when "all in" starts right now. good evening from new york, i'm chris hayes. this is the day that many people expected something huge in the mueller investigation. after all, the midterms are over. there are people flatout saying they expect to be indicted. and the president has ratcheted his anti-mueller rhetoric up to an absolute fever pitch. plus, of course, trump has the attempted to install a lackey to oversee and undermine the mueller investigation in a possible last ditch effort to head off disaster. this morning the president was directly asked if he knew something about the investigation that the rest of us don't. >> on twitter yesterday you seemed agitated about what you might be perceiving the mueller investigation -- >> no, i'm not agitated. it was a hoax. the whole thing is a hoax. >> did you -- >> no, i'm happy. i'm happy with the white house. >> you seemed unhappy with the mueller investigation, particularly yesterday. >> it's just a continuation, you can go. there should have never been any mueller investigation because there was never anything done wrong, there was no collusion, there never has been. you would have known about it a long time ago if there was. there was nothing -- they should have never had it. they've wasted millions and millions of dollars. they should have never been a so-called investigation, which in theory it's not an investigation of me. but it's -- as far as i'm concerned i like to take everything personally you do better that way. the witch hunt, as i call it, should never have taken place. it continues to go on. i imagine it's ending now from what i hear it's ending. and i'm sure it will be just fine. and you know why it's going to be just fine, because there was no collusion. >> does that sound like a man who's worried to you? now, let's be clear, almost nobody knows exactly what mueller is up to. there were no indictments to the, no perp walks in the famously tight-lipped special prosecutor isn't talking, but there continue to be signs all around that there is something going on just out of sight. this week brought reports that mueller has been zeroing in on long time trump adviser roger stone, specifically focusing on his connection to wikileaks. speaking of wikileaks, we learned last night thanks to an apparent mistake by prosecutors that julian assange has been charged under seal, more on that in a bit. we also learned that dick cheney's former top national aid is in mueller's sights. interactions tied to foreign governments. mueller's team also filed an update on convicted felon paul manafort, the former trump campaign chairman who is now cooperating with prosecutors. renato mariotti, it suggests to me that there will be a public event between now and november 26th that would permit mueller to comment in more detail. about manafort's cooperation, such as an indictment of someone manafort is cooperating against. then there's rick gates, who also pleaded guilty this week, another mueller firing revealed gates is cooperating with prosecutors on -- and i quote -- several ongoing investigations, plural. he can't be sentenced just yet. trump himself has refused to sit down with mueller, despite proclaiming he would just love to do so. his legal team did agree to answer written questions. today the president was asked about their progress. the president did not take the question well. >> my lawyers aren't working on that, i'm working on that, i write the answers, my lawyers don't write answers, i write the answers. i was asked a series of questions, i've answered them very easily, very easily. i'm sure they're tricked up because they like to catch people, gee, was the weather sunny or was it rainy? he said it may have been a good day, it was rainy, therefore he told a lie, he perjured himself. so you have to always be careful when you answer questions with people that probably have bad intentions. but no, it's -- the questions were very routinely answered by me, by me. but it didn't take very long to do them. they were my answers. i don't need lawyers to do that. you need lawyers for submittal, you need liar lawyers to go ove of the answers. they're not very difficult questions. >> frank figliuzzi, let's talk timing here. you worked with robert mueller. you're someone who's familiar with high stakes investigations. how do you think about how mueller and others are thinking about the timing of how they proceed now that the midterms are over? >> so, chris, they know their days are numbered. there's no question of that. and clearly bob mueller is a master chess player. so he's prepared for anything and i think he's put several things in place that would allow him to press send on packages of prosecutorial packages. i call them prosecutorial parachutes that would go to various u.s. attorney's offices, states attorneys general. he's ready for that. but the time frame is extremely compressed. we've got whitaker in place. in my observation, whitaker has one mission, one mandate, to mess with the special counsel investigation despite all the attestations to the contrary from senator graham and others. what does that mean? it means we're coming to a head here with regard to the timing of trump submitting his answers that he alleged did himself, all by himself, to the mueller team where we're going to come up on a line where mueller's going to say the time is now to submit those answers or i'm going to move otherwise. i keyed in on this, chris. i keyed in on this recent request for a delay in the manafort status hearing. >> yup. >> right? that tells me that something's happening in the next several days that