Meet the Press NOW — August 31

It's here! The Ford is a big deal! Not yet! The Ford is a big deal- Oh guys, just wait!

The Ford is a big deal event is on! Really? Now! Hurry up to least a 2026 Maverick XLT hybrid all-wheel drive for $197 by weekly at $5.29 for $6.95 with $29.95 down.

That's like $99 a week! The Ford is a big deal event. Visit your Ontario Ford store or Ford.ca. Hey everyone, I'm Dylan Dryer, co-host of the 3rd Hour of State and Mom to Three Wild Boys.

I've learned a lot in 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, we're on this conversation and real-world advice about parenting.

I am over here just like winging it. Hey, I'm just trying not to screw my own kids up, I'm not giving you advice, I'm not screwing yourself. There's a parent chat on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. If it's Thursday, the future of the past, a slew of new questions being raised for both parties, about their leaders, after a second on camera, health scare, or Senator Mitch McConnell.

Plus surveying the damage after Adalia 24 hours later, as communities start to figure out how to clean up from this storm, the federal government has to figure out how to pay for it. And Trump, under oath, inside the New Testament, coming to light in the former president's legal battle in New York, the other one, as he pleads not guilty and yet another case. And welcome to Meet the Press Now. I'm Chuck Tout reporting from Washington, where we begin once again with an uncomfortable topic in this town.

That's just one of the major ongoing issues that erodes trusting government right now. A rapidly aging political leadership, Senator Republican Leader Mitch McConnell appeared to freeze up again at an event yesterday in Covington, Kentucky. It's a moment that was hard to watch. It was unresponsive for more than 30 seconds, despite being prodded by his staff.

It's the second time this summer that we, the public, has seen a moment like this from the Republican leader. We don't know if this has happened at other times without cameras. He also appeared to freeze during a press conference on Capitol Hill late last month. And that time he was led away by fellow senators and but later joked about Biden stumbling at an event earlier this year.

President, call me. I vote like I'm Sam Bex. Oh, no, he's how you feeling now, sir? How are you feeling now?

Any idea what happened? Any idea what happened? I'm fine. That's a good word.

And watch those sandbags. So that was after July, now after yesterday's incident, incident, McConnell, I said he was momentarily lightheaded and that he would see a doctor before his next event. All of this comes after he was hospitalized with a concussion in March. Today, the Capitol physician said McConnell is medically clear to work and his symptoms are common while recovering from a concussion.

McConnell's office also wanted to make it known that he was back to talking to senators last night. It is important to know that 81 year old McConnell is not alone in showing his age. California Democratic Senator 9 Feinstein, who is 90, missed months of votes after a bout of shingles and has appeared disoriented at times on the Hill. Though she doesn't do have to do weekly press conferences like Mitch McConnell does.

Minnesota Democratic Congress, Dean Phillips posted online yesterday for goodness sake. The family, friends and staff of Senator Feinstein McConnell are doing them and our country a tremendous disservice. It's time for term limits for Congress and the Supreme Court and some basic human decency. According to the polls, the American people are essentially on the side of Phillips's beliefs here.

And this month's AP, North Pole, more than two thirds of Americans believe there should be age limits for congressional candidates, Supreme Court justices and presidential candidates. In that same poll, 77% of Americans and 69% of Democrats say President Biden is too old to effectively serve a second term. Now, the issue of aging is not one that the White House wants to be talking about, which makes an episode like McConnell's a problem for Democrats as well. But Republicans have a problem as well because it gets a lot harder for them to point to Biden's age issue.

When their own Senate leader has the same liability and appears to be a bigger obstacle for him at the moment. And it bears repeating by the end of the year 16 senators, 44 House members and delegates as well as one Supreme Court justices will all be 75 years or older. Ali Vitaly is on Capitol Hill for us, Ali Roth is outside the White House in a moment. We joined by someone who's covered in Connell in Congress for a long time.

Washington Post senior congressional correspondent Paul Kane. So, Ali, let me start with you. We got it does seem as if McConnell's office is very sensitive to the perception that he that he has the ability to lead. The quick calls, the leadership, fellow members of leadership, the appearance of the Jim Banks fundraiser, the Capitol physician today, it does seem as if his office has gone in overdrive here.

Well, of course they have Chuck. And this is not the first time that we've seen them do it. Of course, we had that July incident before the Senate went on, where he says, I think during that moment, there was a little bit more cover because McConnell was with other senators who were able to sort of pick up where he left off, do that press conference. He was able to come back and then do more Q and A with reporters.

I think there was a little bit more visibility into just physically seeing him after an episode like that. Now, though, because this has become a pattern because it's the second time that we've seen the exact same thing and in a moment where McConnell was on his own. And so the whole event sort of had to pause while he took the time he needed. Of course, his office is doing a lot to try to show the fact that even though he's out of view of the Capitol, he is still very much at work.

