? virtual tours? zip-file? really big files? in seconds, not minutes... just like that. like everything... the answer is simple. i'll do what i've always done... dream more, dream faster, and above all... now, i'll dream gig. now more businesses, in more places, can afford to dream gig. comcast, building america's largest gig-speed network. welcome to "inside politics." i'm nia-malika henderson. john king has the day off. new drama in the paul manafort trial as the prosecution preps the jury for the testimony of a key witness, manafort's former deputy. plus, china strikes back against the u.s. trade war, but the ongoing tit-for-tat isn't
briefing on election security. they were about as clear as they could be. russia was and is a big threat. >> our democracy itself is in the cross hairs. >> we acknowledge the threat. it is real, it is continuing. >> make no mistake, the scope of this foreign influence threat is both broad and deep. >> but mere hours later, the president went completely off the intel script at a rally in pennsylvania. >> in helsinki, i had a great meeting with putin. we discussed everything. i had a great meeting. [ cheers and applause ] we got along really well. by the way, that's a good thing, not a bad thing. that's a really good thing. now, we're being hindered by the russian hoax. it's a hoax, okay. i'll tell you what, russia's
News, analysis and interviews with politicians and observers.
realizes, finds the i.d., recognized the name pappas thanks to the efforts of the media who have been great partners in getting out this information and on social media in terms of twitter and everything else. he notices it's suspect pappas. he calls back and says, this is mr. pappas. i found his wallet and i.d. at 9:34, units finally, when we got a better location, arrived in the area. a solo officer patrol unit at 9:35 gets even a better address right over here behind us, where you all can see those police cars. one of our officers spots the suspect. the officer recognizes him, gets out of his police car, and at gunpoint starts ordering mr. pappas, starts giving commands. suspect pappas had his left hand up and had his right hand secreted where the officer could not see his hand.
the city of houston and the texas medical center. i'm thankful that we in this instance, the community came forward. the community was our absolute greatest force multiplier. obviously our detective, our patrol officers did not rest. our command staff did not rest until we had this suspect in custody. i'm very thankful that this suspect, although he committed suicide, you normally don't put on a bullet proof vest when you're thinking about suicide. when you start thinking about -- just based on my experience, an opinion, a hunch -- but i thank god that second officer got there when he got there because the suspect was not complying with the commands or the officer kept his strong hand with the weapon in it secreted where the officer couldn't see it. it wasn't until he saw that second officer. i'm convinced that had we not had that second officer arrive from a different angle, we might have had a shootout here. i just thank god.
i also thank god our witness who works for the parks board, i really believe when he was doing this and stopped, he's trying to get him to come up. we talked about his skills, talked about the fact he's a good marksman and actually had a holster secreted in his clothing that we found. so a very dangerous person. the other thing i want to say is we'll conduct an investigation into this shooting like we do any other shooting. the investigation will continue. this morning we've heard reports that some media outlets are putting out there was a hit list by this suspect. let me just address that quickly. when our officers, our investigators conducted the search warrant on sunday night into monday morning -- excuse me, tuesday into wednesday at
the suspect's residence, they found a very extensive intelligence file that this suspect had put together on dr. hausknecht. he knew everything there was to know. inside that intelligence file, we found one sheet with some of dr. hausknecht's information. contained within that sheet was probably, you know, a couple dozen names of potential doctors and other employees of the texas medical center. when we determined that those were potential employees at the texas medical center, we actually passed that information on to the medical center, and they dealt with it to make sure that notifications were being made as they identified those employees. again, this has been the culmination of a lot of great work by the men and women on the houston police department. a lot of outstanding leadership by the men and women you see
here behind me that have not slept. and obviously by our detectives that have not slept. lastly, i think this case illustrates that with the cooperation and with the engagement between local law enforcement and the communities we serve, this is what we get. we get resolution. we get it quickly. and we get it before there's another loss of life. with that, i'll open it up to any questions. >> chief, do we know how pappas has been getting around? >> that'll be part of our -- >> we'll go straight to cnn's ed lavandera for more. ed, talk about the extent of it manhunt. >> reporter: well, it has been rather intense throughout, really concentrated in the city of houston. police, as you heard the police chief there talking about, had found his car inside his home, and they suspected that joseph pappas left his home earlier this week on this ten-speed schwinn bicycle, the same
bicycle he's suspected of having ridn to carry out t ridden to carry out the attack and killing of mark hausknecht. really, the search for this suspect has been concentrated in the houston area simply because he was believed to have left on his bicycle. so there wasn't a sense that he could have gotten terribly far. obviously this kind of plays out to the scene because the neighborhood we're at is a little over a mile away from where joseph pappas lived. all of this very concentrated in the southwest area of houston. >> ed, thanks, and we'll be right back. liberty mutual saved us almost $800
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neutrogena®. let's return now to another one of our top stories. president trump in an apparent split with his own intelligence community yet again over russia's meddling in u.s. elections. his top intelligence officers spoke at the white house briefing yesterday on election security saying it was and is a serious problem. but the president persists in
blasting what he calls the russian hoax. here with me to share their reporting and their insights, michael sheer with "the new york times," ayesha rasco with npr, michael warren. michael, you were in that press briefing yesterday. what do you see as the daylight between the intel community and the president? >> it appears to be gaping daylight. the thing that was striking sitting in that briefing room yesterday was the number of times and the kind of overwhelming way that all of the nation's law enforcement and intelligence officials that were standing there repeatedly said what the president has refused to say, which is that russia was, is, and will be meddling in the elections. i think what's important about it is if you talk to the people charged with trying to prevent the meddling, and that's both the kind of information warfare, the facebook and the social
media warfare from russia, but also the potential hacking into the infrastructure of the voting machines and the voter rolls and the like. if you talk to the people who want to prevent that, they can do a lot, but it requires the president of the united states lighting a fire under everybody. it requires the president's moral leadership and the bully pulpit that only the president has to both motivate the private sector in the case of facebook and the other companies, and to motivate the government to really move to do this important thing ahead of the elections in 2018 and 2020. that's the thing that is so striking that isn't happening. >> his absence very much felt there yesterday when you see all those intel chiefs. and ben carden, a senator from maryland, sayis that means something, particularly for putin. >> what they were saying at that meeting is mr. putin will fill a
void. he thinks he can move with impunity and attack our system, he'll attack our system. what president trump did in held k sin i c -- helsinki and what he did yesterday calling it a hoax gives putin the green light to compromise our system of government. >> how do you think putin sees this? >> well, look, there's discord and chaos coming out of the message coming out of the united states right now. putin, that's kind of the objective if you're russia. keep everything a little off balance. keep everybody fighting each other. that's what russia tried to do with the population during the election, but now it's happening with the trump administration, which is a bonus really for putin. that message that ben cardin.
but he doesn't do it, and congress does not have the power to push him to do it because there's no real appetite from the leadership to directly cross the president with any sort of a bill that would slap new sanctions. they don't want to rush. so you've got this -- people are stuck in the middle of the road. it seems very, very unlikely that anything tangible or concrete is going to change before the midterm elections. >> and trump says his critics have essentially got it all wrong, and he talked about this last night at that rally in pennsylvania. >> i got along great with putin. a couple hours later, i started hearing these reports that, you know, they wanted me to walk up. here's a podium here. they wanted me to walk up and go like this. they wanted me to go up and have a boxing match. whatever happened to diplomacy? >> not exactly what people -- >> would have made great tv though. we can't deny that.
>> what's interesting also is it's clear that at least some folks in the intel community still don't know what trump said behind the scenes with putin, let alone what he did or didn't do in front of the cameras. >> right. this is the perfect example of the way trump perceives how state craft is done. it's don betwee between two lea. all the stuff the state department or foreign ministry have done beforehand, all of the history that backs up all this, that's less important to the president than what happens in a room one on one. but of course, that's why we have this daylight here. that's why we have this divide within the administration. it was a little odd at the briefing yesterday. they kept insisting, sarah sanders insisted this was the president's idea to have all of these people out there. that's what makes it so confusing. i sort of wonder if all of this focus on this only makes the president sort of dig in harder because he has conflated the two ideas that russia meddled in the
election and somehow that invalidates his own victory in the election. we don't know if any votes were changed. it's hard to quantify that. for the president, it seems to be admitting what everybody around him admits and tells him is the same as admitting he's not really supposed to be there. >> and it also means that the intel chief can be on one page and he can still be at his rallies talking about russia being a hoax. >> it was a really strong show of force to have all of those people at a briefing. that's really unusual to have all of those security people there. but to not have president trump backing that up, president trump is the one who's been giving them mixed messages. it hasn't been coming from the rest of the administration. really, until he gets out there and really starts driving that message home, they're still going to have questions about whether this administration is really committed to election security. >> we'll see if that happens over these next crucial weeks and months. up next, prosecutors move from
paul manafort's fancy jackets to the gaping holes he allegedly left on his tax forms. ♪ keep it comin' love. if you keep on eating, we'll keep it comin'. all you can eat riblets and tenders at applebee's. now that's eatin' good in the neighborhood. named 'park' in the u.s. ninety-six hundred roads it's america's most popular street name. but no matter what park you live on, one of 10,000 local allstate agents knows yours. now that you know the truth, are you in good hands?
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witness, manafort's long-time deputy rick gates. gates has already take an plea deal with the special counsel, and yesterday manafort's bookkeeper testified that in 2016 manafort was nearly broke and he lied to banks about his finances to get loans. the indictment alleges that manafort asked gates to doctor those financial documents. we've got cnn's shimon prokupecz, who's been all over this case. what have we learned so far? >> another devastating day, quite honestly, for paul manafort. they just wrapped up a witness on the stand. they're now at lunch. the witness, who works at an accounting firm, said they riched out to paul manafort and rick gates in e-mails saying if paul manafort has any foreign accounts, we need to know. paul manafort and rick gates both said, no, don't worry about it, there are no foreign accounts. here again, another day of just building out this case for the
prosecution, showing that manafort was trying to hide this money, was not reporting it to the irs. really just devastating evidence. these are kind of boring witnesses. this a lot of financial documents. but this goes to the heart of the prosecution's case. >> so everything is leading to gates. he may or may not testify. >> that's right. there was some indications it could be today, could be monday. we're half a day into this case today. we know this judge likes to go late and likes to work fast, quickly. so it could happen today or, if not, monday. >> and the level of detail in this case that's been laid out so far, the documents, some of the documents laying out that manafort is having these financial documents where the actual revenue is zero dollars, but what he's circulating to bank employees is 2.4 million. he'll really doctoring these
documents. if you were watching this trial, michael, i imagine if you're donald trump, that level of detail might make you a little nervous. >> right. i think there's been a lot made about how we should connect the two investigations. the manafort case doesn't directly have anything to do with russian meddling, doesn't directly have anything to do with the obstruction of justice case. but i do think you're right. when you look at the just methodical way that the special counsel has developed the information, developed the level of detail in these documents, and bringing witnesses to testify at just the really granular level, that if you're donald trump and you're his associates, thinking about fast forwarding in your head how a trial for you might go forward, you know, you got to be worried that mueller is not a guy, and his team, they're not people that just make broad generalities. they get the details.
that's what's going to be problematic for the president should that ever get to that point. >> and i think the public part of this case as well. almost the pr side of things. you look at the way trump and his associates and other folks have been making the argument that all of these people caught up have been treated unfairly. michael flynn is being treated unfairly, paul manafort. he said earlier this week he's being treated unfairly. well, it's harder to make that case when you've got all these details that are pretty salacio salacious. the ostrich coat, jacket or whatever, all the spending going on here. manafort is not exactly coming across here as a witness -- or rather as a person who you feel sympathy for. >> and this idea that he seems to be blaming gates. that's essentially what their defense is. there's some evidence that manafort was basically creating these false documents. he would send reports to gates,
and gates would change them from a pdf to a work document and fiddle around with the profit essentially. then allegedly show those documents to the banks. >> there's a lot of finger pointing going on in general. so if you're the guy who goes on trial, you're blaming it on the little guy. but the little guy is cooperating with the prosecutors. that's what's kicking it back up a notch. you could use this as an example of what's going on in all corners of trump world right now. there's various different legal cases being built against various people that were trump subordinates along the way. trump is pointing the finger and saying, not me, it's their fault, at every turn. >> cohen, for instance. >> exactly. the most present example right now. but if those people are working with mueller's team or with other prosecutors and saying, no, actually, i was asked or told to do this through a chain of command that goes back to the big fish, that's problematic for the big fish. you're seeing that play out here in a different way between manafort and his deputy.
>> shimon, maybe we'll see gates at some point today. what would be the gotcha moment for gates if you're the defense? >> well, look, i think gates will be a big witness certainly for the prosecution. we're all looking forward to it. it's going to bring some highlights. it's going to bring some drama probably to the court. i think we're going to see an aggressive move by the defense team to go after him for sure. so it's going to be interesting. also just seeing gates. we haven't seen gates in so long. hearing from him, that is what's going to be the most interesting. it certainly could happen this afternoon, if not monday. >> we'll wait for that. thanks, shimon. and before we go to break, we want to note a milestone in the mueller probe. one year ago today, we learned the special counsel issued grand jury subpoenas related to that june 2016 trump tower meeting. on one year ago today, republican senator susan collins had this message for the president. >> the president can't set red lines for bob mueller.
pro wrestlers? after years of playing a wwe villain, kain has taken off the mask and gets to play the good guy in the mayor's office. republican senator ted cruz's campaign launched its first tv ads for the 2018 election. as we mentioned yesterday, his opponent democrat beto o'rourke is catching up. a quin pnipiac poll has him jus six points behind cruz. one of the cruz ads may be sensing the closeness, attacking o'rourke. >> ted cruz, who brought home billions in disaster relief and passed emergency tax relief for those hit by hurricane harvey. >> no official, state, or federal has been more involved in the recovery of galveston county than senator ted cruz. >> when the hurricane hit, you stood up for texas.
and ted cruz stood up for you. >> in that ad, it's a kinder, gentler ted cruz, not the ideological fire brand we're used to seeing. >> he's making the case he's working for texas and he's working for local texans when they need it. the fact that we're talking about ted cruz in a competitive race, i think, is what is the issue and should be concerning for republicans who want to make sure they keep the senate. i think the fact this race has become competitive is really something to watch. and if he were to be -- to lose his seat, that would be a huge thing for this idea of a blue wave. >> it would be the blue wave in and of itself in texas. >> just a little bit of irony. in ted cruz, one of the conservatives who never wants -- >> voted against the sandy funding. >> yes. the ad saying, oh, he got all of
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a book that you're ready to share with the world? get published now, call for your free publisher kit today! the u.s. economy is a little light the energizer bunny. it keeps going and going and going. the labor department says 157,000 jobs were created in july. now, that's a little less than forecast. but when you look at those average monthly job growth numbers, you see that we've been around about 200,000 jobs a month for a number of years now. white house spokesman says credit belongs solely to the president's economic agenda. >> our economic fundamentals are strong. there is no question that because of president trump's leadership, his vision on terms of pushing forward economic
policies like tax cuts and tax reform, in addition to his deregulatory agenda, it's working. >> christina, you've looked at these numbers. what stands out to you in this report? >> well, malika, one thing that really stands out to me is wage growth at 2.7%. that's been stubbornly low. not a terrible number without context, but the context here is that we are in the later stages of a business cycle. what does that mean? that means americans who are able and willing to work pretty much have a job. so we are at or near full employment. at that stage in the business cycle, you would expect to see the wage number between 3% and 4%, not stuck at that 2.7%. so that's going to be a persistent challenge for the administration. now, that said, 157,000 jobs, as you pointed out, is actually a pretty solid report.
i think wall street probably wanted to see the number closer to expectations, closer to the average we've been getting. but again, given the stage and the cycle that we're in, 157,000, houmg more jobs can you add? i think wall street and investors and employers and companies will have to look forward and say is this the new normal, or is this just a blip and we'll continue on the 200,000 going forward? >> and today we saw china thretton p threaten to put more tariffs on u.s. goods after a similar announcement this week from the trump administration. are there any signs that either side will blink? and are we seeing any reaction in the jobs market to this potential trade war? >> so on whether either side is backing down, no. we see china hitting back, proposing 5% to 25% tariffs on
$60 billion of goods. that in reaction to the administration floating the idea of 25% tariffs on $200 billion worth of goods. look, i don't think anybody in the administration is surprised by china's response today and its rhetoric. earlier in the week, china suggested the u.s. was blackmailing it. so i don't think anybody in the administration really thought that china was going to stand down. but the reality is president trump thinks that the u.s. can inflict more harm on the chinese economy than the chinese can retaliate with. to a certain extent, he's right because the u.s. actually imports a lot more than china imports in u.s. goods. on a dollar-for-dollar basis, china can't fight back, but it can do other things. it can take other retaliatory measures, and that's the kind of thing that all businesses in the u.s. are bracing for and watching very closely. >> cristina, thanks for that report. next, a big win and a big
loss in tennessee's republican primary. did president trump have a hand in both? there's a lot to love about medicare.
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neulasta is for certain cancer patients receiving strong chemotherapy. do not take neulasta if you're allergic to it or neupogen (filgrastim). an incomplete dose could increase infection risk. ruptured spleen, sometimes fatal as well as serious lung problems allergic reactions, kidney injuries and capillary leak syndrome have occurred. report abdominal or shoulder tip pain, trouble breathing or allergic reactions to your doctor right away. in patients with sickle cell disorders, serious, sometimes fatal crises can occur. the most common side effect is bone and muscle ache. ask your doctor about neulasta onpro. pay no more than $25 per dose with copay card. president trump's winning streak with endorsements is alive and well in tennessee. congresswoman, who likes to be called congressman, marsha blackburn getting well over 80% of the vote in the republican senate primary after enthusiastic backing from the president. she'll face the former governor,
phil bredesen. a much different race for diane black. she ran as a trump ally, but without his endorsement, and came in third in the gop primary, losing to a political novice, businessman bill lee. listen to the president's praise here of blackburn, versus his lackluster treatment of black. >> and finally, the person we are all here tonight to support, the next united states senator from the great state of tennessee, a very, very early supporter of ours and a really wonderful woman. she loves your state. she loves your country. she's going to win. marsha blackburn. diane black. diane, where's diane? she's in a big race.
>> just good luck, diane. congresswoman black losing despite spending millions of her own dollars and getting an endorsement from vice president mike pence. adding salt to her wounds, president trump's first tweet of the day, a total and enthusiast endorsement of the man who beat her. so is the president sort of the x factor here in these races? >> for republicans, absolutely. they need to be as close to president trump as possible. they need to be wearing those hats. they need to be saying whatever they can to say i am with trump. that clearly is what will get you over the finish line. diane black did not have that. >> she wasn't wearing her hat enough. and this is going to be a really interesting race here. you've got a race between phil bredesen, who was the governor off off of tennessee. then you have marsha blackburn, who's a fiery trump supporter.
what do you see happening here, michael? >> i would say phil bredesen is a sleeper to actually win this seat. i don't think it's a guarantee that the republicans hold on to it, even though tennessee has gotten much more republican since bredesen was in the governor's office. he's a moderate. he sort of fits the state in a way that i think not a lot of democrats in the trump era have been able to do. maybe in some of these house districts in california where they're trying to beat off republicans who won in hillary districts. bredesen, i think, fits the mold for what democrats in trump states ought to be doing. this is a race i would be watching. >> and what isn't fitting the mold in some of these states are people who are house members, not able to sort of get the ticket to the bigger job. we saw that of course with diane black. she's the fifth house gop member to run for statewide office to lose in 2018. >> right. you see people making these bids
and trying to -- the traditional path. you start in the house, try to make a bid for the senate, as we're seeing. it's kind of a crap shoot sometimes as to whether that works or not. at this point, we're trying to see a lot of women make that advance, especially when you're talking about the governor's offices. it's a difficult road and one that's going to require a lot of people to break glass ceilings. so it's a lot of different elements at play. of course, right now just the political landscape is so much different than it used to be. the traditional you paid your due, you were the insider that went all the way, just doesn't work in this environment. republicans love outsiders. >> outsiders and businessmen. >> quickly, michael, even given the dynamics and demographics in tennessee, do you want trump down there if you are blackburn
this election marks the largest senate games for a presidents party in a first midterm election since at least president kennedy's in 1962. there have been only four midterm elections since 1934 in which a presidents party has gained even a single senate sea seat. as of now, we picked up it looks like three. it could be four. perhaps it could be two. but we picked up a lot. and most likely the number will be three. you people probably know that better than i do at this point. because you have looked at the more recent numbers. 55 is the largest number of republican senators in the last 100 years. in the last 80 years, a sitting president's party has only gained a cumulative total of
eight senate seats. averaging one per decade. so we have picked up two, three, four, that is a big percentage of that number. so in the last 80 years, you think, only eight seats. in president obama's first midterm election, he lost six senate seats including in the deep blue state of massachusett massachusetts. republicans captured at least four senate seats held by democrat incumbents, and these are tremendously talented, hardworking people that did this. indiana, north dakota, florida, missouri. we also won two open senate seats in tennessee, and i want to congratulate our great champion who did such a great job in tennessee.
and in utah. and arizona is looking very good. really very good. she has done a terrific job, that was a big race and she has done a terrific job. in the open seats democrats recruited strong candidates with substantial fund-raising and media support. we were getting bombarded with money on the other side. in the house, republicans dramatically outperformed historical precedents and overcome a historic number of retirements. the most house republican tyrants in 88 years. 43 house republicans retired. now, i will say this, in many cases they were chairman of committees. and they left because they were not chairman, because the republicans have a role for six years. and what they do is wonderful in one way, and lets people come through the system and become
chairman in another way it drives people out. because when they are determined, they do not want to go and not be a chairman. you are the chairman of a committee and you are a big deal. and then all of a sudden you are not doing that anymore. so they leave. we had a lot of them leave. i guess it can flip a coin as to which system is better. the democrats do the other pair to some of those folks have been on the committees for a long time as chairman. in 2010, president obama's first midterm he lost 63 seats. by contrast as of the most current count, it looks like around 27 house seats or something. and we will figure that out pretty soon. we also had a slew of historic wins in the governor 's races. the governor's races were incredible. against well-funded and talented and skilled democrat candidates, and people that worked very, very hard, respectfully for those candidates like oprah, who
i like. i don't know she likes me anymore, but that's okay. she used two. but she worked very hard in georgia, very, very hard. and if you look at them, the four governor's races, crucial to 2020 in the presidential race. florida, iowa, ohio, and georgia, the big ones. florida, iowa, ohio, and georgia. it cannot get much more important than that. they were incredible. they were actually incredible campaigns too. incredible. as of right now, republicans will control the majority of governorships across the country. including three great women who worked very hard. the governors of alabama, south dakota, and iowa. they worked very, very hard. they are very talented. by expanding the senate majority, the voters have also
clearly rebuked the senate democrats for their handling of the kavanaugh hearings, i think that that was a factor. may be a big factor. tremendous energy was given to the republican party for way that they treated then judge cavanaugh, now justice kavanaug kavanaugh. and expressing their support for confirming great pro-constitution judges. candidates who embraced our message of low taxes, low regulations, no crime -- low crime, strong borders, and great judges excelled last night. they excelled. they really, i mean, we have a list of people that were fantastic. and i'm just going to point them out. mike bossed, rodney davis, andy
barr was fantastic. i went to kentucky, for the most part i did not campaign for the house, but i did make a special trip for andy barr, because he was in a very tough race. and he won. that was a very tough race, the polls were all showing that he was down, down substantially, and he won. could stop her and of a minnesota. great guy, he is new. and ran a fantastic race. you have some that said let's stay away, let's stay away. they did very poorly. i'm not sure that i should be happy or sad. but i feel just fine about it. carlos curbelo, mike kaufman. too bad, mike. mia love. i saw mia love, she would call me all the time to help her with a hostage situation, being held
hostage in venezuela. but mia love gave me no love. and she lost. too bad. sorry about that, mia. and barbara concept was another one. i think that she could've won that race, but she did not want to have an embrace. for that, i do not blame her. but she lost substantially lost. peter roskam did not want the embrace. erik paulsen did not want the embrace. and in new jersey, i think that he could have done well, but did not work out too good. bob you can come i feel badly, that is something that could've been one. john fatso, those are some of the people that decided for their own reason not to embrace whether it is me or what we stand for, but what we stand for
meant a lot to a lot of people. and we have had tremendous support and tremendous support in the republican party among the biggest support of the history of the party. i've actually heard and 93% it is the record. but it will not say that. because who knows. but we have had tremendous support. america is booming like never before. doing fantastic. we have larry kudlow here, he said that the numbers are as good as he has ever seen, numbers at any time for our country. but he has a young man, so he has not seen that many numbers. where is larry? you are a young man, right, larry, you have not been doing this too long. but they are as good as you have ever seen. and we may have, if you have a question for larry, we will do that. but i want to send my warmest appreciation in regards to majority leader mitch
mcconnell. we really worked very well together. we have been working very well together. we have a great relationship. people just do not understand. which is fine. and also to perhaps, looks like i would think, speaker nancy pelosi. and i give her a lot of credit. she works very hard. and she has worked long and hard. i give her a great deal of credit for what she has done and accomplished. hopefully we can all work together next year to continue delivering for the american people. including on economic growth, infrastructure, trade, lowering the cost of prescription drugs. these are some of the things that the democrats do want to work on. and i really believe that we will be able to do that. we are going to have a lot of reason to do it. and i will say, just as a matter of business. i was very successful with the people last night.
so if the republicans won, let's say that we held on by two, one, or three, it would've been hard to have that many republicans to even get support among republicans. because there will always be one, two, three people there for good reason or bad raising or for grandstanding, we have that too. you have seen that. plenty of grandstanding. but for certain reasons that many people, you are always going to have a couple that will not do it. so that puts us in a very bad position. in other words, had we kept, and this is new. i am saying this for a very basic reason. it puts us in a very tough position. we win by two, three, and he will have one, two, three, four, or five say that we will not go along with this. we want this, this, this period and all and all of a sudden, we would not be able to get in and in many cases in the republicans hands before we sent it on to the senate.
and now we have a much easier path. because the democrats will come to us with a plan for infrastructure. a plan for health care. a plan for what ever they are looking at. and we will negotiate. and as you know, it has been very hard in the senate, because we essentially do not get the votes from democrats. because they do stick together well. i do not agree with them on a lot of policy. but i agree that they stick together. they stick together good. so we going to the senate, we do not have the ten votes. and what happens? it does not get past. even if it gets out of the house, it does not pass. so under the new concept of what we are doing, i say come on. let me see what you have. they want to do things. i keep hearing about investigations. fatigue, like from the time almost from the time that i announced i was going to run.
they have been giving us this investigation fatigue. it has been a long time. they have nothing. zero. you know why? because there is nothing. but they can play that game, but we can play it better. because we have a thing called the united states senate. and a lot of very questionable things were done between leaks of classified information and many other elements that should not have taken place. and all you are going to do is end up in back and forth and back and forth. and two years will go up, and we will not have done a thing. i really think and i really respect what nancy said last night about bipartisanship and getting together and uniting. she used the word uniting, and she used the bipartisanship statement, which is so important. that is what we should be doing. so we can look at us, they can
look at us. we can look at them. and it will go back and forth. and it will probably be very good for me politically. i can see it being extremely good politically. i think that i am better at that game then they are, actually. but we will find out. we will find out. or we can work together. you cannot do it simultaneously, by the way. oh, you can do them both? no, you can't. because if they are doing that, we are not doing the other. just so you understand. we will not be doing that. but now it happens as we send it to the senate, and we will get 100% democrat support. and we will get some republican support. and if it is good, i really believe that if we have republicans that will help with the approval process. and they will really help with the approval process. so it really could be a beautiful bipartisan type of situation. if we won by one, two, three, four, five. that would not happen. and the closer it is, the worse that it is. this way they will come to me,
we will negotiate. maybe we will make a deal, maybe we won't. that is possible. but we have a lot of things in common on infrastructure. we want to do something on health care, they want to do something on health care. there are a lot of great things that we can do together. it will send it up and we will really get the democrats and the republicans, or some of the republicans. and i will make sure that we send something up that the republicans can support. and they are going to make sure that they want to send something up that the democrats can support. so our great country is blooming like never before and we are thriving on every single level. in terms of economic and political strength. in terms of development, in terms of the gdp, we are doing unbelievable. i can tell you that the trade deals are coming along fantastically. the usmca, and south korea is finished. usmca, it has gotten rave reviews. not going to lose companies
anymore to other countries. they are not going to do that because they have a tremendous economic incentive. it is prohibitive for them to do that. so they are not going to have it happen like nafta, which is one of the worst deals i have ever seen. but we have to mention pretty bad ones too. now it is time for members of both parties to join together, put partisanship a side, and keep the american economic miracle going strong. it is a miracle. we are doing so well, and i have set it at a lot of rallies. some of you have heard it so much, you do not want to hear it again. but when people come to my office, presidents, prime ministers, they all congratulate me. almost the first thing on what we have done economically. because it is really amazing. and our steel industry is back. our aluminum industry is starting to do really well. these are industries that were dead. the miners are working again. we must all work together to
protect our military. we have to do that. we have to support our law enforcement, secure our borders, and advance really great to policy, including environmental policy. we went crystal clean water. we want to beautiful perfect ai air. air and water has to be perfect. at the same time, we do not want to put ourselves at a disadvantage to other countries who are very competitive with us. and who do not abide by the rules at all. we do not want to hurt our jobs. we do not want to hurt our factories. we do not one company is leaving. we want to be totally competitive. and we are. and right now we have just about the cleanest air. the cleanest water that we have ever had. and it is always going to be that way. we insist on it. so environmental is very important to me. and with that, i will take a few questions if you like. whoa. i did not know what happened! go ahead. that was a lot of hands shooting
up so quickly. there is a lot to talk about. >> mr. president, you talked in length about bipartisanship, the presumed speaker of the house nancy pelosi talked about it last night. i'm sure that that is encouraging for the american people. but do you really believe given what the relationship has been like between this white house and the democratic party that that will happen? >> president trump: i think that there is a good chance. i think that there is a very good chance. >> if i can just finish, will you have to compromise on certain issues where it could hurt you in 2020? and do you expect that when the democrats take over the chairmanship of all of these important committees that you will get hit with a blizzard of subpoenas on everything from the russia investigation to your cell phone use, to your taxes? >> president trump: then if that happens, we are going to do the same thing. and governments comes to a halt. and i would blame them. because they now are going to be coming up with policy. they are the majority of the
house. i expect that they will come up with some fantastic ideas that i can support on the environment. on so many different things. including prescription drug prices, which we have made a big dent in already. including some of the things that we are working on for the vets who have gotten choice approve. we have gotten a lot of things approved. but they have some other elements that we want to. if there are many things we can get along on. it can be without the trouble that we agree with them and they agree with us. i would like to see bipartisanship. i would like to see unity. and i think that we have a very good chance, maybe not on everything. but we have a very good chance of seeing that. go ahead. >> one question on your cabinet. you toyed during a shutdown before the midterms in order to secure border wall funding. are you prepared to go at a shutdown strategy during the lame duck, since this might be
the last best chance to secure that? >> president trump: not necessarily, i speak to democrats all the time. a wall as necessary. we have started, but we should build it at one time and not adjuncts. >> but you want much more money. >> president trump: we have the money to build a wall. not pieces. we have the military. and now we have other elements of a wall that are pretty nasty, to be honest with you. but it is nevertheless pretty hard to get through. but i would like to see the wall. many of the people that will be dealing with you all and 2006, they agreed with the same thing. and they all approved it. if statements from every one of them. seeing that we need the wall. they sound like me. but we do need it. because we have people coming. i'm not just talking about the caravans. we have people coming through the border that you physically cannot put that many people, it is a 2,000-mile stretch. you cannot put that many people along that stretch to guard it.