will allow the mueller team to tell the court something that gives them greater insight into the level of manafort's cooperation. what is that? it could very likely be that mueller will point to indictments saying manafort helped make that happen. so watch that to happen in the next couple of weeks. >> that was the filing where they said we'll come back to you in a few weeks with more on how things are going with manafort. and the implication being that something will happen in the interim that shows the court how useful he has been as a cooperator. >> and both sides agreed to that. there was no fight over this delay. ordinarily you'd say, wait a minute, my client wants this done, move on. both sides agreed to that. i read into that that manafort is cooperating and we'll see the flutes in the next couple weeks. >> you view this as whitaker bearing down a kind of clock ticking, and there's always been this kind of weird game of chicken with the president and mueller about answering the questions. partly because my understanding is a sense that the mueller report can't be written until the questions are answered and maggie havreman pointed this out today, one important point here, ascribing negative motive to mueller, mueller has been seeking answers from trump for nearly a year, during that time trump has been playing stall ball on answering. what do you think of that? >> i have the tell you this, i think that mueller is just fine without answers from the president. i think he's got what he needs legally. i think much of this is window dressing and public perception. let's not forget, we may be headed toward articles of impeachment. what is that all about? it's about public perception and people talking to their members of congress and saying yay or nay. mueller's keenly aware of that political side. he needs to say i asked for answers, i got them. the president needs to say publicly i submitted my answers. lest he be able to complain that i never got my say in this. but i've got to tell you, i think it's in large part window dressing. >> frank figliuzzi, thank you very much. stick around, because we have more to talk about in a little bit. first, joined my msnbc legal analyst barbara mcquaid and kim waley. kim, let me start with you, do you take the president at his word that he answered the questions? >> well, if he were so -- if it was so easy to answer the questions, then i would ask why isn't he actually being interviewed live? any good lawyer, given the opportunity to craft responses that is going to immunize their client from any problems is going to do that. this is not unique to criminal investigations. it happens in the civil litigation process as well. and we also have a president who says what he feels like he needs to say and doesn't have a problem telling things that aren't accurate. that's beside the point and probably not true, but, you know, speculation. >> it seems unlikely to me. what do you think, barbara? >> i think it's possible that he shared some information with his lawyers and maybe even wrote down some information but that no doubt the lawyers are going to very carefully look through anything that he's put together. the reporting has been that he spent several sessions with the lawyers, one four-hour session, another three-hour session talking through those answers. and so i have no doubt that the lawyers are going to be heavily involved in whatever answers ultimately get to robert mueller. >> one thing that struck me today about this piece, kim, and you had been the independent counsel's office earlier, different than the special counsel, similar, dynamic in some ways, you're investigating the president. this piece today that ran object mueller looking at a man named john hannah, mueller might be opening another front here, there's a clause in the mandate, open ended to the effect of any associated matters, could be a separate line of inquiry about efforts to influence the election by foreigners, the thinking being some regimes in the middle east. what do you think when you hear that in terms of the scope of what he may be working on? >> well, the mandate that was actually handed off by rod rosenstein, the deputy attorney general who previous to mr. whitaker was in charge of this probe is quite broad, i've read it carefully several times and i don't think there's a whole lot of question that something like -- that would arise out of the russia probe. that being said the big difference really between the white water investigation that i worked on and this one was that what was governing the white water investigation was an act of congress. the act of congress was passed because of the saturday night massacre. that is president nixon trying to game the system in his favor when there was an investigation of the white house. and here we are with history repeating itself. we don't have a statute anymore. that statute was allowed to lapse after white water. and we only have an internal doj regulation. there's a lot that mr. whitaker could do to stymy this investigation, including amend that actual piece of paper that hands off the scope of the investigation, among many other things, actually, that he can do. there's a real question here, thinking we have to assume that mr. whitaker is talking to the president. the president has to know what's going on, whereas i would suspect knowing rod rosenstein, under rod rosenstein that was not the case and then the question becomes where is mr. trump going to actually pull his levers of power, is he going to stop it at his former associates, would it be his family, his business, or