tonight. we'll be back tomorrow with a lot more "mtp daily." "the beat" with ari melber starts right now. ari, i was told today if i didn't quote a little shaggy to you, i wasn't doing my job. as you know, everybody in the administration is singing shaggy. >> it wasn't me. chuck, anytime you're quoting shaggy is an interesting day, i guess it depends what's being denied. >> there you go. our top two stories on "the beat" tonight, democrats throwing down in ways we may have never seen on the judiciary committee before to try to stop trump's supreme court nominee. a member joins me later this hour, it is important. also, the other top story, you probably know what it is, these reports of an ominous boiling point inside the white house, donald trump being reportedly described as livid,

as volcanic, as spurring a "total meltdown" inside the white house, that one of his senior officials has gone rogue and basically chewed him out in this essay, ringing the alarm bell in the "new york times." at this hour, that piece remains the most read item, with everyone asking who did it? >> the inside job, who wrote that blistering op-ed laying bear a president on the edge? >> a lot of speculation that maybe it's mike pence, maybe it's the vice president. >> it's easy to dismiss most of the cabinet right off the bat. >> a high ranking official could be one of a thousand people. >> it won't take long for us to find out who wrote it, who has denied it already, the vice president. that was my first thought. >> now, the essay did not reveal the kind of secret details or

any of the criminality that's associated with watergate. but in one way it has consumed this political class today, much the way the guessing game consumed a different era's political class about deep throat. it's worth recalling how the actual source who was deep throat famously denied that in the paper, former fbi official mark felt. he loudly denied that. and you see here the denials today, many trump officials from mike pence and 20 others have rushed out these official statements, that includes cabinet members, senior white house aides who interact with the president, even ambassadors who felt the need to say it wasn't me. now, if you hear people these days in the trump era, even on these big news nights say it seems like nothing matters, or you hear people question whether whistle blowers or criticism or journalism itself matters, think about what's happening right now. this is a night where the impact is clear. these things do matter. the allegations and the arguments written out by someone

concerned, and handed over to the "new york times" are rocking washington. and maybe the nation. the president is basically calling for the arrest of an anonymous member of his own administration which the courts would almost certainly prevent as illegal. everyone is seemingly pressing for more details, whether they liked the piece or didn't. and the journalist who actually knows the identity of this mystery leaker, and editor of the "new york times" now publicly confirming they communicated directly with the author while holding back any hints. >> how many people at the times know who their writer is? >> i can't tell you. i'm not going to tell you an exact number. let me just say that it is a very small number. >> and have you heard from the writer since the piece was published? >> i have. and i can't really convey the -- >> sure, i just wonder if that person was surprised by the reaction. >> you know, it's a good

question, and i'm not quite sure how surprised they were. >> could imagine the intrigue inside "the new york times" building, i'm joined with someone intimately with that at the "new york times." the white house is hunting for this author, the person was not alone, which is part of why this matters, that's what they argue, "the washington post" separately reporting trump aides and allies are texting each other, the sleeper cells have awoken. if the piece was good for democracy, it could backfire. if the goal was to moderate trump's behavior, it will do the opposite. a few republican members of congress have said they aren't surprised by the anonymous report. the party's leaders are saying the main takeaway is this person should go. >> they ought to resign. >> if you're not interested in helping the president you shouldn't work for the president, as far as i'm concerned. >> that is a fair point. every president is entitled to a policy staff that supports their policies. but there is something bigger

going on as well. democrats today saying the real problem is that in the wave of national security crises, of military officials talking about undermining, avoiding or contradicting the president's orders. and of course the serious allegations of criminality that both have been made and some proven in court amidst all that, this congress doesn't hold this president accountable. >> the republicans in congress have enabled so much of the mayhem that exists in the white house to occur without any comment. some in the white house think that by correcting this behind the scenes is a consolation, i don't think it's good enough. >> as i mentioned, i'm joined by mara gay, a member of the "new york times" editorial board. great to have you both. you work in an interesting building right now. >> i do, although i can confirm