And I think that though politics is usually a pretty cutthroat business, what we've seen among Republicans who are in leadership and even those who just talk with him and our allies at McConnell's, they have been quick to say that they spoke to him yesterday, that he was in good spirits, and that he was back to work as usual, showing that picture from the Congress and Jim Banks fundraiser. All of that meant to lend to the picture that he's fine. And he's even getting some bipartisan cover from the president himself by trying to make it so that this is commonplace for someone recovering from a concussion, despite the fact that concussion was now months ago, Chuck. Allie, they've not been transparent with the public and we heard three weeks ago from various Republican senators, I can think of Kevin Kramer in particular, who said, look, you know, they take him at his word, but they'd like a little bit more information, maybe at their own Senate.

You know, essentially, what are we defending here? Tell us more. You know, is he going to bring a physician to a Senate Republican caucus lunch? I mean, I think that's a question.

Certainly we have several of them posed to McConnell's office right now about what this looks like going forward. And you've got to imagine when senators come back next week, this is something that they're going to be asked about in the halls and certainly then ask about during Senate lunch. I mean, this is a moment where unlike Feinstein and I'm glad you pointed this out. McConnell does a weekly press conference and he's going into a very high stakes time where he and Kevin McCarthy are going to be trying to shepherd their party through a vast range of things that they have on government funding with a looming deadline.

This is someone who Republican senators are going to want to feel is in top shape to potentially go toe to toe with McCarthy on things like appropriation, funding levels on things like Ukraine funding. These are key fundamental things that they're going to have to deal with and they're going to want to have confidence in their leadership. So even though right now, everything is sort of copistetic, you got to imagine that when people start coming back to town, more questions are going to be raised in McConnell and his team are going to have answers for it. They do.

It's ironic here. I think it's Democrats in the White House who are more petrified of Mitch McConnell leaving right now. I think that might be true. Then Republicans and that's a whole separate conversation that I'm going to have with the panel.

Alipit Ali, thank you for that report. Let me go to Ali Rafa down covering the White House. Ali Vitale sort of previewed. I know where you're going to begin.

But we heard an expansive explanation of Mitch McConnell's health, not from a McConnell circuit, but from the president, didn't we, Ali Rafa? Yeah, we heard from the president himself sort of doing what McConnell's office is trying to do, trying to tamp down these concerns over his long time ally, long time friends ability to lead. His mental competency in office. Take a listen to a bit of what he had to say a couple hours ago.

I spoke to Mitch. He's a friend. I spoke to him today. He was all self on the telephone.

Having a little understanding of dealing with neurosurgeons and people, one of the leading, one of my staff, are others in neurosurgeons as well. It's not unusual to have a response that sometimes happens to Mitch when you've had a severe concussion. It's part of recovery. And so I'm confident he's going to be back to it.

And Chuck, the Biden allies that I spoke with today about this say that this is a sensitive topic. It's one that raises real questions about fitness for office, but they admit that this does put the White House in an awkward position because they're sort of receiving the echo of attention after these episodes that the minority leader is having. And the responding to it, as you saw the president say there, sort of like we've seen White House officials and campaign officials react to when we see episodes like this or gas by the president. They point to how quickly he's been able to recover.

They point to his, as you heard, Ali talked about that. Doctors know similar to the doctors know that gave a clean bill of health that we saw after the president's physical. So the Biden team is in lockstep with how they address these age concerns. But I think something to watch moving forward, Chuck, is how this gains more attention on the 2020 campaign show.

Of course, more camera time is more opportunity for these things to happen for the public to see the president have these sorts of episodes and how the campaign addresses this whether they send the vice president or circuits out on the trail of something will be watching for Chuck. No, I mean, it's it does feel as if a limit is public appearances, which ironically could actually have a reverse effect. If you limit the appearances, it makes every appearance more high stakes at sometimes anyway. Al-Bachali, Ali Raffa, thank you both for getting us started on this story.

I'm going to bring in Paul Kane. A long time. He's got the gray hairs on the beard to prove it. Long time reporter on Capitol Hill, but really understand sort of the insider aspect of this.

And this is what I want to get at. Mitch McConnell woke up this morning. And I assume their entire office knows this. These are politically as smart of people you're going to find in this town.

He's got a real problem here because you've got a growing Mago Wing in Capitol Hill, mostly in the house, but it's starting to sit on the side. Who aren't fans of Mitch McConnell anyway? You've got a Republican campaign team nationally that wants to make Biden's age the centerpiece of their election. And here's Mitch McConnell kind of an impediment both on messaging and they don't like him on policy as it is.

How vulnerable could he be here right now, Paul? It's something that we're really not going to know for sure until next week. I think when the Senate comes back next week and they see him at those Tuesday evening votes, then they have lunches. Senate lunches are these magical things.

They are the most important meetings every week and they'll get to sort of poke and prod at him and see how he handles the issues. Does he talk openly and frankly about does he address the fact that this is something that's happened twice now? And neither of these two instances have raised alarm. The Capitol Police Security detail has not rushed him off to a hospital to get checked up.

His wife, I mean, Charles, has not rushed into the Capitol. Do we think it's because this is frequent and we've just only seen it twice? I mean, the way you're introducing this, this is why I've been very careful to say this is the second incident we've caught on camera. Yes, it is unclear whether this has happened more than they've let on.

