Meet the Press NOW – April 20

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Now. I'm Chuck Todd reporting here in Washington where the writing is already on the wall for Floyd Gunner around the sentence, there is no sugar coating this. His emerging presidential candidacy is struggling bigly, as someone might say. Despite huddling with Republicans in Washington in a behind the scenes operation to try to cement and rally home state support, it is Donald Trump who continues to pick up endorsements from Florida Republicans.

Today you can add Congressman Michael Wilkes, who represents DeSantis old congressional seat in Jacksonville. He officially endorsed Trump, touting the former president's record on the economy and national security. We have a great governor, we have an abundance of leadership in Florida. But my focus here in Washington is keeping the country safe.

And we need old leadership. We need experienced leadership. Like 10 congressional Republicans from Florida are now backing Trump and not DeSantis. I mean, the scientists kind of picture in Florida right now, well, they're both delivering for Florida.

So I mean, look, this is a difficult situation that we're in. However, President Trump's from Florida. He delivers for Florida and again on the international stage that deterrence is what we need. He's not from Florida, but he's become a resident recently.

So I guess he is now Floridian as far as Congressman Walt is concerned. The contest for House Republicans as so far not been a contest. Trump has secured endorsements from 11 of the states, 20 congressional Republicans. DeSantis is secured one.

His lack of support in Capitol Hill, by the way, he's a former member of Congress himself, may spell trouble for support back home as well down the ballot. According to Politico, Florida state legislators are deeply frustrated and feeling a bit worn out by the governor, particularly over his seemingly personal feud with Disney. One GOP legislator privately told Politico we're not the party of cancel culture. We can't keep doing this tit for tat.

Despite the challenges, DeSantis is carrying on what appears to be a prelude to a presidential campaign. He's boasting about what he calls a Florida blueprint. Last night in the early voting state of South Carolina, conservative policies are what the average person wants to see. Not just in Florida and South Carolina, but I think all across these United States.

Folks, let's take the obvious. It is early in this 2024 campaign, at least the calendar says it's early, the debate is four months from now, and the first nominating contest is nine months from now. That said, five months ago, Ron DeSantis was quickly becoming at least a co Republican frontier for 2024. He was fresh off a nearly 20 point landslide victory in his re election bid.

And Republicans nationwide were panicking about multiple midterm setback because of Trump's unpopularity and antics. And they see this dark red wave in Florida and they think, wow, what about that guy? But here we are today, six months later, DeSantis is not even the front runner in his own state. He's been trumped, literally and figuratively by the man who helped him rise to prominence.

And that may be the issue here is that DeSantis is Trump. And if you either want Trump or a clone of Trump, you'll take the original. The question now, as the sun set out to desensitis white households for now, will Trump's road The Republican nomination 2024 turn into a contest or coronation? Joining Me now is NBC's own resident Florida man, senior national politics reporter Matt Dixon.

And we're gonna also bring in a couple other folks who are veterans of presidential race. But now let's start with what's going on in Florida. And let's start with the congressional side first. Ron DeSantis went out of his way to make sure there was an even more favorable Republican map for members of Congress.

He created two new Republican districts. When even the Florida Republican legislature said, this is about the best we can max out and this is how grateful the Republican House members are to him, yes, he actually vetoed them. The congressional maps drawn by the very Republican dominated legislature and sort of drew his own. And those are under legal challenge yet.

But yeah, I mean, the Republican journey in the House because it was slimmer than a lot of people expected coming out of midterms, has a lot to do with Flor's maps and there's, you know, been a lot of reporting on it. But the charm offensive isn't exactly Governor stands as a strong suit. He had, you know, a staffer calling around some members of his home state congressional delegation asking them, you know, knock doors, kind of pump the brakes a bit. And Trump was making those calls himself.

And, you know, a few of the members that I've spoken to say things like that matter. And that's what this looks like. I mean, the Greg Stubby, the congressman who fell off his roof while he was trimming trees, ended up in the hospital, very serious. And to find out Donald Trump called him Ron Sans didn't.

I mean, who's, that's politics 101. Honestly, that's, that's a, that's a, any, I mean any company you work with and the leader finds out somebody on his team is in the hospital, they usually call. It is an odd disconnect here with a gun. Yeah, without question.

But that's kind of who he is and there's been a lot of discussion about that. It's, he's not good in those moments. His rise in politics and who he's become nationally is because he's sort of a hammer, blunt force sort of defines his style and you know, personal politics, professionally, however you want to frame it. And I think we're seeing prime examples of that.

I think it seems probably trying to work on it, but I think there's, you know, only, you know, there's limits to, limits to what you can do when the principle of where to go. Let's talk about the Tallahassee Republican issue. When they say they're exhausted, I read between the lines of this is not a bunch of Republicans who are, who are interested in having a fight with Disney for the next two years. Yeah, I don't want to date myself, but I've covered about 13 legislative sessions and I've never seen Republicans have to hold their nose and take books they don't want to take care so much.

