jordan, was shot and killed in racist gun violence in 2012 and whose first bill for stronger background checks was passed with bipartisan support. it is one of the 50 bills passed by the democratic house in the last six months on issues including voting rights, prescription drugs, veteran s services and climate change. the new house may have to wait for a new president to sign the bills into law. the democratic nominating contest is now coming into sharper focus after the first debates here on msnbc. donald trump thinks wall street built america. ordinary middle class americans built america. we do have enormous income inequality and the one thing i agree on is we can make massive cuts in the $1.6 trillion in loopholes and i would be going about eliminating tax cuts for the wealthy. i will ensure this microphone
this is the democratic establishment coming to coalesce around the democratic candidate. is that what today s democratic nominating electorate is interested in getting from their leadership? they are going to have a choice. this field is insane when you look at how many people there are. there are a lot of people to choose from unlike last time. i remember covering the first debate. there were a handful of people and a few debates in, it was two people. because there are so many people and biden is considered the old incumbent, there needs to be a voice to build around him. he will be in a huge field of screaming progressives demanding that race and gender be a huge consideration and the parties move to the left and that s where the energy is. there hasn t been that voice of the clintons are gone and they stink, but let s sting with the center left pro business free
straw poll done amongst republicans and they went on to elect donald trump as president. is it good for fund-raising? absolutely. is it very, very early, too close to call. probably going to be upwards of almost 15 candidates running for president on the democratic side. but i will tell you this, if you re tom perez right now, the dnc is having fund-raisers in dc, you feel good about the positions democrats are in right now in this country. no matter who we select as our nominee, we will have a good group of candidates to choose from. i m curious, beto is so interesting a candidate coming off a statewide loss and being touted this way and finishing first in a straw poll like this. black voters in particular, especially in southern primaries, a very important factor in democratic nominating politics right now. nbc news reporting beto o rourke reaching out to al sharpton, the defeated gubernatorial candidate in florida, you have a feeling
orbit. you see a graphic on your screen there. 14 trump associates now known to have been approached by the russians during the 2016 campaign. let me ask you this. the issue of trump and russia was out there very much during the 2016 campaign. it s something your campaign talked about. what do you know now two years later that you didn t know during the 2016 campaign? you know, our campaign manager just did an op-ed in the washington post that laid this out. we know most we knew most of what we know now back in the summer of 2016. i think from our perspective, unfortunately, the press covered it as just part of politics and didn t take it very seriously. we were screaming about it, and it was viewed as somehow that we were just trying to spin when the reality was the russians
here, not withstanding what the president has asked them for. we re starting to get reaction from around capitol hill. lindsey graham reacting to this meeting. we played some clips just a minute ago. here s what lindsey graham had to say. i love the fact that the american people got to see how politics works. the president s right to want more wall funding. we need a wall as part of border security. schumer has voted in the past for a $42 billion border security package that included money for a wall. everybody s voted for the secure fence act of 2006. it had about 1100 miles of fencing and wall. so i find it pretty hypocritical for the democrats to deny the president $5 billion, which could be well spent in securing a border. if i were the president, i would dig in on this. i would also put daca on the table and try to solve two problems at once.