that i am not one of those small -- the small number of people. >> the small number who knows. >> despite many entreaties by my mother and friends and colleagues. i do not know the answer to who wrote this. >> that's ms. gay, is that right, your mother? >> my mom, yes. >> i have the same question as your mom, i'm sure, what if anything can you tell us about that, and why do you think this matters and do you think "the new york times" knew what it had on its hands? >> i think we certainly knew what we had. one thing i will say is i'll take this opportunity, i'm on the editorial board. this was published by the op-ed section, we are separate. however -- >> but you both have editorial in your name. >> that's true. it confuses me people. >> op-ed stands for opposite editorial. >> that's exactly right. whereas the editorial board gives the opinion of the newspaper, that's why it's unsigned. in any case, the reason this matters is -- and i want to say usually we want to get people on the record. so the ideal is always to have

people put their names to things. but there's been an unexpected benefit to actually having this be anonymous, i believe. >> sure. >> which is that instead of, you know, picking away at -- and dissecting the value that a specific individual would provide to -- you know, if this had, for example, it's not, if it had been mattis, right, we would be saying, well, is he really qualified to make this -- to make this statement? so on and so forth. but instead this anonymous op-ed has become indicative of a larger, broader constituency within the white house, that it's more than one person, right? the conversation is exactly where it should be, which is why are there people who are good americans in this white house who are terrified of the president? and that's exactly what the conversation should be. and it also gives cover to members of congress who want to do their job because, remember, in that op-ed you had the writer of the op-ed say specifically,

listen, members of the cabinet considered invoking the 25th amendment to start to remove the president. >> right. >> now, that was over, i think, a year ago, the writer said. so, therefore, in other words, what's wrong -- that's in the white house. what's wrong with the members of congress who aren't doing their job? >> well, i think you just put your finger on it, right, david, the people closest to it have the front row seat, terrified of the dumpster fire and they're taking these extraordinary issues. david, i like to work with analogies to understand the wild world we're in. you can have a debate about whether to put the dumpster fire out with a fire extinguisher or a blanket to deny it oxygen or regular old water. so there's been a ton of discussion about whether this was the exact right move, blanket versus fire ex-ting wisher. but the larger key point, being backed up in tomorrow's reporting, a lot of us wish we were the writer. i hope trump knows. maybe he does.

there are dozens and dozens of us, let me repeat that, quote, dozens and dozens of us. these are people reaching out, and axios is known as often taking leaks of a friendly sort, pro-administration leaks as well, these are people reaching out to anyone who will listen that this is a dumpster fire. >> but i do think that it's incumbent on people who see a dumpster fire to come forward and say we have a dumpster fire. not to, you know, pretend it's not there, or not to even just make an anonymous call to the police. so i think there's a dumpster fire, quick. >> not to say, oh, well, maybe it's a garbage, maybe we need light, when it's a full blown dumpster fire. >> i was interviewed today by a journalist from poland. and he said, given what's in the woodward book, given what's in the anonymous story, given what's reported for over 18 months now, none of this is new,

you know, trump's ignorance and his erratic behavior, how can this man still be president? i had to explain our constitution to him. but the real issue is if you think the president is a threat of this nature, you know, saying we're going to do our best to keep him contained, i mean, this guy has his finger on the nuclear button. i don't know how you contain him other than tackling him at some point. >> you raise two points. i want to play some senators -- >> people come forward and talk about this publicly and put their name to it. >> david, you raised two points. one, which is that maybe you've got suitors in poland, and us american television hosts should feel jealous, if that's what you're trying to do, fine, we want you to ourselves. >> not my intent. >> number two, more seriously, you reference the fact that this is known. that's widespread debate. plenty of people who say donald trump is quote/unquote

different, he's a dis-rurupter. let me play some senators and then to you and then mara, senators on the republican side saying yeah, we knew this. >> well, there wasn't much new information there. i hope that more will come out publicly. >> i mean, i think this is what all of us have understood to be the situation from day one. >> it's just so similar to what so many of us hear from senior people around the white house, you know, three times a week. so it's really troubling. and yet, in a way, not surprising. >> david and then mara. >> that's true. i agree with everything they said. and we have a fossilized political culture at the moment where it's impossible for people to believe what they want to believe. the only chance at breaking through that, to come forward publicly, an anonymous source,

