. And no surprises on the democrat side there. We can show you that kirsten will be the governor. Will be the democrat i can will be the democratic nominee. Let go back to the conversation about donald trump and Jeff Sessions and Paul Manafort. Paul, you were at the manafort hearing . I was. Anything interesting that we need to hear about . You heard of the top line news, what was a few days delay in the trial. I dont think that it will be terribly significant. I dont think a deal is like until the works. Mainly because the president had trolled a pardon out there for manafort. It would seem almost like a Suicide Mission to go and offer a guilty plea in the face of that kind of offer thats out there on the table lurking, being trolled in front of the defendant. But, you know, there were other discussions that happened at that hearing. In particular, again, some prickly clashes between the judge and the defense team. Remember in the anderson trial, the judge was pretty hot at the prosecution. Here the judge snapped at one of the lead defense lawyers for manafort, basically telling him to sit down and calling him smug, saying she wouldnt tolerate any kind of backtalk, especially when the jury was in the room. If thats a signal of where were headed during this trial, the defense could be getting a very different reception from the judge in washington, d. C. Than they did down in alexandria just a week or two ago. Cynthia, there are a lot of theories about the Manafort Defense Team and what theyre up to, the conversations they had with the mueller team. We heard this today from former fbi counterintelligence official. Lets listen to this. Ive got a theory on this manafort attempt at a pleadeal, which is he doesnt want this stuff to come out at the next trial. This is about being an agent of the federal government. This is about, as joyce said, russians and ukranians. The evidence thats going to come out here will be ugly and its going to point badly at the president and who he surrounds himself with. I think manafort gave a shot to not let this trial happen. I think mueller heard what he had to say and he said, its not good enough. Were having a trial. What do you think of that, cynthia . Thats possible. Another possibility is they piddled around and danced around to have some plea negotiation to try to give trump a sense of urgency that he needed to get the pardon done quickly. Thats also possible. Its also possible, pleanegotiations happen all the time up to trial and it could be just that. We wont know right away. Thank you, all. Coming up the last big primary night as we know before the mid terms, Steve Kornacki is at the big board with the latest numbers, and later the president steps on attacks of information, accusing google, facebook and twitter of silencing action. Silencing conservatives. Were just Getting Started on a tuesday night. Etting started on tuesday night. This wifi is fast. I know i know i know i know when did brian move back in . Brians back . He doesnt get my room. Hes only going to be here for like a week. Like a month, tops. Oh boy. Wifi fast enough for the whole family is simple, easy, awesome. In many cultures, young men would stay with their families until their 40s. And we have breaking news. The news is not that Steve Kornacki is right again, because he always is, but im going to let him tell you what the actual news is. Steve . Ali, nbc news officially predicting that Martha Mcsally is the new governor of arizona. It is the early vote youre seeing here, but she is far enough ahead in this. Even if you reward her, arpaio and ward on election day. She is going to win. Mcsally, the republican, kirsten sinema, the democrat. Two women running for the seat vacated by jeff flake. They are very stark for democrats. If they have any control of winning back control of the u. S. Senate, this is pretty much a mustwin state for them. Theyll need sinema to beat mcsally. The latest poll weve seen had mcsally down by four points. Its been a long time since arizona elected a democrat to the senate. Its been since 1996 that arizona voted democratic in a president ial race, but democrats think the climate, the candidate they have, maybe the trump baggage, they think this is their best shot. Certainly it is their best shot in a long time. But mcsally, sinema, its official, ali. I told you they count them fast in arizona. Exactly. They hold them for an hour and then they dump them, basically. Yeah, they close at 10 00 p. M. Eastern, 7 00 arizona time. And the early vote comes in and the early vote is just a small fragment. But in arizona, almost everyone votes early. Within the hour you get the winner. Folks staying up late, you have to get up for work. Keep your tv on. Youll get the winner pretty early. On nights like this i dont read anything. I just look for you and i watch for you and i read your tweets. I know if you walk away from where you are exactly, youre getting more information. I want to bring in charlie sykes, a longtime radio host who is now contributing editor and podcast host for the weekly standard. Charlie, what do you make of whats going on in arizona right now . I think thats the most interesting result so far. The nut job caucus was defeated. You had two of the most bizarre candidates on the ballot, joe arpaio and kelly ward. Both of them extreme, but also i would say generally repugnant candidates. Had either of them been a tapin, it would have been for the democrats to pick up that candidacy. This is a good night for trump. Its how trumpified his party is. That party degenerated in to who is going to be more of a reliable toadie for donald trump, ironic