and even if you did, tremendous fighting would ensue. so, we need the wall. many democrats know we need the wall. and we are going to have to see what happens. i will be fighting for it. they have done everything in their power to make sure, i got the military $700,000,000,000.716 billion. the wall is a tiny fraction of the cost of that. but their whole agenda has been to try not to giving me anything for though wall. i really believe politically that they are hurting themselves. i actually think politically that is a good thing for me, but i want to get the wall up. >> so no shutdown scenario? >> president trump: i cannot commit to that, but it is possible. >> can you give us clarity on your thinking after the midterms about your attorney general and her deputy attorney general, do they have long timers job security? >> president trump: i will answer that had a little bit of a different time, we are looking at a lot of things including cabinet. i'm very happy with most of my
cabinet. we are looking at different people for different positions. you know, it is very common after the midterms. i do not want to do anything before the midterms. but it will tell you that for the most part i am extremely happy with my cabinet. i think that mike pompeo has fit in so beautifully. he has done an incredible job. >> what about your interior secretary? >> president trump: we are looking at that. and i want to study whatever is being said. >> is he in jeopardy? >> president trump: he is doing a fantastic job. but we will look at that, and probably have an idea about that in a week. >> thank, mr. president. >> president trump: wow. go ahead. he gave me a fair interview the other day. so i might as well let him ask a question. >> thank you, mr. president. you told me the other day that you are an open book. >> president trump: i think i am an open book. >> so pointblank, democrats go after your tax returns, will you try to block that? or will you allow it? >> president trump: look, as i
have told you, they are underwater. they have been placed on time. they are extremely complex. people would not understand the them. it is taken by the biggest and best law firms in the country. same with the accounting firms. they are very, very, large powerful firms in terms of respect and value respected. a big firm. a great law firm, where you know it very well. they do these things. but people do not understand tax returns. i did a filing of over 100 pages, which is in the offices pity them with people went and saw that filing, they saw the magnitude of it and they were very disappointed. they saw the detail. you get far more from that, and i guess we file that down three times, but you get far more from that then you can ever get from a tax return, but when you are under audit. and i am under current and continuous audit. because there are so many companies. it is a big company. far bigger than you would even
understand. but it is a great company. but it is big. and it is complex. and it is probably feet high. it is a very complex instrument. and i think that people would not understand it. but if i were finished with the audit, i would have an open mind to it. i would say that. but i do not want to do it during the audit. and no lawyer even from the other side, they say often. not always. but when you are under audit, you do not subject it to that. you get it done, and then he released it. so when that happens, if that happens, i would certainly have an open mind to it. >> that means of the audit is still oncoming will not turn over the tax returns? >> president trump: nobody would. nobody returns a return when it is under audit. go ahead, please. >> i was tempted to ask you why you like oprah so much, but i think that i will go on to the question -- >> president trump: why do i like oprah? what kind of question is that?
there is a committee in here. i do like oprah, by the way. i do. she was a person that i knew well. came to my place in palm beach often. and i have a lot of respect for her. unfortunately, she did not do the trick. >> the real question is you just set up here and said from this podium -- are you offering a my way or highway scenario to the democrats? >> president trump: negotiation. not at all. >> if they start investigating you that you can play that game and investigate them? >> president trump: better than them. >> can you compartmentalize that and say that you can work with them for the benefit of the rest of the country? or are all bets are off? >> president trump: no, if they do that, all of this is the posture. you heard what i said. >> since it is jim, i will let it go. >> thank you, mr. president. i would like to challenge you on one of the statements that you
made at the tail end of the campaign in the midterms. >> president trump: here we go. >> if you do not mind, mr. president. that the caravan was an invasion. >> president trump: i consider it to be an invasion. >> it is not an invasion. it is a group of migrants moving up from central america towards the border with the u.s. >> president trump: thank you for telling me that. >> why did you characterize that as such? >> president trump: because i consider it an invasion. when i have a difference of opinion. >> do you think you demonized immigrants? >> president trump: no, i want them to come into the country. but they have to come in legally. through a process. i want it to be a process. and i want people to come in. and we need the people. wait, wait. you know why we need the people? because we have hundreds of companies move in. we need to people. >> your campaign had an ad showing migrants climbing over walls -- >> president trump: that's true. they were not actors. it is true. do you think that they were actors? they did not come from
hollywood. these were people, this was an actual -- it happened a few days ago. >> they are hundreds of miles away. that is not an invasion. >> president trump: honestly i think that you should let me run the country. you run cnn. and if you did it well, your ratings will be much higher. >> if i may ask one other question -- >> president trump: that is enough. >> the other folks asked, pardon me, ma'am -- >> president trump: that is enough. >> if i can ask on the russian investigation. are you concerned that you may have -- >> president trump: i am not concerned about anything with the russian investigation, because it is a hoax. that is enough, put down the mi mic. >> mr. president. >> president trump: i tell you what, cnn should be ashamed of themselves having you working for them. you are rude, terrible person. you should not be working for cnn. go ahead.
you are a very rude person, the way that you treat sarah huckabee sanders is horrible. on the way that you treat other people is horrible. you should not treat people that way. >> and jim's defense, he is a diligent reporter. >> president trump: i'm not a big fan of yours either. to be honest. >> i understand. >> president trump: you are not the best. >> over the course of -- >> president trump: just sit down, please. when you report fake news -- no. when you report fake news which cnn does a lot, you're the enemy other of the people. >> mr. president, over the course of the last several days, at the end of the campaign you repeatedly said that americans need to fear democrats. you said the democrats would unleash a wave of violent crime that endangers families everywhere -- >> president trump: they do have crime. peter, what are you trying to do? let me just tell you, first off, because they are very weak on crime. because they have often
suggested members and people within the democratic party at a high level have suggested getting rid of i.c.e. getting rid of law enforcement. that is not going to happen, okay? we want to be strong on the borders. want to be strong on law enforcement. and i want to cherish i.c.e. because i.c.e. does a fantastic job. what they do for us is so really it is someone recognized how good a job they do. so, we went to take care of them, and we want to hold them very close. because they do a good job. >> for the question, to be clear -- >> president trump: thank you very much. to sit down. >> you did not answer my question. very simply, why are you pitting americans against one another? >> president trump: i am not. i will tell you what, we won a lot of elections last night. we do very well last night. and i think that it is going to have a very positive impact. i watched nbc. they did not reported exactly correctly. but that is very, that is the fact with nbc. nothing i can do about that.
but i want this country to have protection. we want to security in our country. i went security, peter. i mean, you may be do not think it is so important. and i think when you do not have it, you are indeed going for a crime. >> you said that you would sign a an executive order on birthright citizenship, are still going to do that? >> president trump: you will answer that question a little bit later. go ahead. >> thank you, mr. president. the investigation by the special counsel robert mueller has been going on since last spring, it has been over a year -- >> president trump: a long time. >> over a year over the republicans had, is this an opportunity for you mr. president, to and they investigation? would you consider removing mr. mueller from his investigation? >> president trump: i could have ended it when ever i wanted. there was no collusion. there was no anything. i did not. they went after hackers and i do not know about that. they went after people with tax
problems from years ago. they went after people with loans and other things. it had nothing to do with my campaign. this is an investigation where many, many millions of dollars has been spent. and there is no collusion. we are supposed to be on collusion. there is no collusion. and i think that it is very bad for our country. i will tell you. i think that it is a shame. and april came out today, by the way, from nbc at least i saw itf the people do not agree with the mueller investigation or was not approved. they have approval and disapproval, and it had a much higher disapproval rate. it should end. because it is very bad for our country. and i'm not just talking about the tremendous expense. and the other thing is, they should look at the other side also. they only look at one side. they are not looking at all of the things that came up during
this investigation. they do not do that. they should also get people that can be fair, not 13 or 14 or 17 i call them the "angry democrats." they are angry people. it is a very unfair thing for the country. you think it is unfair to mean? it is very bad for a country. >> mr. president, if it is unfair to the country and it is costing millions of dollars -- >> president trump: i have answered the question. go ahead, take the mic. i will give you voter suppression. you just have to -- sit down please. sit down paired i did not call you. i did not call you. i will give you voter suppression. look at the cnn polls how inaccurate they were. that is called voter suppression. >> thank you, mr. president . >> president trump: i'm not responding. excuse me, i am not responding to you. i'm talking to this gentleman,
will you please sit down? excuse me. would you please sit down. please go ahead. >> thank you, mr. president. now that the house of -- >> president trump: it is such a hostile meeting. it is so sad. you asked me -- no, you really untouched -- interrupted him. he rudely interrupted him. >> thank you, mr. president. dear men don't make demands for his mean the same to the u.s. congress on immigration and exchange for a doc fix, and amnesty approval of 1.7 millionu willing to change the demands that you made to congress earlier? >> president trump: i think that we can do something with daca and we had some good work, but a judge ruled that daca was okay. had it they not rule that way, we would've made a deal. but then the democrats did not want to talk anymore. so we will see how it works out at the supreme court. go ahead.
>> can you take a question from the incumbent, please? >> president trump: from where? yes, go ahead. go ahead. which group? what do you want me to take -- go ahead, ma'am. either one. or both. are you together? go ahead. >> we are not together. mr. president, how do you respond to critics that you message on the campaign towards minorities have been polarizing? >> president trump: i do not think that there has been at all. >> one of them is veiled to the house making history, is this a rebuke of this? >> president trump: i do not understand. >> is it a rebuke of the message, is this multiethnic and multicultural america? >> president trump: i cannot answer that question. i can only say this, you look at the employment and unemployment numbers of african-americans, asian-americans, or hispanic americans, they are at a historic high. the poll came out recently where
my numbers with hispanics and with african-americans are the highest, the best that they have ever been, that took place two or three days ago. i have the best numbers with african america -- hispanic-american than i have ever had before and use of the sample, i cannot say that, i can say this, you look at median income, you look at all of the unemployment and employment numbers, they are doing the best that they have ever done. and it reflects, it really is very reflective in the polls. >> mr. president. i'm from brooklyn, so you will understand me. my question is on health care. how is it possible to keep premiums down? and cover pre-existing conditions without the individual mandate to fund it? >> president trump: what we are doing and if you look at the department of labor, also secretary separately but they have done, they have come up with some incredible health care plans which is posing great competition and driving the
price is right down. we are getting rid of individual mandate. it was unfair to a lot of people. but we are covering the people that need it. the individual mandate was a disaster, because people that could not necessarily afford it or having to pay for the privilege of not having to pay for health care. and it was bad health care at that. so we are working many plans for health care. creating tremendous competition. we had obamacare repealed and replaced. unfortunately, one person changed his mind at the last moment. and we had no democrat support. i have to say that. we did not have one vote. we would have repealed it, replaced it and we would've had a good health care plan. now we are doing at a different way. we are doing at a different way. by getting rid of the individual mandate is a very, very popular thing. and a very important thing. and people very much appreciate appreciated. go ahead. no, that is enough. go ahead, please. >> thank you, sir, one, i know
that you went through the results and you sign them late last night, what lesson did you learn most from looking at the results? is there one thing is you reviewed that you will change, your strategy not just for congress? but going ahead? and a follow-up. >> president trump: i think that people like me. i think that they like the job i am doing, frankly. because if you look at every place that i did a rally, he could not do it with everybody. but it was very hard to do it with people in congress. because there are just too many, there would be too many stops. but i did it with the senate. i did it with andy barr, as you know. and he one man. he won a very tough race against mcgrath. i was at a very tough race in kentucky. and he was down quite a bit. i went there and we had a tremendous, successful, some of you were at that rally, and he won that race. but i could only do that so much, because there are just so many players involved. but i did focus on the senate,
and we had tremendous success with the senate. >> can i ask you one more question, if you do not mind, i'm so sorry sir, it is a rare opportunity. a lot of people will be rushing to iowa and new hampshire, you know that the democrats are already looking ahead to 2020, do you want to lock down your tickets right now? with the vice president beer running mate in 2020? >> president trump: i have not asked him, but i hope so. mike, will you be my running mate? will you? thank you. if the answer is yes. that was unexpected, but i feel very fine. yes, please. >> thank you, mr. president, going back to the potential investigations from the democratic majority in congress, some say that you could stop all of this -- >> president trump: i could fire everybody right now. but i do not want to stop it, because politically i do not
like to stop it. it is a disgrace. it should have never been started, because there was no crime. everybody has conflicts. they all have conflicts over there that are beyond anything that anybody has ever seen in terms of conflicts. from the fact that people ask for jobs, from the fact that they are very good friends on the other side, like really good friends like comey, who by the way, lied and to leaked and leaked classified information. nothing happened today are. mind, or perhaps, maybe something is happening that i do not know about. but you know what i do? i let it go on. they are wasting a lot of money. but i let it go on, because i do not want to do that. but you are right, i could end it right now. i could say that investigation is over. but it is really, it is a disgrace, frankly. and it is an embarrassment to our country. is this an embarrassment to the people of our country.
and it is too bad. >> what about the complication of the documents. >> president trump: we are looking at that very seriously. the declassification, we are looking at that very seriously. it is amazing how people on the other side just do not want those documents declassified. we are looking at that very carefully. i certainly wanted to wait until after the midterms. >> can i ask you one more question, mr. president ? >> president trump: go ahead. >> thank you, mr. president. you campaigned as a pro-life president. you have defended the rights of unborn children. you know have a divided congress, it is unlikely to pass the pro-life bill. >> president trump: a very tough issue. >> how will you push forward your pro-life agenda? >> president trump: i will just push. i've done a good job too. we are very happy. but it is a tough decision for the two sides paid what will i do? i will not be able to explain that to you. because it is an issue that is a very divisive, polarizing issue. but there is a solution, i think
that i have that solution. and nobody else does. we are going to be working on that. yes, go ahead, please. she took your place, but that is okay. >> mr. president, just a question on rural america, in indiana north dakota, folks turn out for a republican candidate. could you talk about what this means for your agenda in terms of trade and the farm bill? >> president trump: the farm bill is working really well. we could've had it approved at any time had but we are looking to get work rules are approved. the farmers wanted, i like it. the democrats are not giving us the ten boats that we need. everybody wants it, the farmers want it, but the democrats are not approving the farm bill with work laws. we could have a very fast without the work rules. but we want the work rules in. and the democrats just do not want to vote for that. so at some point, they will have to pay maybe a price after. >> mr. president .
thank you, very much, mr. president. have you seen any evidence that russia or china intervened in yesterday's election? >> president trump: we will make a full report. unlike the previous administration we have done a lot of work on that issue. and if you speak with the fbi, and the department of justice coming to speak to homeland security, we have spent a lot of time. it gets very little coverage in the papers. to cover the nonsense, but you do not cover the important part. this is very important. and be up been working very hard on china, and russia and everybody else looking into our elections or meddling with our elections. but people tend not to write about it. but we have worked very hard. >> what do you intend to say to president xi into president putin when you meet with them later this month? >> president trump: i have a good relationship with both. i know that president xi -- i know him better. but i have a good relationship with both. i had a good meeting in russia that you people do not agree
with. it does not matter, obviously. but the fact that i had a very, very good meeting. a very, very good meeting with president putin. and a lot was discussed about security, syria, about ukraine, about the fact that president obama allowed a very large part of ukraine to be taken. and right now you have submarines off of that particular parcel. >> that was president putin who annexed crimea. >> president trump: that was during president obama. right? there was not during me. >> that was the president's annexation. >> president trump: it was president obama that allowed it to happen. at a nothing to do with me. go ahead. >> thank you, mr. president, from sky news. you are a man who likes to win, but last night who is not an absolute victory. >> president trump: i will be honest, i thought that it was a
very close to complete victory. when you look at it from the standpoint of negotiation. when you look at it from the standpoint of dealmaking, because it is all about dealmaking, again, if we had the majority, and we had one, two, three votes to play with, we would have been at a standstill. i really believe that we have a chance to get along very well with the democrats, and if that is the case, we can do a tremendous amount of legislation, and get it approved from both parties. so i consider it to be -- and look, i won georgia. president obama campaigned very hard in georgia. oprah winfrey campaigned very, very hard all over the television. i said that this is going to be tough. i only had me. i did not have anybody else. and i went to georgia, and we had one of the largest crowds that anybody here has seen ever at a political rally.
and you know it's coming he won. and he won actually by a pretty good margin. and then we went to florida, and they had celebrities all over the place. and a man who happens to be a very smart person was running. ron desantis, and people did not give them a chance. and i went, and we did some great work. and they are going to have a great governor at the state of florida. and then we talked about the senate. and a lot of money was pouring in for the democrats, this is a man who has been in office for like 44 years, or something. this is a man who is a professional getting elected and being in office. so bill nelson, not easy to beat, okay. they had a lot of celebration coming through, and everybody coming after nelson. and rick scott won. and i helped him. and i think that we have done an amazing job. you can look at other places. you look at some of the other
places, and we just got the word that in iowa you have a governor who just got extended. and numerous other places. i think that it was a great victory. i will be honest. i think it was a great victory. and some of the news this morning was that it was in fact a great victory. but if you look at it from the standpoint of gridlock, i really believe that there is going to be much less gridlock, because of the way that this is going than any other. >> mr. president, a quick follow-up. >> president trump: sit down, please. go ahead. >> thank you, mr. president, let me ask you about one of the campaign promises you made down the stretch, the 10% tax cut for the middle class. you talked about gridlock, democrats run the house in the committee. if it means a tax cut of some type for the middle class, but that means raising rates elsewhere, corporations, on the wealthiest, is that a trade-off that you would be willing to make? >> president trump: you know that this will have to be now proposed, because if we did and now, we do not have the votes in
the senate. we would need ten democratic votes and we probably could not get them. if we could, we could pass it easily in the house. but there is no reason to waste time, because you do not have the votes in the senate. as an example, if the democrats come up with an idea for tax cuts, which i am a big believer in tax cuts. i would absolutely pursue something even if it means some adjustment. >> some adjustment on which side? the corporate, the individual? >> president trump: to make it cut nomadic possible. i would love to see some cuts on the middle class. but that is their decision, if we bring it up to the senate, we need democrat votes, ten, and we do not have the ten votes. >> just because the markets wouldn't want to know, some adjustment, with every one, two, 3%? >> president trump: i would be willing to do a little bit of an adjustment. go ahead. >> mr. president, thank you very much pay to two questions, one you talked about leaders who had called to congratulate to you, dear president putin called to
and congratulate you? when you meet with him at lunch this coming weekend? >> president trump: as i understand it, and a lot of you going over it, we are having lunch for numerous countries, i will be there. i believe that president putin will be there, we do not have anything scheduled. i do not think that we have anything scheduled in paris. and i am coming back very quickly. you will know it is a great event. this is an important, really, it will be a very important and i think a very beautiful ceremony. i'm looking forward to going. and we are representing the incredible heroes of the world. but the heroes of our country from world war i. and so i will be going there. and i am very proud to go there. i do not think that we have time set aside for that meeting. now, with that being said, we are very shortly meaning at the g20, where he will be there. and i will be there. and that is where we are actually looking towards meeting. we will be having a lunch, but i think that there were many people they are -- >> did he call you to
congratulate you? and can i invite you, since this is quite a gathering, to go ahead and talk about the staff changes that you expect in the white house while we are here? we are eager to hear about them. >> president trump: as we make changes, we will sit down and talk to you about it. i mean, it is no great secret. a lot of administrations make changes after midterms. i will say that for the most part, i am very, very happy with his cabinet. >> but what about in the white house, sir? you have a lot of white house staff that have been talking about leaving. general kelly has been rumored to be leaving -- >> president trump: people leave. >> will that happen? >> president trump: i have not heard about john kelly. the people leave. they come in. they are here. it is a very exhausting job. although, i love doing it. i must tell you. but it is exhausting for a lot of people. i am surprised at a lot of people. they start off as young people, they are there for two years and then they are old by the time they leave. it is quite exhausting. but i love doing it.
and i will tell you, there will be changes. nothing monumental from that standpoint. i do not think very much different than most administrations. and we have many people lined up for every single position. any position, everybody wants to work in this white house. we are a hot country. this is a hot white house. we are a white house that people want to work with. okay. no, no. please come up behind you go ahead. >> this has been a very challenging campaign. >> president trump: a very challenging campaign. >> it has involved quite a lot of abuse, people have died during the course of this campaign. is there anyway that the the temperature could be load? peace could break out with the media? perhaps your bipartisan relationships across the house and senate could now produce some change? or will it be more of the same? >> president trump: it is a
very fair question. look, i would love to see unity, peace, love, and any other word you want to use. and obviously i think that we we had to especially at this particular junction, we had to wait until the midterms were over. now they are over. if they would cover me fairly, which they don't. i'm not saying that in a hostile way. i get extremely inaccurate coverage. i could do something that is fantastic, and they will make it look like not good. and i don't mean -- if i make a mistake, cover it. i would like you to cover it fairly, but cover it. but if you do something terrific, look how little the economy has talked about, a bull talked about how little the three networks, i do not think that they included cnn, but how little the three networks talk about how good the economy is, how little, almost not at all, and if president obama had this
economy, and by the way, if that administration through somebody else kept going, you would have had negative 4.2 instead of positive 4.2% growth. he would have had negative. it was heading down. but the point is this, excuse me. i would love to see unity. including with the media. because i think that the media. i will be honest, it is a very divisive thing for our country. and you will be amazed at how smart people are that are reading the stories and seeing the stories and watching. he would be amazed how perceptive and smart they are. they get it. and it really does bring disunity. excuse me. you are not, you are not called on. go ahead. go ahead, please. >> thank you, president trump, shortly after your victory speech on the night back in november 2016, i asked you to one single factor you attributed
the victory too. >> president trump: you have to speak up. >> on the night of your victory i asked you after your speech to what you would attribute the victory. he went into the ceiling and said that it was god. based off of that, how would you say over the last two years god plays what kind of a factor that he plays as a day-to-day execution? >> president trump: god plays a big factor in my life and a factor in the lives of many people that i know very well in this room. like a vice president. god plays a very big role in my life. >> and one more -- a quick follow-up, which lost last night surprised you the most? and which of these unsuccessful candidates -- >> president trump: nothing surprises me. there were some losses last night. and there were some victories last night that have been incredible. there were victories last night that nobody would believe. especially based on the suppression poles. there were a lot of suppression poles. there were some victories last
night there were very surprising, but i will not pick out special cases. there are enough of those people to have a loss. >> would you consider any of the administration polls of the 3.7 unemployed? >> president trump: what? >> would you consider any of the people who lost for a post in the future? >> president trump: i know a couple good ones. yes, i would. >> mr. president, i asked you on monday if there was anything that you regret in your first two years, and you said that at times you could have and should have used a "softer tone." your critics, your skeptics, they say that they are holding their breath on that happening. will you have to change your tone if you get things passed through congress after losing the house? and he also said that you might extend an olive branch. >> president trump: i would be very good at a low tone. but when things are done not correctly about you, written about you, said about you on television, or on wherever it
is, you have to defend yourself. and i have something that is much easier than what i have to do. i have to go around. and going around is much easier than facing and being treated fairly. but you really have no choice. i would love to have a very even modest, boring tone. i would be very honored by that, but you know what, when you have to fight all the time, fight, because you are being misrepresented by the media, you really cannot do that. >> not about the media, but what about with congress? >> president trump: please, go ahead. >> mr. president, how do you focus on the -- >> president trump: say hello. i'm sure that he is happy about tariffs. >> how are you focused on that in japan? would you ask them to do more?
>> president trump: i really do not understand you. trade with japan? we are dealing with japan right now in trade. and japan has -- is a great country. you have a great prime minister who had a successful election, and one of the people that i am closest with, but i tell him all the time that japan does not treat the united states fairly on trade. they said it at a very low tax, they do not take ours, and they have a massive tax on cars. and i am not blaming japan. i am blaming the people that were in charge of the united states for allowing that to happen. but as you know, we have close to $100 billion trade deficit with japan, and japan has treated us unfairly, but do not feel lonely. you are not the only one. >> thank you, mr. president. two questions. the first one, secretary pompeo
was tough about north korea. what is happening there? and will your meetings happen -- >> president trump: we are going to change it because of trips that are being made. we will make it another day. but we are very happy how it is going with north korea. we think that it is fine. we are in no rush. >> do you still expect to beat kim jong un? >> president trump: the sanctions are on, the missiles have stopped. the rockets have stopped. the hostages are home. the great heroes have been coming home. mike pence was in hawaii where one of the most beautiful ceremony is that anybody has ever seen for the fallen. these are great heroes. very important when i was running. a lot of people, many years ago as it was, in many cases, grandchildren that they were asking about, coming home, and they are being provided to us as we speak. but i am a "no" rush. i am in no rush.
