will he use it as a rally to drum up support? that would be extraordinary. talk about ruins unity, not only could he not bring the country together, he s dividing his own country, and handing over a gift. susan, jon than and beth, stay with us, and stay with nbc all evening for continuing coverage and analysis of the rally in phoenix, one i surprisingly won t be at. hmm. as president trump goes west, will he go offscript? president trump commits to keep troops in afghanistan, but offering little specifics on strategy.
my original instinct was to pull out, but all my life i have heard that decisions are much different when you sit behind the desk in the oval office. this is mtp daily and it starts right now. good evening, i m katy tirr in new york in for chuck todd. prepare for the worst, hope for the best. you re looking live at the scene outside of the phoenix convention center, where president trump is holding a campaign-style rally in just a few hours. officials there are bracing for some potential large protests tonight. organizer are hoping for a show the force against the president, especially wake of his charlottesville comments. thousands of demonstrators, some pro-trump, some anti-trump and
about it. you have folks like collins coming on our air and defending the president. you have house republicans defending the president and you have the senate majority leader saying this guy is refusing to understand how politics works, how government works, how getting things done works. speaking of collins, we had susan collins, a different collins come on our air yesterday to say if she didn t know if donald trump would be the nominee in 2020. that s one of mitch mcconnell s senators right there. there s a lot of other juicy tidbits in that story about how trump misplayed his hand with so many republican senators. that s contributing to this problem that mcconnell is having with him. he just doesn t understand how to put a coalition together even within his own party. he doesn t get that fighting with people that are supposed to carry his legislative agenda will not work since the democrats a united against it. nobody can figure out what trump is trying to do here. the base does
chance. that s a message, but it s clear the president realized he better step up and start unifying people he said it last night, let s come together as one. he could have an opportunity tonight in phoenix in front of all those supporters to say the same thing. it s a real test for him. the words of the president matter. they do. in saying come together as one country he. there was a lot of questions whether he will leave the prompter. after all, he does love the roar of the crowd and arizona is a place that can get rowdy. does he need to just appeal to his base at this point? it seems like a two-part event, the speech last night followed by the really tonight.
establishment leaders of congress, ryan or mbattle, the e and trump. we don t whknow what the ord is. bannon is saying it s war. if you re mitch mcconnell would you be thefnervous? a little bit about the fire power of breitbart. fox might have to make a bit of a decision. you have warfare within the republican party. in arizona you have mcconnell supporting the incumbent jeff flake and you have trump supporting the challenger in that primary. we haven t seen that, literally, since 1938 when franklin roosevelt was trying to purge disloyal democrats. roosevelt was much more popular than trump and it didn t work for him. people didn t like seeing the president getting involved. it was a different time though. i m not sure that this isn t