as you know, can be dismissed by trump and others as being false, phony, not real. but if true significant players in the administration came forward and said this is real, here are examples, we need to stop this, that would put a little more pressure on those do nothing republicans, and might sway the seven people out there in america who still are we a persuadable. that would be important. >> let's just say there are a lot of ways to do the right thing right now and step up. i'm just glad that this person and others are in the white house. >> david corn, i want to thank you. mara, stay with me. bringing in richard painter, when you look at the mystery and the finger pointing, the questikey question, what is this person trying to accomplish. rachel maddow said expose the internal debates about the president's fitness. >> the 25th amendment discussions in the president's cabinet may have been secret

before but they are public now on purpose because of somebody who works on the senior level of the administration. i know you're sick of hearing the word unprecedented, but that word is not being overused in this administration. it is apt. and when the previously unimaginable keeps happening, we do need to think urgently and imaginatively about how our country comes out whole and responsible and constitutionally intact on the other side of this. >> i want to bring richard painter into the conversation, mara still with me. richard, your answer to rachel's question. >> well, this is a dumpster fire. we've known that for a long time now. and we've had people come forward anonymously. we've had other people come forward and put their name to it. this op-ed simply restates a lot of what we've heard before. we've had two books written

about this administration, "fire and fury" and the woodward book fear, lots of stories along these lines. i don't think we need to know the identity of this person to know we have a serious problem. this just reaffirms what we've known all along. this is a dumpster fire. it's a dangerous dumpster fire. it's in plain view, in plain view of the united states congress, which insists on doing absolutely nothing about it. and it's very dangerous. and it's spreading. and it's a dumpster fire with nuclear weapons. i would think that the american people would be very, very concerned and eager to replace a congress that wants to sit around and do nothing about it while this is raging out of control. >> and so, richard, if you look at that, and you're a former candidate who had served in the republican administration and ran as a democrat, if the democrats make gains or take back the house, what is the responsible way to deal with this if constitutional mechanisms are not used, in the

25th amendment, which has literally never been used and requires the cabinet, and the mueller investigation does not lead to what you've stated you think is a likely remedy that would be justified of impeachment, if you take those things off the table, what should a responsible congress do given what we've learned in this piece yesterday? >> i don't think impeachment is off the table. we ought to have hearings in the house and senate judiciary committee as we did in 1973 with respect to president nixon and the goings on in his administration. this is a lot more dangerous than president nixon. we've got a foreign adversary involved, the russians, we've got a president with serious mental stability issues. demonstrable mental instability issues. it's a very dangerous situation. they ought to be having

hearings. this shouldn't be democrat versus republican thing. democrats run around and say don't talk about impeaching the president, and that type of nonsense. the republicans don't want to talk about impeaching the president because he's their own political party. it's a lot of partisan nonsense going on here. and both parties ought to be taking seriously their duties, their constitutional duties. and the house and senate, to excise oversight, including the impeachme impeachment clause of the institution and the 25th amendment, even though that's only triggered by the vice president and the cabinet. congress has a role. >> let me go to mara briefly, what will be the bombshell op-ed tomorrow? >> if i told you, i'd have to kill you. no, i really don't know. i just think that it's really -- this is a great reminder that anybody who has any platform to speak out in favor of the right thing and constitutional democracy, whether you be a member of congress, a voter, a

church, or someone who works in the white house, has a responsibility to do so right now. or a teacher. >> right, yeah. and i think that's why this does feel like an important moment. we've seen that in the reaction. mara, richard, thank you both. coming up, brett kavanaugh grilled about his statements on roe, whether he was caught misleading the senate. senator sheldon whitehouse joins me next. and we hear from actress alyssa milano. should anonymous go public? resigning in protest over donald trump's policies. and also on our special show tonight, the co-author of the art of the deal, tony schwartz talking about trump's mind-set and why "crazy town" comes up so much. and packages. and it's also a story about people. people who rely on us every day to deliver their dreams

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democrats going hard at trump's supreme court nominee today, and senator sheldon whitehouse is about to join me live. today's hearing was shaped with a revelation about brett kavanaugh's position statement on roe v. wade. in a statement he made, quote, i'm not sure all legal scholars refer to roe as the settled law at the supreme court since the court can overrule its precedent. that's basically at odds with

his emphasis yesterday when he said roe is a double precedent, which senator feinstein seized on. >> this has been viewed as you saying that you don't think roe is settled. do you believe it is correct lysette ld? -- correctly settled. >> to your broader point, roe v. wade is an important precedent in the supreme court, it's been reaffirmed many times. >> that is a big difference, of course, it's a super precedent. that's what he's saying this week. the other questioning was all about mueller, kavanaugh denying he spoke to anyone at a key law firm of trump's former attorney. senator harris said this. >> do you know of a conversation that brett kavanaugh had with the kasowitz law firm. >> i have good reason to believe there was a conversation. >> what are you basing that on?