the sanctions are on. i read a couple of times, and i have seen where they said, he has done so much. i meant that. i would love to take the sanctions off. but they have to be responsive too. we are not in any rush at all. before i got there, they were dealing with it for over 70 years. and i guess on a nuclear front for 25 years. that is a long time. i have been there. i probably left singapore for core five months ago. and we made more progress in that four or five months than they have made in 70 years. and nobody else could have done what i have done. but i will say this, i will say this very simply. we are in no rush, the sanctions are on. and in whatever it is. the meeting will be rescheduled. >> that meeting? i thought that your meeting with kim jong un, sir? will it happen in the next mont
month? >> president trump: sometime early next year. >> a quick question on the u.s. and ca, now that it has been included, have you repaired your relationship with prime minister trudeau? >> president trump: yes, i have. we have a very good relationship. >> thank you very much, mr. president. we have been talking about the division that exists in the country right now, some of the just -- statistics are disturbing about everyone, anti-semitic increasing by 57% since 2017, hate crimes are on the rise. what you think that is? and what will you do about it? >> president trump: i hate to see it coming you know that i have done more. if you were with us the last time we meant, prime minister e prime minister netanyahu you said that this president has done more than any other president. those exact words. jerusalem, protection, working together. so many different things. but the big thing is, many
presidents have said that they are going to build the embassy. in jerusalem, never happened. making it the capital of israel. never happen. but it happened with me, and quickly. and not did it happen, the embassy that would have taken another 15 or 20 years and probably cost billions of dollars. and we did it for a tiny amount of money. it is already done. so no one has done more for israel than donald trump. and the nice part is, this is not just me saying it. this is prime minister netanyah netanyahu. >> but netanyahu. >> reporter: mr. president, what about healing that divides in this country? >> president trump: we are really successful now, we got $11.7 trillion, if you know, china has come down
known. this election marks the largest senate gains for a president's party in a first midterm election since at least president kennedy's in 1962. there have been only four midterm elections since 1934 in which a president's party has gained even a single senate seat. as of now we picked up, it looks like, three, could be four, perhaps it could be two. but we picked up a lot. and most likely the number will be three. you people probably know that better than i do at this point because you've looked at the more recent numbers. 55 is the largest number of republican senators in the last 100 years. in the last 80 years a sitting president's party has only gained a cumulative total of
eight senate seats, averaging one per decade. so if we picked up two, three or four, that's a big percentage of that number, so in the lastle -- last 80 years you think of that. in president's midterm election he lost six senate seats including in the deep blue state of massachusetts. republicans captured at least four senate seats held by democrat incumbents and these are tremendously talented, hard-working people that did this. indiana, north dakota, florida, missouri, we also won two open senate seats in tennessee. i want to congratulate our great champion who did such a great
job in tennessee, marsha. and in utah, and arizona is looking very good. really very good. she's done a terrific job. that was a tough race and she's done a fantastic job. in each of these open seats democrats recruited very strong candidates with substantial fund-raising and media support. we were getting bombarded with money on the other side. in the house republicans dramatically outperformed historical precedents and overcame a historic number of retirements. the most house republican retirements in 88 years, 43 house republicans retired. now, i will say this, in many cases they were chairmen of committees and they left because any weren't chairmen because the republicans have a rule for six years and what that does is wonderful in one way, it lets
people come through the system and become chairmen and in another drives people out. when they are a chairman you don't want to go and you're a big deal and all of a sudden you're not doing that anymore so they leave. we had a lot of them leave. i guess you can flip a coin as to which system is better, the democrats do the other. some of their folks have been on those committees for a long time as chairmen. in 2010 president obama's first midterm, he lost 63 seats. by contrast as of the most current count, it looks like around 27 house seats or something and we'll figure that out pretty soon. we also had a slew of historic wins in the governors' races. the governors' races were incredible. again, it's very well funded, talented and skilled. democratic candidates and people that worked very, very hard, respectfully, for those candidates like oprah winfrey
who i like, i don't know if she likes me anymore but that's okay. she used to. but she worked very hard in georgia, very, very hard. and if you look at them, four governors' races crucial to 2020 and the presidential race, florida, iowa, ohio and georgia. the big ones. florida, iowa, ohio and georgia. can't get much more important than that. they were incredible. they were actually incredible campaigns too. incredible. as of right now, republicans will control the majority of governorships across the country including three great women who worked very hard, governors of alabama, south dakota and iowa. they worked very, very hard and they're very talented. by expanding our senate
majority, the voters have also clearly rebuked the senate democrats for their handling of the kavanaugh hearings, that was a factor, i think, maybe a very big factor the way that was handled, i think, was tremendous energy was given to the republican party by the way they treated then judge kavanaugh, now justice kavanaugh. and expressed their support for confirming more great pro-constitution judges. candidates who embraced our message of low taxes, low regulations, low crime, strong borders and great judges excelled last night. they excelled. they really -- i mean, we have a list of people that were fantastic and i'm just going to point them out. mike bost, rodney davis, andy
barr was fantastic. i went to kentucky. for the most part i didn't campaign for the house, but i did actually make a special trip for andy barr because he was in a very tough race in kentucky and he won. that was a very tough race. the polls were all showing that he was down and down substantially and he won and that one i did do, pete stauber of minnesota. great guy, he's new and ran a fantastic race. on the other hand they decided to -- let's stay away. they did very poorly. i'm not sure that i should be happy or sad but i feel just fine about it. carlos carbelo, mike coffman, too bad, mike. mia love, i saw mia love, she'd call me all the time to help her
with a hostage situation, being held hostage in venezuela but mia love gave me no love and she lost. too bad. sorry about that, mia. and barbara comstock was another one, i mean i think she could have won that race, but she didn't want to have any embrace. for that i don't blame her, but she lost substantially lost. peter roskam didn't want the embrace. eric paulsen didn't want the embrace and in new jersey i think he could have done well but didn't work out too good, bob hugin i feel badly because i think that could have been won, john faso decided not to embrace whether it's me or what we stand
for, but what we stand for meant a lot to most people and we've had tremendous support and tremendous support in the republican party among the biggest support in the history of the party. i've actually heard at 93%, it's a record but i won't say that because who knows. but we've had tremendous support. america is booming like never before, doing fantastic. we have larry kudlow here and he said the numbers are as good as he's ever seen numbers at any time for our country, but he's a young man so he hasn't seen that many numbers. where is larry? you're a young man, right, larry, and you haven't been doing this too long but they're as good as you've ever seen, and we may have -- if you have a question for larry, we'll do that but i want to send my warmest appreciation and regards
to majority leader mitch mcconnell. we really worked very well together. we have been working very well together. we actually have a great relationship. people just don't understand that, which is fine. and also to perhaps looks like i would think speaker nancy pelosi and i give her a lot of credit. she works very hard and she's worked long and hard. i give her a great deal of credit for what she's done and what she's accomplished. hopefully we can all work together next year to continue delivering for the american people including on economic growth, infrastructure, trade, lowering the cost of prescription drug, these are some of the things that the democrats do want to work on and i really believe we'll be able to do that i think we'll have a lot of reason to do it and i will say just as a matter of business, i spoke with some successful people last night, we
were watching the returns so if the republicans won and let's say we held on by two or one or three, it would have been very hard having that many republicans to ever even get support among republicans because there will always be one or two or three people that for a good reason or bad reason or grandstanding, we have that too, you've seen that, you've seen that, plenty of grandstanding but for certain reasons that many people, you're always going to have a couple that won't do it. so that puts us at a very bad position. in other words, had we kept -- and this is no -- i'm saying this for a very basic reason, it's common sense, it puts us in a tough position, we win by one or two or three and you'll have one or two or three or four or five say, look, we're not going to go along with that and we wouldn't even be able to get it in many cases out of the republicans' hands before we sent it on to the senate and now
we have a much easier path because the democrats will come to us with a plan for infrastructure, a plan for health care, a plan for whatever they are looking at and we'll negotiate. you know it's been very hard in the senate because we need essentially ten votes from democrats and we don't get those because the democrats do really stick together well. i don't agree with them on a lot of policy but i agree with them on sticking together. they stick together great so we. >> into the senate. we don't have the ten votes, and what happens? it doesn't get passed. even if it gets out of the house it doesn't get passed so under the new concept of what we're doing, i say come on, let me see what you have. they want to do things. you know, i keep hearing about investigations, fatigue, like
from the time almost from the time i announced i was going to rung, they've been giving us this investigation fatigue. it's been a long time. they got nothing, zero. you know why? because there is nothing but they can play that game but we can play it better because we have a thing called the united states senate and a lot of very questionable things were done between leaks of classified information and many other elements that should not have taken place and all you're going to do is end up in back and forth and back and forth and two years is going to go up and we won't have done a thing. i really think and i really respected what nancy said last night about bipartisanship and getting together and uniting. she used the word uniting and she used the bipartisanship statement which is so important because that's what we should be
doing. so we can look at us, they can look at us. then we can look at them and it'll go back and forth and it'll probably be very good for me politically. i could see it being extremely good politically because i think i'm better at that game than they are actually, but we'll find out. i mean, you know, we'll find out or we can work together. you can't do them simultaneous, by the way, oh, you can them. no, you can't. if they're doing that we're not doing the other just so you understand. so we won't be doing that, but now what happens is we send it to the senate and we'll get 100% democrat support and some republican support and if it's good i really believe we have republicans that will help with the approval process and they will really help with the approval process. so it really could be a beautiful bipartisan type of situation. if we won by one or two or three or four or five, that wouldn't happen and the closer it is, the
worse it is. this way they'll come to me. we'll negotiate. maybe we'll make a deal. maybe we won't. that's possible, but we have a lot of things in common on infrastructure. we want to do something on health care. they want to do something on health care. there are a lot of great things we can do together and now we'll set it up and get the democrats and we'll get the republicans or some of the republicans and i'll make sure that we send something up that the republicans can support and they're going to want to make sure they send up something that the democrats can support. so our great country is booming like never before and we're thriving on every single level, both in terms of economic and military strength, in terms of development and in terms of gdp. we're doing unbelievably. i will tell you our trade deals are coming along fantastically. the usmca and south korea is finished. usmca has gotten rave reviews.
we're not going to lose companies to other countries anymore. they're not going to do that because they have a tremendous economic incentive meaning it's prohibitive for them to do that, so it's not going to be like nafta which is one of the worst deals i've ever seen although we've made some other pretty bad ones too. now is the time for members of both parties to join together, put partisanship aside and keep the american economic miracle going strong. it is a miracle. we're doing so well and i've said it at a lot of rally, some of you have probably heard it so much you don't want to hear it again but when people come to my office, presidents, prime minister, they all congratulate me, almost the first thing on what we've done economically because it is really amazing. and our steel industry is back. our aluminum industry is starting to do really well. these are industries that were dead. our miners are working again.
we must all work together to protect our military. we have to do that. to support our law enforcement, secure our borders and advance really great position including environmental policy. we want crystal clean water, we want beautiful perfect air. air and water has to be perfect. at the same time we don't want to put ourselves at a disadvantage to other countries who are very competitive with us and who don't abide by the rules at all. we don't want to hurt other jobs. we don't want to hurt our factories. we don't want companies leaving. we want to be totally competitive and we are and right now we have just about the cleanest air, the cleanest water we've ever had and it's always going to be that way. we insist on it. so environmental is very important to me and with that i'll take a few questions if you'd like. whoa. i didn't know what happened. all right.
go ahead, jon. that was a lot of hands shooting up so quickly. there's a lot to talk about. >> mr. president, you talked at length just now about bipartisanship, the presumed speaker of the house nancy pelosi talked about it last night. i'm sure that's encouraging for the american people, but do you really believe given what the relationship has been like between this white house and the democratic party that that will happen? >> i think there's a good chance, john. i think there's a very good chance. >> will you have to compromise on certain issues to the point where it could hurt you in 2020 and do you expect that when the democrats take over the chairmanship of all these important committees you're going to get hit with a blizzard of subpoenas from the russian investigation to your cell phone use to your tax returns? >> then you're going to -- if that happen, then we're going to do the same thing and government comes to a halt and i would blame them because they now are going to be coming up with
policy. they're the majority in the house. i expect that they will come up with some fantastic ideas that i can support on the environment, on so many different things including prescription drug prices, which we've made a big dent in already, including some of the thing that is we're working on for the vets. we've gotten choices approved -- but there are a lot of other elements we want. there are many things we can get along on that we agree with them and they agree with us. i would like to see bipartisanship. i'd like to see unity and i think we have a very good chance -- maybe not on everything but i think we have a very good chance of seeing that. go ahead. >> one question on the lame duck, sir, and one on your cabinet. you toyed with the idea during the campaign of a shutdown before the midterms in order to secure border wall funding. are you prepared to go on a shutdown strategy during the lame duck since this might be
your last, best chance? >> not necessarily. >> to secure that? >> look, i speak to democrats all the time. they agree that a wall is necessary. a wall is necessary and as you know we're building the wall. we started but we should build it at one time. >> you want much more money and you want it much sooner. >> we need the money to bill the whole wall. now we have the military. now we have other elements of a wall that are pretty nasty to be honest with you, but it's nevertheless, it's pretty hard to get through it but, no, i'd like to see the wall. many of the people that will be dealing with, you know, in 2006 they approved the wall essentially. it was's very strong border fence but it was the same thing. and they all approved it. they all agreed. i have statements from every one of them saying we need the wall. they sound like me. but we do need it because we have people coming and i'm not just talking about the caravans. we have people coming through our border that you physically can't put that many people. it's a 2,000-mile stretch. you can't put that many people
along that stretch to guard it. and even if you did tremendous fight wog ensue. so we need the wall. many democrats know we need the wall and we'll just have to see what happens. i mean we'll be fighting for it. they have done everything in their power to make sure -- i got the military 700 million and 716 billion. the wall is a tiny, tiny fraction of the cost of that but their whole agenda has been to try not giving me anything for the wall. i really believe politically they're hurting themselves. i actually think politically that's a good thing but -- >> no shutdown snare yee. >> i can't commit but it's possible. >> can you give us clarity, sir, on your thinking currently now after the midterms about your attorney general and your deputy attorney general, do they have long-term term security? >> i'd rather answer that at a little bit different time. we're looking at a lot of different things including cabinet i'm very happy with most
of my cabinet. we're looking at different people for different pentagon, you know, it's very common after the midterms. i didn't want to do anything before the midterms but i will tell you that for the most part i'm extremely happy with my cabinet. i think mike pompeo has fit in so beautifully and has done -- >> your interior secretary? >> we're looking at that and i do want to study whatever is being said. >> is he in jeopardy. >> i think he's doing an excellent job but we will take a look at that and we'll probably have an idea about that in about a week. >> thank you, mr. president. >> thank you. wow. this is -- go ahead. he gave me a fair interview the other day so i might as well let him. >> picking up there, you told me the other day you are an open book, so -- >> i think i am an open book. >> so point blank, democrats go after your tax returns, will you try to block that or will you allow them to have it?
>> look, as i've told you they're under out did. they're extremely complex. people wouldn't understand them. they're done by among the biggest and best law firms in the country, same thing with the accounting firms. the accountants are very, very large power firm from the standpoint of respect, highly respected. big firm. a great law firm or you know it very well. they do these things, they put them in. but people don't understand tax returns. now, i did do a filing of over 100 page, i believe, which is in the offices and when people went and saw that filing and saw the magnitude of it, they were very disappointed and they saw the detail, you'd get far more from that and i guess we filed that now three times but you get far more from that than you could ever from a tax return but when you're under audit and i'm continuous out did because there are so many companies and it is a very big company, far bigger
thank you would even understand, but it's a great company, but it's big and it's complex and it's probably feet high. it's a very complex instrument and i think that people wouldn't understand it but if i were finished with the audit, i would have an open mind to it. i would say that but i don't want to do it during the audit and really no lawyer even from the other side, they say, often, not always but when you're under audit you don't subject it to that. you get it done and then you release it. so when that happens, if that happens, i would certainly have an open mind to it. >> so that means if the audit is still on, you will not turn over the tax returns or you're going to fight to block it. >> nobody would. nobody turns over a return when it's under audit. >> go ahead. >> i was tempted to ask you why you like oprah so much but i think i'll go on to the question that -- >> why do i like oprah?
what kind of a question is that? >> i'm just asking. >> a comedian here. i do like oprah, by the way, she was a person i knew well. came to my place in palm beach often and i have a lot of respect for her. unfortunately, she didn't do the trick. >> the real question is, you just said from this podium that -- are you offering a my way or highway scenario to the democrats, you're saying -- >> negotiation. not at all. >> if they start investigating you, that you can play that game and investigate them. >> better than them. >> can you compartmentalize that and still continue to work with them for the benefit of the rest of the country or are you -- or are all bets off. >> no, if they do that then all it is is a war-like posture. >> so wait a minute then the follow up -- >> you heard my answer. go ahead. >> well, since it's jim, i'll let it go. >> thank you, mr. president.
i want to challenge you on one of the statements that you made in the tail end of the campaign in the midterms. >> here we go. >> that, well, that this caravan was an invasion. >> i consider it to be -- >> it was not an invasion. ateman a group of migrants moving up from central america towards the border with the u.s. -- >> thank you for telling me that. i appreciate it. >> why did you characterize it as such and -- >> because i consider it an invasion. you and i have a difference of opinion. >> but do you think that you demonized immigrants in this elections to try to keep them -- >> i want them to come into the country but they have to come in legally. they have to come in, jim, through a process. i want it to be a process -- >> you are campaign had ang ad showing migrants climbing over walls. >> they weren't actors.
do you think they were actors? they weren't actors. they didn't come from hollywood. these were people -- this was an actual, you know, it happened a few days ago and -- there are. >> they're hundreds of miles away. that's not an invasion. >> honestly i think you should let me run the country, you run cnn and if you did it well, your ratings would be much higher. >> are you worried -- >> that's enough. that's enough. >> that's enough. >> excuse me, that's enough. >> i had one other question if i may ask on the russia investigation. are you concerned that you may have -- >> i'm not concerned about anything with the russian investigation because it's a hoax. that's enough. put down the mike. >> mr. president, are you worried about indictments coming down in this investigation? mr. president -- >> i'll tell you what, cnn should be ashamed of itself having you working for them. you are a rude, terrible person. you shouldn't be working for cnn. go ahead.
>> i think that's -- >> you're a very rude person. the way you treat sarah huckabee is horrible. you shouldn't treat people that way. >> go ahead, peter. >> in jim's defense i traveled with him and watched him. he is a dill dent -igent -- >> i'm not a big fan of yours. >> you repeatedly over the course of -- >> just sit down, please. >> pipe bombs -- >> when you report fake news which cnn does a lot, you are the enemy of the people. go ahead. >> mr. president, over the course of -- over the course of the last several days of the campaign, sir, sir, at the end of the campaign you repeatedly said americans need to fear democrats. you said democrats would unleash a wave of violent crime that endangers families everywhere. >> because they're weak on crime. excuse me. >> why are -- >> what, are you trying to be him? >> let me tell you, very simple. because they're very weak on
crime. because they have often suggested members and people within the democrat party at a high level have suggested getting rid of i.c.e., getting rid of law enforcement, that's not going to happen, okay. we want to be strong on the borders. we want to be strong on law enforcement. and i want to cherish i.c.e. because i.c.e. does a fantastic job. what they do for us is so -- really it's so unrecognized how good a job they do. so we want to take care of them and we want to hold them very close because they do a good job. >> but the question to be clear -- >> thank you very much. sit down. >> the question -- but you didn't answer my question. simply the question is why are you pitting americans against one another, sir? >> i'm not. >> is that how you view citizens of this country. >> i tell you what, we won a lot of elections last night. we did very well last night and -- >> in many ways -- >> i think it's going to have a very positive impact. i watched nbc this morning. they didn't report it exactly correctly but that's, you know, very, very -- that's the fact
with nbc, nothing i can do about that. but i want this country to have protection. we want security in our country. i want security, peter. i mean, you maybe don't think it's so important and i think when you don't have it, you are, indeed, unleashing crime. i teal that. >> you said you would scene an executive order on birthright citizenship. are you still going to -- >> you ask me that question later. >> go ahead. sure. >> thank you, mr. president. the investigation by the special counsel, robert mueller, has been going on since last spring. it's been over a year -- >> it's been a long time. >> it's been over your head, over republicans' heads. is this an opportunity for you, mr. president, to end that investigation? would you consider removing mr. mueller from his position? >> i could have ended it they time i wanted. i didn't. and there was no collusion. there was no anything. i didn't. they went after hackers in
moscow. i don't know about that they went after people with tax problems from years ago. they went after people with loans and other things, nothing to do with my campaign. this is an investigation where many, many millions of dollars has been spent and there's no collusion. it was supposed to be on collusion. there's no collusion and i think it's very bad for our country. i will tell you, i think it's a shame and a poll came out today, by the way from nbc or at least i saw it on nbc where a majority of the people do not agree with the mueller investigation or it wasn't approved -- they have approval and disapproval and it had a much higher diggs approval. it should end because it's very bad for our country. >> so if -- >> i'm not just talking about the tremendous expense. and the other thing is they should look at the other side also. they only look at one side.
they're not looking at all of the things that came up during this investigation. they don't do that. they should also get people that could be fair, not 13 or 14 or 17 i call them the angry democrats. they are angry people and it's a very unfair thing for this country. it's a very, very -- forget about unfair to me. it's very bad for our country. >> so, mr. president, if it's unfair -- >> please. >> if it's unfair to the country and it's costing millions of dollars, why don't you just -- >> think him the mike please. i've answered the question. take it. well, i'll give you -- i will give you voter suppression. you just have -- sit down, please. sit down. i didn't call you. i didn't call you. i didn't call you. i'll give you voter suppression, take a look at the cnn polls how inaccurate they were. that's called voter suppression. go ahead, please. >> thanks you, mr. president. >> in georgia? >> i'm not responding. i'm responding to -- excuse me, i'm not responding to
you. i'm talking to this gentleman. will you please sit down? excuse me. would you please sit down. please, go ahead. >> thank you, mr. president. now that the house of representatives -- >> very hostile. such a hostile media. it's so sad. you ask me -- no, you rudely interrupted him. you rudely interrupted him. go ahead. >> thank you, mr. president. do your demands remain the same to the united states congress on immigration in exchange for a daca fix, in exchange for amnesty for 1.7 million are you willing to change any of those demands you gave to congress early. >> i think we could do something having to do with daca and what really happened with daca, we could have done some pretty good work on daca but a judge ruled that daca was okay. had the judge not ruled that way i think we would have made a deal. once the judge ruled that way, the democrats didn't want to talk anymore. so it'll -- we'll see how it works out at the supreme court. >> do you still -- >> go ahead.
>> take a question from the international -- >> from where? go ahead. go ahead. >> mr. president -- >> go ahead. which group? where do you want me to take a question from? >> thank you. >> either one. either one. or both. are you together? go ahead. >> we're not together. mr. president, how do you respond to critics who say that your message on the campaign towards minorities have been polarizing. >> i don't think it has been at all. >> is the election of two muslim women, one is veiled to the house. is this a rebuke of this message -- >> i -- >> is it a rebuke of the message. do you think it's more reflective of multicultural america? >> well, that question -- i can only say this, you look at the employment and unemployment numbers for african-americans, for asian-american, for hispanic americans they're at an historic high.
a poll came out recently where my numbers with hispanics and with african-americans are the highest, the best they've ever been. that took place two or three days ago, the poll. i have the best numbers with african-american and hispan hispanic-american that i've ever had before. i can say this, you look at median income, you look at all of the employment and unemployment numbers, they're doing the best they've ever done and it reflects -- it really is reflective in the poll. >> mr. president, i'm from brooklyn so you'll understand me. my question is on health care. how is it possible to keep premiums down and cover pre-existing conditions without the individual mandate to fund it? >> well, first of all, what we're doing and if you look at the department of labor also secretary separately -- the secretary and what they've done they've come up with incredible health care plans causing great
competition and driving the prices right down, but we are getting rid of the individual mandate because it was very unfair to a lot of people but at the same time we're covering the people that need it. but the individual mandate was a disaster because people that couldn't necessarily afford it were having to pay for the privilege of not having to pay for health care and it was bad health care at that. so we are working many plans with health care and creating tremendous competition. we had obamacare repealed and replaced. unfortunately, one person changed his mind at the last moment and we had no democrat support. i have to say that we didn't have one vote. we would have repealed it, replaced it. we would have had a large-scale very good health care plan. now we're doing it a different way. we're doing it a different way. but getting rid of the individual mandate is a very, very popular thing and a very important thing and people very much appreciate it. go ahead.
that's enough. >> you went through the results and obviously studied them late last night. what lesson did you learn most from look at those results? was there one thing as you kind of reviewed them that you'll change your strategy not just for congress but kind of going forward. >> i think the results that i've learned and may be confirmed, i think people like me. i think people like the job i'm doing, frankly, because if you look at every place to do a rally i couldn't do it with everybody and it was very hard to do it with people in congress because they're just too many -- it would be too many stops, but i did it with andy barr as you know. and he won a tough race against mcgrath. that was a tough race in kentucky and he was down quite a bit and i went there and we had a tremendous very successful -- some of you were at that rally and he won that race but i could only do that so much because there's just so many players
involved but i did focus on the senate and we had tremendous success with the senate. really tremendous. >> can i ask one pormore questi. rare opportunity. a lot will rush to iowa, new hampshire. you know the democrats are already looking ahead to 2020. do you want to lock down your ticket right now, sir? will the vice president be your running mate in 2020? >> well, i haven't asked him but i hope so. where are you? mike, will you be my running mate? huh? stand up. raise your right hand? no, i'm only kidding. will you, thank you. okay, good. the answer is, yes, okay. [ applause ] >> that was unexpected but i feel very fine. yeah, please. >> thank you, mr. president. going back to the russia investigation and the potential investigations from the now democratic majority and congress, some say that you could stop all this by declassifying -- >> i could fire everybody right now but i don't want to stop it because politically i don't like
stopping it. it's a disgrace. it should have never been started because there was no crime. it is -- everybody has conflicts. they all have conflicts over there that are beyond anything that anybody has ever seen in terms of conflicts. from the fact that people ask for jobs from the fact that they have very good friends on the other side like really good friends like comey who by the way lied and leaked and also leaked classified information, nothing happened there. it might perhaps, maybe something is happening that i don't know about. i stay away from it but you know what i do, i let it just go on. they're wasting a lot of money but i let it go on because i don't want to do that but you're right, i could end it right now. i could say that investigation is over but it's really -- it's a disgrace, frankly, and it's an embarrassment to our country.
it's an embarrassment to the people of our country and it's too bad. go ahead. >> what about the declassification of the documents, some say that would clear -- >> we're looking at that very seriously. declassification. we're looking at it seriously. can i ask one more question. >> it's amazing how people on the other side just don't want those documents declassified but we're looking at that carefully. i certainly wanted to wait until after the midterms. >> can i ask you one more question, mr. president? okay. thank you. >> go ahead. >> thank you, mr. president. you have campaigned as a pro-life president. you have defended the rights of unborn children. now you have a divided congress. how are you going to push forward your pro-life agenda? >> i've been pushing and done a very good job and they're happy with me but it's a tough issue for the two sides. >> what are you going to do? >> what am i going to do? i won't be able to explain it to you because it is an issue that is a very divisive polarizing
issue but there is a solution. i think i have that solution and nobody else does. we're going to be -- we're going to be working on that. yes, go ahead, please. >> she took your place but that's okay. >> mr. president, just a quick question on rural america. in states like indiana, north dakota, folks turned out for republican candidates. could you talk a little about what this means for your agenda in terms of trade and the farm bill? >> the farm bill is working really well. i mean we could have it approved any time but we're looking to get work rule as proved. the farmers want it. i'd like it. the problem is the democrats are not giving us the ten voights that we need. we are -- everybody wants it. the farmers want it but the democrats are not approving the farm bill with work rules. we could have it very fast without the work rules but we want the work rules in and the democrats just don't want to vote for that, so at some point they'll have to pay maybe a price. jeff. >> mr. president, thank you very
much. >> thank you. >> have you seen any evidence that russia or china intervened in yesterday's election? >> we're going to make a full report and unlike the previous administration we've done a lot of work on that issue and if you look -- speak with the fbi, speak with the department of justice, speak to homeland security, we've spent a lot of time, it gets very little coverage in the papers, i mean, you cover the nonsense part but you don't cover the important -- this is very important and we have been working very hard on china and russia and everybody else looking into our elections or meddling with our elections, but people tend thought to write about it but we have worked very hard as you probably heard. >> what do you intend to say, sir, to president xi and president putin when you meet with them late they are month? >> well, i have a good relationship with both. i know president xi better but i think i have a very good relationship with both. i actually had a very good meeting in russia thaw people
didn't agree with but that's okay. it doesn't much matter obviously because here i am but the fact is i had a very, very good meeting, a very, very good meeting with president putin and a lot was discussed about security, about syria, about ukraine, about the fact that president obama allowed a very large part of ukraine to be taken and right now you have submarines off that particular parcel that we're talking about. >> that was president putin who annexed crimea. >> that was president obama's regime. that was during president obama, right? that was not during me. >> it was putin, sir, who did the annexation. >> so, it was president obama that allowed it to happen. had nothing to do with me. okay. go ahead. yeah, go ahead. go ahead. go ahead. >> i'm from sky news. you're a man who likes to win but last night was not an
absolute victory. >> i'll be honest, i thought it was a very close to complete victory. when you look at it from the stangepoint of negotiation, when you look at it from the standpoint of dealmakes because it's all about dealmaking, again, if we had the majority and we had one or two or three votes to play with, we would never -- we would have been at a standstill. i really believe we have a chance to get along very well with the democrats and if that's the case we can do a tremendous amount of legislation and get it approved by both parties. so, i can consider it to be -- hey, look, i won georgia. president obama campaignedty ha -- campaigned very hard in georgia. oprah winfrey campaigned very hard over the television. this is going to be tough. i only had me and didn't have anybody else and went to georgia and we had one of the largest crowds that anybody here has
ever seen here at a political rally. and you know what, he won. and he won actually by, you know, pretty good margin. he won. and then we went to florida and they had celebrities all over the place, and a man who happens to be a very smart person was running, ron desantis, and people didn't give him a chance and i went and we had -- we did some great work and they're going to have a great governor of the state of florida and then we talked about the senate and a lot of money was pouring in for the democrat. this is a man who's been in office for like 44 years or something. this is a man who is like a professional at getting elected and being in office so he's not -- bill necessary, not easy to beat, okay. and -- but they had a lot of celebrities for nelson and had everybody coming out for nelson and rick scott won and i helped him and i think we've done an amazing job and you could look at many other places.
you just take a look at some of the other places. and we just got the word that in iowa, you have a governor who just got extended who -- kim just got extended and numerous other places. i think it was a great victory. i'll be honest. i think it was a great convivic and some of the news was that it was a great victory but if you look at it from the standpoint of gridlock, i really believe there's going to be much less gridlock because of the way this is going than any other -- >> mr. president -- >> sit down, please. go ahead. >> thank you, mr. president. let me ask about one of the campaign promises you made down the stretch which was a 10% tax cut for the middle class. you just talked about gridlock. democrats now run the house, ways and means committee. if it means a tax cut of some kind for the middle class but that means raising rates elsewhere, corporations, on the wealthiest, is that a trade-off that you would be willing to make.
>> you know this has to be now proposed because if we did it now we don't have the votes in the senate. we need -- we would need ten democrat votes. we probably couldn't get them. if we could we could pass it easily in the house. no reason to waste time because you don't have the votes in the senate but if the -- as an example, if the democrats come up with an idea for tax cuts which i am a big believer in tax cuts i would absolutely pursue something, even if it means some adjustment to make it possible but i would love to see a tax cut for the middle class now. that's going to be their decision. they'll have to make that decision. as you know if we bring it up to the senate we'd need democrat vote, ten, and don't have those. >> just because the markets would want to know, sir, some adjustment, would that be 1, 2, 3% on either side -- >> i would certainly be willing to do a little bit of an adjustment. go ahead, please. >> thank you. >> mr. president, thank you very much. two question, one is you had stalked about leaders who called to congratulate you.
did president putin call to congratulate and will you meet with him at lunch this coming weekend? >> well, as i understand it we're having and i guess a lot of you are going over. we're having a lunch for numerous countries. i believe president putin is going to be there. we don't have anything scheduled. i don't think we have anything scheduled in paris. and i'm coming back very quickly. i'm going over -- there is a great event this, is an important -- really it's going to be a very important and i think a beautiful ceremony. i'm looking forward to going and we're representing the incredible heroes of the world but the heroes of our country from world war i and so i'll be going there and i am very proud to go there. >> did he call you -- >> i don't think we have time set aside for that meeting. now, with that being said we're shortly meeting again at the g20 where he'll be there and i'll be there and that's where we're actually looking forward to meet. we will be having -- we will be having a lunch but i think there are many people there.