He has fallen more often than they initially admitted in when this fall happened back in March and then in July when he had this first reason of the moment, they were forced to admit. Yeah, there have been a couple of other stumbles. Back in October of 2020, he showed up in the Capitol with incredibly badly bruised hands and popped on the lip. He never explained what that was to anyone, not to the, he got yelled at me, yelled at other reporters, if he asked some questions about it.

And he never told his colleagues what went on. He treats his health like he sees a member of the Soviet polypiero from 40 to 50 years ago. And if he continues to do that, if he continues to just withhold that information, you might see some in his conference just sort of say, Hey, you've got to at least tell us what's going on. You've got to give us a sense of the medical timeline.

That's what we're waiting to see. And yeah, it does pose an issue when you're trying to present the Democratic Party as the party of old, forgetful people, which is the main topic. Right. So when you have, I know the idea that editorial matters anymore is sort of laughable.

That said, National Review, excuse me, came out about an hour ago calling for him to step aside. Does that have any impact with other Senate Republicans? Not necessarily. It might give some of them cover to speak out a little bit on the issue a little bit.

See, we have gone through this in the Senate a lot of times, whether it was Ted Kennedy and John McCain. I go back to this when you and I first started and got to know each other. It was strong for him and Jesse Helms. You know, we know and they didn't want to show Jesse Helms in the in the go-kart.

You know, but we have never had a Senate floor leader or the House Speaker, House Minority Leader go through this. It's different. A Senate Committee Chair, you know, every couple of months a bill of theirs might be on the floor that they should be leading debate. They have to hold maybe one hearing a week that's kind of important.

Maybe just months a month. This is the Senate leader. You're supposed to be there every single day, giving a kickoff speech to the morning. There's a whole other weekly news conference.

Donald hosts three lunches a week of the Senate Republican conference. There's supposed to be moments where he visits leadership. It's more difficult to sort of hide away if you're in really bad health. Let's talk about the issue of nobody knows how to land complicated budget planes like Mitch McConnell.

If he's not fully functional, how much more likely would you put a government shutdown or impeachment happening? I mean, he is the cooling saucer of the House Republicans right now. He knows institutionally exactly how to maneuver things. You know, the worst type of sausage making that drives people sort of crazy that looks ugly and makes no sense.

But in the end, it gets the job done. He is the master at that. And right now, you've got Ukraine funding, 24 billion at least. You've got a whole lot of emergency funding to help with hurricane fires from Hawaii to Florida.

All of that needs to also be massaged into just some basic bills to keep the government up and running. And Mitch McConnell right now is the loudest, proudest anti-Putin force in Senate Republican politics. He needs to be there in a forceful manner. And Biden needs him functioning at that level because if he has to step down, whoever his replacement is is going to be a lesser figure, not as powerful.

Absolutely. Now there's no doubt. This is a real congressional junkies here. This is a relationship.

It's kind of similar to ever Darkson and LBJ. It's a sort of Biden needs McConnell. Biden needs McConnell here in a way that's more important in this current moment. Paul Kane, one of the best on Capitol Hill.

Thank you, sir. Still, I had this hour, not guilty, plea number four in his criminal trials. It's now the books of the former president Donald John Trump. But it means for the case in Georgia, the efforts to separate his case from the 18 code defendants.

And what's going on in these other civil cases that also seem to be sucking up the former president's campaign time? Plus, a proud boys member is sent to the only two decades in prison for his role in the attack of the Capitol. It's a lot less than what the government was hoping for. But it's the most than anybody's got.

Watch me, President. It's here. The Ford is a big deal. Not yet.

The Ford is a big deal. Oh, guys, just wait. The Ford is a big deal event is on. Really?

Now. Hurry until the 2026 Maverick XLT Hybrid all-wheel drive for $197.5 weekly at 5.29% APR for 60 months with $29.95. That's like $99 a week. The Ford is a big deal event.

Visit your Ontario Ford store or Ford.ca. Welcome back. If it feels like every day there's a new development surrounding one or more former president Trump's legal cases, that's because there usually is. Today's no exception.

I feel like we have to almost have a daily legal update. So here's what we learned today. Donald Trump's waving. His arraignment on charges related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia.

With his lawyers submitting his not guilty plea and writing today, he didn't have to come back to Atlanta. Trump's lawyers also found a motion to sever his case from the 18 other Georgia defendants arguing they don't have time to prepare properly for an October defense, which may have a pretty good case to make on that front. It comes a day after two of Trump's co-defendants, Sidney Powell and Kenneth Gisbro, also asked for their cases to be severed from the reco case brought by Fulton County, D.A. Fonnie Wallace.

And in New York, yesterday, the state's generally accused Trump have been plagating his net worth and more than $2 billion in one year. Let's just say James made that allegation of filing a heavy $250 million civil lawsuit that she's bringing against the Trump family and Trump organization. Her office also until portions of Trump's seven-hour deposition with investigators from back in April. And if you've ever spent time reading a Trump deposition transcript, it will look familiar because according to the transcript of that interview, the former president claimed he never thought his financial statements would be taken seriously and said his brand was worth billions and billions of dollars.