The governor sort of has the legislature, you know, doing whatever he wants and there's certainly some exhaustion. None of them will really put their names on it. I was speaking with a member of the state executive committee for the Republic Party of Florida just earlier today. They sort of frame it as Trump is.

Trump is fighting Democrats and DeSantis is fighting a mouse and members of Congress and voters are siding with the person they think is waging the more important fight. And I think that's emblematic. There's certainly support for the governor here. There are members who really, really do like him, to support him.

But there's a lot of people who are tired. Let me ask you this, Matt. Is the DeSantis team, are they self aware here or not? I think there are some.

It's a nuance. It's an interesting question. I definitely think the core inner circle still has institutional confidence, some would call arrogance. But I do think there is a growing course among some of the governor supporters, maybe those who aren't necessarily always in the room, that the key, key advisors, but folks are helping that they need a bit of a course correction.

I have talked to Many who don't think that's coming, they think sort of this governor's ancestors is going to win or lose based on the cultural based trajectory he's been on so far. And no one's really expecting him to sort of step back and maybe, you know, change, change his perspective. I don't think anyone foresees that coming at the moment. And there's, there's no thought that he's getting cold feet, is there?

No, I, I still very much think he runs. And when he does run, I think he'll probably get a little bump. Mike, a lot of bit, I think at that moment when, you know, if he can maintain that momentum after that would be interesting. But I don't personally think that he's getting cold feet.

I think he's gonna run. Matt Dixon, our own floor man who covers national politics force, but based in the crater floor. Matt, thank you. So joining me now is a couple of people who know a little bit about running against Donald Trump or running with Donald Trump, depending on your point of view.

I've got former Ohio governor and ABC newstrand Kingston. Coming up in second will be former congressman from South Florida, Francis Rooney. But Governor Casey, let me, let me start with you. You've been in politics a long time, my friend.

And, and it does. And I'm curious what you make of watching Desantis. Is this a case of when you try to be, hey, I'm just like him, but I'm a, I'm the light version, right? Is this a case of I got a choice between Bud and Bud Light?

I guess that's the rug Beer should be focusing on these days with the Republicans. But if I'm gonna take butter but light, I'm gonna take the original. Right. I think that's true.

And is that what's happening here? I think that's a big chunk of it. I think, you know, you, I mean, there's a couple things. First of all, he's not in the race, right?

I mean, he's got one foot in the race and one foot out of the race. And so it's not surprising that there's a number of members down there that say, well, you know, you're not even in. So, and I got Trump over here, he's gonna hammer me. And, you know, that's part of it.

The other part of it is, is what you say, you know, you can't be Trump light. I mean, if you're gonna be, you know, some sort of a, you know, something that's kind of like it, but not quite it. People will go for the real thing. You know, you're like, coke, you're going to go with coke.

Not coke, white. And I think that's part of it. The other part of it is, you know, he's a front runner. And I kind of like the idea of being a front runner, Chuck.

But you know what happens to front runners? You know, they get hammered and hammered. Is it truck? But you know, you got my point.

My point is, as opposed to Trump, who's the front runner, that's viewed as somebody that could take Trump down. And so. And I just think he's the other problem. I think that he has is that he doesn't have that great personality now.

I'm told. I told you today. Do you know, have you had. I've only met him one time.

One time. He's never called you up. I'm always curious. You know, there's always, like, if you think about doing something you've never done before, a lot of times I know what I do.

I call it people who've done it. Tell me what that's like. Right? Yeah.

Have you gotten that call from him? No, no, I saw him one time. It was brief and it was fine. But you know, what I would say is that if you sit in Congress and you don't know anybody, then you go back and you say, I need you to help me.

Sometimes guys are. And women are not really, you know, kind of fired up to do it. Let me just say a couple things, though, about the Ford legislature. When they say they're exhausted.

Exhausted doing what? You know, go work on a rooftop somewhere and do blue collar labor for a couple hours. And they call me by telling me about being exhausted. They're whining.

I mean, I went through that with my legislature. He has a big agenda now. They may not like his agenda. And fighting with Disney, to me, you know, that just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

But he has a couple things going for him. He's got money raised money at least at this point, he's putting together a pretty good team. And I understand he's signing somebody out that can help him in Iowa. But he's got to focus on those early races.

He can't be, you know, thinking, I can get to the early races later. Giuliani tried that, remember that shot? And it went nowhere. It was like, you know, a lead balloon.

So, you know, it's early. And to be a president, money okay. Ideas critical. And, you know, you know, the third one Magic.

You got to have the magic. And we'll have to see if he has it. But let me ask you about message and messenger, right? Look, I have been.

I have thought that the same. This was sort of an idea that hadn't been tested in theory. And we're starting to see it, and, you know, we're gonna find out. I mean, I can't.

When I've ever seen him perform as a candidate, I've always been like, whoa. I mean, his debate performances are definitely a little stilted and things like that. But let me talk about that message. Is there a message?

