BRIAN WILLIAMS (HOST): Mark Halperin, to you I say this with charity in my heart as an every evening and weekly viewer. When Donald Trump complains that he is not getting favorable coverage in the MSM [mainstream media], he has not been listening to you this cycle. I think you've gone out of your way to find the path, argue for the path, forge the path for him in an argumentative way -- with your co-host -- to the nomination. Tonight I thought you were interestingly optimistic. Where are you getting the path of positivity you laid out on your broadcast tonight?
MARK HALPERIN: Well it's not a question of optimism, it's a question looking at the data and looking at what's going on in the battleground states. I agree with Steve, [Clinton is] still overwhelmingly the favorite. She has many more paths. She's got the demographics on her side. She's got the recent electoral college history that heavily favors the Democratic Party. The polls have tightened, and both campaigns agree they began tightening even before the Comey announcement because of the Affordable Care Act, some of the WikiLeaks stuff. He has the ability to read from the headlines everyday, in a distorted way at times, sometimes not. But if there is a bit of more of a national surge, and if it turns out that his ceiling is higher than the Clinton folks think, if it turns out that she doesn't have the hold on the coalition of the ascendant that Barack Obama had, I think it's possible he could find his way to 270. But it's still not a current thing. He'd need to surge more than he has, and the Clinton folks are quite adamant. He's not surging. It's a small but stable lead, which is exactly what Barack Obama had over Mitt Romney.
WILLIAMS: Either of you, 15 seconds before I play some of what Trump did tonight.
NICOLLE WALLACE: I mean I think that's fair, but I think the idea that there's some magical state with magical polls that we don't see where he's ahead in a blue state is completely false. He's ahead in Iowa. That's it.
