ALSO – EXCLUSIVE WITH REP. JIM JORDAN: “I DON’T THINK THE PRESIDENT’S LIED ABOUT RUSSIA AT ALL”

PLUS – NEW NBC NEWS/WSJ POLL: 2020 RACE WILL BE UPHILL FOR TRUMP, BUT HE HAS STRONG PARTY LOYALTY

MARCH 3, 2019 – Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) said today on Meet the Press that “there’s no one that could factually say there’s not plenty of evidence of collaboration or communications between Trump Organization and Russians.”

The vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee told moderator Chuck Todd, “Mr. Trump knew about the dump of the WikiLeaks material, the fact that clearly the meeting at Trump Tower, meeting which was not described appropriately in terms of offering dirt, the president’s campaign manager sharing information, polling information with the Russians. The earlier instance where Russians were offering through one of the campaigns’ Papadopoulos information. To me, that’s all evidence.”

When asked about Michael Cohen’s recent closed-door testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Warner said that while some of the “tawdry and inappropriate behavior” and “some of the payoffs” came up, the focus of their investigation is on “counterintelligence, what happened in 2016,” and “what level of collaboration and collusion.” He also said Michael Cohen does not have a lot of “veracity” and that “we need to get documents, we are receiving additional documents from him to prove or disprove.”

Sen. Warner also added, “I have never in my lifetime seen a presidential campaign from a person of either party have this much outreach to a foreign country, and a foreign country that the intelligence community and our committee has validated, intervened massively in our election and intervened with an attempt to help one candidate, Donald Trump, and to hurt another candidate, Hillary Clinton.” Watch the full interview.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, also joined the program for an exclusive interview and told Chuck Todd, “I don’t think the president’s lied about Russia at all.”

When asked if he believes that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, Rep. Jordan said, “Yeah, I mean of course, that’s what the intelligence community has told us,” but stopped short of saying they tried to help Donald Trump win: “Who knows why they did it?”

Rep. Jordan also added, “The president’s surrounded himself with some people that, maybe, he shouldn’t. I don’t know. But when he was running this campaign, Mr. Manafort was there, was part of the campaign. Mr. Manafort had been involved with Republican politics before. Why he selected him, I don’t know.”

Rep. Jordan also said that he is “not questioning or interfering” with Robert Mueller’s investigation. “I want it to conclude, I want it over with … And then the attorney general, Bill Barr, will decide, will follow the law and release what he wants to release or maybe release the whole thing. That’s going to happen, we all know that.” Watch the full interview.

Republican pollster Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies and Democratic pollster Fred Yang of Garin Hart Yang Research Group joined the program to discuss the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. The poll found 46 percent of Americans approve of President Trump’s job performance, up three points from January, and 52 percent disapprove. In addition, 41 percent of registered voters said they would “definitely” or “probably” vote for Trump in 2020, versus 48 percent who said they would “definitely” or “probably” vote for the Democratic candidate. Watch the full discussion.

National Political Columnist for Yahoo! News Matt Bai, New York Times Pentagon Correspondent and NBC News Contributor Helene Cooper, Editor of Commentary, New York Post Columnist and NBC News Contributor John Podhoretz, and NBC News National Political Reporter Heidi Przybyla joined the broadcast’s roundtable for insight and analysis on the week in politics. Watch the full panel.

Read the full transcript of Meet the Press this morning and follow the show on Twitter and on Facebook for the latest.

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