>> did he call you to congratulate and also if i could invite you since this is quite a gathering we've got here to go ahead and talk about the staff changes that you expect in the white house while we're here, we're eager to hear about them. is general kelly going to stay on? >> as we make changes we'll sit down and talk to you bit. no great secret. a lot of administrations make changes after midterms. i will say that for the most part i'm very, very happy with this cabinet. we're doing a great. >> what about in the white house. you have a lot of white house staff and some have talked about leaving. general shkreli has been rumored to be leaving. >> people leave. >> is that going to happen? >> people leave. i haven't heard about john kelly. but, no, people -- people leave. they come in. they're here. it's a very exhausting job although i love doing it, i must tell you but it's exhausting for a lot of people. i'm surprised that a lot of people, they start off, they're young people. they're there for two years and they're old by the time they leave.
[ laughter ] it's quite exhausting. but i love doing it and i'll tell you, there will be changes. nothing monumental from that standpoint. i don't think very much different than most administrations and we have -- i mean we have many people lined up for every single position. any position, everybody wants to work in this white house. we are a hot country. this is a hot white house. we are a white house that people want to work with. okay. no, no. please, behind you. behind you. go ahead. >> mr. president, this has been a very challenging campaign. this has been a very challenging campaign. >> it has. >> it has involved quite a lot of abuse and a lot of violence. people have died during the course of this campaign. is there any way in which you think the temperature could be lowered, perhaps peace could break out with the media, perhaps your bipartisan relationships across the house and the senate may now produce some change or are we going to have more of the same. >> it's a very fair question.
look, i would love to see unity and peace and love and any other word you want to use, and obviously i think we had to especially at this particular young tur, we had to wait until after the midterms are over. now they're over. if they would cover me fairly, which they don't, which they don't, i'm not saying that in a hostile way, i get extremely inaccurate coverage, i can do something that's fantastic and they'll make it look like not good. and i don't mind being -- having bad stories, i make a mistake, cover it. i'd like you to cover it fairly, but cover it but when you do something terrific, look how little the economy is talked about. a poll came out this morning talking about how little the three networks -- i don't think they included cnn but how little the three networks talk about how good the economy is. how little. almost not at all. if president obama had this
economy and, by the way, if that administration through somebody else kept going, you would have had negative 4.2 instead of positive 4.2% growth. you would have had negative. it was heading down but the point is this, excuse me, i would love to see unity including with the media because i think the media -- i'll be honest, i think it's a very divisive thick for our country. and you would be amazed at how smart people are that are reading the stories and seeing your stories and watching, you'd be amazed how perceptive and how smart they are. they get it. and it really does bring disunity. i didn't -- excuse me. you are not -- you are not called on. go ahead. go ahead. go ahead, please. >> thank you, president trump. shortly after your victory speech on the night back in november 2016 i asked you to
what single factor you most attributed this victory too. >> speak up. >> sure, on the night of your victory i asked you right after your speech to what you would attribute your victory. you pointed up to the ceiling and you said that it was god. based off of that how would you say over the last two years god plays what kind of a factor he plays in the day-to-day execution of the office of the president -- >> god plays a big sfashth in my life and god plays a factor in the lives of many people that i know very well in this room like your vice president, god plays a very big role in my life. >> and one more back -- quick one, quick follow-up. which loss last night surprised you the most and which of these unsuccessful candidates are you most likely to consider for future administration -- >> there were some losses last night and there were some victories last night that have been incredible. i mean there were victories last night that nobody would believe. especially based on the suppression polls, they had a lot of suppression polls and
there was some victories last night that were very surprising but i'm not going to pick out -- >> would you consider any -- >> tough enough for them to have a loss. >> would you consider any for administration -- as one of -- >> would i what? >> would you consider any of the people who lost last night for a post in the administration in the near future? >> i know a couple of very good ones, yeah, i would, go ahead. >> mr. president, mr. president, i asked you on monday if there was anything you regret in your first two years and you said that at times you could have and should have used a, quote, softer tone. your critics as you can imagine, your skeptics say they're holding their breath on that happening. will you indeed have to change your tone if you're to get things passed through congress since you lost the house and you might extend an olive branch. >> i would love to have -- i'd be good at a low tone but when things are done not correctly about you, written about you, said about you on television, on
wherever it is you have to defend yourself. i would love to do very even toned -- much easier than what i have to do. i have to go around and going around is much easier than facing somebody and being treated fairly. but when you're not treated fairly you have no choice. i would love to have a very even modest boring tone but when you have to fight all the time fight because you're being misrepresented by the media, you really can't do that. >> not about the media, sir, but, sir, real quickly, not about the media but with congress -- >> please, go ahead. >> mr. president, how you focus on the economy -- >> where are you from. >> japan. >> say hello to shinzo. i'm sure he's happy about tar f tariffs on his car. >> that's nye question. how you focus on trade commensurate with japan. you ask japan to do more or
change the tone -- >> i really don't understand. >> how would you focus on trade -- >> trade with japan. we're dealing with japan right now on trade. japan has -- it's a great country. you have a great prime minister who just had a very successful election. he's a very good friend of mine. he's one of the people i'm closest with and but i tell him all the time that japan does not treat the united states fairly on trade. they send in millions of cars at a very low tax. they don't take our cars. and if they do they have a massive tax on the cars. japan -- and i'm not blaming japan. i'm blaming the people that were in charge of the united states for allowing that to happen but as you know we have close to $100 billion trade deficit with japan and japan has treated us very unfairly but don't feel lonely because you weren't the only one. >> thank you, mr. president. two questions. the first one, secretary
pompeo's talks about -- with north korea have been postponed. what is happening there and will your meetings tell what happened -- >> we'll change it because of trips being made. we'll make it on another date but we're very happy how it's going with north korea. we think it's going fine. we're in no rush. the sanctions are on. >> you're still expect to meet kim jong-un? >> excuse me, wait. the sanctions are on. the missiles have stopped. the rockets have stopped. the hostages are home. the great heroes have been coming home. mike pence was in hawaii where the -- one of the most beautiful ceremonies that anyone has ever seen for the fallen, these are great heroes, very important when i was running, a lot of people -- as many years ago as it was in many cases grandchildren were asking about that, they're coming home and they're being provided to us as we speak.
but i'm in no rush. i'm no no rush. the sanctions are on. i read a couple of times and i've seen a few times where they said he's done so much. what have i done? i met. now, i'd love to take the sanctions off, but they have to be responsive too. it's a two-way street but we're not in any rush at all. there's no rush whatsoever. you know, before i got here they were dealing with this for over 70 years and i guess on a nuclear front for 25 years. that's a long time. i've been there, i probably left singapore four or five months ago and made more progress in that four or five months than they've made in 70 years and nobody else could have done what i've done. but i'll say this, i'll say this very simply. we're in no rush. the sanctions are on. and whenever it is but that will be rescheduled. >> that meeting but i bet your meeting with kim jong-un, sir, will it happen in the next
months? >> sometime next year, i would say. >> sometime next year. >> sometime early next year. >> a quick question on usmca. now that it's been concluded have you repaired your relationship with prime minister trudeau? >> yes, i have. we have a very good relationship. >> thank you. >> thank you very much. mr. president. we've been talking a lot about division and the division that exists in this country right now and some of the statistics are disturbing i think to just about everyone. anti-semitic incidents have increased by 57% since 2016. hate crimes are on the rise. why do you think that is and what will you do about it? >> it's very sad to see it. i hate to see it and as you know i've done more, in fact, if you were with us the last time we met, prime minister netanyahu said that this president has done more for israel than any other president. those words. those exact words. jerusalem, protection, working together, so many different things but the big thing is jerusalem.
you though -- know, many presidents said they'll build the embassy in jerusalem. never happened. making it the capital of israel. never happened. never happened. but it happened with me and quickly. and not only did it happen, we built the embassy. that would have taken another 15 or 20 years and cost probably billions of dollars and we did it for a tiny amount of money. it's already done. it's open. nobody has done more for israel than donald trump and the nice part is that's not me saying it, that's prime minister netanyahu. >> but what about -- mr. president, what about the divides in this country, mr. president, what about healing the divides in this country. >> we want to see it here. one of the things i think that can help heal is the success of our country. we are really successful now. we've gone up $11.7 trillion in worth if you know.
across the midwest. lawlessness of the and they haven't stopped. administration. >> to the court of public opinion and the political we're live in oklahoma. reality of impeachment or even and nbc news exclusive. an impeachment inquiry, wen we documents revealing thousands of were talking about this a short migrants detained by i.c.e. were time ago. there's a big article in "the force good solitary confinement new york times." they talk to folks, people who not for breaking the rules but for being gay, disabled or have left the democratic party in youngstown or at least as mentally ill. voters have left the democratic a federal judge rules party. i'm going to reread something i against the trump administration read earlier. ordering the president's one guy said the democratic accounting firm to turn over party has lost its voice to financial documents to congress. speak to people that shower and speaking of congress, a after work and not before work. all we're saying is he won't democratic leadership meeting gets heated as members of the turn over the tax returns. house judiciary committee plead he's saying i'm fighting china with pelosi to launch to get you a better job. inimpeachment proceedings if don does this make the democrats mcgahn refuses to comply with look like they're not on the same page as a lot of the people the subpoena to testify this morning. so far he's refusing. that democrats say they want to >> no one is above the law fight for? they want to defend. including the president of the they think are being hurt under united states. let me be clear. this administration? >> look, we have been fighting if don mcgann doesn't testify, to lower prescription drug it's time to open an inimpeachment inquiry. prices. >> i'll talking to a democrat and we just passed important legislation on that last week.
who's pushing for the we've fought to pass -- >> that's not going to get impeachment inquiry. through the senate. first, democrats are putting >> and there's the problem. the same kind of obstruction we're getting from the white increasing pressure on nancy house in terms of the truth, pelosi. let's go to kelly o'donnell on we're getting from the senate in capitol hill. terms of everything we want to the calls for impeachment took do. whether it's infrastructure, place during a democratic whether it's gun violence and leadership meeting last night gun safety legislation which we've passed. for the inquiry. one source describes it as long, very emotional. whether it's environmental take us inside that meeting. protection, we're getting a what details have you learned complete shutdown from this party of obstruction. about it? >> well, these are regularly that's the problem we're dealing with. >> congressman, always scheduled meetings, consider it appreciate you coming on the program. the democratic family coming thank you. >> thank you so much. together at different levels of >> good to see you. up next, an nbc news leadership and responsibility. this is where they hash out exclusive report. their agenda. thousands of migrants forced and in this instance it was about the dividing lines over into solitary confinement by ice in this cases for things like impeachment with some members being physically disabled or arguing to the leadership team gay. we have that shocking report and the last straw should be don the whistle blower who exposed mcgahn, the former white house it next. o developed it. counsel not coming and answering a subpoena. others see it differently. (vo) align helps to soothe your occasional digestive upsets nancy pelosi and her leadership are team are holding a line 24/7 with a strain of bacteria you can't get anywhere else. saying the different chairman of (woman) you could say align puts the "pro" in probiotic.
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>> that's what's happening on the hill. let's go to peter alexander at oh! no increased risk? ♪ oh, oh, oh, ozempic®! ♪ the white house. what reason is the trump administration giving for the ozempic® should not be the first medicine for treating diabetes, president directing don mcgahn to defy a congressional subpoena or for people with type 1 diabetes and not testify today? or diabetic ketoacidosis. >> the white house counsel do not share needles or pens. details this in a letter to the don't reuse needles. house judiciary chairman writing do not take ozempic® if you have a personal or family history that the justice department has of medullary thyroid cancer, multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2, advised him that mcgahn is or if you are allergic to ozempic®. stop taking ozempic® and get medical help right away immune from white house if you get a lump or swelling in your neck, testimony. the legal opinions go back four severe stomach pain, itching, decades it says regarding a rash, or trouble breathing. president's close advisers and serious side effects may happen, makes clear in this letter the including pancreatitis. president has directed mcgahn tell your doctor if you have diabetic retinopathy or vision changes. not to appear. taking ozempic® with a sulfonylurea or insulin president trump was pressed on his decision on the south lawn may increase the risk for low blood sugar. before departing town last common side effects are nausea, night. >> why are you asking don mcgahn vomiting, diarrhea, stomach pain, and constipation. to defy a congressional some side effects can lead to dehydration, subpoena? >> well, as i understand it, which may worsen kidney problems. they're going that for the i discovered the potential with ozempic®. office of the presidency for future presidents. i think it's an important ♪ oh! oh! oh! ozempic®! ♪ ask your healthcare provider today precedent, and the attorneys say about once-weekly ozempic®.
that they are not doing that for me, they're doing that for the office of the president. so we're talking about the future. >> meantime, the democrats have scored their first court victory in the fight over the president's financial records. tell us about that ruling. >> it's significant. democrats won this early legal battle after a federal judge yesterday declined to block a house oversight committee subpoena to the president's accounting firm for his financial records. the president's personal lawyers argue the subpoena was unconstitutional because they say it doesn't have any we see two travelers so at a comfort innal with a glow around them, legislative purpose. so people watching will be like, the bottom line in simple terms "wow, maybe i'll glow too here, the president and his if i book direct at choicehotels.com". allies call a democratic who glows? overreach. the democrats call it just say, badda book. badda boom. constitutionally mandated book now at choicehotels.com oversight. this ruling means that that accounting firm must comply with the subpoena for eight years of look limu. a civilian buying a new car.ug mr. trump's financial records. the president, he also let's go. criticized the judge in his response calling the ruling, limu's right. quote, crazy and said he would liberty mutual can save you money
by customizing your car insurance, appeal. >> peter alexander, thank you. so you only pay for what you need. kelly o'donnell, thank you to oh... yeah, i've been a customer for years. you as well. meantime, national security huh... reporter ken dlan yan joins us. there's a new set of details only pay for what you need. from the newly released ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ transcripts of cohen's closed door conversations with congress. >> perhaps the most attention grabbing aspect of the new system from michael cohen is his contention that the president's lawyer essentially instructed him to lie to congress about the timing of that trump tower moscow deal. we already knew that cohen told congress that negotiations on that deal ended in january 2016. nbc news has uncovered in fact, they continued through disturbing revelations about the june of 2016. conditions inside the nation's immigration detention system. then candidate donald trump knew where more than 8,000 immigrants that even as he was saying on the campaign trail he had no were taken into custody and held business dealings with moscow. it's important to clarify there's no evidence in the in solitary confinement. a review of documents under the documents that sekulow knew he was repeating fls information to trump and obama administrations cohen. found that, quote, only half of he just told him this is the story. we want you to say this story the cases involved punishment
and cohen knew it wasn't true. for rule violations. the other half were unrelated to it's unclear whether cohen disciplinary concerns. they involved the mentally ill, raised the objection. the disabled or others who were the lawyers on trump team know sent to solitary largely for what to say to shape people's testimony. what ice described as safety it's not clear whether they were concerned whether it was true or reasons. not. an what's interesting is none of gabe gutierrez has been covering the immigration crisis for nbc. them were charged with what was -- was there a clear obstruction of justice by mueller because they were shi d statement of what was the criteria for who was held in shielded by attorney/client privilege. the house has demanded testimony solitary? >> people should only be put in from the trump lawyers. they're fighting that. solitary cob fine amount as last >> another front in this job resort in rare circumstances. going battle. thank you, ken, for that. what the documents found we have that breaking news. according to thousands -- it's happening in the heartland. according to documents uncovered a dangerous weather system by the freedom of information spawned destructive tornadoes, intense rain, and fierce act, it found that more than flooding. let's go live to kerry sanders in hard hit oklahoma. 8400 detainees were held in what's the extent of damage solitary confinement over a five there? >> well, i'm in oklahoma about year period. two and a half hours west of a third were mentally ill and d
oklahoma city. you can see right here where one example, being held in solitary of the tornadoes came through, for 390 days. took down part of this building sometimes those detainees were or really most of it. held in solitary because of another building nearby. this was a barn area used by the acting out their mental future farmers of america. illnesses. now, what is significant here is that we spoke with a federal they had -- the kids had their whistleblower. animals here and some were ellen gallagher currently works injured and had to be put down at the department of homeland security as a policy adviser in by the authorities. but the damage that you can see the office of inspector general. here is spotty around. as you noted going into this, more than 80 tornadoes in recent several years ago, she started days in this part of the looking at segregation reports country, and the threat is still and she was disturbed by what not over. as i'm standing here right now, she saw. take a listen. i'm going to point up a little >> solitary confinement was bit toward the clouds. the reason we're going to look being used as the first resort, at the clouds is it's 57 degrees right now. not the last resort. kind of cold, and so it would >> so, why are you speaking up perhaps suggest that we're now? beyond the threat. >> because if i didn't speak up, but that's not how it works. i don't think i could live with you don't necessarily have to myself. >> and she described disturbing have incredibly warm conditions over several years. temperatures down at this level and the cold temperatures up again, both under the trump there in the clouds. administration, as well as the it's the different in the obama administration. temperatures. so while it may be somewhat now, we did reach out to i.c.e., chris, and this is their chilly here at 57 degrees, colder up there. statement. u.s. immigration and customs
results in the potential for enforcement is firmly committed to the safety and welfare of all these tornadoes to develop. and as we note with the clouds those in its custody. the use of restrictive housing there, a lot of rain as well. in i.c.e. detention facilities and there has been some flooding here. flash flooding today. water rescues taking place in is exceedingly rare but at times the state. the authorities say at this necessary to ensure the safety point, though, with the of staff and individuals in the tornadoes, with the flash facil floods, have have been no serious injuries, but today once again, all eyes on the skies and facility. the fear of potential more danger here. solitary conconfifinement was u >> oh, boy. first. kerry sanders, thanks. >> is this still happening? i know you'll stay on it for us. has it gotten better? to the pentagon now. >> according to ellen gallagher, it is still happening. military reporter kourtney kubi. we spoke with one detainee who lawmakers are on the hill was recently kept for 11 months getting a closed door briefing in solitary confinement and she on iran right now. just the first of three congressional meetings today with all these increasing tried to attempt suicide. tensions. at least 60 detainees in the what's the focus and what's the records that we uncovered, they goal here? >> the ones this morning are actually committed suicide while with former officials. in solitary confinement. the one this morning, i mean, this is really a chance for some >> gabe gutierrez, thank you so of president trump's national much for this. you can watch more of gabe's security leaders to go to the interview and report tonight on hill and try to make good. nbc "nightly news" with lester
there was a lot of frustration last week by members in the holt. breaking news just in. senate and the house that they the president is appealing weren't informed in advance about some of the threats coming monday's ruling that says he has from iran. to turn over his financial particularly the threats that caused the u.s. military to records. we'll have more on that story coming up. surge, to accelerate the coming up. i don't keep track of regrets. deployment of a carrier strike group and move a bomber task force in and then the decision for the state department to withdraw some nonessential americans from iraq last week. so this afternoon we'll see acting secretary shanahan, chairman of the joint chiefs and mike pompeo. first they'll brief the full house and full senate. several members have gotten pull asides and given us a sense of what we might see or hear today or what the members might hear. it's a closed session. we're not going to see anything ourselves, but some of the people who have been involved in some of the planning have talked to us about what the members will hear today. they're going to talk about the intelligence that led to these decisions. they're going to talk about the way forward for the u.s. military, and they're going to talk about how they've seen some of the tension dialled back,
particularly in the maritime environment at sea but the threat remains credible and real is what they're going to hear from the national security leaders today. >> kourtney thank you. a big setback for the white house as a federal judge soundly rejects arguments from president trump's lawyers. forcing the president's accounting firm to hand over financial records to congress. but we'll explain why that's just the beginning of this legal fight. and later a firm no from don mcgahn. a member of the house judiciary committee will be here on that and why mcgahn's no-show should lead to impeachment proceedings. we spoke about justin amash becoming the first republican to say the mueller report showed the president engaged in impeachable conduct. that forced steven tophen colbe ajol jazz to republicans. >> i imply you're a
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that helps keep your engine running like new. guidance, as we've been reporting, don mcgahn will not appear. meantime today, a pivotal it's fuel for thought. moment for the tech industry and privacy. amazon is facing a shareholder vote tomorrow on two proposals to limit the company's use of powerful face recognition tools. the vote comes as the city of san francisco is expected to formally ban any governmental use of facial recognition. i want to go live to san francisco and nbc technology news correspondent jacob ward. we'll get to amazon in a moment, but even if san francisco bans the government from using facial recognition in that city, it is, obviously, just one city. i'm wondering is this more here'sshow me making it. like. symbolic or to send a message. oh! i got one. give us your take on it. the best of amy poehler. >> it is a great question. amy, maybe we could use the voice remote in many ways symbolic and the to search for something that you're not in. symbolism is very strong. show me parks and rec. the heart of the technology from netflix to prime video to live tv, industry. it will make the fortunes of xfinity lets you find your favorites with the emmy award-winning x1 voice remote. thousands of people here in this show me the best of amy poehler, again. city and, yes, it is really just this time around... within the city limits. now that's simple, easy, awesome. right now, one in two americans experience the entertainment you love on x1.
access netflix, prime video, youtube and more, are probably in a facial all with the sound of your voice. recognition database of some click, call or visit a store today. sort without their knowledge. and we've seen that about two-thirds of likely 2020 voters across those political spectrum oppose the idea of government buying facial recognition technology off of private companies and, yet, here we are. it is happening all over the country. people are being sucked up into these system without their consent. the idea that san francisco is making this move and it is symbolic and the fact that it a historic move. >> facial recognition is all around us. i think a lot of people accept or, you know, just have given up and said, okay, this is the way it is. why is amazon holding this vote tomorrow? >> well, really, the most important thing to consider here, chris. would you be cool with in strong and clear terms a fingerprints being collected u.s. district judge has flatly from you in everything you do. i mean, that is really the rejected the trump administration's arguments that congress has no right to ask for concept here. every public space you walk the president's financial through and every time you board records. calling those arguments, in a plane. all of that. put your biometrics into a fact, flawed and unconvincing.
and contrary to, quote, decades system that could identify you later. of legislation regarding the research has shown the president. it's a ruling that could have misidentification of minority communities is a huge problem wide ranging imply kags for within ai and ai systems that president trump's strategy of use facial recognition are also being used to do all kind of defying congressional oversight. the president dismissed it as weird stuff about trying to politically motivated. >> we disagree with that ruling. detect your emotions and your it's crazy, because you look at moods. these are things law enforcement are looking at. a small group of shareholders it. this never happened to any other including a religious community president. in upstate new york are forcing they're trying to get a redo. a vote within that company. as far as the financials are you and i do not have a vote. concerned, we think it's the there is no mechanism by which wrong -- it's totally the wrong the average american could force the company's hand. decision by obviously an obama so, this group of shareholders appointed judge. have put together these two he was a recent obama appointed judge. >> gregg brower is a former u.s. proposals one would say they may not sell to government agencies their recognition product. this facial recognition product attorney and worked under james without specific approval and then the second proposal is an comey. barrett burger is a federal independent commission that would look at the ethics of prosecutor as well as an msnbc facial recognition in general legal analyst. and the sort of financial stakes for the company, if it were to be misused. this was a 41 beige decisipage . >> such inest theteresting stuf. does it read to you as a partisan document? >> not in the slightest. i'm chris jansing in for
i think it's really only the president that talks about stephanie ruhle. a banner day in new york because district court judges as obama hallie jackson is here in the house and big day on capitol appointed or bush appointed. hill. >> no kidding. people that actually work in it is a critical moment as we this field don't think of come on the air about to go down district court judges in that in washington. way. they think of them as being this not a hot seat, but an empty one. one may be tough in this that's because former white house counsel don mcgahn is now particular field. this one may be particularly scholarly, but i think the officially a no show on capitol hill. she is defying that house general legal population does not think of judges as being partisan for a good reason. judiciary subpoena in what may be a final straw for democrats they sort of leave that at the investigating the president. door. they come in and i think all the big question now, how will district court judges really those democrats respond? strive to try to look at each how judiciary committee is set situation based on the facts and the law. to gavel in any moment and we that's what you saw the judge doing here. will watch it live as house >> it was very clear, gregg, it was readable. speaker nancy pelosi faces give us your big picture sense arguably the biggest challenge of the opinion. of her speakership so far. part of it is congress also, for example, investigated bill fed up democrats demanding louder and louder that she allow impeachment hearings now. clinton's conduct and he's not prepared the judge says to roll >> if don mcgahn doesn't back the tide of history by testify, it is time to open an restricting congress's ability impeachment query. to investigate. >> the only thing we can do is how do you see this and is it a start that impeachment inquiry.
precedent setting opinion? >> it is an important opinion. >> nancy pelosi is a great it could be a precedent setting opinion. political strategist and we have and you have to love the judge's reference to president buchanan to take everything very serious right at the beginning of his and it is a dilemma for all of opinion. generally considered to be the worst president in u.s. history. us. >> all the breaking stories and so i think what this opinion at bottom confirms is that we're going to bring you. kasie hunt over on capitol hill and the house judiciary congress's powers when it comes to overnight of the executive committee hearing set to begin any second after plenty of democrats had their say in a branch is very broad and very deep and very expansive, and dramatic meeting overnight. that has been the reality and i want to go to kasie hunt frankly, should be the reality, and this opinion confirms that. secondly, the timing of the interviewing ocasio-cortez. opinion confirms the courts can >> some of these members are a act very quickly even on these part of her leadership very weighty constitutional issues if they want to. and so there's a lot of questioning about how long the inevitable appeal will take. it need not take that long if the d.c. wants to take this up
on an expedited basis. i would submit as a long-time lawyer, a former federal prosecutor, there are reagan appointees, bush one appointees, bush two appointees who were every bit as offended by the characterization of this judge as an obama judge as there are clinton appointees and obama appointees. that is simply the kind of comment by the president that serves only to undermine the rule of law and cause people to lose faith in the justice system. this is a federal judge, calling it like he sees it and the president should recognize that fact. >> one of the things he kept coming back to, and this is an interesting opinion. people probably won't go read 41 pain pains -- pages but it's a good read. >> shorter than the mueller report. >> much shorter. it comes back to the idea of
legislative purpose. the administration says there is no legitimate legislative purpose to these requests, and obviously what congress is saying is there is. what does the judge look at to decide whether or not there is a legitimate legislative purpose and is that the right question? >> yes. this judge framed it interesting in the opinion. he said legislative purpose, we're not looking to see is there a rational basis for the subpoena. that's what you do in civil litigation. he's saying is there a jurisdictional purpose? does congress actually have the jurisdiction to issue this kind of subpoena? is congress staying in their lane? this judge said they were. he said there's been decades of precedent saying congress can issue subpoenas and have this type of oversight. he said he was not going to stand in the way of this type of president and get in the way of congress doing its job. >> i want to ask you about don mcgahn who is not expected to
show up for testimony this morning. the president claims this is for the office of the presidency to protect future presidents. that's why they're telling mcgahn not to testify. does that hold water? >> i don't think so. i think that legally mcgahn is -- should show up. it's possible that legally he could properly refuse to answer certain questions that the white house directs him not to answer, but simply not showing up, i think, is without legal basis. but let's be clear. no one really believes that this is about protecting the presidency. sometimes it is important to make arguments based upon principle like separation of powers. i've been there and done that. there are times where that is important for the institution, but let's be clear about this. this is really about the president and the white house trying to keep important facts from congress and the american people. at bottom, that's what's happening here. >> gregg brower, thank you so
much to both of you. appreciate it. up next, former white house counsel don mcgahn is under subpoena to testify at the top of the hour. he's supposed to be there 40 minutes from now. but the white house told him do not show up. one of the most outspoken democrats from last night's meeting with nancy pelosi. jamie ras kin joins me to talk about why mcgahn's no show he thinks should be the final straw and impeachment proceedings against the president need to begin. as 2020 candidates campaign to protect the environment, the white house takes the opposite approach. "the new york times" reports the epa is changing the way it calculates pollution-related deaths. essentially making it easier for the trump administration to roll back obama era climate protections like the clean power plant. be clear. the new equation wouldn't actually reduce the number of deaths. what it does is lower the number attributed to pollution. ed to p.
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fight for better wages and a fight for a good, affordable health care. it's playing out in places like youngstown, ohio where we spoke to a democrat who says his party is simply out of touch with reality. quote, the democratic party has lost its voice to speak to people that shower after work and not before work. all we're saying is he won't turn over his tax returns. he's saying i'm fighting china to get you better jobs. are the democrats focusing on the right fight when it comes to what's best for the american people? joining me to weigh in nera tanden, president and ceo at the center for american progress. david drugger -- drugger is also with us. are democrats playing this right? >> i think they are. if you look what the what the democratic president candidates are talking about, they're talking about health care and jobs.