I had somebody say to me, what Ron DeSantis needs to figure out is how to give Donald Trump his gold watch. Say, thank you very much. Here's your gold watch. You've been amazing.

You've been terrific. And DeSantis had to figure out how to do that. But is that the right message? I don't think so.

I think the message is. And DeSantis actually said this, Chaka, I guess, a couple weeks ago, he said, look, the chaos is not good. I have people in my administration, DeSantis administration, who really understand what my agenda is. They follow my agenda.

These were shots at Trump. Now, you know, the media wants, you know, heavyweight knockdown. Remember, many heavyweight championships, fights are won on technical knockouts. You know, what you do round by round, by round, by round.

And, you know, DeSantis landed a couple blows, I think, right there. But we haven't heard too much since then. But, you know, the idea of talking to Trump about how great he is. No, no, just do your job.

Tell them why you. Why. You know, it's Mike Wallace, right? Why do you.

Senator Kennedy, why do you want to be president? DeSantis has to tell people why he wants to be president and what's the creative things he wants to do. This drift into being a social media guy and trying to get to the same place where Trump is. I don't.

I don't know about you. I don't think that works for you. I mean, I just don't think that's a positive message. Where's the message of hope?

Where's the message of getting people to be bigger than they are, to think about how they can change the world? I don't see that. This is where I worry that worries are wrong more. Sometimes I wonder if we're just creatures of a previous, a previous world.

Donald Trump himself said, the old Republican Party is dead. I destroyed it. I'm the new Republican Party. What you're describing, look, that's the politics I was raised on, which is you gravitated towards the center.

You tried to be above politics, even if you were a partisan, in order to win a general election, you. But that is not what today's politicians believe. Chuck, Chuck, the Republican Party has gotten slaughtered. We lost the presidential.

We lost all these special elections. We didn't do well in the midterm. I mean, if you're a Republican, you're losing, and you're losing on those issues. There's no issues of hope out there.

Hope always works, Chuck. It always works, you know, with a legitimate foundation that tells you how you can get the hope. People are frustrated today with their lives. They're worried about the economy, all this stuff.

You're not going to win that by having a fight with, you know, with Donald Trump on some. Who's going to be the most conservative here on some of these social issues. I think the old message does work, Chuck. You got to upgrade it.

It's got to be modern. You got to be able to talk about AI and, you know, and all the things, machine learning and all these things and education and all that. But, you know, to go into this dark world, negative, negative, negative world, that doesn't work. Let me just tell you another thing, Chuck.

Remember this? I went to New Hampshire in 16. I lost the Trump. I beat everybody else, and I started with 1%.

How did I do it? Being in with crowds, being in there having a positive message. And then, of course, the media so followed Trump, it was ridiculous. He got all the publicity.

If I had been able to get the money and attention, I might have done a lot better than what I did. I did all right, though. Positive. Look, I don't know if this Republican Party wants a positive message, and they probably don't keep losing until they get one.

I mean, how many times you have to sing the song where the crowd booze you? We're losing. Every Republicans are losing. I'm an American.

I have to be an American before I'm a Republican. And the fact is that the message that's out there now, the message that they're trying to give is not a positive, good, hopeful message. I don't think it works. Jack Casey, I'll let you go.

It's always a pleasure to get your perspective here, particularly someone who put themselves out there, been on a ballot, been up against Trump. You have some unique experiences, as always. Good to see you. Thank you, sir.

Good to see you, Chuck. Thank you. All right. And as promised, technical difficult.

We got things working with me now. Is someone who knows a lot about both Republican politics and Florida politics. It's former Florida Congressman Francis Rooney. Carmen, good to see you.

How to work this out. Thanks for having me back on. All right, I'm gonna make you respond to something you told me six months ago and get your assessment of what you said then and when you still back it up. Let me play the clip for you, sir.

While Trump buried us with these elections, so many people are still currying favor and hiding under Trump's penumbra. And I don't see the value in that. And to keep hearkening back on the past, the world has moved beyond Trump, but there are a certain number of very conservative Republicans who don't seem to have that figured out yet. Now, you said that in November.

Right. And it was just after. Right. What happened in the midterms.

And look, I thought you were speaking for a growing number of rank and power Republicans. That's not what we're seeing right now. Well, we're seeing a rise in his whole polling support as a result of things like that indictment. I think that shows you that there's still a hardcore group of people that are going to do anything for Trump and we're not going to win.

The Democrats have this thing figured out and we're still Ned, the third grade reader. They want to run against Trump and be. Let me ask you this. Give some advice to Governor DeSantis.

What is your take as to why he has been outmaneuvered? I mean, I had one person who say it. It's all thanks to Susie Wiles, who's a longtime Florida political consultant. Are you really going to tell me that a Florida political consultant has outmaneuvered around the census here?