>> information i've received that's pretty reliable. i asked him a clear question and he couldn't give a clear answer. >> and senator whitehouse says kavanaugh should recuse. >> senator, the question of recusal is governed by precedent and rules. >> what possibly greater influence could there be on who is in the seat that you're nominated to than the nomination of the president to that seat? >> so two points, if i could, senator, first i've said already i don't believe it appropriate in this context to make decisions and recue sal is a decision on a case. >> senator, within these hearings this week, have you seen anything that you view as disqualifying for judge

kavanaugh to be elevated to the supreme court. >> he hasn't lift it hed the cl of doubt about his candidacy, particularly being sent there as the president specifically said to overturn roe v. wade, and second that he's being sent there to protect the president from ongoing criminal investigations. >> well, senator, let's take each of those. you've been pushing hard questions. we're looking at live footage as the testimony continues. on roe, since you mentioned it, do you think his misleading your committee when he says it's a superprecedent based on what the new e-mail reveals? >> i think he's being very coy and doing his very best to leave himself room to move to overrule roe. there is a -- it's hard to pin him down on terms, but if you begin with precedent, and then improve to precedent on precedent and then go to settled law and then finally go to correctly decided settled law,

that's kind of how the spectrum goes. and he won't say that roe was correctly decided. he will say that brown versus board of education is correctly decided and he'll say other cases are correctly decided. but he leaves himself that window to overrule roe and he's been slick about dodging around that. >> let's be direct. these things can get rather convoluted. senator, are you saying that he is avoiding committing to upholding roe because that would ultimately be performing perjury on the senate? >> he's more trying to avoid it in order to give senator collins and murkowski some room. >> do you think he has assured senator collins in any meaningful way that he is pro-choice? the balance of what's happened this week, and you just went through some of it, seems to suggest more that he is

pro-life, which would make sense, because the president committed to only appointing pro-life justices. >> yeah, well, the question whether he's pro-choice and whether he's pro-life kind of runs beside the question of how he will treat roe v. wade as precedent. he has gone as far as to say that it is settled law, but he has also said in that particular e-mail that you mentioned that settled law can be overturned, all the time by the court. so the magic words that you're looking for, that he's really committed to defending a particular precedent, are that it is correctly decided. >> right. >> settled law. and he has not been willing to say that. he's leaving himself the opening to go back and overrule roe v. wade under all this pressure that's suspicious. >> i hope you'll forgive me, senator, sometimes i say pro-choice because when we get into what's correctly decided and the day it was decided it's too close to law school and too far from plain language. i know what you mean. the other point i want to turn to, that you've been pressing

and that dovetails with the ongoing scandal about people inside the trump administration saying they are concerned about his fitness for office, which, of course, matches whether there were crimes committed in office. take a listen to senator coons who pressed as you did on these mueller issues today. >> i'm interested in your understanding of the constitution and whether or not it prohibits restrictions on the president's ability to fire a special prosecutor at will. >> so the supreme court said, and so you're asking my views, my views are what the precedent says that in other words i follow the precedent. >> does that concern you? why can't a current appeals court judge simply say that obviously the president cannot fire the prosecutor investigating him without cause? >> it would be good if he could say that, but he didn't. and that's, i think, part of the problem. he comes to us with a record

that runs from him saying that you can't indict a sitting president. and hypothesizing that united states versus nixon, the subpoena of the president case, was wrongly decided, to then, in front of us, saying that united states versus nixon is one of the great fore cases of history, and it's really hard to work through somebody who has taken such a broad array of positions on the same issue. and when you try to pin him down, he just talks about precedent, rather than trying to narrow the range of arguments that he, himself, has made over time. >> senator whitehouse, i know this is an extraordinarily busy time for you and your committee. i appreciate you taking your time out tonight to speak with us. >> thank you, senator. >> i want to let our viewers know about a programming note, kamala harris will be on the rachel maddow show tonight, 9:00

