respective bases this afternoon. trump spoke to the conservative audience at the faith and freedom conference in washington, d.c., his first public event since that teleprompter speech. that happened right after clinton's address at the planned parenthood action fund, less than her first public appearance one mile away. her first public appearance as big endorsements from president obama, joe biden, and elizabeth warren yesterday. trump hit clinton. clinton hit trump. let's go to the tape. [video clip] mrs. clinton: when donald trump says let's make america great again, that is code for let's take america backward. mr. trump: hillary clinton, or as i call her crooked hillary , clinton, refuses to even say the words radical islam. this alone makes her unfit to be president. mrs. clinton: anyone who wants to defund planned parenthood has no idea what is best for women. mr. trump: she will appoint radical judges who will legislate from the bench, overriding congress. the will of the people will mean nothing, nothing. mrs. clinton: this is a man who has called women pigs, dogs and disgusting animals. hard to imagine counting on him to respect our fundamental rights. mr. trump: her policies would be a crushing blow to all poor people in this country. john: this is coming off a stellar week for hillary clinton and one of the worst weeks for trump. for the moment, let's strip away that context and judge the speeches on their own merits. we will expect to see a lot more of what we just saw over the months ahead. on this first day of the general election, who had the better day? mike: hillary clinton because she had the better week, but donald trump, if you watched that speech today, he has picked up the pace with the teleprompters. doing a little better reading the speech from the teleprompter. the speech included all sorts of extraneous subjects he was throwing in there. i don't know why he did that. at the end of the day, it gets back to the point that you have discussed endlessly. there is no campaign there. there is just donald trump. john: that's true. thatays found it strange donald trump has the level of support he has among religious republicans, given the fact it is the one place where he seems shakiest to me. the idea that donald trump would have something with born-again and evangelicals does not strike me as plausible. went -- hillary clinton was very good. i thought trump was able to act like a sort of normal candidate. maybe even a little bit better day for trump because of the weakness of his previous. my: because of lowered expectations. don't you think part of his --eal to the evangelicals and we have witnessed this in the primaries -- is because of what he did today? he shows up and he gives the strong man speech, attacking hillary clinton, and his points are about strength, and i will protect the country. that appeals to evangelicals as well as a whole host of people in the primaries. john: yes, that's true. mike: nobody loves talking about polls more than donald trump, but we did not hear him say much today about the newest national survey by foxnews. it shows trump trailing hillary clinton in the general election matchup 42% to 39%, a six point drop from a month ago for the presumptive republican nominee. trump's strength seems to be growing but this poll shows a 12 point swing in clinton's direction among independents since mid may. it is important to know this poll was put in the field before those big clinton endorsements yesterday. probably get a bigger bump in the coming days. how worried do you think the trump campaign manager is, should they be more worried than they seem to be? john: i think the point you make is a relevant point. we are going to see hillary clinton as she has with astonishing speed moved to start unifying the democratic party. she is going to see a lift. she's now the presumptive nominee. she bernie sanders is falling in has a lot of people behind her line. ,she will get a big lift. but if i am donald trump, looking at just the overall, the six-point drop. given how horrible the last couple weeks have been, he might've expected this to be worse than what he has seen today. he might, i think wrongly, but he might look at those numbers and say, i only dropped six points? i can make that up. mike: i don't disagree with you because donald trump is donald trump. he sees bright lights in everything. but anyone around him who has his ear, and i don't know that that is anyone, i think they would be very worried because you can sense anecdotally the mini collapse within that campaign right now and in a few weeks prior to the democratic convention, republican convention, he is going to be set in cement by the democratic campaign against him. john: that number with the independents is the worrying thing. that is the thing if you are his people or trump and you are focused on the poll, that is the thing you are worried about, because his strength with independence is a large part of why he has been able to be neck and neck with clinton. if the bottom falls out among independent voters, available voters, if the bottom falls out there, he has no chance to beat hillary clinton. that seems to be what is happening. mike: i don't