No. I think there's a couple things Ron could probably do better at, you know, in terms of working as donors and showing a little more warmth to people in the crowd and working the rope lines and stuff like that. But the end of the day, I think this is about Trump and his hardcore support. You know, down where I'm from, those people would do anything.

So what? How do you get beyond that? Because you're right. I mean, look, there are some Democrats who I think believe that, hey, the more attention they pay to him, they basically ice out anybody else.

And we know he has a hard ceiling. I think that's a crazy notion to think about that way. If you're truly fearful of him being present, you shouldn't want to get him the nomination. But let's set that aside.

How do you break through that if you're Republicans. Well, that's why I keep calling for more other voices to get in the fray like Governor Yucken. It's good that Nikki Haley is in there. And as Governor Kasich said quite astutely, we need some discussion on positive ways to go forward, positive policies and not just your typical Trump negativity and bringing things down.

And maybe that would help run the debate a little bit. Well, I come from a time when I was always told the most optimistic candidate usually wins. That's how you win general elections. So I get where you're coming from.

We will see where the party has Francis Ring, Apologies for the tech issues, but I'm five to five minutes. Thank you, sir. Thank you. You got it.

Up next, U.S. troops are having to get ready for a potential evacuation of our embassy in Sudan as the country's security situation continues to deteriorate. We have the latest from the Pentagon. You watch me Press.

Welcome back. NBC News has confirmed reports this afternoon that the US Militaries had a position troops in the East African country of Djibouti in case of a potential need to evacuate. Americans in Sudan. Fighting in Sudan continues when the capital city of Khartoum despite a proclaimed cease fire.

Civilians including Americans in Sudan have been caught up in a violent struggle for political control between a parent military group associated with countries vice president and Sudan's official military associated with the president. This death count from the WHO stands over 330. And despite this military movement, the State Department has not yet asked for an evacuation of embassy staff or American citizens. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reports today that the State Department is trying to get staff all in one place.

We have good accountability of all our government personnel there working in and out of the embassy. They are all not still co located. So the State Department is still embassy. They're still trying to get them all co located together for their own safety.

They are still sheltering in place where they are. Courtney Cuby has been reporting on the story all day today. And Courtney, give me a sense of how much infrastructure are we putting in Djibouti in order to prepare for this? So there's already some infrastructure that's there.

So remember after the attack on the consulate in Benghazi more than a decade ago, Chuck, the Marine Corps established, by the time they were calling a special purpose magtaf Marine Air Ground Task Force, they sort of changed the construct a little. But they still have these small quick reaction force teams. They're regional, including one that's called Crisis Response. Now There are several hundred Marines that are actually already in Djiboutia Camp Lemieh.

It's East Africa, not too far from Sudan. There's already several hundred of them there. They're essentially an aviation combat unit that would have the ability to respond to something like this. So some of the infrastructure exists already there.

According to U.S. defense officials, the U.S. is still sending in even more, including what could will likely include some special operations forces. And part of that is because of just what a contested environment it is right now in Khartoum.

You mentioned that there's been days and days of fighting. There's a ceasefire that's clearly not holding right now. If it's a more contested environment, that's when we could see rather than this Marine air ground task force or this Marine aviation unit going in to potentially evacuate people, we could see special operations forces. And what would be in addition to just potentially being fired at or fired upon while they're flying in or on the ground?

In addition to that, there's also the problem that the airport's not even operable right now. So we have to find an alternative location to go to. It's a difficult logistics environment if in fact they do call for evacuation and the evacuation is just focused on MSC and Ms. Personnel and any Americans get there.

19,000American citizens estimated to be in country. I know a lot of them are dual citizens. What kind of promises will American America make if we're starting back with MC person now? We keep going back and getting Americans.

The military is preparing to not only get out as the MC personnel, but if there is a call for a larger evacuation of American citizens, they're preparing for their sending the infrastructure if they are called to do so. Okay, so do you sense that the State Department asks the Pentagon, look, we're not asking for it yet, but just be ready. Is that the best way to describe this? I think the military decided to get ready.

They saw the attack on that convoy the other day in Khartoum and they. This is very standard, right? They put people in place if they're called upon for something, but they see the situation there and it doesn't surprise me that there are new preposition people. All right, Courtney, QB an administration that does not need a second type of situation that looks like Afghanistan.

Anyway, Courtney, thank you. After the break, lights up the culture wars at the capitol as the U.S. house passes its own transgender sports band in schools. One of the latest in the GOP bill found to die in the Senate.

What says about the road 2024 house next. Welcome back. House Republicans follow the lead of many state House Republicans and took action today on an issue that has been firing up the conservative base, at least in theory. We don't know if this actually matters at the polls yet, but it's not on the board.

It's not on spending our health care. It is on trans athletes. The only Republican votes, the House passed the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports act, which would amend Title I to bar schools that receive federal funding for allowing trans athletes participating in women's sports. For what it's worth, they don't make this designation on men's sports.