>> they're talking about it, but i think people like this guy in youngstown are saying what are they doing and what a lot of democrats in places like ohio and wisconsin and pennsylvania see is a democratic party that's talking about the mueller report and impeachment. >> well, i think we need to separate two things. first, democrats won in november with the largest turnout of -- in 100 years. now, why did that happen? that happened because people were campaigning on health care and other issues, and the democrats and the house have been delivering on those issues. but another reason why that happened is because people actively, the democratic party actively campaigned on a check on donald trump. lots of moderate voters, even republican leaning voters decided to vote for democrats in the house because they wanted some accountability for donald trump. so i think this is a really clear issue. democrats have to walk and chew gum.
they can't ignore their constitutional responsibilities. you have justin amash talking about how the president has probably violated the law and we need to take steps about it. but at the same time democrats on the campaign trail and the freshman democrats are -- they are talking about health care and other issues. in fact, the house just passed a health care bill that shores up the aca. it ensures background checks on political reform. it's focussed on the mueller report because it's a constitutional crisis. >> she makes a couple of points, david. i wonder your take on it. both that hopefully members of congress can walk and chew gum at the same time but also that congress has a constitutional responsibility for oversight. how do you see this playing out for voters in the rust belt states? >> i think this is a very difficult calculation for democrats. on the one hand nera is right.
they have to exercise aggressive oversight. the democratic base demands it and i think they were voted into power in large part because voters wanted to see some check on the president. i think voters are sometimes a little more sophisticated than we give them credit for. and i think voters understand there's a difference between aggressive oversight which i don't think politically hurts democrats and initiating impeachment proceedings which there is as of yet, not the political will in the country to support, and i think that a lot of voters might see it as overreach. let's say i'm wrong about that and voters look at impeachment proceedings as just another form of aggressive oversight. there's then the issue of whether you can walk and chew gum at the same time from the perspective of what message you're able to communicate that voters are able to hear. and what we know about impeachment is that it's so rare and such an overwhelming story that i think it could become difficult for democrats in
congress and democrats on the campaign trail to get through with a message about health care about the economy, about all of the things that voters may not like about trump that democratic presidential candidates are going to offer. and that's where democrats could run into trouble. ultimately what voters are going to do in 2020 is make a calculation about who would make their lives better, who would make them feel better about the country. if democrats cannot communicate that, they're going to be in a world of trouble. voters have come to the conclusion that president trump is who he is. that sort of anyodiminishes expectations for him. >> the idea of the president, nera talking act these, and we saw it last night. he was in pennsylvania, another state where working class voters helped to get him elected, but then he brought joe biden into it. i want to play that. >> don't forget biden deserted you. he's not from pennsylvania.
i guess he was born here, but he left you, folks. he left you for another state. remember that, please. i meant to say that. this guy talks about oh, i know scranton. well, i know the places better. he left you for another state and didn't take care of you because he didn't take care of your jobs. >> just to clarify, nera, joe biden's parents moved when he was 11 years old, so i don't know. in case people were wondering. but the message, i want to ask you about the president's message. it's i'm here for you. joe biden isn't. and i just wonder should democrats be so quick to dismiss that? it did -- those kinds of things worked for him when he ran before. and should democrats be wary of believing polls that show a lot of the democrats in these one to one matchups beating donald trump? >> i personally think you have to run every campaign like you're behind.
and trump has a lot of assets. he's an incumbent and raising a lot of money. i actually think this sort of pathetic level of attacks donald trump has been issuing against joe biden and other democrats, i mean, he's down in his name calling game. sleepy joe? it's pretty pathetic. and i think the truth is that we can talk about the mueller report and what it means for democrats, but let's not forget what it means for the president. which is the president has been engaging in essentially administration wide obstruction effort against this investigation. why? because he's worried about what it will uncover. and i think the reality of this is that democrats have a constitutional responsibility and trump is fighting all of this because he is scared of what will be revealed to the american people. and that is one of the reasons why democrats have to be able to
respond. and he himself, his presidency, t not just that it will affect democrats on the hill. this will effect what he's talking about every day, and when republicans launch benghazi hearings which were over really nothing legitimate, that did have an impact on hillary. i think this will have an impact on him as well. >> thank you so both of you. i appreciate it. up next, one of the most outspoken supporters of impeachment. jamie raskin will join me next. jamie raskin will join me next
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in just about a half hour we're expecting another empty chair moment on capitol hill. the house judiciary committee will gavel in even though don mcgahn says he will not show up to testify. kelly o'donnell is outside the hearing room for us. what can we expect? >> reporter: well, there will be a lot of activity here, but it won't be the kind of main event house democrats had been hoping for where they had high expectations that there would be a chance to hear from donald mcgahn, former counsel at the white house to donald trump. you pointed it out. it's an empty chair day instead. a seat is waiting for him. his name is on the seat. no one expects he'll come. instead, the committee will gavel in and we will hear from the chairman and the ranking member talking about what each side thinks this hearing means. the subpoena that the committee has put forward and has been
rejected by the white house, all the back and forth between the various lawyers and so forth. and what does it mean in the big picture? there are some members of this committee that will convene here briefly today who believe that the absence of don mcgahn is the last straw. they're arguing that a broader impeachment process should begin where all the committees would work in conjunction to gather facts and evidence and move down toward an eventual impeachment trial and all the things that could come about. saying that the president and the white house are obstructing congress's ability to do it job. at the same time house leadership this morning is reiterating that no, they don't believe that's the right way to go, saying they want to grind it out committee by committee. having effectively six different channels of opportunity to gather information and bring witnesses in. they're saying that's the way to go now, not rushing toward impeachment. >> thank you so much, kelly o'donnell. so joining us now is a member of the house judiciary committee
who was inside that meeting and that is maryland democratic congressman jamie raskin. how did the debate play out? >> well, i wish i could. the meetings are supposed to be off the record. i was pretty amazed that everything seemed to leak out almost simultaneously. obviously we're involved in a serious conversation here which is how do you deal with the most lawless and obstructionist administration of our lifetimes? and those of us or many of us on the judiciary committee have been exposed to high crimes and misdemeanors. it was reported by special counsel mueller there were at least 10 or 11 episodes where the president interfered with the law enforcement investigation being conducted by the special counsel. so that's staring us in the face, and now what we have is a president who has expanded the strategy obstruction to obstruct congress. he's acting in blatant befiens and contempt of our lawful
powers under article one of the constitution. so the question isn't whether to impeach or not. the question is whether or not to launch an inquiry into whether there were high crimes and misdemeanors. >> if you're going to talk about lawlessness and obstructionist behavior and i think everyone in your caucus would agree about what's happening here. obviously for people like nancy pelosi and others, there's a political reality about whether an impeachment vote could get through. even given that, is nancy pelosi being too careful here? >> well, you know, we love nancy pelosi because she is careful, and she's a great political strategist. we have to take seriously everything that she's saying. it's a cldilemma for all of us. >> you disagree with her? >> let's put it like this. impeachment is the last line of
constitutional defense against a lawless president trampling the constitution. it's a question of law and the question of politics. the question is whether there were high crimes and misdemeanors which we take to be public offenses against the state and the people through the constitution. but it also asks us to ask the political question which is how does impeachment fit in with everything else we're doing. i think that's the discussion. it's a completely legitimate and valid discussion. obviously it will go on as we struggle to deal with this administration which is shutting down all of our requests for subpoenas, shutting down all of our requests for witnesses in documents. this is an unprecedented situation we're in. so we appreciate the fact that all of us are on the same team trying to figure out how to deal with it. >> given that point, you believe starting the process will give you access to information. if you have an inquiry, you can get more of that information. but then there are people like
your colleague who asked this question, and i'm quoting him. why would we open an impeachment inquiry if we're winning in the court system? how do you answer that question? >> well, but we're winning in the court system, our victories against the white house saying basically they don't have to cooperate with congress's demands for information. the reason that we want that information is we want to determine whether there were high crimes and misdemeanors and also what we can do to try to clear out the corruption in the executive branch. on the oversight committee where i serve, we have an investigation into the white house personnel office where 25 people were rejected by the professional staff in terms of getting their security clearance. they were overruled by the white house, by the president who said let's grant security clearance to people who are found totally not qualified to have it. so we're doing an investigation into that. they've shut us down on that and we're trying to fight that out
the shutdown meeting when he walked out. exactly, that's according to two democratic sources with knowledge of that meeting. we'll hear from senator schumer and speaker pelosi any moment now. but that's it for me. andrea mitchell picking things up right now. i'll see you tomorrow morning. >> what a day. craig melvin, thank you. good day. i'm andrea mitchell in washington. we are awaiting comments at any moment from house speaker nancy pelosi and senate democratic leader chuck schumer. moments after president trump suddenly appeared in the rose garden to lash out at them, pouncing on comments pelosi had made this morning, that the president had engaged in a cover-up, comments she made in part to slow her own caucus' march to impeachment. the president walking out of that pre-arranged meeting over infrastructure and trade with pelosi and schumer, and leading democrats on capitol hill. here's part of it. >> instead of walking in happily into a meefg, i walk into look at people that had just said
that i was doing a cover-up. i don't do cover-ups. we've had a house investigation, we had senate investigations, we have investigations like nobody's ever had before and we've done nothing wrong. these people were out to get us. the republican party and president trump. >> and nancy pelosi about to respond with chuck schumer on what happened when he walked out on them in the oval office. >> good morning, everyone. this morning, we went to the white house for a follow-up meeting with the president, follow-up to a meeting we had a few weeks ago, where we agreed on a dollar figure, where we agreed on the percentage of 80/20, in terms of responsibility, and we discussed some priorities about infrastructure. it was agreed at that time that we would return today to talk about how we would cover the cost of such a proposal.
last night, in the time in between, the president was making some sounds that would question how serious he could be if he was saying what he was saying, and last night he put forth a letter saying that unless we passed the u.s./mexico/canada free trade agreement, there was no reason for us to -- you know, we couldn't go forward with infrastructure. we didn't see those two as related, but the fact is, hopeful, optimistic, and seeing the necessity for a big infrastructure initiative for our country, we went in the spirit of bipartisanship to find common ground with the president on this. he came into the room, made a statement that he made, i won't even characterize it, but i will say this, and what i said after he left, thomas jefferson, when he was president of the united states tasked his secretary of the treasury, gallatin, to put
forth an infrastructure proposal, initiative for the country. it would follow the lewis and clark expedition, the louisiana purchase, it would be about the erie canal, the cumberland road, things like that to build into america. 100 year to date later, a hundred years later, teddy roosevelt did his infrastructure big initiative and it was called the establishment of the national parks service, the green infrastructure of america. we had hoped that we could give this president an opportunity to have a signature infrastructure initiative to create jobs, to improve the quality of life, to just do so much for our country on the ongoing -- not only the jobs it created by building, but the commerce it would promote. and that included roads and bridges and mass transit --
well, broadband into rural america and other underserved areas, clean water, waste water, all of the things that have numerous needs. the american society of civil engineers says it's in the trillions, the deficit we have, we're talking about a couple billion dollars. for some reason, maybe it was lack of confidence on his part, that he really couldn't match the greatness of the challenge that we have, wasn't really respectful of the reason -- of the congress and the white house working together. he just took a pass. and it just makes me wonder why he did that. in any event, i pray for the president for the united states of america. i'm pleased to yield now to the
distinguished democratic leader of the senate, mr. schumer. >> well, thank you, speaker pelosi. and to watch what happened in the white house would make your jaw drop. we democrats believe in infrastructure. we believe our roads and bridges need repair. we believe that rural america, as well as inner city america needs broadband. we believe that bring clean, new energy around the country we need a power grid modernized and updated. we believe in modernizing our transportation fleet with electric cars. we believe in all of these things. and so despite signals in the previous few weeks, that he might not be serious, we went forward. we came here very seriously. the president asked in his letter last night, where would democrats spend the money on infrastructure? i was prepared to give him a 35-page plan detailing this in
all the areas i mentioned and more, that have the broad support of senate and house democrats. we were interested. we are interested in doing infrastructure. it's clear the president isn't. he is looking for every excuse, whether it was let's do trade first, or whether it was, he's not going to pay for any funding, or whether today, that there are investigations going on. hello, there were investigations going on three weeks ago when we met. and he still met with us. but now that he was forced to actually say how he'd pay for it, he had to run away. and he came up with this pre-planned excuse. and one final point, it's clear that this was not a spontaneous move on the president's part. it was planned. when we got in the room, the curtains were closed, the president -- there was a place for him at the front, so he could stand and attempt to tell
us why he wouldn't do infrastructure. and of course, then he went to the rose garden with prepared signs that had been printed up long before our meeting. we want the president to do infrastructure. we want our congress to perform its constitutional responsibilities and create jobs, create income, create wealth for the average american. we can do both. it's clear the president doesn't want to do any of that. >> i just would add this one thing that we had a very distinguished delegation to the congress, very powerful house and senate, as you can see, distinguished leader on the appropriations committee, senator patty murray, mr. carper, the ranking member on the committee of jurisdiction that oversees some of what we're talking about here, richey neal, the chairman of the ways and means committee in the house. our distinguished democratic leader in the house, steny
hoyer. where's dick durbin? is he this way? the senate whip, whatever the title is in the senate. >> number two. >> debbie stabenow of michigan, leader on all of these issues in her committees in the congress. our assistant speaker, mr. ben ray lujan of new mexico. our distinguished whip of the house, democratic whip of the house, mr. clyburn, the chair of the -- i love saying chair, the chair of the transportation infrastructure committee appropriate to this discuss, mr. defazio, and the top democrat on the finance committee in the united states senate, ron wyden. so we came with heft, with commitment, with knowledge, we hoped with a shared vision of
creating this great jobs initiative for our country. and the spirit of president eisenhower, when he substituins the interstate highway system. it was important for jobs and mobility. it was a national security initiative and it was bipartisan. lyndon johnson and sam rayburn in the house and senate, the president of the united states, dwight eisenhower, we had hoped that we could do something comparable. unfortunately, the president isn't ready for that. thank you all very much. >> well, joining me now, peter alexander, nbc's kelly o'donnell on capitol hill, joyce vance, former u.s. attorney and an msnbc contributor, matt miller, former chief spokesperson to attorney general eric holder and
an nbc justice and security analyst, "usa today" washington bureau chief, susan page, and "washington post" political reporter, eugene scott. peter alexander, first to you. it does appear that this was pre-planned, they had the posters all planned. he has been tweeting all night and all morning about the democratic investigations. he said that he came into the rose garden because nancy pelosi koo accused him of a cover-up. >> reporter: yeah, there may have been some degree of planning, obviously, andrea, because we were handed these as we exited the rose garden. this was basically one of the signs that was on the podium. the key sound bite from president trump today was "i don't do cover-ups," which of course ignores the facts that he had involvement with a series of hush money payments to former playmate and to a porn star to try to buy their silence over the course of the 2016 campaign. it also reminds me of what we heard from this president in that first news conference, the day after the midterm election, andrea, where he was pressed
what he would do if democrats pursued investigations. he said, in effect, if they do that, for us, it would be a war-like posture, this is, from president trump, a war-like posture. but it's also a bookend, in many ways. because you'll remember late last year, where there was that contentious visit with nancy pelosi and chuck schumer in the oval office, with the president, where he said, basically, he would take the blame. he would be the one responsible for a shutdown on the issue of border security. well, today, basically, he said, i'm willing to say, we're not going franywhere on infrastructure, as long as the democrats won't move forward and get over it in terms of their investigations. the democrats tried to make hay with that, trying to capitalize on that today, and the sound bite that everyone's going to be talking about as it relates to the democrats is nancy pelosi saying at the end of her remarks, "i pray for the president of the united states, i pray for the country." >> indeed. and peter alexander, when you talk about, "i don't do cover-ups, there's also the fact that he has been refusing to let
his current and former aides testify, refusing to turn over documents that have been demanded, including the tax returns, which are argue blip under a real legal mandate and more on that to come, and also, refusing to grant an interview to robert mueller, which plays into all of that, right? >> reporter: you're exactly right. he's consistently says he's been the most transparent president of all. he didn't sit down with robert mueller, even though mueller desired that, requested for that to happen. instead, he provided written answers. he said "they were out to get us." and about this claim he's made repeatedly about the effort to investigate the investigators, where he's even referred to some of those investigators as treasonous, saying they committed treason, when that rose garden event was over, i yelled to him a couple of questions that he ignored. one was, if you've been cleared, why not let robert mueller testify? he walked away. and separately, i asked him, as it related to this separate issue, i asked him broadly
about -- you know, i was peppering with him a lot of questions. >> i think it was whether or not he had read the mueller report. >> that was another one of them that we asked him in that moment that he didn't answer. we also asked him who he was accusing -- that's it. who he specifically was accusing of treason. he said in his remarks that it hopes it will come out well, but he doesn't think so. while he's claiming there was treason, he's acknowledging that he doesn't know. >> what a morning for you guys over at the white house. and meanwhile on capitol hill, kelly o'donnell, first to you. you've got some insights into what happened in that oval office meeting, beyond what we heard from nancy pelosi and chuck schumer. >> reporter: a senior democratic aide says to me that pelosi herself said that she knew the president was not serious about infrastructure and would find a way out. as the president left the meeting. that was reflected in her on-camera remarks. and i think part of what we'll take away from this day, andrea, is not only the words and the unexpected nature of everything
that played out, but the imagery that was cast here. the president standing alone in the rose garden, which is sort of the solitary nature of being president. there may be strength in that, according to his supporters, there may be isolation in it. and then on capitol hill, the speaker of the house, the leader of the democrats in the senate and so many of their leadership team standing together and describing the scene at the white house in terms that cast the president in a very dark and isolated fashion. that is both in the way they described the room, the words, and so the imagery of this day, i think, will stand out beyond just how we're covering this back and forth. speaker pelosi may have contributed by saying that the president is engaged in a cover-up. certainly, he knew last night, as he described it, that there would be this meeting this morning for all democrats to talk about impeachment and investigations. that window of time from last night to today's event certainly
enough to do the posters and the planning. but the cover-up phrase was something new that happened right before the house speaker went to the white house, and clearly, that agitated the president. from the democrats' side of those we've been able to talk to, in the minute since this unfolded, they've described the president as having been late, they described his mood in sort of dark terms. and as we heard the speaker say, trying to find a way to give the president an opportunity for an achievement in infrastructure, while all of this other stuff is swirling on capitol hill. she thought there might be a path for that. clearly the president said that that is an obstacle that he cannot tolerate, as far as negotiations and so forth. so the state of governance right now has boiled down to dueling press conferences, a lot of emotion, and some very tough feelings on both sides of pennsylvania avenue. andrea. >> kelly, thank you so much. and of course, our chief
congressional correspondent, kasie hunt, up there and in the room when nancy pelosi and chuck schumer came in. do they have any concerns that the president has a bigger megaphone than they do, and he can say, i want to get stuff done, but they were just engaged in investigations and name calling, which is not polling very well. >> reporter: that's always a concern, andrea, and it's always one of the central challenges of being a leader here on capitol hill, instead of being in what we've long called the bully pulpit, even before what may be the quintessential embodiment of that afraid entered the white house. so that is a potential challenge for them. and i think you saw, when they first started, trying to get underway on this infrastructure package. you know, a pretty remarkable moment from schumer and pelosi, when they went to the white house and they said, hey, we really want to do this. i think that they know that showing the american people, you know, what their agenda is, that they are actually focused on
being for something instead of just against someone is an incredibly important political calculation. now, that said, it seems pretty obvious, kind of, how this all played out. and where, you know, those stronger set of emotions were coming from. i mean, nancy pelosi's words here, the fact that she said that the president was engaged in a cover-up, that was actually messaging that came out of that meeting that they were holding on impeachment. elijah cummings, the chairman of the oversight committee has urged his colleagues to use that phrase to kind of take a stronger stance toward the president, even if they're not going to actually launch impeachment proceedings. so nancy pelosi was kind of reflecting that consensus in her caucus, as she up and left. but pelosi has worked in this town a long time. there have been a lot of presidents as well as a lot of congresses that have, on the one hand, you know, done things, passed bills, gotten things signed into law while at the same time, having a massive
partisan, often personal fight with a member of the -- the person occupying the oval office. and i think it's pretty clear here that this president does not operate on that wavelength. there's also been reporting that, you know, when he does see pelosi privately, he wants to focus on questions about impeachment, he brings it up, and clearly, he could not handle what she had said before the cameras. now what she said while it was all jue unfolding, an aide said knew he was going to find a way to wiggle out of this. she did open the door or give him an excuse out of all of this. but at the end of the day, i think this is another episode where we see that trump's form of governing is frankly, you know, what he says can't be trusted. and that's kind of the defining, you know, principle here on capitol hill, quite frankly, for both parties, republican and democrat, andrea. >> kasie hunt, such a big point. i want to bring in the rest of the panel here, susan page.
we've seen this happen before, but this seems to be the most critical, it is so personal. because we've seen the blow-up with dianne feinstein and others when they talked about guns. they were all going to try to get something done, they were in the cabinet room, and nothing came of that. it all fell apart. and then on immigration and the wall and the border deals. and now this. the most critical showdown i think we've seen between the president. "the new york times" is reporting that he blew up in the oval office at them. >> and you know -- >> and left after just three minutes. >> if there was an issue on which it's possible you might see a big legislative package between the white house and democrats on the hill, it was on the issue of infrastructure. it's the issue in which they have the most overlap and interest in positions, but it's pretty clear that nothing -- you wonder if things are going to happen legislatively on substantiative issues over the next year and a half, no. this is a sign that we're going to have, for better or for worse, we'll have a president who is opposing all the investigative efforts by the
house democrats and that house democrats are going to pursue them. we don't know if they're going to pursue impeachment or not, we know we'll snu tthey'll pursue investigations. >> and there were more subpoenas last night, for hope hicks, closest to him. the increased tempo as they have finally really reached a crescendo. there's a hearing today on the deutsche bank materials. there's action in the new york state legislature today against the president. and he lost a key battle just two days ago in court, saying they have absolutely no grounds. that there's no reason to demand what the legislative purpose is. you can't impugn that. >> and we see the courts beginning to weigh in. the process begin to work its way through the courts, which adds another dynamic to this. and if there's one thing that could lead to impeachment in the house, it would be if the president defied a court order.
if the courts weigh in on the impasse between the white house and the congress on subpoenas or testimony, and the white house defies the courts, that's when i think you would see a true crisis. >> well, in fact, eugene, the democratic caucus was already moving nin that direction. they've been incredibly frustrated by the -- you can only call it stonewalling, refusing to let don mcgahn appear. nadler then falling that up with the hope hicks subpoena and a lot of the other materials that are so close to the president. and your colleagues, our colleagues, peter baker and katie rogers at "the washington post" saying that -- rather, at "the new york times," saying that the president walked out without even letting -- within three minutes or less, without letting them say a word. >> and the democrats are going to use this as they campaign in 2020 at the presidential level as well as in congress. they're going to say, they tried to deliver to the american people things that the american people said they wanted and that the president and the
republicans also said they wanted, but weren't able to. a year is a long time not to get anything done. and people are going to take note of that. i remember during the hearings when the democrats were questioning, i believe, bill barr. and some of the democrats said, we can walk and chew gum at the same time. the president wants them to focus on one thing at a time and drop impeachment requests or interests. the democrats don't want to do that. and neither do their base. and it's going to be interesting to see how the republicans are able to frame what they've been able to do as helping the american people, if nothing is actually done ultimately. >> matt miller, how quickly would the courts proceed? because time is a real factor here. and they still have not heard from robert mueller. >> well, one of the courts we saw moved very quickly this week in the oversight committees for trump's financial records. you have another hearing today. it's a very similar case. you'll see the court move very quickly in that case, as well. the proposition the president advanced today, which is basically, unless the congress
agrees to abdicate its responsibility to hold him accountable, he's going to hold the legislative priorities of the american people hostage, is kind of an offensive proposition, and also a politically not very bright one. i don't think that was a wise move for the president to come out and just say, look, i'm not going to do anything legislatively unless you agree to drop all of your investigations. i think to some extent, in the last few weeks, since the report was delivered, the congress and the president have been fighting a little bit of an asemitic battle, where the president somebody coming out and saying, no collusion, no instruction. and the democrats have been saying, we need to see more documents. you saw nancy pelosi change that this morning by coming out and accusing the president of a cover-up. and you can see it very clearly got under his skin. and i think what you're seeing is a little bit of a new, more aggressive posture by democrats in the house. you've heard them saying this privately, that we cannot just allow the president to frustrate our ability to conduct oversight. and we're going to have at the same time we go to the courts and try to get the courts to move quickly, we're going to have to step up our rhetoric and
our attempts to hold him accountable. and i think you saw the speaker do that today and you saw the president clearly stung by that. >> and one thing that did happen, is that somehow politicously adam schiff and his house intelligence committee got access to the counterintelligence records or at least some of them from the mueller probe that he's been demanding. they have a mandate, the intelligence committees, to get access. that is written in stone. so that was going to happen. he was confident that that was going to happen, but it finally, apparently came through today. i want to bring in joyce. we've been talking about these other courts that have been working in parallel. there was the decision on monday and refusal to grant a temporary injunction, or six days or seven days from now, they have to -- the accounting firm has to turn over the financial records. now the deutsche bank hearing today, these are both district judges, one doesn't bind the other, but correct me if i'm wrong, the judge today will be
certainly knowledgeable and will be observing what happened two days ago and it could influence a decision today, they could be on a parallel track. it seems to me the president's anger today, what may have tipped the scale is not only nancy pelosi, but this is getting awfully close to the crown jewels, the trump financials. because if there's action in the new york state legislature, on the state tax returns, there's action on the accounting firm and once they see the state tax returns, they can infer a whole lot about his sources of income. >> you know, this fight is finally in the hands of people that the president doesn't control. we're seeing the third branch of our government, the courts, finally having an opportunity to weigh in, and they're weighing in on issues where there's really no law in the president's favor. these subpoenas by congress are legitimate, they should be enforced, we're seeing judges enforce them. we're seeing cases move on an expedited track.
that, i think, is something that we will see continuous. not a political issue. it's just a clear matter of law. and of course, in new york now, there's legislation in place that permits the state of new york to turn over state tax returns. the president's new york state taxes, which he's required to report any of his foreign financial activities in as well, those can be requested by congress. this is trump's red line. and it's finally being crossed by a variety of different people who he can't tell to keep on -- to hold on to his resources. so now they'll all become public. >> joyce, a lot of people are asking, why didn't robert mueller go there on the financials? because you could argue that if you're investigating russia and what influence russia might have had during 2015 and '16 and before, with donald trump, what leverage they might have had for his behavior and his behavior was not similar to other candidates, republican or democratic, when he talked about vladimir putin, so admiringly. couldn't he have gone to the financial records.
or was he brushed back by the president saying that that was his red line? >> this very limited remit or scope of investigation that mueller drew for himself is something of a mystery, because rosenstein's original document, giving mueller the grant of the special counsel's office said he could investigate matters related to the campaign and russia, but also anything that directly arose from that investigation. people, commentators like myself long assumed that there would be at least some investigation into financial matters, perhaps limited to russia, perhaps broader. i think many people were surprised by how narrowly mueller interpreted this grant of jurisdiction. we don't know whether if that's because he believed it was the right thing to do or whether limits were imposed on him my rosenstein, by the white house, by someone else. that's one of the questions that we still need to have answered. >> and i want to go back to the meeting that was held on capitol
hill this morning over impeachment with nancy pelosi trying to hold back the firebrands and increasing calls for at least the start of impeachment hearings. kelly o'donnell, first to you. you were staked out there, as people were going in. it seemed to me that many more mainstream democrats, to the just the more progressive wing, not just the freshman were now saying, it's time. >> there has been a bubbling up, andrea, with more people willing to talk about it. but at the same time, there was also a certain calmness that seemed to take hold during the meeting, where as members left, they were willing, it appeared, based on those that our team surveyed to go along with some of the main themes of the speaker. so in recent days, we've clearly seen a more passionate bubbling up based on facts and the environment politically, where more members are talking about impeachment, but during the course of the meeting that was focused on presentation from the six committee chairpersons who are working through all the different lines of inquiry,
hearing those presentations, getting a sense of the leadership strategy here, which is to amass as much information, grind out the facts, get the witness testimony where possible, win in the courts, and then ultimately come up with a strategy. interesting that some of that passion seem to be quieted a bit. not that they're not still interested, but willing to go along strategically. i think that's a real takeaway from today. do more democratic members talk impeachme impeachment? yes. do they also talk about the plan? it appears so, this afternoon. >> kasie hunt, we want to play a little bit of nancy pelosi and chuck schumer just moments ago and talk to you on the other side. >> maybe it was lack of confidence on his part that he really couldn't come match the greatness of the challenge that we have. he just took a pass and it just
makes me wonder why he did that. in any event, i pray for the president of the united states. >> it's clear that this was not a spontaneous move on the president's part. it was planned. when we got in the room, the curtains were closed, the president, there was a place for him at the front so he could stand and attempt to tell us why he wouldn't do infrastructure and, of course, then he went to the rose garden with prepared signs. >> so, kasie, there's a momentum to these events, and this was unplanned, but also planned in a certain way. >> reporter: it certainly seems so, andrea. and you know, i'm trying to recall another -- another time when a president has essentially used members of congress to teenage his own kind of dramatic show. i mean, i suppose this is to be expected from, you know, i mean, president trump has a very clear record of, you know, focusing on
made-for-television events, for taking chirons and rewriting them, to try to say what he wants to focus on. i think going into this meeting, relationships between the democratic leaders and the president were not great. i'm anxious to have some private conversations with some of the people that were in the room as we kind of flesh out exactly how people are feeling now. but, it just has to be -- you have to think it's at a new low. because this really is kind of a remarkable -- a remarkable turn of events for some of the most powerful people in the country. i mean, nancy pelosi, you know, in line to the presidency of the united states. and somebody that, you know, the president has, it's been reported, has had respect for before. he has criticized the former republican speaker of the house, paul ryan, for not being able to deal with misfits in his own
conference and said that he admired pelosi for being able to keep all of her people on the straight and narrow. so, again, if there was any hope of trying to get anything done here in congress, it seems to have just evaporated. and there's a couple of other big questions coming up. one of them is disaster relief for puerto rico, for iowa. there are, you know, people who are hurting, who have been waiting for months and months for relief there. they're kind of on the verge of getting that done, but the wild card is the president, because he has expressed issues around border wall issues and previously about funding for puerto rico, disaster relief. there's also this massive budget deal. i mean, we are heading into another series of fiscal crises, potential government shutdowns. if you can't come up with a deal up here, and that also is going to require the president. in every single one of these cases, it's actually kind of stunning, because usually, i'm used to covering these massive fights where we're standing outside doors late into the night, waiting for members of congress to tell us whether or not they've managed to figure it
out. the president is typically just down the road, waiting to put pen to paper and sign the thing. it's the opposite here. these guys up here can agree. and the president is throwing monkey wrenches into all of it. and so it really raises a lot of questions, in my mind, for kind of the governing period between now and the 2020 election. obviously, you know, nothing usually very much gets done in any election year, but there are some basics that really have to happen. and even those basics -- disaster relief used to be an easy thing here on capitol hill. and it is not in president trump's washington. >> it's such an important context. kasie hunt, thank you so much. peter alexander at the white house, that brings to mind newt gingrich versus bill clinton. newt gingrich had led the impeachment drive. he was incredibly unpopular afterwards, because the democrats had campaigned so effectively against him on that. and yet, they sat down in the cabinet room and worked out a deal to bail out mexico. very unpopular deal, he signed
on to it. the treasury secretary, bob ruben, got it through. you know, they still made some things happen. welfare reform, things that were unpopular with the progressive left of the democratic party, but everybody came to the middle and they got things done. >> yeah, andrea, what's striking is i had a conversation before what happened in the rose garden with a senior white house official who said, there really is this sense that they might be able to get one big thing done before the 2020 campaign season. that was the usmca. the sense was that they would like other things to happen, but that was not going to happen. it's clear that that may also be in jeopardy today given the divisions we just wnd aitnessed the president's line in the sand as evidenced businey his commen the rose garden. to pull back the curtain on what we just witnessed, one of the things that struck me is while the president spoke there outside the oval office, just to the side, we could see a ton of his aides.