think the trump campaign people have factored into the equation there are not enough white men in america to elect him president of the united states. john: those are your people. the whitest man i've ever seen. there is not enough of you out there, the conservative version of you. the demographics are stacked against him. with independent voters, they have been attracted to trump all along. what this poll for jeff is that independent voters have been affected in a significant way by all of the negative headlines and the controversy, trump's racist comments, and that is the real reason for worry for him. hillary clinton unveils her all-star lineup of democratic surrogates last night. what it means for your 2016 fantasy league right after this quick commercial break. ♪ john: today at her home in washington, d.c., hillary clinton huddled with massachusetts senator elizabeth warren, the newest high-profile recruit. after that big day of endorsements, warren is that heavy hitter of the murderous row of new democratic surrogates stepping up to the 2016 election plate and swinging for the fences. in this already vastly overextended baseball metaphor, clinton's lineup includes warren and vice president joe biden. they both spoke last night. and of course, hitting in the cleanup spot, was president barack obama with his appearance on "the tonight show" with jimmy fallon last night. take a look at the replay. senator warren: donald trump is a loud, nasty, thin-skinned fraud who has never risked anything for anyone and who serves no one but himself. v.p. biden: i find donald trump's conduct in this regard reprehensible. engaging in an attack on a vital pillar of democracy, by threats of intimidation, and undercutting the legitimacy of a judge by suggesting because of his heritage he is incapable of being fair. in addition to this, it is racist. president obama: thank you, congress, for spending 8 years wishing you could replace me with a republican. or, to put it another way -- how do you like me now? john: got a couple of hard hits in that joke. the strength of clinton's lineup is only heightened by the surrogates on the republican bench. after trump highlighted that his comments were misconstrued, ben carson said that "trump fully recognizes that was not the right thing to say." ben carson, you had one job there, buddy. hillary clinton has had one super surrogate, her husband, with her the whole time, and now she has filled out the roster with warren and biden and obama. what roles do you think they will play in her campaign as we go forward? mike: a couple of things. it is going to be a long time before we have a president of the united states as cool as barack obama is. john: really good on the humor. mike: yeah. all of hillary clinton's surrogates can all hit major league pitches, to continue endlessly this baseball metaphor. trump's surrogates, he seemingly has none, the best of the surrogates he has happen to be his children, i think. going forward, the strongest surrogate that hillary clinton has, i think, without doubt will be the president of the united states who is fully committed to beating donald trump. not just beating donald trump but devastating donald trump because of largely the roots of his antipathy toward him is the birth certificate. john: 100%. and the suggestion he is not a legitimate president of the united states. i think these three will all be a big part of the campaign. i think as i suggested they will play distinct roles. elizabeth warren is shaping up as an attack dog figure. she will appeal to the populace -- populist left. she can take trump with a degree of ferocity that hillary clinton is not capable of. trump can mock her as pocahontas, but she is good in that role. biden appealing to working-class right voters, especially men, who hillary clinton has trouble with. and president obama, the authority of the office. no one is in a better position, even better than hillary clinton, no one is in position to suggest that trump is unfit to be commander-in-chief than the guy who is commander-in-chief now. mike: what is interesting about elizabeth warren to me is the fearlessness with which she takes on donald trump when the field of republican candidates against donald trump, all of them, were fearful of him. john: none of those folks, none of them will be afraid of donald trump. he will have good days on his campaign, no doubt. but i do not see a single surrogate, a single surrogate right now for donald trump. there is not one. there is not one who can play at a major league level like all those four people at the top of the democratic surrogate lineup. mike: speaking of trump's surrogate problem, top republicans like paul ryan and mitch mcconnell are still clearly uncomfortable with having him as their party's presumptive nominee. in tone and substance, the two gop leaders are handling this hot potato in somewhat different ways. take a look at the latest rounds of trump criticism. ryan in an interview on "good morning america" and mcconnell in the latest episode of bloomberg's masters of politics podcast. paul ryan: that comment is beyond the pale. that is not political correctness, suggesting a person cannot do a job because of