Bill has no chance of making it through a Democratically controlled Senate. Of course, while there are only a very small number of trans athletes competing in sports, it is something that has fired up Republican commentators nationwide. Take a listen to House number three in leadership least, Stefanik, earlier today. This is about protecting women's sports now and into the future.

And we anticipate this will be passed today. And it is a winning issue across America standing up for the future of women and girls. Join me now on set. Tamara Keith Scenes bookwingless Cornell Belcher and Republican strategist Doug High.

Tamara, I make the note again, this is only talking about trans women participating in women's sport. There's nothing on there about trans men saying male sports for what it's worth. But it's that last comment I at least define. I talk to many Republicans who believe, they keep thinking if they, if they frame this as protecting women's sports, that it's going to get more support.

And I don't think that's worked. So Title nine is about women's sports. So that's, that's what's going on here with that. And if you look at polling, the majority of Americans do not want trans athletes or they want trans athletes playing in the sport according to the gender they were born with.

Right. However, in terms of like a motivating voting issue, I think the jury is very much out and there's no proof yet. No, there was a navigator poll around the time of the midterms. Now, this is a Democratic ish polling firm, so take it with a grain of salt.

But they talked to 5,000 voters and among Republican voters, only about 20% said it was a motivating issue for them. You know, people care a lot more about the economy and, and certainly the abortion issue. We should make note there is some Title 9 recommendations that the Biden administration did amend to deal with trans athletes And Cornell, one of the things that essentially they gave the power to. They said if they're banned from competition, that's okay.

Like it was one of those, they should be banned from being on the team. But it's sort of up to the universities, it's up to the competition. So Navy Spider said, yes, we agree. I've heard this conversation about how we should leave it up to, you know, the states or the localities for coming for Republicans, something really interesting that they decided they had to do a national.

A national ban. Last time I checked. I actually did check before coming here. I can't find transgender issues as a top 10 issue concern anywhere in this country.

So. So you have Republican Congress who ran largely on we gotta fix it, kinda fix it, gotta fix it. Oh, and by the way, crime is out of control. It'd be really, really interesting that they've wasted this much time moving something that impacts maybe 10 people across this country when they ran on taking care of, you know, taking care of issues of crime and making the economy better.

And I've yet to see any major legislation that they pass around the issue that quite frankly, most important American people, I think for the average voter that maybe, you know, sort of glances political highlines, maybe once a week, sits down, watches a Sunday show, fleeing the press. But one thing they might heard from the Republicans has to do with light trans athletes. They're not talking about. I mean, to Konoha's point, isn't this a potential problem?

That they're not focusing on the issues that everybody else tends to focus on is a problem. And I think we can see this in some of the demographics of what we've seen. Women's sports have gone through a wide change of leaps and bounds in the prominence of American sports. We just saw that with the final four, where they believe that women's final four got a lot more attention and interesting.

And while I think that they can correctly argue about protecting women's sports, Republicans, especially conservative Republican primary voters, I'm going to step off on limb here and say probably don't actually watch a lot of women's sports. So it's not really the demographic, the targeted demographic is the one that follows that argument most closely. You know, it's one of those things. Arguably, there was a lot of people concerned in 2021 that Democratic consultants were living in a bubble.

And so these culture issues, everyone lives in a bubble. It's just that your bubble is different from my bubble. My bubble is different from your bubble. And we despise and love other people's bubbles.

We Love ours because we think ours is. It is shipped to abortion here a little bit. It was very interesting. According to the Washington Post, the chair of the rnc, Ronald on again has privately been circulating polling to candidates showing the American public broadly support the 15 week ban and she's privately expressed concerns about a six week ban.

More hammering over what to do about abortion with the leadership of the Republican Party. You might say that this is a Republicans in disarray moment where Republicans have this very big issue that when it was abstract and it was an academic debate and it wasn't about anyone's rights really because Roe was in place then, they were pretty unified. But now that Roe is gone and they're in the position of making policy and needing to take a position on very specific things, there's not actual agreement among Republicans on what their position should be. And there is very real concern that taking too extreme a position, though many, many candidates and state leaders are moving directly towards that more extreme position, that that extreme position is going to cause them major problems in the election.

Cornell, the irony is that what got the DOT's decision was a law in Mississippi that was trying to be 15 wings. You tell me, would there be as much usefulness as the abortion issue rallying Democratic candidates if the rest of the Republic party get 15 weeks and 15 weeks with law and there would be Democratic activists going no, no, no, that's too little. Would it have the same impact? That's a really good question.

But as you know, if you're arguing process and politics, chuck your loose right. I think this is an issue that. And by with that issue is going away again going to the next election. This will be a top two issue and it'll be an issue that absolutely.

If you dislike by gender it'll. And if you look at the gender gap that continues to grow, especially in the suburbs and battleground states, this is a problem for Republicans. I don't know how you get Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin suburbs back with this issue. It goes back to Doug, think about your old days.