in the state represented by john mccain and jeff flake. Here is what he told casey hunt about john mccain. Lets listen. Im going to bring you that, but he was asked if john mccain is a patriot and a hero, and arpaio said its hard for him to answer because he never had a hero until several months ago when, after 75 years, he found his hero. I dont know if you know what he said, charlie, but he said donald trump is that hero. Lets go to florida for a second and talk about that. Ron desantis, another situation in which he has won the primary for for governor for senator im sorry, for governor for a campaign party. For the republican party. Here is a campaign a. D. Th ca ad that he ran. Lets watch it. Everyone knows my husband ron desantis is endorsed by President Trump. But hes also an amazing dad. Ron loves playing with the kids. He reads stories. Then mr. Trump said, youre fired. I love that part. Hes teaching madison to talk. Make America Great again. People say ron is all trump, but he is so much more. Big league. So good. I just thought you should know. I mean, charlie, there is an example of somebody who is sort of out trying to outtrump trump, making everyone realize hes all about trump and maybe about Something Else a very distant second. You ought to make it clear that is not a parody. That is actually something he put on the air. He was willing to be a clown himself in that particular way. Florida is very, very interesting because it really sets up a preview for 2020 because you have the republicans nominating a completely trumpified candidate and the democrats nominating a Bernie Sanderslike progressive. It will be an interesting test case. What do you do when basically both of those parties nominate someone who is something of an outlyer. Both of these candidates for governor are 39 years old. I interviewed Andrew Gillum who is going to be the democratic candidate. Bernie sanders came into the race a little late for him, but Andrew Gillum is a progressive and that will set up quite a battle in that state. Hes the former mayor hes the mayor of tallahassee. Thats going to set up a battle. Jeremy peters, by the way, is with us, Jeremy Peters of the new york times. Jeremy, one of the things that sort of caught our attention today is this word that donald trump has talked to evangelicals and said if republicans lose the house in november, there will be violence in america. What do we make of this . So, ali, this is the way that i think a lot of republicans are trying to frame the midterms, is this fight between trump and an angry, menacing, violent left. And the conflict theyre setting up there is that the democrats have been so unhinged by trumps victory that they will stop at nothing to take that victory away from him. The implication there, if not implied, then outright stated in a lot of Campaign Speeches and ads is that theyre going to impeach President Trump. So i think this is the kind of turf that very conservative members of congress will want to fight on. Im not so sure that it works for members in swing districts where youre really going to need to win voters over on your ideas. I think that making this about a knockdown, dragout violent fight with the left is not really something that a lot of centrist voters are going to respond to. Republicans have seen those numbers and they know that. This is really a base play here. Charlie, lets talk about where donald trump sort of comes into this thing. Because he sort of gets involved when he thinks somebody is going to win or he thinks they can use his endorsement. He makes the endorsement. He then tweets very quickly, as he has tonight, about them, and it sort of bolsters republicans chances in these candidacies. The stuff jeremy is talking about in terms of getting moderates out, how does that work in trump world . Well, i mean, hes very, very effective, obviously, in the republican primary because he has such a high Approval Rating among republicans. Jeremy is absolutely right, though, when he says this is going to be the type of scorched earth play that donald trump is going to make to gin up and motivate republicans. He wants to run against metifa, he wants to run against ms13, he wants to run against the killer of mollie tibbetts. He wants to frame this as, whatever problems i may have, look what a terrible threat the left poses to you. If that means raising the prospect of violence and adding that kind of divisive rhetoric to american politics, he is fully prepared to do that between now and november. I would expect that it will escalate. It will get actually worse. Jeremy, taking a look in florida again, where do democrats push back against this, because florida is always a swing state. In this case democrats were probably a little excited that desantis gets this nomination because they can paint him as a trump acolyte. On the other side you do have a candidate on the democratic side, Andrew Gillum, who was not really expected to win. This is possibly the upset of the night. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Its a major victory for the Bernie Sanders more progressive wing of the party which has been short on victories this cycle. They put up a lot of candidates and most of them have lost. I think it will be a fight between the hearts and souls of each party. On the one hand you have ron desantis who did everything but take a blood oath to donald trump during this primary season, and you have, in the democrats, a big city mayor who supports 15 minimum wage singlepayer health care and legalized marijuana. If those arent the polls of the two parties, i dont know what are. Guys, good to talk to you tonight. Thank you for joining us. Jeremy peters and charlie sykes. Coming up, the president calls it rigged and very dangerous. Hes not actually talking about the mueller investigation. The object of trumps latest attack when the 11th hour continues. 