race or ethnicity, that is not a politically incorrect thing to do. that is just a wrong thing to say. i hope he gets that. i believe he walked this comment back. >> what core principle is more important to the party of lincoln? paul ryan: that is why i spoke out against this, and hopefully this will not continue. obviousconnell: it is he does not know a lot about the issues. you see that in the debates he has debated in. that is why i have argued to him publicly and privately he ought to use a script more often. there is nothing wrong with having prepared text. it indicates a level of seriousness to convey to the american people about the job you are seeking. mike: mcconnell is being tougher than ryan. especially in his comments to --omberg, when he said it is he knows nothing about the issues. you can coach him. what is going on here? john: there are the institutional issues between the house and the senate. we can talk about those in a second, but mitch mcconnell is in the job, his last job. he is not going to do anything else as majority leader, or a minority leader if the democrats take over. paul ryan wants to be president and he is looking at 2020. and the likelihood that donald trump in his view is going to lose this election, and ryan is trying to figure out a way to both protect his members but not alienate trump voters that he might need when he runs for president next time around. mike: mitch mcconnell has a reputation, as you know, of being principally a very cautious individual who would not tell you if your coat were on fire. nor would i tell you. john: that has happened several times in the past. you let the coat burn, you said nothing. mike: what's going through mcconnell's mind, if you put yourself in mcconnell's mind, he's basically seeming to write donald trump off. john: mcconnell was really focused more than anything, mcconnell was focused on trying to somehow against the odds, given the number of seats republicans are defending in the senate, he wants to keep hold of the majority. to do that, under his calculation the only way for him , to do that is to put as much distance as possible between themselves and donald trump. and he is starting to lay down markers for that. mitch mcconnell is going to be running away from donald trump all election long. mike: do you think paul ryan's job as speaker of the house, the leader of the national republican party, the phrase leadership and character, they both go together. what is he sacrificing in terms of his hesitancy to really come out and say, listen, this guy is not what i thought? john: you tell me. what do you think he is sacrificing? you seem to be suggesting something. mike: i think at the end of the day, he is sacrificing a lot of his hard-earned reputation he has. as a smart guy who wants to broaden his approach to politics and end poverty. john: he is in a ridiculous position right now which is to basically say, he is a racist and yet, i still endorse them. , not a great place to be. today the funeral of a great, great man. muhammad ali laid to rest in louisville, kentucky, this afternoon. we will talk about that special service when we come back. ♪ john: it has been a week since muhammad ali passed away at the age of 74 but the world is still mourning. today, celebrities and politicians, including bill clinton and heads of state from turkey and jordan gathered, honoring muhammad ali in the city of his childhood, louisville, kentucky. go back a long time now, back to 1980. in marblehead, massachusetts, where you spent some time in the presence of ali. tell us about that moment. you wrote about it. that is why i know this happened. mike: actually, it was 36 years ago this past wednesday. and, yes, muhammad ali was in massachusetts. he was going to address the class day on the fifth three union of the class of it was 1975. june, 1980, at harvard. i met him. i went up to meet them in the -- him in the morning. he was staying at a friend's home. i spent the day with him, but the most poignant and most insightful part of the day to me was just he and i having breakfast in this man's home, and he spoke eloquently about his lack of fear. that he didn't fear anything happening to him because he had fought the government, changed his name, given up his title, given up his olympic medal all for his belief and his commitment. he talked about, i asked him at one point, do you worry about brain damage? you get hit so hard i was , referring specifically to the thriller in manila fight. he said, who knows. if it happens, it happens. he was an enormously charismatic figure. and you were kind of in awe when you are with him and you had to fight that feeling of awe in order to listen to what he was saying. john: one of the most extraordinary things about ali is this. you have met presidents, heads of state, fortune 500 ceo's. you have met a lot of people in the course of your journalistic career. and you, like every other journalist i know who spent time with ali, and most other sports figures who spent time with ali, celebrities, everybody speaks of him in the same way. the biggest egos in the world. i include you here. but even bigger egos than yours , were like, being in his presence was a