The rnc, the goal back then used to be what's your addition? What are you adding to your, to your, to your tape pool of voters? Where are Republicans adding right now? They're not on this.

And part of that is the RNC wants to make a national effort because you have 50 states are going to do 50 things and it's sort of the name that tune. You're banning that abortion in seven weeks? Well, I can ban that abortion in six weeks and nobody gets that more. Ironically than Donald Trump.

He is more single handedly responsible because the three Supreme Court justices and he's not saying a word. Trump gets it, which is not something I say very often. All right, let's move to Florida and Ron DeSantis. I, it's early.

All the caveats but boy, this feels Tamara, like, like the sequel to the movie Failure to Launch or the Jeb Bush the movie exclamation point. In fact, I was gonna say John Casey keep picking up because, you know, you know, while Ron DeSantis really did take, he had a good message saying, you know, Trump's filled with chaos. And I'm like, you know, the first person made the chaos. So what the former president has been able to do is line up and let's just say endorsements may not matter as much as they used to, but the former president has been able to consolidate Republicans in Florida at this point.

He's got about half of the congressional delegation. He's a corporate factor. We're a world building carpet. We don't care.

But he's been afforded for about 10 minutes. Right. He, he disclaimed his New York citizenship at some point. But he has locked those people down and that is an indication potentially of something larger that and you know, Trump is back on Fox and you know, like all DeSantis has somehow is not as shiny as he was a couple months ago.

Yes, the both of you, this is desantis. Sorry about the Santa Trump. Both Trump's team has handled this, definitely handled this in their timing on these endorsements. And meanwhile, Susie plots.

Absolutely. I do think she gets a bunch of crap. I mean I had such a cocky. She's just iced him and it's like welcome to being, you know, to say to Sock, he couldn't knife, you know, bully everybody in the state.

Meanwhile, what is the topic on every TV channel today and yesterday? Gases gas stations in the Miami area. Where's the governor? Not in the state.

Not at this gas station saying, I'm going to solve this problem. And it's not a cultural problem. It's something that affects Every Florida politics 101 pro camping politics 101. You've got at some point disqualified the person.

You just do. I think they brilliantly make a strategic because his whole sort of predicate was, well, I'm Trumpish. But if Trump fails on the fallback when you disqualify him, I thought the legal problems were a perfect way for him to start disqualifying. And he took up the Trump message on the legal argument about arms very quickly at this point in time in 07 people were handwriting about Obama oh he's not taking to Hillary.

Is it a similar comparison or not all polls at this point do not matter but he has but you can see pathway for Obama change different Anti anti Washington I don't I have a hard time seeing pathway for him. It's strong light anti Washington would have been an interesting place for him to go. But yes Washington's rejecting Martin sentence and Mr. I who came with a Reggie bar.

How's that for your four time celebration after the break? High anxiety for Senate Democrats. I'm heading to the big border break down the 2024 sets it play and the curious watch for the one and only Steve Koraki who's visiting the doing state visit to the bureau. Go anywhere.

You watch me first now. Welcome back. I'm here at the big board because I got a special guest who's visiting the D.C. bureau today.

It's an early look at the 2024 Senate map. We may be more than five days from election day, but there are some inferences we can already make from even this far out. Here's the map as it stands right now. This is a map.

As we've been saying for a while, Democrats have a lot of ground to defend and they don't have many places to go on offense from incumbents in states Trump won like Montana, Ohio, West Virginia, to the perennial swing states these days of Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. All of those have key Senate races. But unlike the Senate races in 2022, this map isn't happening in a vacuum. Next November's presidential race could have a huge impact on every one of these races.

Why is that? Check this out. In 2020, only one state had a Senate contest that went a different way than the presidential race. That was our friends Susan Collins right here in Maine, the only one.

Not a single state did that in 2016 and only one in 2020. Let me bring our special guest Steve Kornacki. When we're both working the board. What are we gonna do here?

Look, here's the 2020 map. Let's bring back and it just reminded just one look, everything was narrow but everything went the same direction. What was one that was I mean it was Michigan maybe was the one that sort of surprised people. The Senate race got almost as close as the president.

Yeah. But what that really gets to is that thing always talk about split ticket voting has just been in decline and you're down to a point that for frankly it was surprised that even one state in 2020. I was upset when she. Because that second congressional district did vote for Troy.

So in some ways that was the saving grace for her. Let's bring up the 2024 map here a minute. Just where the Senate races are and the 2024 Senate map, it's got all the battleground states. We got Wisconsin, we got Michigan, we got Pennsylvania.

I throw in Minnesota. Right. You've got Nevada and Arizona. So here you have your battleground states and then there's the other three that probably make it so that the Democrats are more likely to lose control of Senate.

That's the basically what you're just saying there. When Joe Biden could get reelected in 2024, is Biden carrying West Virginia over Trump? He also bet by 42 points. Is he carrying Montana over Trump?