p.m. eastern, in 30 seconds, we come back to discuss donald trump's volcanic eruption and the fallout. after donald trump's infamous defense of both sides,

violence regarding charlottesville. in a new piece he writes that officials like mattis and kelly are signaling to the congress and the american people that trump is wholly unfit for the job. i am joined by former ambassador john pheele y. what do you think of this style of protest while staying on the job. >> there's a couple things you have to take into account. number one, i was a career official. this individual has given every indication that he or she is an appointee, not a career official. i attempted to leave quietly. the only reason that i came out and spoke the way i did, first in a "washington post" editorial and other media platforms is because my confidential letter to the president was leaked by the administration. once they leaked it they became the owners, if you will, of the public narrative regarding my departure. and it was at that point that i

personally decided that as a private citizen, not as a government employee, not as a personal representative of president trump serving overseas, that i was going to push back and i was going to write my own narrative and voice my own criticism as an american citizen. what you've got here with the letter or the op-ed in the "new york times" is something that's very, very different. i think you can read it one of two ways, and i frankly am not sure exactly which one is correct. we'll know at some point. it's clearly a cry for help. it's clearly, as i wrote in the editorial that i published today with univision, it is clearly signaling, hey, there are those of us inside here who know this is not normal behavior. we get it, and we're doing everything we can to stop it. >> yup. >> at the same time this also, and it could be, as i said, it could be that sort of blink coding to folks, please do something. congress, do something. robert mueller, do something.

we're trying to prevent bad decisions. but with what we've seen in the advances from the woodward book and from that op-ed, it's bad. >> do you think it's constructive, this type of move? >> i do not believe that it is. i think that as many have said on other -- in other places, putting your name to it is, i think, always more impactful. that said, what this could be, and this is my other thought, it could be somebody who's trying to position him or herself on the right side of history. >> let me push you on the empirical claim, and i say it with all due respect, but i think you might agree, and our viewers might note that your name is not as well-known as this op-ed, which is anonymous. so when you say the op-ed has less impact, and signing your own name has more impact, you with your public service and your service to this country, which is respected, are a

correlater. you didn't get as much attention. you explained how they were trying to dog you. isn't there a lot of evidence that this is having, at least a bigger initial impact. >> ari, there's no doubt that whoever wrote this and put it in the "new york times" knew that they were going to get a lot of play. there's also no doubt that i was an ambassador. i was one of "x." i was not that close to the president. and you're 100% right that i wouldn't get anywhere near the attention that somebody who sits in the white house or professes to sit in the white house would get. mine was a reaction to my letter being leaked. this is a proactive cry for help. and i think that's a big difference. >> yeah, certainly a big difference and as you say it also goes to the emergency level as depicted in this piece. mr. ambassador, john feeley, thank you for giving us your insights tonight. >> my pleasure. we go to state of mind with tony schwartz, he says today he

has "never seen donald trump," who he knows quite well, better than most, look more "terrified and desperate." we have seen trump rage at those who he feels have been disloyal in any way, and this goes back before politics in the '80s when he was touring his recently purchased plaza hotel, ripping doors off on armoire he didn't like, or more recently berating jeff sessions for recusing in the russia probe, raging in the oval office, it was "the most humiliating experience in his decades of public service." tony schwartz, what are we witnessing? >> well, we're witnessing what happens to a deeply, deeply insecure person who is terrified, above all else, of seeming weak and vulnerable be in a position where he is weak and vulnerable and reacting. and that reference to being

terrified and desperate was looking at his eyes during the session where he spontaneously began to talk yesterday at the white house when he was in front of the sheriffs and he was holding some copy of the "times" piece. and it just seems to me, and i've been saying this to you now probably for six months or so that this is a progressive process. >> narrate for us what you see here. >> well, he's -- it's very hard to see it. >> he's holding the paper. there was no strategy, no -- >> no, this is an impulsive thing, he's looking at it, looks out of sorts, he turns back to the sheriffs, can you believe this stuff? he just is -- this is a man, what i'm thinking about today is this is a man who has built a life around having no relationships. and now the chickens are coming home to roost.