magical experience just because of the totally self-created man. his energy, his wit. and the charisma that you talked about. i literally, there is no one who does not have that kind of -- and not just because sad because of his death. in real-time, people would say, there is nothing like him and no one like him. mike: this was and he was 1980 already arguably the most famous person in the world. he was obviously an iconic figure of the 20th and the 21st centuries. and he was involved in two of the greatest sporting events -- the rumble in the jungle and the thriller in manila, in which both men almost died. that fight was held at 10:00 in the morning. the temperature in the ring was 120 degrees. after the fight, ali said, "joe frazier and i went to manila as champions and we came home as old men." john: yes, those fights, if you go back and watch them now, youtube, it is something. an amazing thing the degree to which boxing is no longer -- it used to be the most important sports event. every celebrity, the greatest writers, everybody flocked to the ring to see the great heavyweights fight. now, boxing still exists but it is nothing like the kind of attraction. probably because of ali. the perception, right or wrong, that somehow that ali, the beatings he took was part of why he ended up with parkinson's. i think it is part of why boxing people believe that. i think it is part of why boxing has lost favor in our society. people looked at ali and said, rightly or wrongly, they see him as a vivid illustration of how savage the sport is. i think the country has turned against the sport for that reason. mike: i absolutely agree with you. you wonder if pro football will be next. in ali, you also wonder in the passage of time gives us allowance to look at this so , many people missed the importance of his social cultural statements in the 1960's. some of the greatest newspaper writers of all-time missed it and made fun of him or ran him down. changed his name. he was a muslim. because he came out against the war in vietnam. but he was right. john: the day after he passed away, the nba finals, there were people that talked to lebron james in cleveland. and the warriors at the oracle arena. james pointed out that he felt like ali had freed him to take some of the stances he has taken. ali was important as an athlete, more important in some ways outside of athletics than the things he did in. from the moment he decided to resist the draft, he not only became an incredibly important figure in black culture, the antiwar movement, but he freed athletes to become engaged in politics in a way they never have before. you suddenly had things from the 1968 olympics with carlos with the black power salute. in every dimension of sports, suddenly sports figures were like, hey, i can be involved in the broader social issues that wrack the country. mike: you have to ask yourself this question that took great courage to get in a ring and fight for your life as muhammad ali did. today, you look at athletes, and we revere many of them today. which among them would have the courage he had to stand up for himself and his beliefs? john: it is the case, i stand by my assertion that he was a signal phenomenon in terms of the politicization of sports, sometimes for good and sometimes for ill. although he freed a lot of athletes to get involved in politics, none of them had the cost -- none of them assuming the courage that was required. none of them paid the price he paid having taken himself out of millions of dollars in the prime of his career because he was not going to fight vietcong. coming up, we turn to donald trump's latest controversy. we will be right back with all of that. ♪ okay, ready? whoa! [ explosion ] nothing should get in the way of the things you love. ♪ get america's fastest internet. only from xfinity. john: welcome back. over the last 24 hours in the usa today and the wall street investigationsd into the lawsuits of donald j trump and his companies. down contractors and vendors, the litigation you can find across the country, as in these labor cases. -- lust ofm he laws old back and negotiate when people do not do good work. he says let's say they do a job they do not finish or it is late. i will the duct from their contract, absolutely. that is what the country should be doing. joining us now to unpack these two stories are the reporters behind them. and nick berzon penzenstadler from denver. alexandra, both of these have gotten a lot of attention today. give me an overview of the most important things you found in reporting this piece. alexandra: we found were a number of people who had been doing work for donald trump for his company, things like drapery, making curtains, or selling chandeliers. a hardy had not -- had time getting paid, or they had to sue trump in order to try to get paid. we also found there were people from the trump organization that it worked for him over the years and said this was a philosophy of the company, but now they say that is not true. f you can pay 75% of what you oew, pay 75%. john: nic, both of these stories are consistent, and overlapping. the thing that is striking about your piece is the sheer volume that you guys