That's a 20 plus point state. Is he carrying Ohio over Trump? That we now generally regard as a pretty safe Republican state presidential election. So all he's got to do is carry those unless there's an upset or really there's two.

Right. Isn't it just right. Like Democrats have to win two of those. Three of three Republicans probably only need one.

And there's really only two places even remotely you can make an argument that they could target and win and that'd be Texas in four. Yeah. The crazy thing too is, I mean split ticketing has been declined for a long time. So this trend is a long time coming.

But if you look at this same set of Senate races, he wasn't that long ago in 2012, Barack Obama got reelected. Heidi Heitkamp, London. Joe Donnelly, Missouri, Claire McCaskill got reelected. I think we had it here.

Six states in 2012. Yeah. Six of them. Nevada, you had a Republican.

Republican was able to win. Yeah. Nevada, six different races ended up split ticketing. We've had one in the last two presidential cycles.

And if there is not more than one for the Democrats, it is likely you and I'm disgusting. Joe Biden, if he wins re elections more likely to get the House in his party's hands and lose because again, it would require to keep. If Biden is reelected, he's got to either get his candidate to win a state, he's going to lose by about 40. West Virginia or state he's probably going to lose by 20.

Plus Montana, there's house districts that are a lot more competitive than they could win. And then let's flip the script here. If Donald Trump or the Republican wins the president, we're assuming already it's fighting Trump, we can discuss that later. But if, if the Republicans win the presidency, they're probably gonna win at least some of these swing state Senate races.

It means the Republicans, the Republican presidents likely have both houses. Yeah. The odds of there being complete control for one party, 20, 24, much better if that is the case. It may not be the case at all.

But if it is the case, the odds are it would be the Republicans because the Republicans ended up winning nationally. We're going through the Senate here. They already have the House for the Democrats to win nationally. Okay.

Maybe you can make an argument in the House. You're really starting to stretch now. We did one battle in Montana this week. This idea Republicans.

John Tester has won Montana. He's only 17 seat. Last time he got narrowly over 50. Okay.

It was the first time he'd ever done it. He did not get over 1506 and he did not get over 50 in 2012. The meaning of him not having to get to 50. Yeah, again, it was, that was a three point race in 2018 is what it came down to.

So, yeah, if you can lower the threshold of biffram, it gives him a bit of a fighting chance. But the other one is think of Mansion in West Virginia. You think Mansion runs? Mansion may be on ballot in West Virginia and a lot of other states.

Jim justice, the Republican governor, is he going to run? Is he getting a clear path? Does it look like he's going to be the candidate? Not a clear path.

Does it look like he's going to overwhelm the Republican field there? And if so, boy, that makes it tough for me. I will say this, Jim justice will be as easy to win a voter for Democrat as your mitigation. Yeah, thanks for listening.

Silicon Assessment. How would the US Respond if China invaded Taiwan? How's China? Committee members held war games this week to answer that very question.

Amid rising tensions between Washington and Beijing, one of the lawmakers on the China Committee who participated in that war game this week. Join me next with more. You're WATCHING THE PRESS now. Welcome back to years 2027.

And the US is deciding how to respond to China's invasion of Taiwan. That was the fictional scenario that two dozen US Lawmakers were simulating last night on Capitol Hill. This war game was led by China Select Committee Chairman Mike Gallagher and was run by the D.C. based Thinkpank center for a New American Security.

For roughly two hours, lawmakers acted as National Security Council advisors, deciding the best military, diplomatic and economic actions to take against Beijing. With the security of the Asia Pacific hanging in the balance. Last year, we here at Meet the Press did an episode of Meat Press Reports and we conducted a similar tabletop exercise also with CNAS and also with Congressman Gallagher. Take a listen to what was our biggest takeaway from that exercise.

My biggest takeaway. And I want to save this last question for the two of you because you're really elected officials, you're going to have to try to do this. We need an AI. It is pretty clear we need one.

I think we have an urgent need for more basing agreements. And the reason that became very apparent throughout the war game. We had three, three allies that were involved in the conflict. But we still struggle to project power when we need to project it.

And again, that was Mike Alighier participating in the war game. We didn't catch that version of the China war game on ABC news.com right now on NBC news.com MTP reports or you can see on the banana Peacock. I want to join me now is Democratic congressman from California, Rokhana. He's also a member of this China Select Committee and he participated in this war game yesterday.

So Congressman, that's what I took away. We did not, we did a, we did a shrunken version of it. You guys spent time also on the economic sanction front, the sort of the pre, the pre pregame, if you will, before exchanging military fire. You tell me, what did you learn?

What did you, what didn't you know going in that you're glad you know. Now the overall lesson is that a war with China would be devastating and catastrophic for humanity and the United States. So anything we can do, there's no winner. We never had a winner.

There's no winner in this. There's no winner and it means thousands of loss of life and economic hatred. Here's what surprised me. Under the scenario, there was an assumed no communication between the United States and Beijing intermilitary political leadership.