He's actually made that claim for years that somehow there is his brand. The name Donald Trump is worth more money than can be calculated, which is what he always uses when he is a defense when he gets caught inflating. We're joined now by NBC News Justice and Intelligence correspondent, Candelini, and our NBC News Legal analyst, Danny Salvelis, is also a criminal defense attorney. So, again, I know people need his work hard to keep up.

But let's start with the Trump arraignment today. This was sort of as we expected, but let's get to the issue of severing this case. Everybody else is trying to sever for a speedier trial. He's trying to sever for a delay.

In this case, he actually has a pretty good case to make because he's got other trials he's got to worry about, right? That's right. And that actually works at his advantage because if these other defendants actually manage to go to trial before he does, and his lawyers will see all the evidence, the witnesses, where the vulnerabilities are. That's a really big advantage to Donald Trump.

And it's one of the issues that I think people are starting to look at this Georgia case and wonder about a lot of things about it, some of the charges and massive amount of defendants and whether it's over to get to trial, the track record of that office with some other re-cocases. So, big question. When do we get a final note about this cheese bro and Sidney Powell? When do we know if that severing has been allowed and that this trial will be dead?

When the judge rules and I'm not 100% sure when that's happening, but I think it's soon. And on the decision of Littisha James and this statistician, why really is it? What was the purpose? I believe because there was no purpose in keeping it sealed anymore.

Portions had already been released. There weren't major revelations in it, but you're not talking off the air. It's just fascinating to see how Donald Trump's mind works. And it would be great to have the whole thing made public, but people would benefit from seeing it.

Alright, another legal development has Rudy Giuliani's defamation. I'm bringing you in here in a minute, but I want to get a few more updates here. The defamation case with Rudy Giuliani. He's already been ruled to have defamed them.

Now there's a trial. Is this a trial we expect to actually happen? Or is this a judge going, you should settle and you should figure out how to settle? I don't know what money Rudy can settle with.

That's the problem. Yeah, so basically the judge, because Rudy Giuliani was playing games and not providing the documents and discovery, that he should have done, the judge levied the ultimate sanction, which is a finding of guilt, essentially, that he in fact defamed and committed a civil conspiracy against these two women. And now the only question is how much damage is he going to have to pay? They'll be a trial about that, but not just compensatory damage.

It's punitive damages. But you know, it's really broke. So who knows if you can pay any of this stuff? Alright, you get ready with your Proud Boys answer.

I'm going to be asking you about that in a couple of minutes. Let me bring in Dani some others here. Alright, Dani, on. First, let's start with the severing of cases.

Does Trump is the fact that the federal case begins when it begins? And he's got these other cases. Does that work to his advantage at getting the Atlanta case severed and getting his own timeline? That's not a strong argument for severing the case.

The strongest argument for severing the case is that the different defendants at different charges against them, which is true. They're different counts alleged against different defendants. But that being said, Donald Trump has a weaker argument for severing his case than, say, for example, Sidney Powell or Jenna Ellis, for example, who I believe is only charged with two counts. She might have a stronger argument that, look, you will create guilt by association if you put me in the same trial with these other defendants.

I've been involved in large multi-defendant cases like that. And there really is a threat of somebody who's charged with, say, one or two counts in the same room with the person charged with 50 counts. That some of that guilt will just bleed over in the room to that person. So while I think Sidney Powell's argument for severance is stronger than Trump's, I think all defendants have a decent argument for severance.

And look, funny, Willis had to know this was coming. This is going to be a very effective tool against her case, which will really gum up the process. Imagine if there is severance as to at least a few of these defendants in the state court case. And then imagine if some of the defendants are able to remove and stay in federal court, to be more precise, they've already removed the federal court.

Imagine if they're allowed to stay there. This case now goes on in several different trials in several different court houses. All right, but it's funny, well, it's going to be able to start one of her trials. This calendar year, I think that matters a lot if she can.

And that's why I'm curious. Is that going to happen this calendar year in your best guess? 0.0 chance. Now that leaves open the numbers in there.

Not even Sidney Powell. You don't think those two cases could get started in October? Oh, I think in theory, those could. But even, and that's only because Cheesebrow is asserting a speedy trial rights.

But even given that, that doesn't mean that there may be some delay that Cheesebrow doesn't get the advantage of. In other words, there may be days or even weeks that don't count towards that speedy trial time. Speedy trial rules are not absolute. Some of the time can count against the defendant.

So if Cheesebrow were to make a sudden motion right now that would cause delay, he wouldn't get the benefit at that time. You can't assert your speedy trial rights and then do something to slow up the time to trial or add more time until your trial date. So I think there might be a chance that at least the trial date is set for early November, that it's going to go forward on that date, highly unlikely. And don't forget, I just have to add, there is another state re-go case going on in the Bolton County courthouse.

Chuck, it's been a jury selection for eight months. Not the case in chief, not defense case, not witness testimony, jury selection. This case isn't going to trial probably until 2025. Quick question about LaTissa James and the civil suit in New York.

Well, Donald Trump have to appear at that trial on a regular basis or not. Generally the rule in civil cases as a defendant, you don't have to appear. Strategically there may be some interest in appearing. And in fact, even plaintiffs don't have to appear at their own civil trial.

So there isn't the same rule that there is for a criminal defendant to appear. But even that rule has variation, for example, you just saw the Trump's arraignment. He waived his personal appearance and arraignment. By the way, any jurisdiction where I can waive arraignment, I do it.

There's virtually no reason for your client to come in and stand there for arraignment. But yeah, on the civil case, on the civil side, even though the AG is a law enforcement body, she's bringing this case as a civil case, he probably will be at none of it. Back to the special session of the Georgia legislature doing Peach Fulton County D.A. Fony Willis.

I have not seen any evidence that D.A. Willis' actions, or lack thereof, warrant action by the prosecuting attorney oversight commission. In my mind, a special session of the general assembly to in run around this law is not feasible and may ultimately prove to be unconstitutional. The bottom line is that in the state of Georgia, as long as I'm governor, we're going to follow the law in a constitution, regardless of who it helps or harms politically.

Over the last few years, some inside and outside of this building may have forgotten that. Joining me now on set, Betsy Woodruff's fund, the National Correspondent of Politico and NBC News contributor Democratic Polisor, NBC News political analyst Cornel Belcher and Matthew Conneck, the Director of Domestic Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Wow, Betsy, that was stronger than I've heard from Mike Pence. That was stronger than anything I've heard from when I think about the people who want to be seen as the constitutional conservatives here.

That was, look, that was a gauntlet. Yeah, it was very strong. It's also something that Kemp is used to doing. This isn't his first rodeo when it comes to Trump, Agilites calling on special sessions to do creative things with legislative bodies.

And of course, he won his gubernatorial re-elect despite Trump making laws and laws of noise to the contrary. So Kemp knows what he's doing. He's done this already. And as far as just about any governor and your Republican governor goes, there's hardly one that owes less to Trump than he does.

Matthew, you can't help but continue to look at him as the best guy, you know, when you think it's a baseball playoff time. It's like, who's the emergency starter you want to bring in if your star gets injured? Right. That guy looks like the best guy that they have in the bullpen.

And has for a long time and had his re-elect, of course, he's not going to enter the 24 race. This is a different set of candidates. What interesting to me about this battle, Chuck, is the state-based civil wars within the Republican Party. Fantastic.

We're trying to see him. Like, just Texas, like Texas. It's a great soap opera, but it's about to unravel the party. Georgia, we've seen the Republican Party essentially implode in Michigan.

Nevada? Nevada? Nevada? It happened earlier in California.

As the party becomes Trumpified, you see it almost like a sun when it goes Nova. Kind of collapses in on itself. Other politicians like Brian Kemp were saying, guys, let's just take a steep breath and step back from the abyss. And I would go, and I'm a Democrat when I'm saying nice things about Kemp.

I'm going to say that as an example of why he can win comfortably in a battle round state. And he did say why. Right. And what you see is down by the state legislative bodies where they're so derrymander, they don't have to worry about winning state why.

But that is a position of a candidate who can win state why and in a purple state which increasingly Georgia is a battleground state. It's just interesting in this whole war, right, you have some of the party bets you want to make any of this legal stuff is all politics. And you know, we're sitting here, right? And I think a lot of us are nervous.

What if this doesn't work, right? And all of a sudden the rule of law is subject to the box. That's a scary moment. And I feel like there's, you know, not many people in the Republican party worried about that.

He seems like he's one of them. No question. And what he's having to grapple with is this new reality that Trump has is pushing, which is for Trump himself as an individual person as a political candidate. His political strategy is his legal strategy.

It's entirely within Trump's interests to treat law enforcement as something that's purely political to treat it as something that the nation, particularly his supporters should view as purely and explicitly political. And of course, if Trump gets elected in 2024, his first step is going to say, yeah, look, Democrats made this political. I'm just continuing what they're doing and then fire the people he doesn't like. And so the challenge, of course, for Kemp and for other more traditional conservative Republicans is trying to decouple those two things, trying to say legal problems and political problems should be different.

They should not be married to each other. We could talk about one without talking about the other. The problem is the Republican base doesn't see it that way. No.

Republican voters, they think Donald Trump. Well, the information system has fed them this garbage. Well, but it's also reality. I mean, Donald Trump is now under four different indictments, two federal, two state and local.

And it all happens in the year before the election where he's the front runner for the Republican nomination and tied with Joe Biden in average as a national poll. So if you're a Republican, you see that and you're thinking exactly what you're saying, trust is that politics and the law have become intertwined from the Democratic perspective. Right. Talk about this 14th Amendment stuff.

Do we have to? Well, I don't want to talk about it as a legal, I think there's a legal questions about it. There's no finding yet of an insurrection. But anyway, let's set that aside.

Is this the way to defeat Trump as a Trump? No, it absolutely isn't. And by the way, if I'm Ron, if I'm the Republican running for president, I'm going to say, I like this as an option because they're certainly not going to take him out through voting. Sure.

And most of them aren't even trying to run a campaign against him. They're taking him out through voting. But ultimately, I think you have to let the people decide on this. I'm not a lawyer, not having a political television, but I don't think any of it passes muster.