there are no relationships. what he's realizing, this is a very paranoid guy who now has reason to be paranoid. >> this also goes to something we have reported as a factual, a journalistic matter that there are valid criticisms of basically taking this move while in government service. and if this president had paused for an hour or spoken to his advisers, they might have come out and focused on that, number one, focused, number two, on the argument that this reveals part of what they claim is unfair about the federal government, that there are people working against him. but it doesn't seem, tony, that he was in the presence of mind to do any of that. instead we get rage, we get all caps "treason". >> exactly. let me say, just so i'm taking a slightly different perspective than you're getting from a lot of your guests, nonsense about this notion that it was somehow wrong for this person to write this piece anonymously. who gives a damn?

what's important about that piece is that it got written. what's important about that piece is that there is someone in the white house who has daily contact with donald trump who's saying this guy is unmoored, this guy is crazy. everything else pales in comparison to that. let's stay focused on that and stop parsing whether it's a good thing or bad thing. >> you know why we're focused on that mystery? >> i don't. >> because we're deeply superficial and easily distracted. >> it is easy to lose sight of the heart of this, which is you've got a man in office who is unfit to be president, he's mentally unfit, he's emotionally unfit, he's ignorant, he is despotic, and we are continuing to have him. and we have him in a position where somebody who is on the verge of being accused of a whole series of crimes, i believe, i think that's what will happen with mueller, is in

a position to change the rule of law for the next 40 years through kavanaugh. >> you're talking about a void. take a look at donald trump who is saying he's afraid of people who are smarter than him. >> you can't have great success without having really good people around you. never trust them too much because all of a sudden things will start to happen that you're not going to like and you understand what i mean. you always have to be on top of them and you have to be smarter than they are. i hear so many times, oh, i want my people to be smarter than i am. that's a lot of crap. you want to be smarter than people if possible. >> it's a lot of crap. you want to be smarter than people if possible, and i'm not, and it drives me absolutely nuts. >> and that is, i think, what scares him when these people are anonymous, they have more government experience, some of them are military and he's looking at this right now and he's having a reaction. tony, as someone who's sat with him, great to get your insight.

kavanaugh confronted with that e-mail that ignites the roe debate. actress alyssa milano has led the fight on this. she joins me next. now has over 300,000 yearbooks from all across the country. start searching for your family, free, at ancestry.com. (seriously, that's what we call tit. officially.all a huge drag. and we covered it. talk to farmers. we know a thing or two because we've seen a thing or two. ♪ we are farmers. bum-pa-dum, bum-bum-bum-bum ♪ ahoy! gotcha! nooooo... noooooo...

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an important surprise today hit judge brett kavanaugh, he was grilled over this newly revealed e-mail about overturning roe versus wade. in it he wrote i'm not sure all legal scholars refer to roe as the settled law of the land, because the court can always overrule its precedent. abortion access is at the center of so many protests of kavanaugh, which includes alyssa mila milano joining us in a moment. the judge is pressing on a case about a teen detained at the u.s. border seeking an abortion. kavanaugh dissented, saying he didn't have a right without

matching up with a sponsor. take a look at this. >> but, judge, the clock is ticking. >> it is. >> the clock is ticking, 20 week clock is ticking. she made the decision early in the pregnancy, and all that i've described to you, and the judicial decisions, the clock is ticking. and you are suggesting that she should have waited to have a sponsor appointed who she may or may not have consulted in making this decision? >> again, this is -- i'm a judge. i'm not making the policy decision. my job is to decide whether that policy is consistent with law. >> if you listen to that closely, kavanaugh claiming he was following the law. the court ruled that the law was the teen could get an abortion. milano is highlighting this problem. here she is speaking on behalf of that teen. >> i'm jane doe, when i was 17, i crossed the border, i was 17 when i was detained, i was 17, and soon i would learn that i was -- i was pregnant. and after they examined me, i

asked for an abortion. the trump administration tried to stop me. brett kavanaugh tried to stop me. >> she's been campaigning against kavanaugh, and wrote in elle magazine that he must be stopped. right before i left washington, i was able to interview milano, and i began to ask her, why spotlight this issue? >> it's not just about kavanaugh, or about trump, this issue is about my daughter, my mother, the health care of the underprivileged, the marginalized, the people that live in low-income communities because, really, it's those people that are going to be affected most by this. you know, trump made a promise during his campaign that he was going to appoint judges, supreme court judges that would overturn roe v. wade which has been the