Now our committee had met with Bob Iger and Tim Cook about a week ago. If Bob Iger has been to China 45 times, my impression with Bob Iger, China, more than probably many people in our military are in this relationship, probably has more channels of communication and we need to figure out how we keep the lines of communication open at the same time for our military. And that was really, we had enough communication. Why did, why was that assumption made?

Obviously this is an issue right now. I mean, China continues to block a rescheduling of Secretary Blinken's trip to the nation. Well, we all have the same formalized agreement that we did with the Soviet Union, where we had military to military communication, where we had methods established, where Secretaries of State could communicate. And right now I think Secretary Blinken has done a very good job of trying to figure out how we are tough and make sure we're rebalancing the economic relationship with China, making it clear that they cannot invade in any way Taiwan, but also having communication and.

And that needs to be formalized. We need to do a lot more to formalize it. Let me ask about the economic aspect of this, the sanctions. Gallagher, my galler told reporters today that you played out those economic and financial moves and the counter moves.

Describe to me what that looked like and why do you think it didn't work in this exercise? Well, it didn't work because to the extent that GP is going to be motivated to invade Taiwan, it's out of a cultural reunification. It is out of a sense of having China restored to their nation that they see before the emulation. And they're factoring in all the economic consequences.

They're factoring in that we control the straight up hormones and can block some of their oil supply. And they're factoring in that they may be able to get that from Russia. And so if they actually take that step, it becomes very hard to deter them. And that's why the deterrence and the prevention has to be before him.

I actually think that the strategic ambiguity has served the country quite well in deteriorating. When I was in Taiwan, I led bipartisan delegation. We heard the same for the dpp. Yes, help us get arms and have defense, but continue to have engagement.

We've lived with the Chinese up and down for the last 40 years. We want to be secure, but we also want to continue the business relationship. I'm curious what you thought of the exercise and is it something you know, I had Mikey Sherlock and Mike Gallagher participating in this one that we did. They both said when one members of Congress ought to do this, Congress ought to do this more often.

It was not something that was a regular thing. What did you make of it? Is it something you'd like to see? I thought it was constructive.

I thought it was done well. One of the things I want to displace chair Gallagher. Is he really trying to take the politics out of this? They're not the grandstanding speeches and I think it's helpful.

I do think one thing that would be helpful though, is to figure out what would prevent war in the first place. I mean, we started with China is invading and I guess the questions I would want to do your point about the nation. NATO is if we didn't move X or move Y, would that deter China? And to gain out, what are effective deterrence strategies for China?

Well, I mean, do you think we should be putting together a Pacific alliance that looks like NATO? I think we need to be increasing our defense of ourselves to Taiwan and we need to make sure we have long range missile capacity in, in places and allies. Where, Where? Japan, Philippines, India.

I don't know if we need to have a formal structure. We definitely need, need to strengthen the alliances and have military capability, both naval, to make sure there's no blockade and to make sure that there's no amphibious landing. A quick political question for you. Any regrets about going public with your, with your call for Senator Feinstein to resign?

Were you the right person to be the one to call for it in California? I don't know if it was the right person, but I said, what is the truth? Which is that the senator has just not been able to fulfill her duty. 75 missed votes today.

The Judiciary Committee nominated or passed seven candidates, but they didn't pass five of them because Senator Feinstein is not there. And in private, a lot of people have said, yeah, Rob, thanks for speaking out now. I know, look, I'm coaching. Barbara said that, Gavin, you should appoint someone else.

And so don't, don't appoint one of the candidates running. So I don't think that that creates a conflict. I was after saying, go appoint Barbara. It'd be different.

I'm curious, you still comfortable with President Biden's election? Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, if he's one of the 20 people to be a surrogate for him, I'm hoping to be out there making the case.

Are you gonna ask to be a formal part of the campaign? You just said that. Is that something they're lining up right now? There's a, there was a report in the Washington Post.

I learned about it reading about in the papers that I was named for one of these as 20 of his surrogates said, yes. Right? And I said, yes, look, he's been a successful president. Chuck, here's the deal.

You know, I've been traveling around the country. I still think he's the best vet in Pennsylvania, in Michigan and Wisconsin with those things. All right, I'm up against it. We'd have plenty more to talk about.

Good to see you, Congressman. Appreciate you taking, taking some time and telling us about this board game. And thank you all for being with us. This outreach personality news, how coverage t keeps rolling along with Hallie Jackson.

Right now, everyone, I'm Dylan Driver, co host of the third hour of Stay and mom to three wild boys. I've learned a lot my years as a parent. Mostly that I don't have it all figured out yet. And I'm not the only one.

This is my new podcast, the Parent Chat. Each week, I sit down with someone new for honest conversation and real world advice about parenting. I'm over here just, like, winging it. Hey, I'm trying not to prove my own kid.

I want to give you advice on how to screw yourself. Search parent chat on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts.