2016 bhsh they swung back towards democrats in 2018. suburban women who may have held their nose and supported president trump in 2016, they voted for democrats overwhelmingly in 2018 and that was integral for democrats to take back the house. the president needs to try to corral support from those dependents, from those suburban voters. thanks to both of you. thank you. president trump wants his wall built now. and a new report from the washington post says he s encouraging aides, listen to this, to break the law to get it done. that s no small thing. we re going to discuss that more. plus the family behind opioid drugmaker purdue pharma could walk away from the pharmaceutical giant if desettle the thousands of lawsuits. and a veterans medical center in west virginia under investigation now after nearly a
campaign season without having demonstrable progress on building that wall. he has wanted to get 500 miles or so new wall built, they ve only built about 60 miles of new wall. and that s not new border, that s replacing sort of existing border structures that were there. this is a very complicated process, as everybody well knows. there are environmental rules, they have to take land in some cases. and the law is protective of a lot of those steps. and so trump is telling his administration officials go ahead, break the law, do whatever you have to do to get this wall built fast and i will even pardon you if it comes to that. julia, we re talking about a lot of money here in your reporting. what more can you tell us about how that large sum of money s going to be used? so it s going to be used in two ways, craig. first of all, there s 116 million that s coming from across dhs they re pulling from fema, tsa, cybersecurity, basically everywhere except the secret service to go down an
this wall built before the re-election in november of 2020, because he wants to have a sort of physical manifestation of his ability to deliver on his campaign promise. but there s a policy component too. he s a believer that the wall will somehow keep migrants from coming to the border from seeking asylum and there is there has been for many months now humanitarian crisis at the border. we ve seen that with the detention of these migrant families. we ve seen them with the separation of children from their parents at the border. i mean, these are all policy dilemmas that this administration has been faced with. but the president, i think, more than anything wants that wall constructed. he wants to be able to effectively cut the ribbon on the big beautiful wall that he had promised at rally after rally after rally. the washington post is also reporting that the attorney general of the united states william barr booked a, quote, family holiday party, $30,000 party, and they booked
i m good. i saw your took your kids first day of school. yes. fall is here. he did well. his mom and dad not so much. thank you, we ll see you tomorrow morning, radford. craig melvin here. msnbc news headquarters in new york city on this busy news wednesday. we just heard the latest forecast from the national hurricane center as puerto rico starts to feel the effects of tropical storm dorian. we will take you live to that still recovering u.s. territory will tens of thousands are still living with tarps as roofs. also, president trump reportedly promised to pardon aides to who break the law in order to fast track his border wall and he wants it done by election day. length that he s going to to deliver on that signature campaign promise to build that wall. we ll dig into that in a moment. but we start with the big news in the democratic primary and the contender era s race for
administration taking money from the disaster relief as a storm barrels towards puerto rico? it s not a slush fund for policies that they can t get congress to pay for. this literally the administration taking money from actual crisis programs to fund a crisis of its own making, which is its remain in mexico policy and the extra burden that s created needlessly. phil, the rush to finish this border wall, it is a crisis of the president s own making. he promises to deliver this wall over and over throughout the campaign. president trump has promised, again, as you pointed out, 500 miles, 60 miles or so is completed so far. that s replacement fencing. is this i mean, how much of this is actually about just the pr of it and how much of this is about actually getting the wall built? well, i think it s a little bit of both, craig. certainly it s a pr move. that s why the president wants