It just feels like actually fuel for Trump. It feels to certainly appear to the Republican base, like it's Democrats and liberals trying to use an avenue other than the Democratic process to affect the outcome of what he's trying to avoid the Democratic process. It's not good if the left starts to act like, well, let me speak for the left right now. I want that one to talk on that ballot because of the same reason we just saw.

I want Donald Trump on that ballot. The best way to carry it. Well, that's how you look. Let me explain what's going on.

Let's bring up Mitch McConnell here. Let me do the national reviews call for his resignation here. No matter what one thinks of his performance in the past, it's tough to see how much longer he can serve his highest Republican in the Senate if he is not in a position to handle basic question from reporters. This is especially given that Republicans plan to make president Biden's age and decline in mental state as central part of their argument against him next year.

Look, the fact is Joe Biden did more to defend Mitch McConnell than any Republican has in the last 24 hours. That's interesting. And the McConnell team rushing into action showing him with Senate candidate Jim Banks of Indiana at the fundraiser answering questions, the doctor clearing McConnell, the idea that he is ready for action. And I think the test will be this next month, Chuck.

There is so much going on legislatively that you wouldn't want a leader who's on top of things in order to command. That's what happens if Donald Trump decides, I can get him now. He's been trying to get rid of McConnell and trying to rid him of McConnell. And he calls up one of the Johns and says, you've got my endorsement if you go.

He's been trying out for a long time. And I think what the Johns understand is that McConnell's days leading the Republican conference are numbered. They don't know how big that number is. The Johns by the way, John Thun, John Barass or John Corning, the three other members of leadership, the three Johns, we expect to run as a ticket actually.

I think that an in Barasso if this happens. But we'll say. From their standpoint, it seems pretty obvious that trying to speed up a process that is inevitable would be politically foolish. One note, the National Review editorial itself is interesting because although National Review broadly does not have a great relationship with the Republican primary electorate, it is very widely read among the Senate Republicans.

That's why the editorial is important is because that group of people is very much NR's audience. And Cornell, I think the White House wants to do a budget negotiation without Mitch McConnell in the right now. Michael, I can't believe I'm saying this, but it's like, I think this Biden White House is petrified of going into the fall without McConnell. Well, that's why the president was one of his strongest defenders, right?

Mitch McConnell's, and by the way, that's all pretty that he's fine and a little different side, but this whole piece is one that was a scary moment. But yeah, Mitch McConnell's one of the adults in the room. And what we've seen from the House side of things is there are no adults in the room at all there. And God help us.

Ironically, Matthew, at that press conference earlier, he had been sort of essentially given the sniff arm to McCarthy. That's right. And we should recall, McCarthy, McConnell wasn't that active in the debt ceiling negotiations. On purpose.

Right. And he may not be active. Yeah, he might not be active this time either. But it's a bad image for it.

And CBS polls show increasing Americans don't want, you know, what age limits that's going to continue. I absolutely. This is something that has that 60, 70, 70, 80 support Betsy, thank you all. Up next, we're on the ground in Perry, Florida.

That of course was where Hurricane Idalia hit hardest in the state as they start their cleanup former FEMA chief, Craig Fugate, joins me to discuss how climate preparedness should play a role in disaster recovery. You're watching me the president. Welcome back and a visit to FEMA headquarters today. President Biden announced he will visit Florida on Saturday to survey the damage hurricane.

And Idalia did to the big bend there, right, where the panhandle and the peninsula come together. We told you yesterday that the storm made landfall in Florida's big bend area as a category three. It then traveled through Georgia and the Carolinas leaving a path of destruction from floodwaters and wind in its wake. But thankfully, the worst case scenarios in many of these places didn't come true.

Officials have now confirmed though that three people have died in connection with the storm. This new video shows the high floodwaters and devastation in horseshoe, Florida. But this is one of these good news stories of how government could work because as we learned yesterday in horseshoe, nobody died because everybody evacuated. They listened, everybody evacuated.

And we see his correspondent, Maggie Vespa, is on the ground in Perry right now as the city begins to take stock of the damage. Maggie, you were telling me yesterday, it was tough to get communications in Perry yesterday. How are things today? Things are still a mess, frankly, today.

If you look at things like this, you can see the work that cruise, exactly that cruise, and those who are leading the cleanup here, which includes emergency operations, FEMA headquarters, they're on the ground here as well. This is part of what was an antique store. Now you can see this giant piece of metal sheeting. I also want to point out traffic is running for town, but it's kind of an eerie constant reminder that things are not normal because we have generators.

You might be able to hear it in the background running traffic lights. The vast majority of the town here still does not have power. It's largely thanks to down trees. We talked to a woman earlier, Deborah Mims, who wrote out the storm in her house, does not have power, does not have AC because of trees that came crashing down in her neighborhood.

Take a listen. I've lived here this long and have never seen it this bad. And we weren't prepared to lose all of this. And we're all grateful.

I don't know of any distance, but it's devastating. We live in a town along town. I sat in a comfortable chair and I had myself on my hand and they had a flashlight and my little kitties were running around. And you just sit there and you listen and you don't know what's happening.

