facing. this may sit well with his right-wing voter base as he has a tough re-election campaign. the bigger risk, has he just created an even greater fracture between israel and the democratic party. we ll stay in touch as the elections play out in the days ahead. with me here in washington to share their reporting and their reporting, eliana johnson, jeff zeleny, matt visor and laura lopez. let s start here in the sense that it is unprecedented for a president to tweet at a foreign government do not let democratically elected members of congress come and visit. yes, they have said quite controversial things. but this country gives billions of dollars in economic and military aid to israel. it is supposed to be two democracies that are willing to air their differences and have their debates. what does it say that the president of the united states would decide, you know what, i m essentially going to tell, using twitter, my friend bebe don t do this. yeah, i think the president s
mouthing of the words written for him condemning white supremacists this week, i don t believe fooled anyone. so there s an illustration of one moment where people would consider it a gaffe. he talked about meeting parkland in 08 and spoke as if he was vice president at this point, of course he was not. he spoke to the people and really moved some people with that speech about the president. do these moments for him balance each other out? or what is i m wondering what the risk is that the gaffes he has will be forgiven or will be too detrimental to him? there are a lot of voters that give joe biden a pass on some of these gaffes because they know him and have known him for such a long time but my colleague matt visor has a story in the washington post today talking to some voters in iowa who think he has lost his mojo.
i ve done nothing wrong, you should apologize, i m not a racist is so insulting and so missing the larger point that he should not have to have explained to him. to coddle the reputations of segregationist, if people who had their way i would literally not be standing here as a member of the united states senate is, i think is just misinformed and it s wrong. i don t think that you should be bragging about working on a bipartisan basis with segregationist. when you hear that from someone who wants to be the standard bearer of our party, it begs the question how on earth does he not understand what permanent feeling today? with me now nbc road warp yore garrett haake, eddy, an msnbc contributor, matt visor, national political reporter for the washington post who s just written about this and claire mccaskill.
he considers certain things a resource that he has worked across the aisle, that s what he was saying. so some air cover there from the speaker for joe biden. and, craig, think to the degree this has legs, it could come in that back and forth between joe biden and senator booker. it s not a great look for a white candidate to tell a black candidate what he should or should not be offended about on the issues of race. i don t have any indication that booker wants to continue this fight right now, but there say presidential debate next week, you may have heard. yes, i have heard. more on that in just a moment and where you can watch that debate. but, matt, let me turn to you here because you ve got some new reporting about biden s aides essentially telling the senator don t go there. yeah. they had warned him ahead of time because this is an anecdote particularly with senator james eastland that biden had told before. he had talked about his willingness to work with eastland and hi
that he did that, i don t know it was smart for him to say cory booker should apologize to me or that it was appropriate. but i do think that joe biden has realized he s not going to get elected president unless he shows strength. i think he fundamentally believes he didn t say anything wrong because he was trying to make the point these guys were bad guys, but i still won. i still beat them. i still got the legislation across the finish line that i ran through the senate to try to get done. senator mccac cass kill, thank you so much. matt, thank you. professor, thank you. reminder we are less than a week out of the first 2020 debate in miami. only on msnbc, nbc, and telemundo. so big it s over two days. now to that breaking news we ve been following here. breaking news in the standoff with iran. word that a meeting is under way