andrea mitchell. she covers the hillary clinton campaign. hallie jackson and kristen welker and katie tur who is on the donald trump beat. welcome all. sorry that i am sucking up holiday time. i appreciate it. >> that's all right. >> obviously a bizarre week, andrea, in so many ways. i want to go because what i think could have been the story of this week was this unbelievable editorial board interview that donald trump did with the washington post. i'm going to play a longer excerpt of it and get you to respond. >> if you could substantially reduce the risk of harm to our ground troops, would you use the battlefield nuclear weapon to take out isis? >> i don't want to use nuclear. rubio hit me, bush hit me. when i said low energy, he's a low energy individual. he hit me first. by the way, he spent $18 million worth of negative ads on me. >> this is about isis. you would not -- >> by the way, could i do one thing? this is a very good looking group of people. could i just go around so i know who the hell i'm talking about. >> when he excerpted

and joining me for insight and analysis are members of the nbc campaign team, andrea mitchell, katy tur, hallie jackson and kristen welker. welcome to this special easter nday edition of "meet the press." >>> from nbc news in washington, this is "meet the press" with chuck todd. >>> good easter sunday morning. it was a big saturday night by the way for bernie sanders. he will join me later in the show. sanders swept the three caucuses in washington, alaska and hawaii, and he did so by huge margins. that said he still faces an uphill path to the nomination because hillary clinton still has that commanding overall delegate lead. but we're going to start with what's been a strange week in the republican campaign, even strange by this standard. you might have expected the conversation to have been dominated by the isis terror attacks in brussels, which claimed the lives of 28 people including two americans, two we can identify, justin and stephanie schultz. they were married and had been living in brussels since 2014. but as donald trump has done countless times, he somehow -- or had it mov

this was hillary clinton with andrea mitchell at nancy reagan's memorial service. >> the other point i wanted to make too is it may be hard for your viewers to remember how difficult it was for people to talk about hiv/aids back in the 1980s. and because of both president and mrs. reagan, in particular 34rs mrs. reagan, we started a national conversation when it. >> all right. well, they quickly cleaned this up after getting a whole mess of complaints from the lgbt community. hillary clinton put up a tweet said the reagans were strong advocates for stem cell research in finding a cure for alzheimer's disease i misspoke for records on hiv and aids. for that i'm sorry. now, a misspeak, that didn't look like a misspeak. they gave an explanation of what she was trying to refer to. >> well, yeah. i mean, it's kind of unbelievable that she could completely conflate or misremember one of the central tenants of the aids crisis, right? >> which was that the -- did the reagan administration do enough? >> exactly. at the time the crisis emerged the president was looking the other way and active

. >> i want to bring in nbc's andrea mitchell joining us by phone. andrea, lester said it best. it was an epic love story between those two. >> it was an extraordinary love story. we should also say i'm kofrpd, i'm flooded with a flood of memories. because she was i think the most imagine in modern history for all of her early missteps and for the press criticism of luxury and designer gowns and designer china, white house expenses during a recession in 1982, she became throughout the first term and then the second term very clearly the most important adviser who pushed and moved the president in very significant ways towards conversations and discussions with mikaele gorbachev at the first geneva summit. believing that talk was better than the continuation of the cold war. this is a president who had said he could not talk to them because the soviet leaders kept dying on them. bresh nef and others. she saw the opening, saw the possibility and who framed all of those conversations and the thit -- he was much more ideological than her husband. she played the role behind the scene

chief foreign affairs correspondent andrea mitchell, hallie jackson covering the white house, kristen welker covering the beat and katy tur on the donald trump beat. welcome all. sorry i'm sucking up holiday time, but i appreciate it. obviously a bizarre week, andrea, in so many ways. but i want to go because what i think could have been the story of the week was this unbelievable editorial board interview that donald trump did with "the washington post." let me play a longer excerpt of it and get you to respond. >> if you could substantially reduce the risk of harm to ground troops, would you use a battlefield nuclear weapon to take out isis? >> i don't want to use -- i don't want to start the process of nuclear. remember, one thing that everybody has said, i'm a counterpuncher. rub yoio hit me, bush hit me, w i said low energy, he's a low energy individual. he hit me first. by the way, spent $18 million worth of negative ads on me. >> this is about isis. you would not use -- >> by the way, could i do one thing? this is a very good looking group of people. can i go around and so i kn