documented. of theseof incidences things. give us a sense of what you found in your investigation. it really broke down to contractors and vendors who tried to sue. those with a civil litigations across the country, and then these labor cases area complaints go to the labor department and ultimately end up in court for workers and bartenders and servers who do not get paid for overtime are -- or for what they are owed. alexandra picking up on that , line of thought, did you find in the journal report that small vendors, people in business for themselves, if their payment is delayed beyond 30 days or 60 days, in some cases, that they find themselves in real economic trouble as a small business, and trump was causing this trouble? alexandra: i did find that with some people. there were people that talked about getting delayed 60 or 70 days. trump said, oh, is that a lot of time? for these people it happened to, it was a problem for them. they did tell me that. they had trouble they had to pay , their vendors and employees. it was a problem for people. my: it is funny, human nature and the economy being what it is in reading your story, i get a sense from some of the people you reported on, the small business owners, they realize their shock and amazement that it was much easier for donald trump to owe a bank $100 million than them to owe us of vendors fareir sub less and not being able to pay it. that puts them in real trouble. nick: there was a huge variety in final bills, $30,000 or less than that. and huge contracts in the millions that the trump organization, they would treat them the same way and try to negotiate or on final payment would say we have paid enough already and will not give you this last installment. but we will still let you work for us in the future, to the shock of many of these smalltime vendors who would say, i am not going to work for them ever again. it is a rough-and-tumble business, and a lot of people play hardball. what do you say to the pushback that the allegations are what they are, but that this is common practice among people who do business and the kind of business that trump deals in? it is tough, sometimes rough, but it is par for the course. nick: ultimately, that is up for readers and voters to judge. the thing we have really thought about is, we do not have a business record for hillary clinton to judge, but we do have a business record for donald trump and vice versa with hillary not owning a business. we have to judge what we have, and anything less than a stellar record on either of those we feel is fair game to scrutinize. john: trump responded to both of these stories, including yours, by saying, yeah, i sort of did this stuff and it is actually kind of smart business. was that the extent of the response? there were a lot of allegations in your piece. was there a terse response or was there more thorough pushback on what you reported? alexandra: there was pushback. there is pushback on the premise of the story, to the point you talked about earlier, the idea that you are picking out a few cases and we have lots of people we work with who want to be our vendors and have had good experiences, so we spoke with many of them. we included some of that in the story, but we also think it is fair game to point to the people that did not have good experiences. we spoke with them in included some of that in the story. but we think it is also fair game to point to those that did not have good experiences. john: all right, alexandra, naked, thank you for your work and for being on the show. next, espn's new epic series about oj simpson that has a lot of people talking. i will show you my interview with the director in just a moment. if you're watching us and washington, d.c. keep in mind you can listen to us on the radio at bloomberg 99.1 fm. ♪ john: espn is set to release its most ambitious project to date as part of the 30 for 30 documentary brand. oj: made in america, a five-part documentary series that dives deep into the life and career of oj simpson, and the complex social and racial backdrop for his landmark murder trial. the first episode is tomorrow at 9:00 p.m. eastern on abc and subsequent episodes on espn next week. here in gotham city at bloomberg headquarters in gotham city with the director of that series and asked what it was like to make a film this political for the total sports network. john: espn said, made a long form doc on oj simpson, correct? ezra: correct. john: you were not thrilled originally to what turned you around? ezra: it was a larger canvas at first, five hours. when i started thinking about the five hours part -- what i was reluctant to do was the story about his guilt or innocence, or a regurgitation of the trial. but then i realized i could do a story about l.a., about race in america and in los angeles, about who o.j. was from a racial and identity standpoint, a story about the lapd. things i am interested in and i feel have been overlooked. john: what are the threads in it? to me race will obviously be a , huge threat because of how the trial unfolded. and what happened as the public spectacle was. what was the other thread that you do not think would be big parts of it and ended up