i spotted ivanka trump, steve mnuchin, larry kudlow, sarah sanders, kellyanne conway, hogan gidley, and pat cipollone, who is the white house counsel right now, who are all there, you know, nodding along with the president, smiling when he said that the press in effect should be ashamed of itself. and another thing that also struck me as we've had time to digest it is i showed you this flyer that was handed out to reporters as we left the rose garden. it says mueller probe by the numbers. this focuses on all the subpoenas, effectively, the search warrants and the like. but it also, by the way, notes abc news. it was literally lifted off the abc news website. it doesn't show a separate graphic that abc news also printed at the time that listed all of those who were indicted, all of those who are behind bars and all the other evidence that would be more damaging to the president as he suggested, as he has suggested that this was a witch hunt that came up with nothing. >> and matt miller, peter's
point there, i mean, here they are, and also, the 18 angry democrats, we were talking offline, that's his reference to the mueller staff. we don't know what political affiliations any of them may have. at the same time, there's this big argument over the irs returns. and that is heading to a showdown. there was a showdown on the hill today. i think we have some tape of mnuchin, steve mnuchin, the treasury secretary, before m maxine waters. that's a matchup that has not gone so well. and in the past, he's been very patronizing to her. they've had some really rough goes. and i think if we have that tape, we can show something of what went on also this morning on capitol hill. >> let me just comment, i have no idea -- i just saw that memo this morning. i've never seen that before. i don't know who wrote that memo. we will try to get to the bottom of it. >> did you discuss the memo with the president of the united states? >> i've had no discussions with
the president or anybody in the white house about releasing the president's -- >> did you discuss the memorandum with anybody inside the white house, outside the white house? i'm referring to legal counsel? i'm referring to lawyers. i'm referring to advisers. >> let me be clear. the only person i've discussed that memo with is my general counsel on the car ride over here who's sitting behind me. >> reporter: so that memo, eugene scott, was broken by "the washington post." josh dawsey, i believe, was the correspondent on this. and it is a draft confidential memo of the irs, saying that it is mandatory, mandatory that the irs, the treasury secretary turn over the trump tax returns. any president's tax returns, it's not optional. but mnuchin had told the committees, ways and means financial services that they were not turning it over because there was no, quote, legislative purpose. >> this shouldn't be a problem for the president, given that he
just said, he is the most transparent president in recent history. the reality is, so many of the questions that this committee, that representative waters have about this current president and the finances and who's behind these finances require this documentation and this information. and that's why they're pursuing it. and it looks like they very well may be able to get it. the question becomes, what will the president say once this becomes public and he has to be accountable for all of these things he just has said he doesn't have to reveal or he's been dishonest about or he's tried to portray in a way that's very different from what he's campaigned on. i think that's the position he's trying to avoid putting himself in that could really cause him real jeopardy heading into 2020. >> this puts the irs in the crosshairs. rachel maddow has done a lot of reporting on how this irs commissioner and general counsel, michael desmond, were, you know, personally shepherded through confirmation by the president of the united states. he's got all of these acting cabinet secretaries, but he
cared most, it seems, about getting an irs commissioner and a friendly lawyer, by all accounts, who had done some work for the trump organization. peter, do you have a new statement from the irs in response to all of this? >> yeah, in the course of this conversation, i did receive a statement from the irs. i had reached out to them earlier today. and for all the reasons that you just indicated, it makes sense that they would be distancing themselves from this draft memo. it reads as follow, the memo in question citizen a draft background mapaper that was nev finalized. it is not the final position of the irs, they insist. the document was prepared last fall. the irs commissioner and the chief council were unaware of the paper until this week's media inquiry. the document was not sent to treasury. again, that's the latest statement from the sirirs as th try to push back in this reporting, that they have known as far back as last fall that the only way that the president could stop any access to his tax returns would be by exerting executive privilege. of course, this is a big concern to the president when you get into the issues of his personal records, his financial records.
that's when they put up a lot of stop signs. >> and one point you could make is that of course it's a draft. this irs general counsel and commissioner would never have approved this legal memo. so it would, of course, be a draft. and that's one of the issues. did they cover it up and deep six it? i wanted to play a little bit more of president trump earlier today in the rose garden. >> i just saw that nancy pelosi, just before our meeting, made a statement that we believe that the president of the united states is engaged in a cover-up. well, it turns out i'm the most -- and i think most of you would agree to this. i'm the most transparent president. i want to do infrastructure. i want to do it more than you want to do it. i would be really good at that. that's what i do. but you know what? you can't do it under these circumstances. so get these phony investigations over with. >> stephanie cutter joins us
now, former deputy adviser to barack obama. you've been in the white house, you've been on campaigns. sort of take your democratic hat for a moment. i'm trying to assess how this plays in the country. the president saying, i'm not going to do the nation's business until they stop investigating. we know that investigations have not been popular outside of the democratic pace. you know, who has the play here, do you think? or is it too soon to tell? >> reporter: well, i don't think it's quite accurate to say the investigations haven't been popular. i think people want the president to be transparent and people want the president to do what other presidents have done. and understand that there's a check and balance with working withing on and on substantiate stonewalling has actually, you know, led people to believe that he's actually covering something up. i also think that it's important to remember that we are approaching a presidential election in a little over a year. and the president's at the top of the ticket. it is critical for a president to be able to point back and
show that they tried to work across the aisle, that they put the country's interests ahead of their own, and got some things done. and this president is not able to do that, at least at this point. and today was a major breakdown in that. at the end of the day, he's to blame for this. he is the president of the united states. it's not the speaker of the house or the minority leader in the senate. it's always the president of the united states. and i think he needs to understand that. today, he looked like he was picking up his toys and going home, because he didn't want to be transparent with the american people. >> well, i just also want to point out that in the pennsylvania rally monday night, in a red part of pennsylvania where he was campaigning for -- in a special election, the republican won handedly, that was predetermined. but when we talked to people afterwards, they really liked what he said. so they didn't care if he was claiming credit for things that haven't really been accomplished. the fact checking somehow doesn't always catch up to this president. i wanted to bring in a
presidential contender, montana governor, steve bullock, who knows something about red states and running against a trump tide. president trump won your state by 20 points. you won by 4 points. so you pushed back against that and succeeded. you're a late entry into this race. we now have 20 candidates. we are talking about a very crowded field. how do you make your mark? >> reporter: yeah, andrea, first, thanks for having me on. i am late, because i was still in the middle of a legislative session. i had to get medicaid expansion through. i actually got a $400 million infrastructure package through and i didn't even have to threaten anyone. but i think i make my mark because we need to defeat donald trump, but we also have to get this country working again. as you noted, i'm the only one in the field that actually won in a state when trump was on the ballot. and if we don't win back some of
the places that we lost, we're never going to win in 2020. i have also been able to actually work with democrats and republicans to get progressive things done in a majority republican legislature, from health care for 100,000 monta montanans from freezing college tuition and banning dark money half an hour elections. and i think i've been able to move in other places and to really address i think what is the original season now of the system. that's corrupting influence of outside dollars. and until we address that, it's going to be that much harder to address many of the other issues we're facing. >> so in montana and in the rest of the country, from your perspective, how are people going to react and what is your reaction? the president says he's not going to do infrastructure, he's not going to do bridges. a lot of projects that your state needs as well as the rest of the country, until they stop investigating. does he have the hearts and minds of a lot of his trump supporters and a lot of other people when he makes that argument against the
congressional democrats? >> yeah, no, look, congress needs to fulfill its investigatory and its oversight function. and the executive branch actually has an obligation to respond to that. so i think that more or less saying, i'm going to take my ball and go home, i won't do anything if congress is going to continue to fulfill its obligations, that won't play well anywhere. because people expect washington, d.c. to work. expect things like the base issues like infrastructure, roads, bridges. we need it in montana and you need it all across the country. >> and finally, when you talk to people in montana, what do they say about the house democrats? >> well, i think that people in monta montana, and really, people both in montana and iowa and elsewhere, they're less focused on the dysfunction and the
frustration out there and they're worried about, will government work? so i don't hear folks saying, oh, these democrats are going too far by asking questions and fulfilling the functions that they have. but even more than that, people really want to make sure that their kids can get health care, that they can drive on safe roads. that education can continue. i was in iowa last week, we made eight different stops, not on one of them were the investigation investigations and the mueller report were brought up. it was more about, how are you going to address issues like climate, like health care, like making sure everyone has a fair shot at a better life. >> governor steve bullock, thanks so much. busy news day here. i'll look forward to catching up with you in iowa, new hampshire, or somewhere else. hopefully montana. it's so beautiful out there. >> thanks for having me, andrea. >> thank you. and souvenusan page, you're oute
a lot and you know this is a very delicate balancing act for nancy pelosi. >> it is. and she has made the case that it is a mistake both for the country and for the party to impeach the president at this point. not that she's against pursuing investigations, but she thinks the act of starting an impeachment inquiry carries huge risks for democrats and it is divisive for the country. and that is a case she has managed to make pretty effectively, even in the face of this rising tide of frustration, by other house democrats, who want more aggressive action. i think she came out and quite deliberately this morning said, the president is guilty of a cover-up, as a message to her own troops, she heard what they were saying and agreed with them, even if to some degree might disagree on exactly what to do with it. this is a big risk for the president not to engage on substantiative legislation, but there's a risk for house democrats if they cannot deliver on having the majority and actually getting things done that affect the lives of the people who elected them.
>> and it wasn't really a press conference, he took one or two questions, that's not a press conference. but this morning, the president again took aim at one of his favorite targets. and he said that the whole thing was a takedown -- sorry, we played that sound for you earlier, but he said that the whole thing was a takedown of him, of the president, but according to retired four-star admiral william mccraven, who led the raid that killed osama bin laden among a lot of other heroic achievements, the greatest threat to american democracy is not from a rogue regime or terrorist group, but from president trump's rhetoric. rhetoric we heard again today. joining me now is admiral william mcraven who served 37 years in the navy. his new book is "sea stories: my life in special operations." admiral, great to see you. >> good to be with you. >> i know it was our own colleague here, souvenusan page
has that headline out of your comments to her about the rhetoric of the president. we saw it again in the rose garden, refusing to deal with democrats, refusing to work on infrastructure, walking out of a meeting without even letting them say anything. you've worked with so many commanders in chief at every level, how does that affect the national conversation and the character of america? >> first let me say, andrea, i want the president to do well. i think every president should want the president to do well. and to your point, i had a chance and a great honor to work in the bush 43 white house and i was one of president obama's military commanders. and while i didn't agree with everything that either president bush or president obama did, what i knew is that they were men of integrity and character and always trying to do the right thing for the country. and i think you can always, as a military member follow somebody
that you believe has the country's best interest at heart. and i will tell you that the military will follow this commander in chief contrary to, i think, kind of the player narrative out there. i think the president does listen to his military commanders. he does listen to his secretary of state and pat shanahan, the acting secretary of defense. again, he also listens to other people. but the fact of the matter is, you know, i'm not concerned about the direction of the military. the folks in the military are going to do the right thing. the great service men and women, you know, have an understanding of what their responsibility is. >> what about the rhetoric of the president, though, as you described it, as the bigger threat right now than cade? >> yeah, so, what i talked about, and this really started as an address i gave to the school communications at the university of texas at austin. but there's always a part that the press leaves out. i did say that i thought that the president's attack on the media, saying that the media was the enemy of the american people, was the greatest threat to democracy in my lifetime.
and i stand by that. however, part ii of that was to the media and to the young journalism students that were there that said, look, you have a responsibility, as a journalist, to leave your bias at the doorstep and to make sure that you check your sources and that you are doing everything you can to get the facts right. so, again, i have, as i have told susan and others, look, i've been raked over the coals by the press. having said that, there is nothing more important to this nation, to this republic, than a free press and freedom of expression. however, having said that, i think the press has an obligation to make sure they leave their bias at home, they get their facts as straight as they can. >> i think we all agree with that. and i believe, if you would just stand by for a moment, i believe nancy pelosi is now speaking at the center for american progress and talking about the meeting and let's listen for a moment. >> aren't you impressed with our
freshman members of congress? aren't they fantastic? and i know you heard from adam schiff earlier. we're so proud of his work. i just want you to know this. when watergate babies came -- when the watergate babies came to the congress in 1976, it was a big transformational class of members of congress. it was fantastic. fantastic. people have compared this class in terms of size and energy and enthusiasm and entrepreneurship and all the rest, diversity, as a similar class. the reason i bring it up is in 1976, when they came, not one of those freshman chaired a subcommittee in the first year. and this freshman class, 18 freshman chair subcommittees. we view this as something
spectacular. ten women -- where's stephanie? thank you, stephanie, for making that happen and eight men. but this is remarkable. >> nancy pelosi talking about her achievements with the new class and we'll replease what she said earlier. but admiral, i wanted to play a little bit of what the president said today, just to refresh our viewers on that. >> this whole thing was a takedown attempt at the president of the united states. and honestly, you ought to be ashamed of yourselves for the way you report it so dishonestly. not all of you, but many of you. the way you report it. now, i just want to say that the placard that he had taken was misleading. it was misleading in the way he describes the mueller team and no obstruction, no collusion.
it was taken from an abc website without the rest of it. your point, very well taken, from your speech, the communications team, but the way he has attacked the press, the way he has attacked the fbi and the cia, from day one of his presidency. and i know from having heard you speak to the intelligence community the last year or several months ago, how you honor the work of the people in the field from the agency. and what we know now is that fbi recruitment is down, agency recruitment is down, foreign service tests are not being taken. these attacks on our institutions are really taking hold. police departments around the country are not getting recruits, other than the really high-paying suburban districts that pay high. so if you could speak to the character of that kind of rhetoric? >> and the rhetoric does concern me. as i mentioned this to susan a week or so ago, you know, presidents will come and go, but our institutions are fundamental to the running of this great
democracy. so i do get concerned when the president talks about dirty cops and the fbi or doesn't listen to his intelligence professionals or, again, goes after the media. it's just not helpful. and to your point, it does impact the moral of the great men and women that are working at these phenomenal institutions. and to your point, i am a huge fan of the intelligence community, obviously, as well as the military and the first responders, so, you know, my hope, again, would be that the president would tone down the rhetoric and get back to supporting these institutions, because they will have to survive him long after he's gone as the president. >> admiral mcraven, thank you very much. the book is "sea stories" and thanks for being with us today. and as we continue, nancy pelosi picking up on her comments. >> -- investigating him since we took majority. so there is nothing new in that. but -- and then he had a press conference in the rose garden with all of this sort of visuals
that obviously were planned long before i said most currently that he was engaged in a cover-up. so it's really sad. and here's the thing -- and i told this to the room when he came in and made that statement and then he walked out and you've got the secretary of the treasury and all this, that, and the other thing, and a distinguished group of members from the house and senate, democrats. i said, you know, 200 years ago thomas jefferson tasked his secretary of the treasury, the other one was standing right there, to develop an infrastructure initiative for america to build into the louisiana purchase, the lewis and clark expedition, it was the erie canal, the cumberland road, all those kinds of things for our -- a hundred years later, teddy roosevelt instituted his infrastructure initiative, the national park service, the green infrastructure of america. and so we were -- and i said to them, and i said to the
president after, i said, we want to give this president the opportunity to do something historic for our country. while there are those in our family who think, why would you work with him if he -- you know. and basically he's saying back to me, why would i work you if you're investigating me? but the fact is, something happened there. so i pray for him and i pray for the united states of america. it's really -- he walked away. whether he ever intended to honor what he said before remains to be seen. but democrats believe in building the infrastructure of our country, mass transit roads, bridges, broadband into rural america, into underserved areas in our cities. waste water, clean water, infrastructure, the satellite so we can have precision farming. >> nancy pelosi speaking at the
center for american progress, a left or progressive think tank here in washington. matt miller, i wanted to share what frank thorpe, our senate and house producer -- our senate producer has been picking up from people who were in the room. they say that the democrats waited for 15 minutes. the president then came in, spent three minutes talking, two minutes was pelosi saying something after he left, and then the democrats leaving. so the whole meeting was the president speaking for three minutes and walking out before he could listen to what she had to say. >> it was a little bit of presidential temper tantrum. it might have been a temper tantrum that has been playing out over the last couple of days as he gets angrier and angrier about these investigations. i don't know if it was the thing that caused him to do this, but what clearly got under his skin was nancy pelosi coming out and saying he was engaged in a cover-up today. and to tie all of these things together, you're seeing the administration fight on multiple fronts. they are trying to prevent his tax returns from being made
public, they are trying to block witnesses from coming up to the hill. they're trying to block the underlying pieces of the mueller report from being made available. they cannot win on all of these fronts. the fact that they're fighting on so many fronts is damaging politically and will damage them in the courts. they look like they are covering something up. and they don't just look like they're covering something up to the american people, but they'll look like they're covering something up with judges. the one place where they decided to give documents over to adam schiff, that was the justice department recognizing that they cannot continue to stonewall on every front or there will be consequences. >> we've got a lot of people to thank. this has been impromptu and continuously live broadcast with, of course, all of our colleagues, peter alexander, kasie hunt, kelly o'donnell, our panel here, matt miller, susan page, stephanie cutter, eugene scott, joyce aileen vance, and
power of the office to obtain an improper personal benefit while ignoring and injuring the national interest. or acts in ways that are grossly inconsistent with and undermine the separation of powers that is the foundation of our democratic system. now, these -- this question of whether president engaged in abuse of power came up before when this congress considered the impeachment of president nixon. and after action was taken, president nixon famously said if the president does it, it is not illegal. and this body rejected that because that's not so. that goes directly contrary to what the founders said. but president trump has said the same thing in responding to the prior investigation by department of justice and defending his conduct. here is what he said -- >> then i have an article, too, where i have to write to do whatever i want as president. >> that he has the right to do
whatever he wants as president. that is as wrong as when president nixon said a similar thing. that is not what the constitution provides. that is not what the country demands. he does not have the right to do whatever he wants. turning to the second abuse of power mostly concerned. betrayal of the nation involving foreign powers. the american people have suffered that foreign influence when president trump treated military aid that had been approved, taxpayer's dollars, and decided to treat it as his own checkbook to try to further his own re-election chances. that reflects what the founders were concerned about. and finally, corruption of our elections. the framers knew that corrupt leaders or leaders acting corruptly concentrate their powers to manipulate elections and undercut adversaries. they talked about it frequently.
that is why the framers thought electoral treachery particularly o involving foreign powers was a critical abuse that could support and lead to impeachment. now the american people learned last election how dangerous foreign intervention in our elections can be. let me show another clip from president -- from candidate trump on the campaign trail. >> russia, if you're listening, i hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. i think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. >> and russia was listening. within approximately five hours, five hours, of president trump's invitation to russia to interfere in our election by trying to hack and obtain the emails of his political opponent, russia, in fact, tried to do that for the first time.
the very officers who were then indicted by the department of justice for that conduct, they took candidate trump's invitation. now, the american people learned a lesson. president trump unfortunately apparently learned a different lesson. let's look. >> well, i would think that if they were honest about it they would start a major investigation into the bidens. it's a very simple answer. they should investigate the bidens. >> so this was president trump answering a question about what did he want president zelensky to do. even after he got caught, he is saying again this vulnerable nation, dependent on u.s. support militarily and otherwise, again he's telling them what to do. unlike in 2016 when he only had a campaign platform which to extend the invitation to a foreign power, now he has the
levers of government in his control to not only request it and invite it but to pressure that country to do it. and that's exactly what he did. and you'll hear more about that in the presentation from the house intelligence committee. and what's most striking as we come back to this issue that the framers were concerned about is there a continuing risk of wrong doing. the fact that president trump did this after he was caught shows the risk. shows the risk of what will happen if this body doesn't act. he really does believe he can act as though herp above the law. he really does believe as evidence by this conduct that he can put his personal and political interests over the nation's interest over the nation's national security interest, over the nation's integrity of its elections. so, of course, we do have an
election coming up. that's not a reason to postpone this discussion. that's a reason we must have this discussion to make sure it is not interfered with. to make sure this president doesn't do it, to make sure future presidents do not do it. it is the hope that in these discussions you can put aside political ranker, disagreements and have a fair discussion about the facts and this conduct. not just as it relates to president trump, but as to the presidency itself and future presidents. my son, our children, our grandchildren, they will study this moment in history. they will read all of your remarks. they will learn about all of your actions. and that is not a reason to vote for or against impeachment. for that, of course, you must
vote your conscious. but that is a reason for us to have a fair debate about what the undisputed facts show. to recognize that it is wrong, it is very wrong, and it cannot happen again with this president or any president. it is a reason to talk about whether we want our children and grandchildren to live in a country where the president-elected by the people can put his own personal and political interests over the interest of the people who elected them. it is a reason for these debates to, again, fairly focus on the facts and to make sure the presentations we're going to hear will not distort the record, focus on process points, raise extraneous matters that really are intended to distract rather than focus on what the conduct was at issue here. it is a reason to focus on the
facts and what is in the country's best interest. history, future generations will be the judge. >> thank you, mr. berks rke. >> mr. chairman, point of order. >> mr. caster is recognized for 30 minutes. >> mr. chairman, point of order. >> mr. caster is recognized for 30 minutes. >> my point of order should be heard. >> point of order. >> the witness has used language which impugns the motives of the president and suggests he's disloyal to his country and those words should be stricken from the record and taken down. >> the point of order is not sustained. witnesses are not subject to the rules of decorum. >> appeal the ruling of the chair. >> in the same way members are. the topic of the hearing is the
president's misconduct, so none of us should find it surprising that we are hearing testimony that is critical of the president. i do not find that the witness's comments were disorderly. i find they are pertinent to the subject matter of this hearing. the witness would be able to continue except that his time has expired. mr. caster is recognized. >> mr. chairman -- my point of order is not that his words are disorderly. they violate the rules of the house and should be taken down. this is not about his conduct. he's talking about the motives -- >> the gentleman is sustained. >> the character of the president of the united states. >> the gentleman will suspend the rules of decorum apply to members of the house, not to witnesses. the gentleman may proceed. >> so i appeal the ruling of the chair. >> that is not a ruling. >> sit a ruling. >> there was no -- >> it is a ruling on the point of order. it is appealing. >> subject to a vote. >> that's a rule. >> the point of order is not sustained. >> overruling of the chair. >> i move to table the --
>> the motion is made to table the appeal of the ruling of the chair. >> move to motion the table is made in writing. move the motion is made in writing. >> is not in debate. all in favor of the motion to -- all in favor of the motion to table say aye. >> aye. >> point opposed no. >> no. >> motion to table -- >> she has to put it in writing first and then you can call the vote. >> motion to table is sustained. >> role call. >> clerk will call the role. >> mr. nadler. >> aye. >> mr. nadler votes aye. >> ms. jackson lee. >> aye. >> mr. cohen votes aye. mr. johnson of georgia votes aye. mr. deutsche votes aye. mr. richmond votes aye. mr. jeffries votes aye. mr. lou votes aye. mr. ras kin votes aye.
ms. demmings votes aye. >> aye ms. garcia votes aye. >> ms. mcbath. >> aye. >> mr. stanton. >> aye, mr. stanton votes ay. >> ms. dean. >> aye. >> ms. escobar. >> aye. >> mr. collins? >> nope. >> mr. collins votes note. >> mr. stenson berner votes no. >> mr. sabot votes no. >> mr. jordan votes no. >> mr. buck? >> mr. radcliffe? mr. radcliffe votes no. >> ms. roby votes no. >> mr. gates votes no. mr. johnson of louisiana. >> no. >> mr. johnson of louisiana votes no. mr. bigs. >> mr. mcclintok votes no. >> ms. lesco votes no. >> mr. kline. >> no. >> mr. kline votes no.
mr. armstrong. >> no. >> mr. armstrong votes no. >> mr. stuby votes no. >> how am i recorded? >> mr. bigs you are not recorded. >> i said no. >> mr. bigs votes no. >> every member vote who had wishes to vote? the clerk will report. >> mr. chairman, 24 aye and 15 no. >> parliamentary inquiry? >> mr. caster is recognized. i will not recognize parliamentary inquiry at this time. >> good morning, chairman nadler, ranking member collinss and members of the staff. my name is steve caster. i'm a congressional staff member. i served with the oversight committee on the republican staff with mr. jordan. i'm also for purposes of this investigation i'm a shared staffer with judiciary committee and mr. collins and the house permanent select committee on intelligence and mr. nunes.
it sure is atypical for a staffer to be presenting, but again thanks for having me. the purpose of this hearing as we understand it is to discuss whether president donald j. trump's conduct fits the definition of high crime and misdemeanor. it does not. such that committee should consider articles of impeachment to remove the president from office and it should not. this case and many respects comes down to eight lines in a call transcript. let me say clearly and unequivocally that the answer to that question is no. the record in the democrats impeachment inquiry does not show that president trump abused the power of his office or obstructed congress. to impeach a president who 63 million people voted for over eight lines in a call transcript is baloney. democrats seek to impeach president trump not because of evidence of high crimes and
misdemeanors but because they disagree with his policies. this impeachment inquiry is not the organic outgrowth of serious misconduct. democrats have been searching for a set of facts which to impeach president trump on january 20, 2017. just 27 minutes after the president's inauguration that day, "the washington post" ran a story that the campaign to impeach the president has already begun. the article reported democrats and liberal activists are mounting broad opposition to stymy trump's agenda and noted that impeachment strategists believed the constitution's emoluments clause would be the vehicle. in the first two years of the administration, democrats in the house introduced articles of impeachment to remove president trump from office on several very different factual bases. on january 3rd, the very first day of the new congress, congressman short-termman introduced articles of impeachment against the
president. representative tlaib said we're going to go in there and impeach the president. in may, 2019, representative green said on msnbc if we don't impeach this president, he will be re-elected. even speaker pelosi, who has said that impeachment is a somber and prayerful exercise has called president trump an imposter. and said it is dangerous to allow voters to judge his performance in 2020. the obsession with impeaching the president is reflected in house democrats used the power of their majority in the past 11 months. informer sight committee, the democrats first announced witness was michael cohen, a disgraced felon who pleaded guilty to lying to congress. when he came before us, at the oversight committee, he then lied again as many as eight
times. oversight committee democrats demanded information about the president's personal finances and even subpoenaed the president's accounting firm for large swaths of sensitive and personal financial information about the entire trump family. the subpoena was issued over the committee of republicans and without a vote. in the ways and means committee, democrats demanded the president's personal tax return information. the reason they sited they said was to oversee the irs's audit process for presidential tax returns. you can judge that for yourself. in the financial services committee, democrats demanded and subpoenaed the president's bank records going back ten years. the financial services committee staff, the republicans tell me, the information demanded would cover every withdrawal, credit card swipe, or debit card purchase of every member of the trump family, including his
minor child. the reason that the democrats gave for why they needed such voluminous and intrusive information about the trump family was, get this, financial industry compliance with banking statutes and regulations. here in the judiciary committee, democrats sent out letters demanding information from over 80 recipients, including the president's children, business partners, employees, his campaign, businesses and foundation. of course the main event for the judiciary committee was the report of special counsel mueller which democrats would believe would serve as the evidentiary basis for impeaching the president. despite interviewing 500 witnesses, issuing 2800 subpoenas, executing almost 500 search warrants and spending 25
million dollars, the special counsel's 19 attorneys and 40 fbi agents, analysts and staff found no conspiracy or coordination between the trump campaign and the russian government. after the trump russia collusion allegation did not pan out, democrats focussed their efforts on obstruction of justice. they criticized attorney general barr for concluding that no crime of obstruction had occurred in the special counsel investigation. but, in fact, was entirely appropriate for the attorney general to make that call because the special counsel declined to do so. not surprisingly, the democrats mueller hearing was underwhelming to say the least and the sequel with corey lewandowski definitely did not move the impeachment needle either. the intelligence committee, too, was heavily invested in the russia collusion investigation. committee democrats hired former federal prosecutors to prepare for their anticipated efforts to
impeach the president. now that the russian collusion allegations did not work out, democrats have settled on the ukraine phone call, eight lines the president utderred on july 25th with ukrainian president zelensky. but the foreign affairs committee, the committee on jurisdiction wasn't the committee leading the impeachment inquiry or holding the hearings. never was the oversight committee. the houses chief investigative entity. the judiciary committee was only recently brought back into the mix after fact finding concluded. instead the impeachment inquiry was run by the house intelligence committee and these former federal prosecutors. democrats on the intelligence committee ran the impeachment inquiry in a manifestly unfair way. all the fact-finding was unclassified and that was made clear at the top of every single deposition but the democrats took advantage of the closed door process in the capitol
basement bunker the sciff to control access information. the secrecy effectively weaponized the investigation, allowing mis-leading public narratives to form and catch hold with careful leaks of witness testimony. democrats refused to invite republican witnesses and directed witnesses called by the democrats not to answer our questions. in the public hearings, many of these unfair processes continued. democrats refused to invite numerous witnesses requested by republicans. interrupted republican questioning, and prevented witnesses from answering republican questions. democrats voted down by virtue of a motion to table with no notice, subpoenas for documents and testimony requested by republicans. i'll note that democrats never once brought any of their subpoenas to a vote before the intelligence committee. this unfair process reflects the degree to which democrats are
obsessed with impeaching the president. the democrats went searching for a set of facts on which to impeach the president, the emoluments clause, the president's business and financial records, the mueller report, allegations of obstruction before landing on the ukraine phone call. the impeachment inquiry is clearly an orchestrated effort to up end our political system. according to politico, the speaker has tightly scripted every step of the impeachment inquiry. democrats have reportedly convened focus groups to test which allegations, whether it be quid pro quo or bribery or extortion were most compelling to the american public. speaker pelosi said democrats must strike while the iron is hot on impeaching the president. the entire duration of the impeachment inquiry from the time speaker pelosi announced it on september 24th until today
has been 76 days. as professor turley testified last wednesday, this impeachment would stand out among modern impeachments as the shortest proceeding with the thinnest evidentiary record and the narrowest grounds ever used to impeach a president. the artificial and arbitrary political deadline by which democrats are determined to finish impeachment by christmas leads to a rushed process. and missed opportunities to obtain relevant information. democrats avoided the accommodations process required by federal courts and disputes between congress and the executive. democrats declined to attempt to negotiate with the administration for the production of documents and witnesses. democrats did not exhaust all their options to entice witnesses or agencies to cooperate, such as allowing witnesses to appear with agency lawyers. or initiating contempt
proceedings. sometimes the threat of a contempt proceeding gets you a different result. sometimes the witnesses choose to appear when contempt is on the table. democrats even withdrew a subpoena to one witness who asked the federal court to resolve conflicting orders from congress and the executive. either because the democrats did not want to wait for the court to rule or they didn't like the presiding judge, judge leon. instead, democrats made their demands and refused to budge. democrats told witnesses at the outset that their refusal to cooperate in full would be used against them and the president. democrats threatened federal employees that their salaries could be with held for not meeting committee demands. these tactics are fundamentally unfair and counterproductive for gathering investigation in any serious inquiry. this rushed and take it or leave it approach to investigating is
contrary to how successful congressional investigations typically work. congressional investigations take time. there is no easy button. in this job, you must take the information that's offered even if you don't like the terms. you should not say no to taking a witness's testimony because you would prefer the agency counsel is not present. if that's the only means of obtaining the testimony, you should take it. your priority must not be on blocking information out, it must be on seeking information. in all recent major congressional investigations, for example, investigation into the justice department's decision during 2016, the irs targeting investigation benghazi investigation and fast and furious there have been give and take between congress and the executive. in the investigation, for example, it took two months. two months of negotiations
before the committees conducted the first witness interview with deputy director mccabe. the justice department only began producing documents to the committee after many more months of discussions. in none of these investigations did congress get everything it wanted right at the beginning, certainly not within 76 days, but with persistence and patience we eventually did receive enough information to do our work. and contrary to talking points, the trump administration has, in fact, cooperated with and facilitated congressional oversight and investigations. for example, earlier this year the oversight committee conducted an investigation into security clearances at the white house. the central allegation put forward was that the white house deviated from established procedures to grant clearances to certain white house staff. the democrats sought to interview career staff who performed these security
clearance reviews. but, declined the witness initially to appear with agency counsel. house and the white house were at an impasse. however, after a little bit of time, we, the republican staff, wth the help of mr. jordan, convinced the witness to appear with agency counsel for our own tri transcribed interview and the democrats came along. the subsequent interviews and the security clearance investigation were conducted with agency counsel. the testimony allowed the committee to obtain the evidence to get to the bottom of what was going on and it wasn't what was alleged. nobody outside the security clearance office was handing out clearances. certainly not to senior white house staffers. in this impeachment inquiry, however, democrats turned away information that could be available to the inquiry.