1th hour continues. If your moderate to Severe Ulcerative Colitis or crohns symptoms are holding you back, and your Current Treatment hasnt worked well enough it may be time for a change. Ask your doctor about entyvio®, the only biologic developed and approved just for uc and crohns. Entyvio® works at the site of inflammation in the gi tract, and is clinically proven to help many patients achieve both symptom relief and remission. Infusion and serious allergic reactions can happen during or after treatment. Entyvio® may increase risk of infection, which can be serious. 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This is precision Cancer Treatment. Because at Cancer Treatment centers of america. Were not just fighting cancer. Were outsmarting it. Visit cancercenter. Com and schedule an appointment with our cancer care specialists today. I think google is really taking advantage of a lot of people, and i think thats a very serious thing and a very serious charge. President trump wants an investigation into one of the Worlds Largest internet companies. His attack on google started this morning with these two tweets. Quote, Google Search results for trump news shows only the viewing reporting of fake news media. In other words, they have it rigged for me and others, so that almost all stories and news is bad. Fake cnn is prominent. Republican conservative and fair media is shut out. Illegal . 96 of results on trump news are from National Left wing media, very dangerous. Google and others are suppressing voices of conservatives and hiding information and news that is good. They are controlling what we can and cannot see. This is a very serious situation will be addressed. As you heard there, it wasnt just google in trumps ears. If you look at whats going on in twitter, if you look at whats going on in facebook, theyre doing it also. You better be careful because you cant do it. We have literally thousands and thousands of complaints coming in, and you just cant do that. So i think that google and twitter and facebook, theyre really treading on very, very troubled territory and they have to be careful. Its not fair to large portions of the population. Google fired back in a statement saying in part, Google Search is not used to set a political agenda and we dont bias our results with political idealogy. Shannon is here from bloomberg. 96 of those results are liberal, according to the president. Im not sure where he got that information from. It doesnt seem to be the result of any meaningful study. No, there has not been any meaningful study, and part of the explanation for that might be because he considers liberal media to be essentially all major news organizations at this point. Hes talking about nbc news, cnn, the Washington Post, the new york times, abc news hes thrown in there before. So if youre talking about those are some of the worlds biggest news organizations, certainly the biggest news organizations in this country that have very large reporting staffs, they produce the most enormous content. Those are the organizations hes lumping in together as liberal news organizations. Look, hes the interesting part about what the president has to say here is that the algorithms for facebook and google are not transparent, so we dont actually know what causes these things to come up. But apparently the president was citing something that lou dobbs said that seemed to have reference to somebody who put two computers near each other and tested them both out. I would welcome a real study about how these search results come up, but two computers isnt it. Well, and im not an expert on Search Engine optimization, but anyone who has done a Google Search knows you get a lot of traffic. But this allegation the president seems to be making is Search Engine information is something thats been around for decades and they are somehow biased against him personally. You know, that has no merit at all in how this technology works. So i guess one of the things that we have to think about here look, when i search on google, i get results that come from fox news and the wall street journal and even breitbarts. I dont know what the president is going on about here, but he did say it would be addressed. We have a discussion about whether congress should be involved in social media because of the problems we have in the election. On the other hand, it seems to be different when the white house says it will be addressed. And when the president makes the statements in the oval office, in that video clip you just showed. It carries some weight with it. The white house seems to be caught flatfooted about this today when very early in the morning i started asking people about it. A group of us reporters caught larry kudlow in the driveway and asked him about it. All he would say was its something were looking into ive got that for you. This is larry kudlow talking about google. Does the president believe or does the administration feel that there needs to be some sort of regulation for google, or what exactly was the president referring to . Well let you know. Were taking a look at it. Well let you know. Is the president aware that the idea originated in a story on Russian Media during the campaign thats been discredited . Which media . Google censoring search results. This is about my pay rate. Maybe about our pay rates. He did go on to say this big thing that