engrossing you and becoming big parts of the work? ezra: you're right, race was the predominant theme. the sub theme initially was celebrity. it was impossible to reduce this to just a story about one thing. celebrity,is race, gender, masculinity, the justice system there is such an , interconnectedness to all these things that it is impossible to sort of leave them off the table. that is when i sort of realized is about everything and not just one thing. john: the specificity of the black experience in los angeles, whyhistory of policing nla, is that so important? ezra: because the entire trial was framed, no pun intended, on whether this black icon was sort of treated unfairly by the police, whether evidence was planted, whether he was framed. that was the explanation. but the entire defense was about, look at who the lapd has been in our city for the past 50 years, look at what they do to black people. then when you parse who o.j. is and the choices he made, the advantages he had as an athlete and celebrity, where he lived, there was an irony to that defense being connected to this man. then you think, oh, sure, you grew up in a time, and i did in high school, when rodney king happened and it looks like payback for rodney king. when people wanted to reduce the jurors decisions to that. well, yes, rodney king was beaten in 1991 and the riots happened in 1992. but there was a history that consistently went back with these incidents 30 or 40 years, hallmark incidents that people in los angeles would continue to bring up to me that i realized it was such a deeper reservoir of frustration and tension that needed to be explored. that was drawn upon by the defense, more so than just look what happened to years ago. it was look what happened 40 years ago. john: there was the incredible footage of oj's best friend, most staunch loyal defender, at nicole simpson's memorial service giving a tearful farewell to her. and then after the acquittal, coming back to his house and watching the coverage on television and yelling at the television set. how did you pull that off? ezra: we got fortunate in terms of having access to material that someone had archived. someone was there that day and shot in the house. i do not know if anyone had ever seen it. i had never seen it it was just , fortunate. john: and the wedding footage. and there was a huge question about guilt or innocence. and the vast majority of african-americans that he was innocent, and white americans, thought he was guilty. ezra: i think you would find that that percentage of black americans who think he's innocent is much smaller than it was in 1995. john: now younger african-americans are able to accept he was guilty? ezra: the initial evidence came out, like about the shoes he was wearing, so it was proven that he was wearing the shoes encased in a bloody footprint at the scene, so that is damming. and when you look good what it happened to him in this 20-year period, there is a level to which none of us can understand after going through that period what it does to a person. whether he did that or not and how crazy that makes you, but he did not go the straight and narrow path. that makes people less forgiving of him as a character and less forgiving toward the idea of him being innocent. i admire trying to say all these perspectives have a validity, this is not a polemic. at the same time, you come to a sense that there is a case to be made, that o.j. simpson was almost certainly guilty, and in some way, the verdict was justice. ezra: i do not know if i would argue the verdict was justice, but i would argue that the verdict was just. within the framework of what the prosecution did or did not do, having a police detective in the center of the investigation having perjured himself, and what happened in the court, literally, the bloody glove did not fit the apparent murderer. there were enough instances of that ible doubt understand why a jerk would have voted the way they voted to acquit him. in that way, regardless of factual evidence, including dna evidence, yes, there is an alternate universe where you can look at the film and say i believe he's guilty but i also believe he should have gotten off. john: there is a way in which the verdict was striking a blow, sometimes for racial justice and the city, given the long history. you can see why people believe that. ezra: and i want people to understand that. i do not want people to watch and be like, i wanted that, too, but if there is a level of empathy the people arrive at after having watched this, whether you are a white person who never thought about incidents of race and you are wondering why people were celebrating. and you watch this and emotionally connect with the justices and you go, you know, i get that. i understand. john: i imagine you looked at hundreds of hours of footage and thought about this insanely intensely for a couple years of your life, right? and you will be talking about o.j. simpson for the next, who knows how long. depending on how successful this whole venture is. what is the take away for you? what do you say to people? what did you learn about o.j. simpson? ezra: the one thing i can say is i was taken by o.j. simpson