to talk with mitt romney on the campaign trail. he s set to become the republican senator in the age of trump. plus, do not congratulate. russia stuns spain at the world cup. but first the interviews, the lobbying effort and even the ads are underway to replace justice anthony kennedy on the supreme court. the president is back home after spending the weekend at bedminster conferring with white house counsel don mcgahn. a handful of names are floating around from the president s list of 25. democrats are pushing to postpone the confirmation until after the midterms. my colleagues on both sides of the aisle know that this vote could be one of the key votes of their entire career. if they vote for somebody who is going to change precedent, it could be a career-ending move. you don t need a degree in applied physics to understand the forces that democrats are up against. so for the white house, it s striking the right balance. convince republicans to hang
again from our nbc news headquarters here in new york. day 525 of this trump administration, which now finds itself facing twin battles that will likely define the trump presidency for years to come. for starters, there is that opening on the supreme court, which the president made sure to bring up again today. we re going to pick ourselves one great united states supreme court justice. we re going to start working on that process. we re already started. and hopefully we re going to make you very proud. and tonight there was confirmation that a formidable white house lobbying effort aimed at potentially wobbly republican senators is already up and running before there is even a nominee that we know of. press secretary sarah sanders wrote tonight that the president met with senators grassley, collins, murkowski, manchin, donnelly, and heitkamp to discuss the supreme court vacancy. the potus team also talked with
administration, which now finds itself facing twin battles that will likely define the trump presidency for years to come. for starters, there is that opening on the supreme court, which the president made sure to bring up again today. we re going to pick ourselves one great united states supreme court justice. we re going to start working on that process. we ve already started. and hopefully we re going to make you very proud. and tonight there was confirmation that a formidable white house lobbying effort aimed at potentially wobbly republican senators is already up and running before there is even a nominee that we know of. press secretary sarah sanders wrote tonight that the president met with senators grassley, collins, murkowski, manchin, donnelly, and heitkamp to discuss the supreme court vacancy. the potus team also talked with more than a dozen other senators today as part of ongoing outreach to get views and advice
about the immigration proposals that they will be voting on tomorrow. obviously, as we all know at this point, house republican leaders are pushing for that broad immigration overhaul bill they helped negotiate to pass. we know from their whipping effort last night they re well short of the votes to pass that bill. it i think the interesting element is, that bill deals with family separation. but it didn t have a clear path forward in the senate. so there s a lot of questions what the incentive is for the members to vote for that bill. it will be interesting to see if a lobbying effort, particularly in the wake of the president s unclear support of the bill last night in his closed door meeting will help that process going forward. look, we talked about this earlier. i think the biggest deal right now with republicans in the house and senate as it relates to the executive order the president says he s going to sign, it s a pressure release valve. there was no chelear ledggislat
necessary? i mean, you have alleged committed crimes, it s not unusual. they put an ankle bracelet on someone like that to know where they are and conditions of release are typical. not allowed to commit crimes, not allowed to consume alcohol, all those kinds of things. julie: if you lie to the fbi you need to consider the consequences. right. julie: it seems like that s what he did. paul manafort s legal team. let s talk about how they are defending client. they are pushing back back on robert mueller after mueller brought charges against him in trump-russia investigation. what would the motion release friday actually accomplish? their argument is straightforward. look, it can t be obstruction to just tell the truth, and if the truth was that the reality is the lobbying effort that group