were doing investigation and analyses. Nobody else in the white house seemed to know what was going on, so it seems to be an instance where the reporter caught his staff blindsided. Other things in the past, like millions of illegal votes, the white house has to now create some investigation to support a claim that the president made based off of a news article that someone shared with him, or something that he heard late at night on tv. Shannon, i never like to not take advantage of the fact that you, like me, have a background in economics reporting. The president has been touting this deal with mexico. He said its not going to be nafta anymore, its going to be the u. S. Mexican trade agreement, sumta. Everybody seems to think canada needs to be a part of it. Everybody is trying to hammer out a deal by friday. Where do we stand on this . We did not get an impression that any significant progress was made today. Canada has really dug in their heels here, and thats a surprise because a year ago most of our reporters covering this thought mexico would be the difficult partner to negotiate with. It has been surprising to see how far apart trudeau and this white house have been on this issue. Yes, you need canada to be in part of this. Canada is the u. S. s biggest trading partner. When you go to some of these states like michigan, swing states, ohio, minnesota that do a lot of interstate commerce, or interstate International Commerce between the u. S. And canada, those states are aware that this deal will feel the most if a deal between canada and the u. S. Falls apart. Were a few days away, according to the president , from a deadline of getting all that done. Shannon pettipiece, thank you for being here. We have numbers were going to share from arizona when the 11th hour continues. We have more results coming in from the last major primary elections of the 2018 cycle. Arizona and florida voters are choosing Party Candidates for senate, governor and house seats. In arizona, nbc news is projecting that Martha Mcsally has won her threeway race in the gop senate primary. And in florida, the gop primary for governor included a highprofile president ial endorsement in a state that President Trump won in 2016 by 1. 2 . In return, winner ron desantis made sure to thank trump for his support. I did have support from someone in washington. If you walk down pennsylvania avenue, he lives in the white house with the pillars in front of it. And i was able to talk to the president. I want to thank him for his support. I want to thank him for entrusting me with viewing me as someone who could be a great leader for florida. So thank you, mr. President. Here to break down the latest numbers, Steve Kornacki, msnbc National Political correspondent and fixture on your tv on Election Night. Steve, what do we got . Look, it was somebody a famous man named tim russell in this studio years ago said florida, florida, florida, and florida were going to be talking about a lot because each party base got their candidate and each party base got their candidate in the other party they think they can beat. How about the senate race, though, because the democrats are entertaining hopes they may be a little bit outside, but they have some hope of winning back that senate chamber. Well, florida has a lot to do with that. What happened tonight, the republican governor of florida, no surprise here, he had token opposition in the republican primary, but rick scott will be the republican nominee officially for the u. S. Senate. Who will he take on . He will take on bill nelson, the democrat. We can show you the early polling on this race. This one has surprised people in both parties. If you average together the polling out there right now, scott is actually slightly leading bill nelson. A bit of a surprise because florida always competitive. It was a trump state in 2016 but only by a small margin. Those democrats in trump states, they seem to be the ones that trump won by 30, 40 points. He is in a dogfight with rick scott. He won the race for governor in 2010 and 2014. He rarely won both of those. He may not be that popular, it may not be the year for him climatewise. He was fighting what he thought to be political gravity. We will see. If republicans can knock off bill nelson, very, very hard, almost impossible, to see democrats picking up control of the senate, so this will be a premiere race. Another one, we set it up a minute ago with that news out of arizona, but well show you again the official winner on the republican side, the establishment gets their wish here. Martha mcsally, National Republican said they believe shes the most electable. They believe she is clearly, in their mind, the only elected republican on this list in the fall. Even then, on the democratic side, kirsten sinema. What have the polls shown in this race . Well put it on the screen in arizona. Most recent poll, sinema 48 , mcsally 44 . When is the last time a democratic candidate won a u. S. Senate race in arizona . 1988. Dennis cosini was his name. The last time a democrat won an election in arizona . 