You're just hoping that the roof doesn't come crashing in. And you say a lot of prayers too. Hey, say a lot of prayers. You mentioned the deaths and obviously there were tragic repercussions of the storm.

But in every case it was kind of a fluke according to authorities. Florida Highway Patrol say two deaths here in this state were caused by car crashes during the storm in Georgia. Authorities say a tree fell on a car. So to your point, a lot of these communities, one sheriff said, they were expecting like a Katrina situation.

That was according to the Leon County Sheriff. And again, the worst did not come to fruition. But again, tragic circumstances in some communities. Absolutely.

But it's nice to hear that when you look at horseshoe, people listen, right, we say lies. Property can get replaced. Lives are much, you know, Maggie does on the ground horse and Perry. Maggie, thank you.

And as we noted yesterday, I tell you it's now the fifth hurricane to hit Florida's west coast of the year. FEMA Administrator DeAnn Creswell attributed the rise of the storms, of course, to the warming, water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico. And said that our agency has to factor that climate shift into their emergency preparedness plans from Warren Howe. We could prepare for this extreme, these extreme weather situations.

Now by Craig Feudate, he's a course former director of FEMA. He's currently a Florida resident. And before he ran FEMA, he was the guy that ran Florida's emergency management system during that four hurricane summer back in the early offs. Craig, it's good to see you.

Let me start with, you attempted to try to change the budgeting process at FEMA when you were there. There was an attempted say, look, let's not stick our head in the stands. We can know on average of how much disaster recovery money we need on an annual basis. But it didn't happen.

What made that so difficult? Well, we had C-quest station. And then, you know, for a variety of things, we did get some success with Speaker Ryan and Jack Lewin, who was OMB Director, to at least get the catastrophic disasters funded above the top line. But I remember we, before they did that, we were dealing with Hurricane Irene and we were down to 100, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars while responding to a major hurricane.

So it's gotten better and then it doesn't keep up because these big disasters keep wiping out the funds that Congress has to replace. And I saw a really disturbing report yesterday about the NOAA hurricane, Hunter Plains. Two were getting serviced. One was reusable and then it needed serviced.

And suddenly the Hurricane Center was panicked and they got an Air Force plane to go into the hurricane. And look, it looks like the forecast was accurate and all of that. But it sounds like it's funding issues that have slowed down the ability to have this operational hurricane hunting planes now. Yeah, I mean, we've got both the Air Force Reserve, which flies C-130s, and we have the P-3As and the G5 that the NOAA operations fly and all the NOAA budget, just like everybody else.

They have to fit everything into the overall top line of the Congress budget. And so you get all the competing resources and fewer dollars available, things start to suffer. And again, this is where Congress has to make these calls, but it does have an impact. Would you like to see the mission?

I mean, do you believe that you could make disaster preparedness part of the FEMA mission? I think something Congress wouldn't fully embrace that. But I think about yesterday I was talking with the mayor of Tallahassee about the, how many power lines are buried in Tallahassee? And he admitted it's not been very good progress.

It's better progress in South Florida. Development is newer there. There's some explanation of that. But we know that's costly.

Why shouldn't that be a FEMA grant, if you will, right? And a more perfect world where the federal government helped local communities. Because guess what? It would save money the long run.

They certainly agree that's exactly what they do with what they call building resilient infrastructure communities. You heard the president announced that they're going to do some of the infrastructure money to help put the power lines underground and now. So we know there are things we can do to protect infrastructure, reduce the impacts. There's funding.

In fact, Congress has been providing much more funding than they had in the past. But it's an ongoing effort. And it needs to be addressing two of the things we need to build resilience in based upon a change in climate threat, not just looking at the infrastructure that we built last 100 years. We need to really think about what's coming.

I mean, it's clear. I mean, that part of the Yucatan now is launching pad for these storms. And this is something that frankly, when you first started, that was not a common thing. And now it is.

I mean, we've got to sort of acknowledge this. Well, this rapid investigation, I think, is the thing that's really stood out. We've not seen this many storms this close together. Go from a tropical storm in the morning to a cat floor and all three of them.

It's barely identified low pressure, Craig. Forget storm. It's astonishing. Well, again, this is what we're seeing with Hurricane Michael now with this storm.

It's the rapid anticipation. And again, it goes back to water, warm water. These are like sea dinges. The warmer the water, the stronger they can get.

The insurance problem in the state of Florida, is this something that you think the federal government is going to have to help out with here in order to keep insurance companies from fleeing the state? Well, I don't know. We may have to really rethink our model. Our model is always based upon people who had homeowners insurance and FEMA helped out with folks that did.

We're seeing that going more and more towards FEMA helping out with our mind people. It's the federal tax payer that's paying this. And so as we see less insurance, less availability as taxpayers were paying more. So that's the policy question.

Our systems design going forward as insurance becomes a luxury for many and unavailable to others. And a system that was based upon the majority of the people that have insurance and there would be few people that needed federal assistance. Yeah, no, I think you were right about that. And there's some people I think in the state of Florida that are thinking, maybe I'm just better off not having insurance.