him? and, of course, if there's any criminal liability for him, whether it's impeachment or indictment, then we are in a full scale constitutional crisis. i have little doubt that will be pushed into its limit. >> barbara, i sort of when i take a step back and look at the scope of what this office has done, as we're sort of here, we feel like are possibly, you know, towards the day we want, here's an incomplete list of people interviewed by the special counsel, or his grand jury. i follow this professionally every day. i have to jog my memory about some of the names. the scope here is really remarkable. >> yeah. you know, i think, though, that one of the things robert mueller has shown is he is very disciplined in following his mandate. he, no doubt, is taking a broad search for connections to russian interference and connections with the trump campaign. when he finds something that looks like it's too far afield, he's farmed it out to other attorney's offices, other cases going to the district of columbia. and not only does that help him keep him focused with his eye on the ball of what he's investigating, i think it also prevents critics from arguing he's gone too far afield. i think it preserves these cases if there should be a bomb that explodes the special counsel's office, figuratively speaking and shuts him down, these other cases have tentacles now in other districts that will continue even if he is removed from office. and so i think it's a very strategic way of casting a wide net, but then once he decides what is related to his case, focusing solely on that and sending those cases elsewhere. >> let me follow up and get your take on this, kim, same question, is it a possibility at this point some of that farming out has already been done, people talked about the possibility of there being sealed indictments or cases already having been farmed out along other parallels. is that a possibility? >> it certainly is. it's possible cases have been farmed out for investigation or have even been filed under seal. for example, the erroneous unsealing suggesting that julian assange has been charged in the eastern district of virginia in that u.s. attorney's office. there could be a sealed indictment there. and other indictments against others in other districts as well already. >> what do you think, kim? >> yeah, sure. and i think the key there also, though, is that mr. whitaker of course is in charge of all of those u.s. attorney's offices. >> right. >> so we can't siphon off the special prosecutor the way we could ken starr, a fourth branch of the government. now to the extent to which he's handing things off to the states we're in a situation where trump has very little control over that and he couldn't even do a pardon. that's significant. >> yeah, all right, barbara mcquaid and kim wehle, thank you. prosecutors mistakenly reveal criminal charges against wikileaks founder julian assange, one of the central figures in the russian investigation, what we know about the charges and the potentially massive implications in a variety of directions in just two minutes. slams on his brakes out of nowhere. you do, too, but not in time. hey, no big deal. you've got a good record and liberty mutual won't hold a grudge by raising your rates over one mistake. you hear that, karen? liberty mutual doesn't hold grudges. how mature of them! for drivers with accident forgiveness, liberty mutual won't raise their rates because of their first accident. liberty mutual insurance. liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ i am a techie dad.n. i believe the best technology should feel effortless. like magic. at comcast, it's my job to develop, apps and tools that simplify your experience. my name is mike, i'm in product development at comcast. we're working to make things simple, easy and awesome. federal prosecutors filed criminal charges against wikileaks founder julian assange, it was supposed to be a secret. the exact charges unknown, but the implications are huge. it came to light by accident. a counterterrorism expert at george washington university who regularly combs through court documents came across something odd and he jokingly tweeted you guys should read edva court filings more. cheaper than a journal description. the screen shot ended with this, no other procedure is likely to keep confidential the fact that assange has been charged. the court document was from an entirely unrelated case with a couple paragraphs about julian assange included. it was confirmed it was an error, probably a cut and paste error. news organizations took notice. the times is reporting that indeed assange has been criminally charged according to a person familiar with the case, it was done under seal, secretly, as far back as august, assange has been in the government's sights since -- his platform famously published the russian hacked e-mails from the clinton campaign and the dnc in 2016. justice analyst matt miller is the former chief spokesperson. for the department of justice in the obama administration. still with me, frank figluizzi. both of you gentlemen were in the government when people were talking about assange. matt, i'll start with you. it was my understanding that the obama administration came to the conclusion, and i will say correct conclusion, that there is no way to prosecute assange for publishing documents because it would be a violation of the first amendment and would be overturned. >> yeah, that's basically right. look, the justice department has wanted to find a way to charge julian assange since 2010, since the chelsea manning leaks that first brought him to prominence, the problem the justice department has come up against, it's hard to see how you charge a person for publishing documents. it's not just the act of publishing documents, it's also doing things like soliciting classified information, also something reporters do all the time. it's not because julian assange is a journalist, he's not and never has been. the first amendment protections of the constitution don't only say they apply to journalists. you have to think, both, about the precedent you're trying to set and the bad law that you don't want to make and also the fact that, you know, bringing charges that don't survive a court challenge doesn't do anything for the justice department. a couple possibilities here. one, the government has found a way to charge him for something publishing plus, maybe conspiring to violate hacking laws or acting as a foreign intelligence agent if these charges relate to the russian hacking or it's possible the trump administration just isn't worried about the precedent of charging someone for publishing only and not worried about the court challenge and potentially losing the case. these are all possibilities we're looking at right now. >> what do you think, frank? >> well, this is spot on discussion. boy, there was great debate over whether wikileaks was a journalistic entity or a foreign adversary. it appears that something has happened and that it may, may be linked to mueller. there's recent reporting, chris, as recent as this afternoon, we may be talking about a complaint as opposed to an indictment. what does that mean? complaints are done in a hurry. complaints are done when you've got information and you need to act on it quickly and you don't want to get to a grand jury or maybe don't have time. if that reporting is accurate then it lends credence to the idea that maybe the special counsel became into possession of interesting information and needed to move quickly on it. and so maybe we're looking at a sealed complaint. that would be fascinating. think of the whole collusion picture, the russian involvement picture, three pieces of a puzzle. we've got the russian piece, over two dozen indictments of russians, we've got that. but with regard to how the russians used wikileaks as their arm to get that stuff published, we don't have that. we're missing that. and if mueller's got that, then the third piece could fall into place, which is who in the campaign knew about that, knew about the connection to russia, and had that stolen material published? >> so this is key. i want to say that wikileaks is cited in one of those d.i.m.e.s cited in one of those indictments brought against the gru officers, referred to as organization one. the conspirators, posing as the gru folks doing the hacking. discussing the documents with organization one. to heighten the impact in the 2016 national election. everyone understands that's wikile wikileaks. what you're saying, frank, this is important, one possibility that matt brings up is the justice department or the trump administration doesn't have any problem with prosecuting someone for publishing. they just say we don't care about that, don't care about protecting that first amendment right we're going to go at him. number two is some new piece of information that is about maybe soliciting stolen information, or number three, which i think you're pointing to, is that this has something to do with the mueller investigation. and matt, folks have pointed out this came out of the eastern district of virginia and obviously, which is not the special counsel's shop. is there any conclusion we can draw about the -- what that means? >> yeah. i don't think a direct conclusion, but we can make some guesses. so i think given the fact that this case was filed in the eastern district of virginia, or i should say the case that, you know, we found out about this because this complaint was mistakenly copied and pasted into another complaint in the eastern district of virginia by a prosecutor there, that leads me to believe it was probably by prosecutors this that office and in that district. that leads me to believe that this complaint probably isn't at least directly related to the russian hacking charges we've already seen filed because those were brought by mueller in a different district, in the district of columbia. it's possible, but it seems unlikely to me. now that said, you know, if the eastern district of virginia, where the original wikileaks investigation began, they could be continuing to look at him and charging him for leaks in 2017, from the cia, the famous cia information that made it onto wikileaks. even if the charges are being brought related to that, though, i wouldn't say that there's no nexus with the mueller investigation because obviously if the justice department can get their hands on him, and ecuador has seemed to be softening, if they can get their hands on him, bob mueller is going to want to take a crack at questioning him and getting him to flip. >> final question, frank. you can publish my view of this, consensus legal view, publishing documents protected by the first amendment, stealing documents is a crime, there's an interesting place in between those two which is asking someone to steal documents, right? so, you know, reporters might have a confidential source and they bring them a document and the reporter says this is great but i kind of need more, could you get more? and there's a question about the legality of that. what is your sense of what the legality of that is and whether that might be tested here? >> so it's one thing for a reporter to passively sit back and receive information and perhaps shape and guide what that source is getting. it's another thing to direct a source to commit a crime. so i think that's where the justice department would probably focus. there's another issue as well and that's the larger charge of espionage that would involve intent to harm, intent to distribute national defense information with the intent to harm the united states. if they can show that, they could flip into a larger espionage charge. >> matt miller and frank figliuzzi, thank you both. we are learning more about the man president trump wants to lead the immigration and customs enforcement, that story is next. (burke) fender-biter. seen it, covered it. we know a thing or two because we've seen a thing or two. ♪ we are farmers. bum-pa-dum, bum-bum-bum-bum ♪ what sore muscles? what with advpounding head? .. advil is... relief that's fast. strength that lasts. you'll ask... what pain? with advil. on the new sleep number 360 smart bed. it senses your movement and automatically adjusts to keep you both comfortable. and now, the queen sleep number 360 c4 smart bed is only $1299. plus 24-month financing on all beds. ends sunday. president donald trump has deployed more than 5,000 u.s. troops to the border to thwart migrant women and children, mostly, from coming to ask for asylum. 1,500 of those troops are in arizona where nbc news national security reporter julia ainsley reports they will likely stay through thanksgiving. what are they up to in in nogales, ten american soldiers dangled their legs on a ledge spitting out shells and tobacco juice, waiting for the forklift to arrive. that's all a political stunt by the president. but behind the theatrics, there's some serious policy moves. president trump is trying to restrict asylum claims. he's trying to get ronald vitiello confirmed, he helped oversee the separation of migrant children from their families. here to talk about all those immigration changes, faiz shakir. political director for the aclu. let's start with the new nominee to head i.c.e., the aclu is opposed. he has years and years of experience in the agency. what's your opposition? >> he was just on fox news a couple days ago talking about the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the so-called migrant caravan. he was asked about, he said game on. it reveals his mind-set, a giddiness of an aggressor who wants to deploy forces and beat up on people who he sees as subhuman, others. and that has been his mentality when he was the head of i.c.e. he viewed the family separation crisis as a good thing. he framed it as deterrence. we now see migrants coming across to america, family separation did not deter anybody. what he's all about is treating these immigrant people, both in america and across our borders, as something other than equal human beings, depriving them of liberty. >> there are still many children still separated, the total has come down a tremendous amount, there's 25 in custody, the administration says are not eligible for reunification, 99 in custody, deported parents have chosen not to reunite, at least that's according to the administration. the aclu has been a party to the lawsuit. what is your position on where things stand? >> it's been painful, but because of us and so many ngos, chris, families are being reunited, many of them. there's a handful out there still looking to reunite. for months and months, the government had information that they could have turned over voluntarily about cell phone numbers of parents in order to more quickly reunite families. they withheld that information, fought the aclu in court for weeks while we're running around guatemala looking for parents to ask them if they would like to be reunited with their children. the government is refusing to hand over information it has. thankfully parents are being reunited finally. it tells you about the mind-set, even if you're told to reunite, i'm not going to help you do that. >> the government's position, you've compelled us to reunite these families, we're not going to lift a finger to do it, you do it, aclu. >> and not volunteer information they know they had. you didn't ask you for those phone numbers, aclu. i didn't know you wanted it. no, we wanted to go running around guatemala looking for them. why don't you help and be part of a solution. no, we don't because we want to send this message that these people are somehow awful, evil, that we need to send them a clear message. to anyone like them, that they are not welcome here. and that's what's going on, obviously. >> then they've now proposed changes to asylum. they want to deny asylum to anyone that does not enter a port of entry, even as they squeeze those ports of entry and turn people back from them. the aclu has sued over that. and they're being forced to wait in mexico for immigration cases. what do you think of that? >> there's long established u.s. and international law on asylum seekers. vitello, architects of family separation, they're openly talking about how they're ready to violate u.s. law and inflict harm on people coming across as asylum seekers. we'll be in court on this again. the trump administration as you rightly note is not only putting architects in place, but funding it. if you look at the funding debate that's about to happen in december. it's unidirectional, only more money for border patrol, only more money for detention beds. this is going in one direction unless we the people rise up and stop it. i mean, this budget is out of control. the agencies are out of control. >> not