law of the land for the last, you know, over 40 years. and we have all entertained this idea in this presidency regardless of their trying to push this through, regardless of the fact that they served 40,000 pages of documents, only hours before the hearing were to start, and i don't know in any other court that that would be permissible. time and time again, i feel like we are entertaining the absurdity of this presidency. and one of these key issues for me, and i think women across the country, again, especially women in low-income and the marginalized is this issue of getting access to safe abortion. kavanaugh only has 37% of the american people. so not only is this a bad choice that senate is making, but they're making a choice going against what the american people

feel and that's the third -- >> alyssa, i want to put to your point, some of that data on the screen for your viewers. you mentioned the support of 37%. donald trump in a range of polls has about 35% range approval. and then roe v. wade, as i think you know, is actually up at 64%. and that goes into the next thing that we wanted to ask you about, which is activists have been protesting kavanaugh, some of them dressed up like the handmaid's tale costumes, we saw these activists outside the entire festivities or rally or hearings. and for those who haven't read the book, we want to show a clip from the series. >> you girls will serve the leaders and their barren wives, you will bear children for them. >> we only wanted to make the world better. >> better never means better for

everyone. >> culture drives these policies in politics. explain to us, or for our viewers who might even be less familiar with that novel why you're putting it in this perspective and why gender equality seems to be such an issue that people are concerned in the context of judge kavanaugh. >> for a number of reasons. if we take this presidency as a whole before he was elected, you know, we had 18 women come forward saying that he had sexually harassed or abused and maybe assaulted them. and then we have systematically watched this president and the administration roll back or attempt to roll back women's rights. and it's hard breakineartbreakis sad, and we're feeling that in the room with the protesters, and we're really getting a glimpse into the corruption and how these major corporations have really taking precedent

over the american people. and i'm hopeful that things will change because i am an optimist. but it's been a very trying time for anyone in the position to use their voice to affect positive change because ultimately what i do, and my passion is to be the voice of those that have no voice. >> well, i'd have to imagine that many people watching would understand and share some of those feelings. you said a little earlier you don't do this full-time. of course, the building behind me was supposed to be responsive to all the people who don't do this full-time to citizens. and so using your following and your platform to reach a lot of citizens is why we wanted to hear from you on this kavanaugh fight. alyssa milano, thank you for coming on "the beat." >> thank you for this opportunity. next, there is news tonight a trump immigration move that could allow for longer detention of children. we'll bring that to you next. ninety-six hundred roads named "park" in the u.s. it's america's most popular street name. but allstate agents know that's where the similarity stops.

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for decades, the united states has applied a humanitarian rule to protect undocumented immigrant children. they cannot be in prison for more than 20 years. today the trump administration is moving to cancel that rule. it would basically allow the government, the trump administration to lock up children and their parents indefinitely. the potential detention of children well beyond 20 days and

depending on the case it could be month, the trump administration saying they are unable to offer how long it would be extended. ramp up child detention and separation at the border which turned out to be a self-inflicted humanitarian crisis ripping more than two and a 1/2 thousand children from their parents. to be clear tonight, the administration's last crack down backfired and it was paired down by the courts. and that was not before thousands of lives were impacted. we bring you this story, this rule change, this potential indefinite rule of children, and we will bring you updates on whether the courts have the final word. mail and packages. mail and it's also a story about people. people who rely on us every day to deliver their dreams they're handing us more than mail

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this week washington has been consumed by disturbing reports coming from inside the house so to speak, the accounts in the woodward book, deeply sourced to trump administration officials. saying donald trump is a dangerous incompetent amoral menace. continue tomorrow, the former trump aide who kicked off the entire russian collusion, george papadopoulos will be sentenced to lying to the feds.

also tomorrow, tomorrows he will be testifying. former cosby actor geoffrey owens will be on tomorrow. we will see that tomorrow. "hardball" is next. active volcano. let's play "hardball." good evening, i am chris matthews in washington. and here, just blocks away from 1600 pennsylvania avenue, the lava sparks over the horizon. the president of the united states is said to be volcanic in his rage over a staff and his admiti