And that because of the price and all of that, that's not a good model either. Great view gate with a lot of wisdom that I hope people are taking it. Thank you, sir. Next possible progress in Ukraine's counter-offensive after months of hand-wringing here in the Pentagon and New Fears about a potential weapons deal for North Korea and Russia.

You're watching me throw us down. Welcome back amid concerns in Ukraine's counter-offensive against Russia with stalling Ukrainian officials. In progress in the southern region of Ukraine, reclaiming multiple cities. Ukrainian forces say they believe they finally broke through Russia's line of defense in the southeast.

Raising hopes this will reinvigorate troops on the front lines. It comes up for reports of a meeting. This month between senior NATO military chiefs and Ukraine's top general to reset Kyiv's military strategy. Meanwhile, the White House is out with a new warning today that weapons negotiations between North Korea and Russia are, quote, actively advancing.

I mean, now it's retired. Now, James Sabrese is, of course, the former NATO Supreme Allied Commander and East NBC News' chief international analyst. Jim, let's start with, you know, yesterday if you and I done this, I'd be asking, boy, when are we going to see a breakthrough, right, right, this counter-offensive? And lo and behold, they got.

Look, I hate to put this in these cynical political terms here in Washington, but they needed this breakthrough just as negotiations and debate started about a new supplemental. Ukraine needs to show progress here if they're going to keep this funding coming. No. Absolutely.

You can kind of hear the cracking on both sides of the political spectrum, Chuck, on the far right, the Marjorie Taylor Greene's, that crowd asking increasingly why are we spending billions in Ukraine on the left? Others are saying, well, couldn't we use that money here in the United States? These are legitimate questions, but I would argue, I think you would agree. We need to continue.

Yes, you're right. These breakthroughs, and I think we need to be a little cautious here, but compared to where we were a couple of weeks ago, looks like they're pushing through. That's vital. And here's a key thing to understand.

Once they crack through that line, they get behind the Russian defenses. They can flank the Russian forces breaking north and south, where they can continue to drive toward the Black Sea. Not a good day for Russia. Pretty good news for the Ukrainian side in this debate.

I want you to look, but realistically, how many more fighting months are there? And what kind of progress, right? We got the winners coming. We're looking at 60 days.

We're looking at 90 days. And there's going to be calls for talks when there is a weather-inspired pause here. Where do you hope the Ukrainians are? I hope that they will, as we just discussed, have broken through breaking north and south, driving to the sea.

That puts Putin in a very difficult situation. And particularly with the end of the Wagner Group, Progosian, who was the one competent general that Putin had. So I guess he decided to blow him up in an airplane. I would hope that that would be the moment that Chinese begin to say to Putin, let's get to the table.

And frankly, your point, Chuck, I think quietly, softly, offstage, Zelensky is going to hear from the West. Now would be a good time for you to negotiate. When do we get to that point? I'd say probably toward the end of this year when a third combatant enters the field.

That would be winter. We got, technically, there were supposed to be parliamentary elections this fall in Ukraine, a presidential election next year. I think they're delaying the parliamentary elections. It costs a lot of money to try to do this in wartime.

It seemed to be a hint that he'd like to help to do this. If they do this, do you see the United States essentially helping to fund a war time? election in Ukraine or waiting until after the fighting is stopped. The former, I think we will move forward to assist.

And I think that's money well spent. We've done this before in other scenarios. We certainly provide a lot of support for legitimate democratic processes. And I think this can be done in a way that does not impugn the Zelensky regime.

He's immensely popular in his country. But like we always want to see democracy be the lead here. So yes, I think we should. And yes, I think we will.

This is my shock face that North Korea and Russia are thinking about doing a deal. I mean, you sit there, we're warning, this doesn't feel like news. We made a public decision to say this, why? To prove that we know they're doing it?

Explain why we made a headline about this. Because again, I'm shocked that one bad actor is working with another bad actor. Right. I mean, this is could there be gambling in the house here?

And clearly we are shining a light on this. And we should. Is it going to have a realistic impact? Probably not.

I think the target chuck is more Beijing. I wonder. Yeah. And I think that's where the cleag lights are going to start to go on.

And again, the big flick here, the big casino is getting China to put the pressure on Putin. And Jimmy, is it just simply like regular old ammunition? That's what Russia needs from North Korea, isn't it? Yeah, it really is.

And frankly, North Korea doesn't have much else to offer. I was just going to say that's about the one thing I think they can share now. Jim Sivres always bludged to get your wisdom on the show. Thank you, sir.

And thank you all for being with us this hour. I'll be back tomorrow with more Meet the Press Now. NBC News Now coverage continues. My pal Peter Alexander sitting in for my other friend, I like Jackson.

It's here. The four is a big. Not yet. The four is a big deal.

Oh, guys, just wait. The four is a big deal event is on. Really? Now hurry until the 2026 Maverick XLT Hybrid all-wheel drive for $197 by weekly at 5.29% APR for 60 months with $29.95 a week.

The four is a big deal event. Visit your Ontario Fortstore or Fort.ca.