to mention what the estimated $200 million that's looked to be spent on the 5,000 u.s. service members who have been dispatched to different parts of texas and arizona to string wire, chew sunflower seeds and wait for some kind of mission. >> i hope that people sense that one of the verdicts of november 6th politically was that this kind of politics is being -- is revolting, and that people are revolting against it. ultimately the trump administration did not seem to hear those messages. they do put these people in place and continue to fund this deportation machinery, politically they're heading into disaster zone and legally they'll head into disaster zone, they'll meet us at the ballot box and at the courtroom. >> thank you so much for your time. >> thank you, chris. house democrats are stating a showdown for nancy pelosi's bid. to return as house speaker. why? 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we had wonderful people in our administration. >> and you never had a situation like that? >> not once. >> the white house has tried to put their spin on it. no, no, she hasn't been fired, sarah huckabee sanders said wednesday, she would transition to a new role, and by transition, they meant pack your stuff and move to estonia. bloomberg reports president trump offered to nominate her to the post of ambassador to estonia. alas, she turned it town. what's next? i really don't care, do you? but that wasn't the only ambassador nomination news of the week. we've had one other happily accept the offer. >> the beautiful oceans, the blue oceans and the waves of the oceans lapping up against the shoreline. >> and that's thing two in 60 seconds. 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>> they always ask that question. it's up to mitch mcconnell. >> excuse me, you, mr. hoyer, mr. clyburn, you're all over 70. did your staying on prohibit younger leadership from moving forward? >> you're suggesting that everybody step aside? >> i'm simply saying to let younger leadership from moving forward -- >> let's, for a moment, honor it as a legitimate question. although it's quite offensive, but you don't realize it, i guess. the fact is -- the fact is, is that everything that i have done in my almost, i guess, decade now of leadership is to elect younger and newer people to the congress. in my own personal experience it was very important for me to elect young women. i came to congress when my youngest child alexandra was a senior in high school, practically on her way to college. i knew that my male colleagues had come when they were 30. they had a jump on me because they didn't have to stay home. i did what i wanted to do. i was blessed to have that opportunity. so i don't have any concern about that. and i've always said to you, you've got to take off of that 14 years for me because i was home raising my family, getting the best experience of all in diplomacy, interpersonal skills. no, the answer is no. >> when we come back the 2018 version of that great nancy pelosi debate. bad enough, now your insurance won't replace it outright because of depreciation. if your insurance won't replace your car, what good is it? 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>> well, i'm going to try to demystify it for you. i served ten years. part of the time nancy and i shared the representation of san francisco. she is the best of the best, just as a human being. and, you know, i often said to her, nancy, as she climbed up that ladder, it's really tough to be in leadership in the house. it was something i was never interested in, either in the house or the senate to go to the top of the echelon, because what you have to do is set aside your own goals, understand what everybody needs from you, understand when they can be with you, understand when they can walk away. look, there is nobody better at strategy. there is nobody better at mentoring. there is nobody better at getting things done. the woman got obamacare done. >> yes. >> she got a climate bill through. so i don't know what's happening there, but i think that there are just some people that are impatient. that's what i think. >> dorian, you did a lot of work sort of grassroots around this, the midterms and particularly connected to a bunch of progressive groups nationwide. move on has come out and endorsed nancy pelosi. what is your read on about the ideological aspect of this battle? >> nancy pelosi objectively, objectively is probably the best democratic legislator since lbj. so let's just start there. now i think you're right to point to this little, you know, internal fight with the five white guys who are not progressives. let's be very clear about that, who are gunning for her leadership. and i think the criteria that i think progressive groups would say is if you look at the backbone on the democratic party, and on a day of like today where many of us are heartbroken over stacey abrams and the governor's race in georgia, and think about the black women of the democratic party who are the most consistent, the voters who actually vote in their own self-interests for progressive policies, i think the question is, is nancy pelosi the best for them? and secondly, where is the rise in leadership for black women, say barbara lee or karen bass? and i know that the congressional progressive caucus has been negotiating with soon to be speaker pelosi around progressives broadly speaking on important committees. so i think that's where the action is, and that's the most important thing to take away here. >> well, one of the things that is happening in this fight is everyone now senses