to investigate his chief rival who s up 14 points now in most polls in the united states. we have nbc news chief person to counter-richard engel with us here on set. it was almost three years ago when he had this report about the coalition assault on the iraqi city of mosul. in one sense i think it was politically timed. i think the mosul campaign, there was an objective to get in done while president obama is still in office. the rise of isis in rack and syria, the birth of the so-called caliphate has probably been the blackest stain on the obama administration. and i think there was a determination to get this operation under way and to get mosul liberated from isis while president obama s still in office. well, this sunday on the latest episode of on assignment richard offers an inside look at
we don t know exactly what the details of the allegation are. and moreover, the mechanism by which it is said to have happened, whatever it was, is a communication between the president of the united states and a foreign head of state which is the kind of molten core of executive kind of confidentialities that the executive branch will endeavor to protect. and so i think there s a real puzzle here, it s a horrible allegation, we need to find out what happened, and it is going to be very difficult to figure it out because the executive branch will tenaciously try to protect this information. and, by the way, as you point out just now, this is the sort of information that traditional presidencies will try to protect. and so i think we have a puzzle about how to unravel this thing in a way that gives us the
said i did it and i m proud of it. by the way, they come on the air, they say something so outrageous that would get anybody thrown out of office in years past. and then all their little chihuahuas running around yapping going what s the big deal? that s what they do. i wonder if republicans from my former party would say this is not a big deal too because this is not only impeachable, it s not only wrong, it could well be a crime. and if it s not a crime, i don t know what the hell is. i don t know what is an impeachable offense if this is not. like, basically this is big time. there s not anything that can get you impeached if the democrats do not act on this. and i won t ever again lindsey graham to lecture me about how if i don t want to send x number of troops to start a new land war, i m not tough on national security if this is what republicans are willing to
that s just a reality. i want to press you on one thing related to mika s question. understanding you re not going to endorse anybody today, et cetera, you and i sat down before you ran and one of the things you were very clear about was the democratic party does not need a moderate, said that over and over again. you said joe biden say moderate, that s one of the things you said. yeah. i m curious as to now having stood on stage with joe biden and having watched joe biden who is the front runner by every metric, whether you ve changed your mind in any way about about either of those two things? that the democratic party needs whether it still doesn t need a moderate and whether having listened to joe biden carefully and debated with him on stage whether your view of him as a moderate versus a progressive has any way been changed by the campaign you ve seen so far. one, you sir are a dog way bone. he just will not forget this. i m impressed. you said it on tv. i m very
ability to answer the question that you just posed. i think trump is also uniquely difficult person to deal with in this way, which is as michael cohen said in his testimony, he doesn t give a direct order, he doesn t say things all that directly. it s sort of what jj says in the sweet smell of success, my right hand hasn t seen what my left e left hand has been doing in 30 years. he knows how to say things without saying them. if there s a transcript of this call it could be that he alluded to the prose inspect that maybe unclearly saturday lin ski should if he did this maybe he d be happy urgent concern, remember those words. it was such an extraordinary act. we don t know. but we don t know we don t know what the act is. the. the act of coming forward. i understand the whistleblower but how many times over the past several years have we heard