96, clinton beat bob dole there. This is a state with a rich tradition. The democrats are changing a little bit, trump has some issues in this state. Trump won in 2016 but only by three points over Hillary Clinton. Democrats think if they get a favorable midterm climate, if they get a strong candidate, this could be the year that break those jinxes, those losing streaks in arizona. As we say, florida said it, arizona said it, and the top there lets talk about that for a second because you and i are both getting some active commentary on twitter right now about Andrew Gillum, who has won the democratic race, a, this was not expected to happen. B, this is a guy who supported Hillary Clinton in the last election and c, Bernie Sanders has endorsed him this election, and d, tonight he tweeted his thanks to Bernie Sanders. What is Andrew Gillum in terms of the democratic party. We are going to take a close look at where this coalition came from. One thought that is out there, initially, and i want to look more closely at the returns here. But i think theres a possibility here, that young voters, might have turned thought larger numbers. Which may be a done thing. Nor gillum in this primaryst. One trend we have seen, all the primary nights we have been here and democratic primaries, one democratic primaries, i dont know why it just did. That in one democratic primary after another, we have seen a trend, if you have a female candidate and multiple male opponents, the t the female candidates have won. And seems the voters are pushing the female candidates. Gillum, won here, its 34 , its a Broad Coalition in had that democratic eelectric for alekel what does that say about him and desantos, you stress that florida is a swing state, and now you have a trump backed candidate and i think its fair to describe, i have interviewed Andrew Gillum, you can describe him as a progressive. Yes, if you talk to each party and you say, it gillum, versus desantos, democrats, how do you beat desantos in this thing, the democratic answer is easy, its trump. You saw knit the speech, he attached himself at the hip, he lives and dies by trump and maybe that will be too much of a liability for him to overcome in 2018 t republican answer to how they beat gillum, its first of all, we will see, i think gillum will be a lot of people look engine to him for the first time. He was not thought to be the frontrunner here. The thing that is hanging over it, the mayor of tallahassee, theres a federal investigation around city hall of tallahassee. We are going to be setting up for that one. That will be interesting to see how the governors race goes and how you described the senate race in florida will be interesting as well, so, both races tonight in arizona and in florida, a lot of interesting things coming out of it, our thanks to steve, coming up, correcting the record in puerto ri rico, their death toll now in the thousands, we are back after this. E thousands, we are back ar this the last thing before we go tonight, a tragic update on how devastating Hurricane Maria was on puerto rico last september, the storm left millions without power for far too long. It devastated the local economy, and disrupted life for more than 3 million american citizens. Its worth pointing out again and again, Puerto Ricans are american citizens. In the wake of the storm and his administration faced fierce criticism for what was perceived as what was slow and indifferent. In early october, when the official death toll was 16, people in puerto rico, the president compared 16 people, the president compared the disaster to a real catastrophe, like katrina, every death is a horror, ifyou look at a real disaster like katrina, and you look at the tremendous hundreds and hundred hads and hundreds of people hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people that died and you look at what happened here with really a storm that was just totally over bearing, nobody has seen anything like had this. You can be very proud of all of your people, all of our people, working together. 16 versus literally thousands of people. You can be very proud. Everybody around the table and everybody watching can really be very proud of what has taken place in puerto rico. Really proud of what has taken place in puerto rico because only 16 people died, 16 people didnt die, the death toll was later raised to 64, where it had since remained until today. An independent study commissioned by puerto rican officials was concluded by Public Health experts, and it puts the true number higher. With that study, finished late today, puerto ricos governorer raised the official death from Hurricane Marina from 64 to 2,975 people, carmen was of one of the loudest critics. Today, she had this to say to the president. All he had to say, is im sorry. That 20,975 of you died. That 2,975 of you died. That is all he had to say, he is incapable of doing that. Anything that comes out of the president s mouth that doesnt begin with im sorry that those people died, even as a simple act of being in tune with what we are feeling, is totally neglectful, off the grid, i mean, the man does not have a clue. That is the broadcast for tonight, thank you for being with us and goodnight from nbc headquarters in new york. Happy to have you with us, so the judge said, where do you want to go . They asked, we are thinking about leaving, your honor, and the judge was like, where, where would you go . That happened today in we just got in the transcript of the Court Hearing today in the second federal felony trial of the president s Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort. And he is not on trial yet in that second trial. This is pretrial arguing. This is the defense and the prosecution arguing before the judge about the logistics of how the next trial will go, how it will unfold. There are two pieces that will end up being very, very relevant in that trial, depending on how the judge works it out. And they were both hashed out today in court in front of the judge. The first is that Paul Manaforts defense team doesnt want his second felony trial to be in washington, d. C. Paul manaforts defense lawyer today speaking to the judge