leverage. you have freshman coming who want committee assignments. alexandra ocasio-cortez joined a bunch of senators about getting a climate select committee. this is the way it works. people sense leverage. smart wielders of that, you're going to see something happen. there is going to have to be a bunch of deals made for this to get over the hump. >> right. and those deals are being made. this is what pelosi does. >> exactly. >> this is what she wants. i don't think she wants to just sail into the leadership. she would love to have a fight here. >> i think that's probably true. >> and she has already met with progressives and she has promised them prominent positions on committees, and that's what they wanted, and they came right out and endorsed her. >> right, which in some ways is a microcosm of what she is good at. >> that's why she is good. that's why she is still a leader. the people still opposing her, the five white guys have this vague opposition to her. we need something new. but they haven't put up a leader as effective as her, and they haven't given specifics as to what exactly she has done. >> this is what is weird to me. elections are choices of cads. they're not referendums. you can't replace the speaker of the house with a computer algorithm or a robot. somebody is going to be speaker of the house. if you don't want to be nancy pelosi, god bless you, run some people and then you can have a choice amongst them. but this weird thing about not here is strange. >> well, there is impatience. and, you know, i can only tell you this because of my experience. nancy has a lot of tools in the tool box, as your guests have noted. they're not only committee assignments, there are many other things. there are jobs in the leadership. and she knows how to bring people together. i'm telling you, i know her as well as i know any member of my family, and there is nobody else there. now, i also want to point out john lewis, who is an icon of the civil rights movement. he adores nancy. nancy has fought for equality her entire life. she is a champion for equal rights, for voting rights. who do you want making sure. >> yeah. >> that we protect social security, preexisting conditions? we could be on all night. and i no you don't want that. i'll stop. but she is the best to do it. >> part of it, obviously is that there is a bunch of members that made pledges they wouldn't vote for her. partly out of political expediency, because she does have high unfavorables in a lot of districts around the country. and they don't want their first vote to be break their promise. i'm sympathetic to that, aren't you? >> yeah, sure. look, they're politicians. they know how to explain votes that they have to take that they don't want to take. it's not a hard vote to take. and especially if they can leverage it for at least the strategic and smart ones, the five white guys don't seem to be strategic nor smart to me. and trying to grab marcia fudge is not a good move in my book. say this is what i got out of it. this is what the trajectory looks like by the way for 2020 in terms of new voices in the party that are coming up in the leadership that will be groomed and mentored. so if they can negotiate that, which i think the progressive caucus actually did in a smart strategic way, i think that's way forward. >> what do you think? >> i agree. i don't think they have put up any alternative to nancy pelosi, and i think the fact that republicans campaigned against her and lost in a big way -- >> that's part of it too, right. i want to go back in time to those candidates and say you didn't have to -- if you were doing it out of expediency, it turned out you probably didn't have to do that. >> right. and republicans probably would not have campaigned against her if she was a weak leader. obviously they see a formidable enemy in her and that's exactly what makes her good for the democrats. >> senator, i think there is sometimes a little misapprehension of the job. mitch mcconnell isn't exactly popular with the american people. he has huge negatives, but he is damn effective as the majority leader of the senate. the job is not necessarily to be popular. >> in a grumpy way, he is very effective, there is no question. i often look at mitch and i think he seems so unhappy in the job. >> he does. >> nancy is more of a happy warrior. mitch is so grumpy. >> he is. he does always look kind of miserable. >> yeah. >> but i imagine there is a light shining somewhere deep inside him as he tallies up additional t judicial confirmations. >> let's hope there is. i haven't found it yet. >> senator boxer, dorian warren and laura bassett, thank you all. "the rachel maddow show" starts right now. good evening, rachel. good evening. >> have an excellent weekend. thanks at home for joining us this hour. happy friday. the newly appointed head of the u.s. department of justice, matt whitaker, is not someone who you might have expected to ascend to the top law enforcement job in the united states of america, especially at this point in his life. he does not have a particularly distinguished resume. and i don't say that as an insult. i am not -- i do not mean it in a personal capacity. he just -- what i mean by that is he doesn't have the kind of experience, the kind of resume one usually associates with the job he currently holds. matt whitaker is from iowa. in the early 2000s, he joined a small iowa law firm. he also went into business in his home state. he went to a whole bunch of businesses. he owned a day care center and a concrete supply business, also a trailer manufacturer called road husky.