like everyone else, as a kid growing up, you know, as an athlete and celebrity. but it is really hard when you spend this much time examining somebody and the things that he is even on the record having done and not coming away with sort of a general feeling of -- disgust? yeah. that made it difficult because, by the way, i also had a real desire to be fair to him in this story, as well. but it is hard to ignore all the things that took place. john: it is interesting in the context of our earlier conversation of muhammad ali, one of the most famous people, consummate black is beautiful, black pride -- o.j. simpson also one of the most famous athletes in america in roughly the same timeframe who tried to make himself into a graceless figure, but that was the leitmotif of the trial. my: race is still the dominant factor in american culture. it is time to have a conversation about race, but we will never have the conversation in this country. john: we will certainly never be able to move past it. it is deeply embedded in the institutions of our country. we will never be post-racial. mike that film could win an : oscar. john: 7.5 hours long, and not a moment that you think, i am bored. not a single moment. watch it. thanks to the man who made it. espn's "o.j.: made in america." premieres tomorrow, saturday at 9:00 eastern on abc. next, more on what mitch mcconnell said about donald trump, right after this. ♪ >> the choice for many americans is not a happy choice, but this is the choice. do we want four more years just like the last eight, or do we want to go in a different direction? for all of his obvious shortcomings, donald trump is certainly a different direction, so i am comfortable supporting him, and i think he would have a much better chance of winning if he would quit making so many unfortunate public utterances. >> is there a line he could cross that you would decide you could not support him anymore? >> i am not going to speculate about what he might say or what i might do. but i have been clear publicly about i think he should change directions, and i hope that is what we are going to see. john: that was another snippet of senate majority leader mitch mcconnell speaking. that is from the latest episode of bloomberg politics, masters of politics. , ourng us to chat more guest. mitch mcconnell, that is pretty tough stuff. throughout this whole interview about trump. are you surprised the degree to which he is kind of the voice of principle in this debate? betsy: interesting that you say principle, because the way i think of it is like he has been the high school principal. he has a senior class president that has a supportive of the seniors, and he is a little bit nervous and the teachers are little bit nervous. so i think he is just sending the clear message, because it is important to him, i think, ultimately, and this is a person who is a master of the senate. he writes in his book about how his ambition in life was to be a senate majority leader once he became a senator. so keeping in the senate is very important to him. he became majority leader, he wants to keep it. it is important to him that the nominee stick to the script, stop the unfortunate public utterances, and prevail. my: did you think it was kind of surprising? a, that he did the interview. he is sort of a very cautious guy. b, what he said is so un-mitch mcconnell, because there is an element of risk and what he said about trump, that he basically has not a lot of knowledge about issues. that is surprising to me. betsy: i think his number one priority is the future of the republican party. i asked the question, if he had to choose between winning the white house or the future of the republican party, what would you do? he said, well, we can do both. at the end of the day, i do not think he would hesitate to throw donald trump overboard if he needed to. john: you have talked to people like this in many situations as a journalist. he basically left open the question of whether he might unendorse donald trump. do you think he would do that? betsy: i think so. but i think it was important to him to issue that warning. deliberate. john: betsy fischer martin, thank you. everybody in the entire world should listen to the masters and politics podcast on bloomberg.com. this one in particular, but all of them. we will be right back with who won the week. ♪ john: all right, who won the week? mike: well,i did not because i was here at lexington avenue. john: headquarters of bloomberg. mike: it was fantastic. i think the president of the united states won the week. he managed to get all his cards on the table, bernie sanders out of the race, hillary clinton endorsed. john: coming up, the gawker bankruptcy news. that is on bloomberg west. until tomorrow sayonara. , ♪ >> the challenges facing our world are growing all the time. how do we build stronger economies with equal opportunities for all? how do we build a sustainable world for generations to come? how do we protect our cities and harness the power of technology for our common benefit? bloomberglatest research and analysis we will make sense of the problems of tomorrow. inequality,

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