democrats turned away information by declining to negotiate in good faith with the administration about the scope of document requests. as a result of these failures, the evidentiary record in the impeachment inquiry is incomplete and in many places incoherent. the failure to exhaust all avenues to obtain information severely risks undermining the legitimacy of any articles of impeachment. as professor turley said, to the committee last week, i'm concerned about lowering impeachment standards to fit posity of evidence in an abundance of anger. i believe this impeachment not only fails the standard of past impeachments but would create a dangerous precedent for future impeachments. professor turley elaborated that the current lack of proof is another reason why the abbreviated investigation into this matter is so damaging for the case of impeachment.
the substantive case for impeaching president trump as a result of an artificial, arbitrary and political schedule relies heavily on ambiguous facts. presumptions and speculation. president turley warned here, too, impeachments have been based on proof, not presumptions. the democrats do not have the proof. now my democrat counterparts on the intelligence committee are talented attorneys. i'm sure they would tell you a riveting story about a shadow or irregular foreign policy apparatus and a smear campaign designed to extort ukraine for the president's political benefit, they'll tell you about president trump and how he put his own political interests ahead of national security by mentioning former president, former vice president joe biden by name and raising the allegations of ukrainian
influence in the 2016 election on the july 25th call. they'll try to convince you that the trump administration, the same administration democrats regularly accuse of being incompetent, orchestrated an international conspiracy at the highest levels. none of this adds up. it may be a great screen play, but it's not what the evidence shows. the democrats impeachment inquiry ignores all of the evidence that does not advance their story. the democrats impeachment narrative resolves all ambiguous facts and conflicting evidence in a way that is most unflattering to the president. the democrats impeachment narrative ignores public statements from senior ukrainian officials that contradict the narrative. as you listen to the democrat presentation later today, i urge you to keep these points in mind. what evidence that has been gathered in the impeachment inquiry paints a different
picture? i won't provide a detailed presentation now, but allow me to highlight a few points. first, the summary of the july 25th phone call reflects no conditionality or pressure. president zelensky never vocalized any discomfort or pressure on the call. contrary to democrat allegations, president trump was not asking for a favor that would help his re-election. he was asking for assistance in helping our country move forward from the divisiveness of the russia collusion investigation. second, since president trump is declassified and publicly released the call summary, 75 days ago, president zelensky has said publicly and repeatedly that he felt no pressure. he said it on september 25th at the united nations general assembly. he said it in an interview published on october 6th. he said it again on october 10th. and most recently, he said it
just last week in "time" magazine. other senior ukrainian officials also said there was no linkage between a meeting, security assistance and an investigation. if president trump was truly orchestrating a pressure campaign to force ukraine to investigate former vice president biden, one would think that ukraine would have felt some pressure. third, at the time of the july 25th call, senior officials in kiev did not know that the security assistance was paused. they did not lempb it was paused until the pause was reported publicly in the u.s. media on august 28th. as ambassador volker testified because the highest levels of the ukrainian government did not know about the pause, there was no leverage implied. finally, president zelensky met with president trump in new york on september 25th at the united nations. shortly thereafter, or shortly
before that, the security assistance flowed to ukraine. both happened without ukraine ever taking actions or investigations. the impeachment record also has substantial evidence going to the president's state of mind. undercutting the democrat's assertion of some malicious intent. witnesses testified that president trump has a deeply rooted, genuine and reasonable skepticism of ukraine stemming from its history of corruption. president trump is skeptical of u.s. taxpayer-funded foreign assistance and believes that our allies should share more of the burden of ukraine's defense. ukrainian politicians openly spoke out about against president trump during the 2016 election. these events beared directly on the president's state of mind. president zelensky had run on an anti-corruption platform, but he was an untried politician with a
relationship to a controversial ukrainian oligarch. when former vice president pence met with president zelensky in warsaw, i'm sorry when vice president pence met with president zelensky in warsaw on september 1, he stressed to him the need for reform and reiterated the president's concern about burden sharing, especially among european allies. in late august and early september, after his party took control of the ukrainian parliament, ukraine passed historic reforms to fight corruption. these reforms included removing parliamentary immunity which witnesses said had been a historic source of corruption. imagine if members of our congress had immunity. president trump later lifted the pause on security assistance and met with president zelensky two weeks later. the aid was paused for 55 days. very simply, the evidence in the democrat's impeachment inquiry does not support the conclusion that president trump abused his
power for his own personal, political benefit. there is simply no clear evidence that president trump acted with malicious intent in with holding a meeting for security assistance. indeed there are and the republican report articulates them legitimate explanations for these actions that are not nefarious as the democrats allege. the evidence shows that president trump faithfully executed the duties of his office by delivering on what he promised the american voters he would do. democrats may disagree with the president's policy decisions or their matter in which he governs, but those disagreements are not enough to justify the irrevocable action of removing him from office. the democrats hyperbole and hissee onices are no good reason 11 months out from an election to prevent the american people from deciding on their own who is going to be their next
president. this record also does not support a conclusion that president trump obstructed congress during the impeachment inquiry. for many of the procedural defects i touched on earlier. additionally, as a factual matter, the only direct testimony the investigation has obtained about the president's reaction to the inquiry is from ambassador sondland who testified president trump told him to cooperate and tell the truth. president trump also declassified and released the summaries of his two phone calls with the president zelensky. president trump has said that he would like witnesses to testify but he's been forced to resist the unfair and abusive process. i believe strongly in the prerogatives of the congress. it's awful to hear president turley's testimony from last week when he critiqued the house from proceeding on impeachment so rapidly on such a thin record.
professor turley said the man documents and then impeach because they haven't been turned over when they go to court i think is an abuse of power. the impeachment of a duly elected president as chairman nadler said in 1998 is the undoing of a national election. now, i understand democrats issued a report over the weekend arguing that contrary to the chairman's statement in 1998 impeachment is not undoing an election, i would just respond by saying that i don't think many of the 63 million americans from all around the country who voted for president trump in 2016 would agree. by impeaching president trump, the house would essentially be nullifying the decision of those americans. and the house would be doing it in less than 11 months before the next election. there still is no compelling argument for why democrats in the house must take this decision out of the hands of the voters and do it before
christmas. during the clinton impeachment in 1998, the chairman said at bare minimum the president's accusers must go beyond hearsay and innuendo and beyond the demands that the president improve his innocence of vague and changing charges. i would submit that those words ring as true today as the chairman believed them to be in 1998. the blacksmith record is heavily reliant on hearsay, innuendo and presumptions. democrats have lobbed vague and ever-changing charges for impeachment going as far back as the president's inauguration. for all these reasons the extraordinary exercise of the house's impeachment on authority is not warranted on the evidentiary record presented. thank you for allowing me to present this information this morning. and i yield back. >> gentleman yields back.
thank you both for your presentations. mr. berke, you are now excused and we will invite mr. goldman to take his place at the witness table. >> mr. chairman. mr. chairman. cl mr. chairman. >> what purposes does the gentleman seek recognition? >> parliamentary inquiry. >> thank you, mr. chairman. pursuant to rule 7b of the house rules the chairman is allowed to administer an oath. not mandated to. but it has been the practice of this committee to administer oaths to witnesses. i'm wondering why we have not ministered the oath in this situation? >> i'm going to administer the oath to the two witnesses who are now coming before us to make presentation. the two gentlemen who just testified were not witnesses. they were staff -- they were making opening statements for the committees. we will now administer an oath to mr. caster and mr. goldman who are now testifying in the capacity of witnesses.
>> typically we administer before opening statements. >> which we will -- for witnesses. for witnesses. >> parliamentary inquiry. >> suspend. mr. castor was here with mr. berke presenting the report of the committee. that is the opening statement for this committee. they were not witnesses before this committee. mr. castor now and mr. goldman are witnesses before this committee and i will administer the oath. >> mr. chairman, if they were making presentations on behalf of members the rule should apply. >> the gentleman is not recognized. >> mr. chairman, point of order. >> we welcome both of -- >> mr. chairman, i have a point of order. >> who is seeking recognition. >> right here, chair. >> gentleman state his order. >> mr. chairman, despite our repeated questions for access to the evidence we received less than 48 hours ago over 8,000 pages of documentation. mr. chairman, if this were a court of law, you would be facing sanctions right now by
the bar association. >> state his point of order not a speech. >> how are we supposed to process over 8,000 pages of documents that came from various committees -- >> that is not a point of order. that is not a point of order. >> mr. chairman, will you give us an explanation of why you gave us documents -- >> gentleman will suspend and not make a speech. please rise and raise your right hand. do you swear or affirm under penalty of perjury that the testimony you're about to give is true and correct to the best of your knowledge, information and belief so help you god? let the record show the presenters answered in the affirmative. thank you and please be seated. >> mr. chairman, i have a point of order. >> each will have 45 minutes to present. >> mr. chairman, off point of order. >> there's a timing light on your table. when the light switches from green to yellow, you have one minute to conclude your testimony. when the light turns red, it signals your time has expired. >> i have a point of order, mr. chairman.
>> you have to recognize the point. >> mr. chairman, my point of order is this, in the previous point of order issued by mr. johnson of louisiana, you ruled against his points of order because you said that mr. berke was a witness. you said he was not a witness but he was a staffer. as such, a staffer must -- avoid impugning motivations. >> gentleman will sustain. >> will you let him finish his point of order, please. >> he made his point of order. >> i haven't completed yet, mr. chairman. the rule requires that members and staff not impugn the motivations of the president. what you ruled was that he was a witness. you've just told us he wasn't a witness. my point of order is that you were out of order in your ruling. >> the point of order is not sustained. i've already ruled on it. he was not a witness. these two gentlemen -- >> aappeal the decision of the
chair. >> that is not -- >> it most certainly is. >> it is appealable. >> the ruling is not -- >> point of order is not -- >> point of order is not sustained. >> i appeal the decision of the chair. >> i move to table. >> the appeal to ruling of the chair is tabled. aye, opposed nah. motion to table is approved. >> i seek a role call vote. >> mr. nadler? >> aye. >> ms. lofgrin-aye. mr. cohen votes aye. jeffrey toobin, this is another procedural move right now. clearly the republicans are frustrated by the way nadler is conducting this hearing. >> that's right. and you know, i think it is consistent with mr. castor's remarks, which were very heavily focussed on what he regarded and what the republicans regard as an unfair process. he didn't really engage much
with the facts of the ukrainian matter which is before the committee. which is the bulk of the evidence here. and this procedural sparring, which i suggest -- which i submit is probably of interest to few people, is a way of delaying the hearing and denying the democrats any momentum. >> yeah. we shouldn't be surprised by this. >> no. i think that's right. he really used one of the major republican talking points talking about the staffer castor, one of the major republican talking points which is that this is akin to overturning an election and i think he said that several times throughout his statement. he also i think tried to distract really somewhat from this current proceeding by referencing the administration's cooperation in a number of completely unrelated hearings. so he was describing oversight work that congress is doing and how the administration has cooperated with it, but he was talking about investigations
that have nothing to do with this particular proceeding. so it wasn't until the very end of his opening statement that he started to discuss the facts a little bit. >> and it's a fore gone conclusion that republicans will lose the vote. the democrats will win and now presumably the speaker will try to resume this hearing. they're just doing a few final votes. >> i think, wolf, this is a political argument the republicans are making through process saying that democrats are in such a rush to avoid impeaching the president in an actual election year. >> here is mr. goldman. >> chairman nadler, ranking member collins, members of the committee, we are here today because donald j. trump, 45th president of the united states, abused the power of his office, the american presidency, for his political and personal benefit. president trump directed a
month's long campaign to solicit foreign help in his 2020 re-election efforts. with holding official acts from the government of ukraine in order to coerce and secure political assistance. and interference in our domestic affairs. as part of this scheme, president trump applied increasing pressure on the president of ukraine to publicly announce two investigations helpful to his personal re-election efforts. he applied this pressure himself and through his agents, working within and outside of the u.s. government by conditioning a desperately-sought oval office meeting and $391 million in taxpayer-funded congressionally appropriated security assistance. vital to ukraine's ability to
fend off russian aggression. and he conditioned that on the announcement of these two political investigations that were helpful to his personal interests. when the president's efforts were discovered, he released the military aid, though it would ultimately take congressional action for the money to be made fully available to ukraine. the oval office meeting still has not happened. when faced with the opening of an official impeachment inquiry into his conduct, president trump launched an unprecedented campaign of obstruction of congress, ordering executive branch agencies and government officials to defy subpoenas for documents and testimony. to date, the investigating committees have received no documents from the trump administration pursuant to our
subpoenas. were it not for courageous public servants doing their duty and honoring their oath to this country and coming forward and testifying, the president's scheme might still be concealed today. the central moment in this scheme was a telephone call between president trump and ukrainian president volodymyr zelensky on july 25th of this year. during that call, president trump asked president zelensky for a personal favor, to initiate the two investigations that president trump hoped could ultimately help his re-election in 2020. the first investigation involved former vice president joe biden and was an effort to smear his reputation as he seeks the democratic nomination in next year's presidential election. the second investigation sought to elevate an entirely debunked conspiracy theory promoted by
russian president vladimir putin that ukraine interfered in the last presidential election to support the democratic nominee. in truth, as has been made clear by irrefutable evidence from throughout the government, russia interfered in the last election in order to help then candidate trump. the allegations about vice president biden and the 2016 election are patently false. but that did not deter president trump during his phone call with the ukrainian president. and it does not appear to deter him today. just two days ago president trump stated publicly that he hopes that his personal attorney, rudy giuliani, will report to the department of justice and to congress the results of mr. giuliani's efforts in ukraine last week to pursue these false allegations meant to tarnish vice president biden. president trump's persistent and
continuing effort to coerce a foreign country to help him cheat to win an election is a clear and present danger to our free and fair elections and to our national security. the overwhelming evidence of this scheme is described in detail in a nearly 300-page document entitled "the trump ukraine impeachment inquiry report" formally transmitted from the house selection committee on intelligence to this committee a few days ago. the report relies on testimony from numerous current and former government officials, the vast majority of whom are nonpartisan, career professionals responsible for keeping our nation safe and promoting american values around the globe. the evidence from these witnesses cannot seriously be disputed. the president placed his personal interests above the
nation's interests in order to help his own re-election efforts. before i highlight the evidence and the findings of this report, i want to take just a moment to introduce myself and discuss today's testimony. i joined the house intelligence committee as senior adviser and director of investigations at the beginning of this year. previously i served for ten years a as prosecutor in the southern district of new york, when i joined the department of justice under the george w. bush administration. the team that i led on the intelligence community includes other former federal prosecutors, a retired fbi agent, an investigators with significant national security expertise. the report that i am presenting today is based entirely on the evidence that we collected in coordination with the oversight and foreign affairs committees that were gathered as part of the impeachment inquiry into
president trump's actions. nothing more and nothing less. the three investigating committees ran a fair, professional and thorough investigation. we followed the house rules for depositions and public hearing, including the rule against agency counsel being present for depositions and members and staff from both parties had equal time to ask questions and there were no substantive questions that were prevented from being asked and answered. this investigation moved swiftly and intensively as all good investigations should. to the extent that other witnesses would be able to provide more context and detail about this scheme, their failure to testify is due solely to the fact that president trump obstructed the inquiry and refused to make them available. nevertheless, the extensive
evidence that the committees uncovered during this investigation led to the following critical findings. first, president trump used the power of his office to pressure and induce the newly elected president of ukraine to interfere in the 2020 presidential election for president trump's personal and political benefit. second, in order to increase the pressure on ukraine to announce the politically-motivated investigations that president trump wanted, president trump with held a coveted oval office meeting and $391 of essential military assistance from ukraine. third, president trump's conduct sought to undermine our free and fair elections and poses an imminent threat to our national security. and fourth, faced with the revelation of his pressure campaign against ukraine, president trump directed an
unprecedented effort to obstruct congress's impeachment inquiry into his conduct. and with that context in mind, i would like to turn to the evidence of president trump's conduct concerning ukraine. my colleague, mr. castor just said it revolves around eight lines in one call record. but that's sorely ignores the vast amount of evidence that we collected of a month's long scheme directed by the president. but i do want to start with that july 25th phone call because that is critical evidence of the president's involvement and intent. it was on that day that he held his second phone call with the new ukrainian president. the first in april was short and cordial, following the ukrainian president's election success. but this second call would die
verge dramatically from those listening had expected. president trump spoke to gordon sondland prior to this phone daul, the u.s. ambassador to the european union who donated $1 million to the president's inaugural campaign. and who had been directed by the president himself to take on a leading role in ukraine issues. ambassador sondland relaid the president's message to president zelensky through ambassador kurt volker who had had lunch that day with president zelensky's top aide andre yermac who appears repeatedly through this scheme as president zelensky's right hand man. ambassador volker texted mr. yermac with president trump's direction. good lunch. thanks. heard from white house. assuming president z convinces trump he will investigate, get to the bottom of what happened in 2016, we will nail down visit for -- we will nail down for
visit to washington. good luck. see you tomorrow, kurt. so, even before the phone call with president zelensky took place, president trump had directed that ukraine initiate the investigation into 2016 the debunked conspiracy theory that ukraine had interfered in the election in order for president zelensky to get the white house visit that he desperately coveted. ambassador sondland was clear in his testimony about this quid pro quo. >> members of this committee frequently frame these complicated issues in the form of a simple question, was there a quid pro quo? as i testified previously with regard to the requested white house call and the white house meeting, the answer is yes.
during this call with the ukrainian leader, president trump did not discuss matters of important to the united states such as ukrainian's efforts to root out corruption. instead president trump veered quickly into the personal favor he wanted president zelensky to do. two investigations that would help president trump's re-election effort. witnesses who listened to the call described it as unusual, improper, inappropriate and concerning. two of them immediately reported their concerns to white house lawyers. now, let me just take a few minutes walking through that important call step by step because it is evidence that is central to the president's scheme. near the beginning of the call, president zelensky said, i would also like to thank you for your great support in the area of defense. we are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps, specifically we are almost ready to buy more javelins from the
united states for defense purposes. the great support in the area of defense included the nearly $400 million of u.s. military assistance to ukraine. which one witness testified was nearly 10% of ukraine's defense budget. in this support comes as a result of russia's invasion of ukraine in 2014, when russia illegally annexed nearly 7% of ukraine's territory. since then, the united states and our allies have provided support for ukraine, an emerging post soviet democracy to fend off russia in the east. yet, just a few weeks before this july 25th call, president trump had inexplicably placed a hold on military assistance to ukraine without providing any reason to his own cabinet members or national security officials. the evidence the committees collected showed that there was unanimous support for the aid
from every relevant agency in the trump administration. nevertheless, during the call president trump complained that u.s. support for ukraine was not reciprocal, that somehow ukraine needed to give more to the united states. what did he mean? well, it became clear. immediately after president zelensky brought up u.s. military support and purchasing javelin, anti--tank weapons, president trump responded -- i would like you to do us a favor, though, because our country has been through a lot and ukraine knows a lot about it. now the favor that he referenced there included two demands that had nothing to do with official u.s. policy or foreign policy. first, president trump said -- i would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with ukraine. they say crowd strike. as you saw yesterday -- or excuse me, i guess you have one of your wealthy people, it says, the server you say ukraine has
it. there are a lot of things that went on. the whole situation. i think you're surrounding yourself with some of the same people. and he went on later. i would like to have the attorney general call you or your people. and i would like you to get to the bottom of it. as you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named robert mueller, an incompetent performance. but they say a lot of it started with ukraine. whatever you can do, it's very important that you do it with that's possible. here again president trump was referring to the baseless conspiracy theory that the ukrainian government, not russia, was behind the hack of the democratic national committee in 2016. not a single witness in our investigation testified that there was any factual support for this allegation. to the contrary, a unanimous assessment of the u.s. intelligence community found that russia alone interfered in
the 2016 u.s. election and special counsel mueller who indicted 12 russians for this conspiracy testified before congress that the russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion. dr. fiona hill, an expert on russia and president putin who served on the national security council until july, testified that the president was told by his own former senior advisers, including his homeland security adviser and his former national security adviser, that the alternative theory that ukraine had interfered in the election was false. and although no one in the u.s. government knew of any factual support for this theory, it did have one significant supporter. russian president vladimir putin. in february of 2017, president putin said, second as we all know, during the presidential campaign in the united states
whatwe that means, it's to use e power of the office to obtain an improper personal benefit while ignoring orfi injuring the national interest, or acts in ways that are grossly inconsistent with and undermine the separation of powers that is the foundation of our democratic system. now, this question of whether the president engaged in abuse of power came up before when this congress considered the impeachment of president nixon. and president nixon famously said, if the president does it, it is notde illegal. and this body rejected that because that's not so. that goes directly contrary to what the founders said. but president trump has said the same thing in responding to the prior investigation by the department of justice and defending his conduct. here's what he said. >> i have an article 2 where i have the right to do whatever i want as president.
>> that he has the right to do whatever he wants as president. that is as wrong as when president nixon said a similar thing. that is not what the constitution provides. he does not have the right to do whatever he wants. turning to the second abuse of power, betrayal of the nation involving foreign powers. the men the american people have suffered foreign influence when president trump treated military aid that had been amapproved, taxpayer dollars, and decided to treat it as his own checkbook to try to further his own re-election chances. that reflects what the founders were concerned about. and finally, corruption of our elections. the framers knew that corrupt leaders or leaders acting corruptly concentratein their powers to manipulate elections
andle undercut adversaries. they talked about it frequently. that's why the framers thought electoral treasury, particularly involving foreign powers, was a critical abuse and that could support or lead to impeachment. now, the american people learned last election how dangerous foreignho intervention in our elections can be. let me show another clip from candidate trump on the campaign trail. >> russia, if you're listening, i hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. i think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. >> and russia was listening. within approximately five hours, five hours of president trump's invitation to russia to interfere inss our election, by trying to hack and obtain the
emails of his political opponent, russia in fact tried to do that for the first time. the very officers who were then indicted by the department of justice for that conduct, they took candidate trump's invitation. now, the american people learned a lesson. president trump unfortunately, apparently, learned a different lesson. let's look. >> well, i would think that if they were honest about it, they would startut a major investigation into the bidens. it's a very simple answer. they should investigate the bidens. >> so this was president trump answering ais question about wh didqu he want president zelensk to do. so event after he got caught, is saying again this vulnerable nation dependent on u.s. support militarily and otherwise, and unlike in 2016 when he only had
a campaign platform to extend the invitation to the foreign power, now he has the levers of government in his control to not only request it and invite it, but toly pressure that country do it. and that's exactly what he did. and w you'll hear more about th in the presentation from the house intelligence committee: and what's most c striking as w come back to this issue that the framers were concerned about, is there a continuing risk of wrongdoing, the fact that president trump did this after he was caught shows the risk. shows the risk of what will happen if this body doesn't act. he really does believe he can act as though he were above the law. he really does believe as evidenced by this conduct, that he can puts his personal and political interests over the nation's interest, over the nation's national security interest, overe the nation's integrity of its elections.
so of course we do have an election coming up. that's not a reason to postpone this discussion. that's aos reason we must have this discussion, to make sure it is not d interfered with. to make sure this president doesn't do it, to make sure future presidents do not do it. it is the hope that in these discussionsse we can put aside political anger, disagreements, and have a fair discussion about the facts and this conduct. not just as it relates to president trump, but as to the presidency itself and future presidents. my son, our children, our grandchildren, they will study this moment in history. they will read all of your remarks. they will learn about all of your actions. and that is not a reason to vote
for or against impeachment. for that of course you must vote your conscience. but that is a reason for us to have a fair debate about what the undisputed facts show. to recognize that it is wrong, it is very wrong, and it cannot happen again with this president or any president. it is a reason to talk about whether we wantlk our children d grandchildren to live in a country where the president elected by the people can put his own personal and political interests over the interests of the people who elected them. it is a reason for these debates to, again, fairly focus on the facts and to make sure the presentations we're going to hear will not distort the record. focus on process points, raise extraneous matters that really arean intended to distract rath than focus on what the conduct was at issue here.
it is a reason to focus on the facts and what is in the country's best interest. history, future generations will be the judge. >> thank you, mr. burke. mr. caster, you are -- >> chairman. >> -- you are recognized for 30 points. >> point of order. >> mr. caster is recognized for 30 points. >> point of order. >> mr. caster is recognized for 30 points. >> the witness has violated rule 17 and my point of order should be heard. >> o point of order. >> the. witness has used langue which impugns the matters of the president and suggests he's disloyal to his country and those should be stricken from the record andsu taken down. >> the point ofe order is not sustained. witnesses are not subject to the rules of decorum. >> appeal the ruling of the
chair. >> the topic of the hearing is the president's misconduct, so none of us should find it surprising that we are hearing testimony that is critical ofsu the president.st i do not o find that the witness comments are disorderly. i find they are pertinent to the subject matter of this hearing. the witness would be able to continue, except that his time is expired. >> tichairman, it's not -- my point of order is not that his words are disorderly. they are unparliamentary. they violate the rules of the house and should be taken down. this is not about his conduct. he is talking about the motives and the character of the president of the united states. >> the gentleman willve suspend. the rules of decorum apply to members of the house, not to witnesses. the gentleman may proceed. >> i appeal the ruling of the chair. >> that is not a ruling. >> it is a ruling on a point of order and it's appealable. >> that is a ruling. >> the point of order is not
sustained. >> i move to table the -- >> the motion is made to table the appeal of m the ruling. >> move the motion that the table is made in writing. >> it is not in debate. all in favor of the motion to -- all in favor of the motion to table say aye. >> aye. >> those no. >> no. >> the motion to table. >> she has to put it in writing first, then you can call it a vote. >> the motionn to table is -- >> we should follow the rules. >> the motionou to table is sustained. >> roll call. >> the clerk will call the role. >> mr. nadler votes aye. ms. lofgren votes aye. ms. jackson votes aye. mr. johnson of georgia votes aye. mr. deutsche votes aye. mr. richmond votes aye. mr. jeffries votes aye. mr. cicilline votes aye. mr. swalwell votes aye.
mr. raskin votes aye. mrs. demmings votes aye. mr. correa votes aye. ms. scanlon votes aye. ms. garcia votes aye. ms. mcbath votes aye. mr. stanton votes aye. ms. dean votes aye. ms. escobar votes aye. mr. collins votes no. mr. sensenbrenner votes no. mr. gomer votes no.. mr. jordan votes no.. mr. buck. mr. ratcliffe notes no. ms. roby votes no. mr. gates votes no. >> mr. johnson of louisiana votes no. mr. biggs. mr. mcclintock votes no..
mr. cline votes no. mr. armstrong votes no. mr. steube votes no. >> mr. chairman, how am i recorded? >> mr. bigs, you are not recorded. i said no. >> mr. biggs votes no. >> has every member voted who wishes to vote? the clerk will report. mr. chairman, there are 24 ayes and 14 nos. >> may i make a parliamentary inquiry. >> i will not recognize a parliamentary inquiry at this time. >> good morning, chairman nadler and members of the committee and staff. my name is steve castor, i serve with ther, oversight committee the republican staff with mr. jordan. i'm also for purposes of this investigation, i'm a shared staffer with the judiciary committee and mr. collins, and
the house permanent select committee on intelligence and mr. nunes. it sure is a. >> tom: co-- atypical for a staffer to testify, but thank you for havingfo me. we're here to discuss about president trump's conduct fits theco high crime or dismeaner. it does not. this case in many respects comes down to eight lines in a call transcript. let me say clearly and unequivocally that the answer to that question is no. the record in the democrats' impeachment inquiry does not show that president trump abused the power of his office or obstructed congress. to impeach a president who 63 million people voted for over eight lines in a call transcript is baloney. democrats seek to impeach president trump not because they evidence of high crimes or
misdemeanors, but because they disagree with his policies. this impeachment inquiry is not the organic outgrowth of serious misconduct. democrats have been searching for a set of facts on which to impeach president trump since his inauguration on january 20th, 2017. just 27 minutes after the president's inauguration that day, the "washington post" ran a story that the campaign to impeach the president has already begun. the article reported democrats and liberal activists are mounting broad opposition to stymyn trump's agenda and note that impeachment strategists believed the constitutions emoluments clause would be the vehicle. the democrats announced articles of impeachment to remove president trump on several different factual bases. on january 3rdt , the very firs day of the new congress, congressman sherman introduced
articles of impeachment against the president. the same day, representative talib said we're going to go in there, we're going to impeach the -- president. in may 2019, representative green said on ms nbc if we don't impeach this president, he will be reelected. even speaker pelosi, who has said that impeachment is a somber and prayerful exercise, has called president trump an imposter and said it is dangerous to allow voters to judgell his performance in 2020. the obsession with impeaching the presidentio is reflected in-house democrats have used the power of their majority in the past 11 months. in the oversight committee the democrats's first announced witness was michael cohen, a disgraced felon who pleaded guilty to lying to congress. when he came before us at the oversight committee, he then
lied again as many as eight times. oversight committee democrats demanded information about the president's personal finances and even subpoenaed the president's accounting firm for large swaths of sensitive and personal financial information about the entire trump family. the subpoena was issued over the objection ofer committee republicans and without a vote. in the ways and means committee, democrats demanded the president's personal tax return information. the reason they cited for wantingth the president's tax returns, they said, was to oversee the irs's audit process for presidential tax returns.r you can judge that for yourself. in the financial services committee, democrats demanded and subpoenaede, the president' bank records going back ten years. the financial services committee staff, the republicans tell me, the information demanded would cover every withdraw, credit card swipe, debit card purchase
of every member of the trump family, including his minor child. the reason they gave for why they needed such personal information about the trump family was, get this, financial industry compliance with banking statutes and regulations. here in the judiciary committee, democrats sent out letters demanding information from over 80 recipients, including the president's children, business partners, employees, his campaign, businesses and foundation. of course the main event for the judiciary committee was the report of special counsel mueller, which democrats would believe would serve as the everybo evidentiary basis for impeaching the president. despite interviewing 500 witnesses, issuing 2800 subpoenas, executing almost 500 search warrants and spending $25
million, the special counsel's 19 attorneys and 40 fbi agents, analysts and staff, found no conspiracy or coordination between the trump campaign and the russian government. after the trump-russia collusion allegations did not pan out, democrats then focused their efforts on obstruction of justice. they visiton sized attorney general barr for concluding that none crime of obstruction had occurred in the special counsel investigation. but, in fact, it was entirely appropriate for the attorney general to make that call because the special counsel declined to do so. not surprisingly, the democrats mueller hearing was underwhelming, to say the least, and thehe sequel with corey lewandowski definitely did not prove theni impeachment needle either. the intelligence committee is heavily invested in the russia collusion investigation.
democrats hired federal prosecutors to prepare for their anticipated efforts to impeach the president. now that the russian collusion allegations did not work out, democrats have settled on the ukraine phone call, eight lines, the president uttered on july 25th with ukrainian president zelensky. but the foreign affairs committee, the committee of jurisdiction, wasn't the committee leading the impeachment inquiry or holding the hearings. neither was the oversight committee. the house's chief investigative entity. the judiciary committee was only recently brought back into the mix afterug fact finding concluded. instead, the impeachment inquiry was run byco the house intelligence committee, and thesete former federal prosecutors. democrats on the intelligence committee ran the impeachment inquiryco in a manifestly unfai way. all of the fact-finding was classified andwa that was made clear at the top of every single
deposition. but the democrats took advantage of the closed-door process in the capitol basement bunker to control access to information. the secrecy effectively weaponized the investigation, allowingnv misleading public narratives to form and catch hold with careful leaks of witness testimony. democrats refused to invite republican witnesses and directed witnesses called by the democrats notle to answer our questions. in the publicr hearings, many these unfair processes continued. democrats refused to invite numerous witnesses requested by republicans, interrupted republican questioning and prevented witnesses from answering republican questions. democrats voted down by virtue of a motion to table with no notice subpoenas for documents and testimony requested by republicans. i'll note that democrats never once brought any of their subpoenas to a vote before the intelligence committee.
this unfair process reflects the degree to which democrats are obsessed with impeaching the president. the democrats went searching for a set of facts on which to impeach the president, the emoluments clause, the president's business and financial records, the mueller report, allegations of obstruction, before landing on the ukraine phone call. the impeachment inquiry is clearly an orchestrated effort to upend our political system. according to politico, the speaker was scripted every step of the impeachment inquiry. democrats have reportedly convened focus groups to test which g allegations, whether ite quid pro quo or bribery or extortion, were most compelling to the american public. speakerri pelosi said democrats must strike while the iron is hot on impeaching the president. the entire duration of the impeachment inquiry from the time speaker pelosi announced
it, on september 24th until today, has been 76 days. as professor turley testified last wednesday, this impeachment would stand out among modern impeachments as the shortest proceeding with the thinnest evidentiary record and the narrowest grounds ever used to impeach a president. the artificial and arbitrary political deadline by which democrats are determined to finish impeachment by christmas leads to a rushed process and missed opportunities tooc obtai relevant information. democratsva avoided the accommodations process required byro federal courts in disputes between congress and the executive. democrats declined to attempt to negotiate with the administration for the production of documents and witnesses.an democrats did not exhaust all their options to entice witnesses or agencies to to cooperate, such as allowing
witnesses to a peer with agency lawyers or initiating contempt proceedings. sometimes the threat of a contempt proceeding gets you a different tsresult, sometimes t witnesses choose to appear when contempt is on the table. democrats even withdrew a subpoena to one witness who asked a federal court to resolve conflicting orders from congress and thein executive, either because the democrats did not want to waite for the court to rule, or they didn't like the presiding judge, judge leon. instead, democrats made their demands and refused to budge. democrats told witnesses at the outset that their refusal to cooperate in full would be used against them and the president. democrats threatened federal employees that theirth salaries could be withheld for not meeting committee demands. these tactics are fundamentally unfair and counterproductive for gathering information in any serious inquiry.
thisou rushed and take it or lee it approach to investigating the contrary to house successful investigations typically work. congressional investigations take time. there is no easy button. in this job you must take the information that's offered, even if you don'tth like the terms. you should not say no to taking ato witness's testimony because you would prefer the agency counsel is not erpresent. if that's the only means of obtaining the m testimony, you shouldta take it. your priority must not be on blocking information out, it must benf on seeking informatio. inki all recent major congressional investigations, for example, chairman gaudy's investigation into the justice department's decision during 2016, the i ars targeting investigation an benghazi and fast and furious, there have been give and take between gong and the executive. in the gaudy investigation, for
example, it took two months. two months of m negotiations before the committees conducted the c first witness interview wh deputy director mccabe. the justice department only began producing documents to the committee after many more months of discussions. in none of these investigations did congress get everything it wanted right at the beginning. certainly not within 76 days. but with persistence and patience, we eventually did receive enough information to do our work. and contrary to talking points, the trump administration has in fact cooperated with and facilitated congressional oversight and investigations. for example, earlier this year the oversight committee conducted ane investigation in security clearances at the white house. the central allegation put forward was that the white house deviated from established procedures to grant clearances to certain white house staff. the democratshi sought to
interview careerug staff who performed these security clearancepe reviews. but declined the witness initially to appear with agency counsel. the house and the white house were at an impasse, however, after a i little bit of time, w the republican staff with the help of mr. jordan, convinced the witness to appear with agency counsel for our own transcribed interview and the democrats came along. the subsequent interviews in the security clearance investigation were conducted with agency counsel. the testimony allowed the committee tost obtain the evidence, get to the bottom of what was going on, and it wasn't what was alleged. nobody outside the security clearance office was handing out clearances. certainly not to senior white house staffers. in this impeachment inquiry, however, democrats have turned away information that could be valuable to the inquiry by
disallowing agency counsel accompany witnesses. democrats have turned away information by t declining to negotiate in good faith with the administration aboutit the scop of document requests. as a result of these failures, the evidentiary record in the impeachment inquiry is incomplete and in many places incoherent. the failure to exhaust all avenues to obtain information severely risks undermining the legitimacy of any articles of impeachment. as professor turley said to the committee last week, i'm concerned about lowering impeachment standards to fit evidence and an abundance of anger. i believe this impeachment not only fails the standard of past impeachments, but would create a dangerous precedent for future impeachments. professor turley elaborated that the current lack of proof is another reason why the abbreviatedhy investigation int this matterev is so damaging fo
the case of impeachment. the substantive case for impeaching president trump as a result ofim an artificial, arbitrary and political schedule, relies heavily on ambiguous facts. presumptions and speculation. presidenton turley warned that impeachmentsey have been based proof, not presumptions. the democrats do not have the proof. now, my democrat counterparts on the intelligence committee are talented attorneys. i'm sure they will tell you a riveting story about a shadow or irregular foreign policy apparatus and a smear campaign designed to ex tort ukraine for the president's political benefit. they'll tell you about president trump and how he put his own political interests ahead of national security by mentioning former vice president joe biden
by name and raising the allegations of ukrainian influence in the 2016 election on the july 25th call. they'll try to convince you that the trump administration, the sameon administration democrats regularlyio accuse of being incompetent, orchestrated a conspiracy at the highest levels. none of this adds up. it may be a great screen play, but it ist not what the eviden shows. democrats' impeachment inquiry ignores all of the evidence that does not advance their story. the democrats' impeachment narrative resolves all ambiguous facts and conflicting evidence in a way that is most unflattering to the president. the democrats' impeachment narrative ignores public statements from senior ukrainian officials that contradict the narrative. as you listenic to the democrat presentation later today, i urge you to keep these points in mind. what evidence that has been
gathered in the impeachment inquiry paints a different picture? i won't provide a detailed presentation now, but allow me to highlight a few points. first, the summery of the july 25th phone call reflects no conditionality or pressure. president zelensky never vocalized any discomfort or pressure on the call. contrary to democrat allegations, president trump was not asking for a favor that would help his re-election. he was asking for assistance in helping our country move forward from thetr divisiveness of the russia collusionen investigatio. second, since president trump has declassified and publicly released the callub summery 75 days ago, president zelensky has said publicly and repeatedly that he felt no pressure. he said it on september 25th at thept united nations general assembly. he said it in an interview published on october 6th.
he said it again on october 10th. and most recently he said it justy last week in "time" magazine. other senior ukrainian officials have also said there was no linkage between a meeting, security assistance and an investigation. if president trump was truly orchestrating a pressure campaign to force ukraine to investigate former vice president biden, one would think that ukraine would have felt some pressure. third, at the time of the july 25th call, senior officials in kiev did not know that the security assistance wasno pause. they did not learn it was paused until the pause was reported publicly in the u.s. media on august 28th o. as8t ambassador volker testifie because the highest levels of the ukrainian government did not know aboutnt the pause, there w nose leverage implied. finally, president zelensky met with president trump in new york on septembern 25th at the unit
nations. shortly thereafter -- or shortly beforert that, the security assistance flowed to ukraine. both happened without ukraine ever taking actions or investigations. the impeachment record also has substantial evidence going to the president's state of mind. undercutting the democrats' assertion of some malicious intent. witnesses testified that president trump has a deeply rooted, genuine and reasonable skepticisman of ukraine stemmin from its history of corruption. president trump is skeptical of u.s. taxpayer funded foreign assistance and believes that our alliesat should share more of t burden of o ukraine's defense. uk ukrainian politicians openly spoke out against president trump during the 2016 election. these bore directly on the president's state of mind. president zelensky had run a an
anti-corruption platform, but he was an untried politician with a relationship to a controversial ukrainian oligarch. when vice president pence met with president zelensky in -- i'm -sorry, when vice presiden pence met with president zelensky ine war saw on septemr 1, he stressed to him the need for reform and reiterated the president's concern about burden sharing, especially young european allies. in late august and early accept afterly his party took control the ukrainian parliament, they passed reforms to fight corruption. these included removing par rimtrim limitary immunity. imagine if members of our congress had immunity. president trump then lifted the assistance and wet p president zelensky two weeks later. the aid was paused for 55 days. very simply, the evidence does
not support the conclude that president trump abused his power foris his own personal politica benefit. there is simply no clear evidence thatpl president trump acted with malicious intent in withholding a meeting or securityin assistance. indeed, there are, and the republican report articulates them, legitimate explanations for these actions that are not nefarious as the democrats allege. the evidence shows that president trump faithfully executed the duties of his office by delivering on what he promised the american voters he would do. democrats may disagree with the president's policy decisions or the manner in which he governs, but those disagreements are not enoughnt to justify the irrevocable action of removing him from office. the democrats hyperbole are no good reason, 11 months out from an election, to prevent the american people from deciding on
their own who is going to be their next president. this record also does not support a conclusion that president trump obstructed congress during the impeachment inquiry. for many of theenru procedural defects i touched on earlier. additionally as a factual matter, the only direct testimony theth investigation h obtained about the president's reaction tohe the inquiry, is fm ambassador sondland, who testified president trump told him to cooperate and tell the truth. president trump has also declassifiedso and released the summaries of his two phone calls with the president, president zelensky. president trump has said that he would like witnesses to testify, but he's been forced to resist the unfair and abusive process. i believece strongly in the prerogativesth of the congress. it's awful to hear president turley's testimony from last week wheney he spoke to the hou on for impeachment so rapidly and on such a thin record.
professor turley said to set this abbreviated schedule, demand documents and then impeach because they haven't been turned over, when they go to court, i think is an abuse of power. the impeachment of a duly elected president as chairman snad ler said in 1988, is the undoing of a national election. now, i understand democrats issued a report over the weekend arguing that contrary to the chairman's statement in 1988, impeachment is not on doing an election. i would justn respond by sayini don't think many of the 63 million americans from all around the country who voted for president trump in 2016 would agree. by impeaching president trump, the house would essentially be nullifying the decision of those americans. and the house would be doing it in lessbe than 11 months before the next election. there still is no compelling argument for why democrats and the house must take this decision out of the hands of the
voters and do it before christmas. during the clinton impeachment in 1988, the chairman said that a bearha minimum, the president accuserse must go beyond hears and innuendo and beyond the demands that the president prove his innocence of vague and changing charges. i would submit that those words ring as true today as the chairman believed them to be in 1988. the impeachment record is heavily reliant on hearsay, innuendo and presumptions. democrats have lobbed vague and ever-changing charges for impeachment goingev as far backs the president's inauguration. for all these reasons, the extraordinary exercise of the house's impeachment authority is not warranted on the evidentiary record presented. thank you for allowing me to present this information this morning, and i yield back.
>> the gentleman yields back. thank anyou, both for your presentations. mr. burke, you are now excused. >> mr. chairman, i have a parliamentary inquiry. >> the gentleman will state his parliamentary inquiry. >> pursuant to house b of the house torules, the chairman is allowed to administer an oath, notr mandated to. but it has been the practice of this committee to administer oaths to witnesses. i'm wondering why we have not administered the oathwe in this situation. >> i'm going to administer the oath to the two witnesses who are now coming up before us to makere presentation. the two gentlemen who just testified were not witnesses. they were making opening statements for the committees. we will now administer an oath to mr. castor and goldman who
are now testifying in the capacity of witnesses. >> typically we administer oaths before opening statements. >> for witnesses. for witnesses. >> parliamentary inquiry. >> mr. castor was here with mr. burke presenting the opening statement for the committee. they were not witnesses before this committee. mr. castor now and mr. goldman arend witnesses for this commite and i willth administer the oat >> mr. chairman, if they were making a presentation, the rules wouldnt apply. >> the gentleman is not recognized. >> mr. chairman, may i have a point of order? i have a point of order. >> who is seeking recognition? >> right here. >> theit gentleman will state h point of order. >> mr. chairman, despite our repeated request for o access t the fevidence, we received les than r 48 hours ago over 8,000 pages of documentation. mr. chairman, if this were a
court of law, you would be facing sanctions right now by the bar association. >> the gentleman will state his point of order. >> how aree we supposed to process over 8,000 pages of documents that came from various committees -- >> that is not a point of order. i will now proceed with the oath. the gentleman willth suspend an not makell a speech. mr. goldman, mr. castor, please rise and raise your right hand., >> do you wear or affirm under penalty of perjury that the testimony you're about to give is correct toyo the best of you knowledge, information and belief so help you god? let the record show the presenters answered in the affirmative. thank you and please be seated each ofyo you will have 45 minus to present. to help you stay within that time, there is a timing light on your table. when the light switches from green to yellow, you have one minute to conclude your testimony. when the y light turns red, it signals your time is expired.
mr. goldman, you may began. >> mr. chairman, i have a point of order. >> the gentleman will state his point of order. >> my point of order is this, in the previous point of order issued by mr. johnston of louisiana, you ruled against his point of order because you said that mr. burke was a witness. you have just told us he was not a witness but he was a staffer. as such, a staffer must avoid impugning motivations. >> the gentleman will -- >> will youtl let him finish hi point of order? >> he made his point of order. >> mr. chairman, i haven't completed yet. the rule requires that members and staff not impugn the motivations of the president.re what you ruled was that he was a witness. you've just told us he wasn't a witness. my point of w order is that you were out of orderor in your ruling. >> the point of order is not sustained. i've already ruled on it. he was not a witness.
>> i appeal the decision of the chair. >> that is not -- >> it most certainly is. >> the ruling is not -- the point of orderot is not sustain. >> i appeal the decision of the chair. >> i move to table the -- >> the appeal of the ruling of the chairul is tabled. all in favor of the motion to table say aye. >> the motion to table is approved. >> i see the roll call vote. >> mr. nadler votes aye. ms. lofgren votes aye. ms. jackson lee votes ay. mr. cohen votes aye. mr. johnstons votes aye. mr. toich votes aye. mrs. bass votes aye. mr. richmond votes aye. mr. jeffries votes aye. mr. cicilline votes aye. mr. swalwell votes aye. mr. raskin votes aye.
mr. yedemmings votes aye. mr. correa. mrs. scanlon. ms. garcia votes aye. ms. mcbath votes aye. mr. stanton votes aye. ms. dean votes aye. ms. escobar votes aye. mr. collins votes no. >> sensenbrenner votes no.. mr. gomert votes no.. mr. jordan votes no. mr. buck votes no. mr. ratcliffe notes no. ms. roby votes no. mr. gates votes no. mr. johnston of louisiana votes no. mr. biggs. mr. mcclint tock votes no.
mr. cline votes no. mr. armstrong votes no. mr. steube notes no. mr. biggs, you are not recorded. mr. biggs notes no. >> has everyone voted that wishesas to vote? >> am i recorded? >> ms. scanlon, you are not recorded. >> ms. scanlon votes aye. mr. correa votes aye. >> the clerk will report. >> there arel 24 ayes and 17 n. mr. goldman, you may begin. >> thank you, mr. chairman. chairman nadler and ranking memberr collins and members of the committee, we are here today because donald j. trump, the 45th president of the united states, abused the power of his office. american presidency, for his political and personal benefit.
president trump directed a month's long campaign to solicit foreign help in his 2020 re-election efforts, withholding official acts from the government of ukraine in order to coerce and secure political assistance and interference in our domestic affairs. as part of this scheme, president trump applied increasing pressure on the president of ukraine to publicly announce two investigations helpful to his personal re-election efforts. he applied this pressure himself and through his agents, working within and outside of the u.s. government, by conditioning a desperately sought oval office meeting and $391 million in taxpayer-funded congressionally
appropriated securityio assistance, vitalap to ukraine' ability to fend off russia aggression. and he conditioned that on the announcement ofhe these two political investigations that were helpful to his personal interests. when the president's efforts were discovered, he released the military aid, though it would ultimately take congressional action for the money to be made fully available to ukraine. theai oval office meeting still hase not happened. and when faced with the opening of an official impeachment his conduct, president trump launched an unprecedented campaign of obstruction of congress, ordering executive branch agencies and government officials to defy subpoenas for documents and testimony. to date, the investigating committees have received no documents from the trump
administration pursuant to our subpoenas. were it not for courageous public servants doing their duty and honoring their oath to this country, and coming forward and testifying, the president's scheme might still be concealed today. the central moment in this scheme was a telephone call between president trump and ukrainian president zelensky on july 25thn of this year. during that call, president trump asked president zelensky for a personalke favor, to initiate the two investigations that president trump hoped could ultimately help his re-election in 2020. first investigation involved former vice president joe biden and was an effort to smear his reputation as he seeks the democratic nomination in next year's presidential election. thede second investigation soug to elevate an entirely debunked
conspiracy theory promoted by russian president vladimir putin that ukraine interfered in the last presidential election to support the democraticec nomine. in truth, as has been made clear byde irrefutable evidence from throughout the government, russia interfered in the last election in order to help then-candidate trump. the allegations about vice president biden and the 2016 election are patently false. but thattl did not defer presidt trump during his phone call with the ukrainian president, and it does notes appear to deter him today. just two days ago, president trump stated publicly that he hopes that his personal attorney, rudy giuliani, will report to the department of justice and to congress the results of mr. giuliani's efforts in ukraine last week to pursue these false allegations meant to tarnish vice president
biden. president trump's persistent and continuing effort to coerce a foreign country to help him cheat to win an election is a clear and present danger to our free ander fair elections and t our national security. the overwhelming evidence of this scheme is described in detail in a nailer 300-page document entitled the trump-ukraine impeachment inquiry report. formally transmitted from the house committee on intelligence to this committee a few days ago. the report relies on testimony from numerous current and former government officials, the vast majoritye of whom are nonpartin career professionals responsible forio keeping our nation safe a promoting american values around the globe. the evidence from these witnesses cannot seriously be disputed. the president placed his
personal interests above the nation's interests in order to help his own re-election efforts. before i highlight the evidence and the findings of this report, i want to take just a moment to introduce myself and discuss today's testimony. i joinedda the house intelligen committee as senior adviser and director of investigations at the beginning of this year. previously i served for ten years as a prosecutor in the southernr district of new york. when i n joined the department justice under the george w. bush administration. the team that ish led on the intelligence communityd includ other former federal prosecutors, a retired fbi agent, and investigators with significant national security ent enter tees. the report that i am presenting today is basedam entirely on th evidence that we collected in coordination withle the oversig and foreign affairs committees
that wered gathered as part of the impeachment inquiry into president trump's actions. nothing more and nothing less. the three investigating committees ran a fair, professional and thorough investigation. wero followed the house rules f depositionss and public hearin, including the rule against agency counsel being present for depositions, and members and staff from both parties had equal time to ask questions and there were no substantive questions that weresu prevented from being asked and answered. this investigation moved swiftly and intensively, as all good investigations should. to the extent that other witnesses would be able to provide morebe context and deta about this scheme, their failure to testify is due solely to the fact that president trump obstructed thetr inquiry and refused refused to make them available.
nevertheless the extensive ne evidence that the committees uncovered during this investigation led to the following critical findings. first, president trump used the power of his office to pressure and indues the newly elected president of ukraine to interfere in the 2020 presidential election t for president trump's personal and political benefit. second, in order to increase the pressure on ukraine to announce theuk politically motivated investigations that president trumpmo wanted, president trump withheld a coveted oval office meeting and $391 of his central military assistance from ukraine. third, president trump's conduct sought to undermine our free and fair elections and poses an imminent threat to our national security. and fourth, faced with the revelation of his pressure
campaign against ukraine, president trump directed an unprecedented effort to obstruct congress's impeachment inquiry conduct. with that context in mind i would like toco turn to the evidence of president trump's conduct concerning ukraine. my colleague mr. castor just said it revolves around eight lines in one call record. but that sorely ignores the vast amount of evidence that we collected of a months long scheme directed by the president. but i do want to start with that july 25th phone call, because that is critical evidence of the president's involvement and intent. it was on that day that he held his second phone call with the new ukrainian president. thera first in april was short d cordial, following the ukrainian president's election success. but the second call would diverge dramatically from those
listening had expected. now just prior to this telephone call, president trumpne spoke t gordon sondland, u.s. ambassador to the european union who had donated $1 million to the president's inaugural campaign. andgu who had been directed by e president himself to take on a leading role in ukraine issues. ambassador sondland relayed theh president's message to president zelensky through ambassador kurt volker who had lunch that day with president t zelensky's top aide who appears repeatedly through this scheme as president zelensky's right-hand man. ambassador kurt volker texted him with president trump's direction. good lunch, thanks. heard from white house. assuming president z convinces trump he'll investigate get to the bottom ofve what happened i
2016, we'll nail down visit for -- we'll nail down for a visit to fwashington. goodsi luck. see you tomorrow. kurt. so evenmo before the phone call with president zelensky took place, president trump had directed that ukraine initiate the investigation into 2016, the debunked conspiracy theory that ukraine had interfered in the election in order for president zelensky to get the white house visit that heth desperately coveted. ambassador sondland was clear in his testimony about this quid t pro quo. >> frequently framed these complicated issues in the form of a simplete question. was there a quid pro quo? as i testified previously, with regard to the requested white house call and the white house meeting, the answer is yes.
>> during this call with the ukrainian leader, president trump did notin discuss mattersf importancesc to the united stat, such asth ukraine's efforts to root outs corruption. instead president trump veered quickly into the personal favor that he wanted president zelensky to do. two investigations that would help president trump's nt re-election effort. witnesses who listened to the call described it as unusual, improper,, inappropriate, and concerning. two of them immediately reported their concerns to white house lawyers. now let me just take a few minutes walking through that important callg step by step because it is evidence that is central to the president's scheme. near the beginning of the call presidentca zelensky said, i wod also like to thank you for your great support in the area of defense. we are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps
specifically we are almost ready to buy more javelins from the united states for defense purposes. it included nearly $400 million of military assistance to ukraine,it which one witness testifiedne was nearly 10% of ukraine's defense budget. thiss support comes as a resul russia'sre invasion of ukraine 2014, when russia illegally annexed nearly 7% of ukraine's territory. since 'sthen, the united states and our allies have provide support for ukraine, an emerging post-soviet democracy to fend off russiaac in the east. yet just a few weeks before this july b 25th call, president tru had inexplicably placed a hold once military assistance to ukraine without providing any reason to his own cabinet members or national security officials. the evidence the committee collected showed that there was
unanimous support for the aid from every relevant agency in the trump administration. nevertheless, during the call, president trump complained that u.s. support for ukraine was not reciprocal, that somehow ukrains needed to give more to the united states. what did he mean? it became clear, because immediately after b president zelensky broughtaf up u.s. military support and purchased javelin anti-tank weapons president trump responded, i would like to you do us a favor, though, because our country has been throughus a lot and ukrain knows a lot about it. now the favor that he referenced there included two demands that had nothing the to do with official u.s. policy or foreign policy. first,cy president trump said i to find out what happened withfi this whole situation with ukraine. they said crowdstrike. as you saw yesterday, excuse mex i guess you have one of your
wealthy people it says the server they sayhe ukraine has i. there are a lot of things that went loon. the whole situation. i think you're surrounding yourself with hek some of the same people. and he went on later, i would like to have the attorney general call you or your people and i would like you to get to the bottom of it. as you saw yesterday that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a name named robert mueller an incompetent performance but they say a lot of it started with ukraine. whatever youwi can do, it's ver important that you do it, if that's possible. here, again, president trump was referring to the baseless conspiracy theory that the ukrainian government not russia was behind the hack of the democratic national committee in 2016. not a single witness in our investigation testified that there was anyif factual support for this allegation. tor the contrary, a unanimous assessment of the u.s.
intelligence community found thatig russia alone interfered theed 2016 u.s. election and special counsel muellerti who indicted 12 russians for this conspiracy testified before congress that the russian government interferedth in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion. dr. fiona hill an expert on russia and president putin who served on p the national securi council until july testified that theun president was told b his own former senior advisors including his homeland security adviser andur national security adviser thatti the alternative theory that ukraine interfered in the election was false. and although no one in the u.s. government knew of any factual support for this theory, it did have one significant supporter. russian president putin. in february of 2017, president putin said, second as we all know, during the presidential
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