thank you very much for your time. >> thank you for having me. >> of course. "cnn this morning" continues right now. ♪ it's okay. it's a fraud. it's election interference. it's keeping me here instead of iowa and new hampshire. i should be in iowa and new hampshire, south carolina. i should be sitting in a -- i shouldn't be sitting in a courthouse. and i don't have to sit here. i could just do whatever i want to do, but i want to make sure that you get the true story. >> good morning, everyone. thank you for joining us on this friday, the 2024 campaign trail is running straight through the courthouse, or courthouses. former president trump set to take the stand in his new york civil fraud trial monday. he chose to be in the courtroom yesterday rather than the campaign trail and in the federal election subversion case against him trump's legal team is working to delay the trial set to begin in march in the heat of the presidential election season. >> legal problems for the current president's son, hunter biden facing nine new criminal charges, accused of failing to pay $1.4 million in taxes from 2016 to 2019. instead spent millions on drugs, luxury hotels, exotic cars. >> now it's worth noting hunter biden is not joe biden and there is no allegation in any of the 56 pages of this indictment that the president did anything wrong. he is not mentioned in the indictment. but it could still have big political implications for him. house republicans have made hunter biden's business dealings a basis for their impeachment inquiry push against the president. here is how the president responded to questions about his son. >> first of all, my son has done nothing wrong. i trust him. i have faith in him. and it affects my presidency by making me feel proud of him. >> can you explain to americans, this impeachment inquiry, why you acted with so many business associates? >> i did not. it's a bunch of lies. >> that last comment this week. let's begin with katelyn polantz. these charges, the 56 pages, very, very detailed, i would note. you have been following this case much longer than i have. break down the new charges here. >> yeah, so this is nine federal charges filed in court to california. before hunter biden had a plea deal that fell apart, those were misdemeanors, but, prize, they're back. the special counsel's office that revived this investigation after that plea deal fell apart they brought nine charges. they span related to the tax years of 2016 through 2019, but a lot of this is based around what happened in one year, 2018. that's a big year for hunter biden. these felony charges, two of them, are about that year, i believe. and the difference here is it's not just that he is being accused of failing to pay his taxes. the irs says he didn't pay $1.4 million that he owed them. there is also felony accusations that boil down to lying to the irs. that's where the justice department, the special counsel, the prosecutors, they are putting hunter biden on blast. it's a 56-page indictment and it goes into great detail about all of the things that hunter biden was spending his money on instead of paying his taxes, and they are saying things like he is spending almost $700,000 towards women that includes exotic dancers, people who are escorts, clothing, accessories, adult entertainment, pornography website $188,000 alone. the other thing is with these, they are saying that he had the money to pay. he $7 million coming in in all of the businesses, interests that he had, and then instead of putting it towards the irs or telling the irs it was going towards an extravagant lifestyle. that's where one you have these felony charges comes really into play where the irs or the justice department is saying that hunter biden is claiming false deductions, including a $10,000 payment for his membership in sex club, among many other things, renting a lamborghini, paying tens of thousands of dollars to luxury hotels. he is claiming those things are business expenses when the justice department says, no, those were personal expenses. one of those things particularly was this. he claimed this as a business expense, according to the stead put $27,000 into online porn. all tv this taken together is quite a serious set of charges. hunter biden's attorney abbe lowell says we will take you to trial if you charge them. they are on path to trial related to a guan charge in delaware. now in california we are expecting that and the statement, if hunter biden's last name was anything other than biden, the charges in delaware and now california would not have been brought. they are ready to fight and they are ready, too, to say that he is a political victim and also probably very likely to highlight that this distances him from his father. he had a couple bad years. he wrote about it in his memoir. 2018 he spent quite a lot of money. >> the two indictments, a delaware that already happened, now in california. do they overlap at all? >> well, a little bit. his attorneys, because whenever he initially cut his plea deal, he cut it as two separate things. the gun charge and the tax-related misdemeanors. and whenever he went to court on that initially, his attorneys have been saying we had a deal with the justice department that he wasn't going to be charged elsewhere. so they -- we are going to see that argument come up in this case in delaware that he should never have gotten charged in california because everything should have ended for him after that agreement was made, that they weren't going to prosecute him on the gun case, and that should have applied to the tax charges as well. we'll see if that is something that can happen in the california court. it's a trump-appointed judge on this case. we will see if they make that argument to him and if that flies at all. >> thank you. as we edges inned, donald trump says he will stestify in the civil trial monday against him. he will not be there today at 10:00 a.m. live outside the courthouse. so interesting because one of his attorneys said publicly i told him, i don't think he should testify. but this is how passionately he feels about it, so he is going to take the stand? >> yeah, poppy, that's right. donald trump is expected to take the stand on monday. this time he will have a lot more latitude in his answers than when he testified the first time when he new york attorney general's team called him as their witness. so he will be questioned by his lawyers and, as you say, his attorney yesterday, she said that he is not afraid to testify. she said he will add some clarity to this, but she also said she didn't think he should. take a listen. >> he still wants to take the stand even though my advice is you should never take the stand with a gag order. he is so firmly against what is happening in this court. >> reporter: now, the gag order in this case is narrow. it prevents the former president from speaking about the judge's clerk. so that suggests we might see a bit of a repeat of what we saw last time when trump was essentially campaigning from the witness stand criticizing the new york attorney general who was sitting in the room and also criticizing a judge sitting a few feet to his right. you know, trump though at that time did actually acknowledge that he had a role in the financial statements. he said that the banks did rely on them, but he said that he relied on the accountants to make sure that the numbers were right. so we can expect it to be pretty long day on monday and probably with a lot of activity. you may remember the last time the judge told trump's lawyers they need today control their client or we would control him, essentially remove him from the witness stand. expect tensions to be high in the courtroom because the stakes are high for the former president with his reputation as a wealthy businessman and the future of his business in new york. phil, poppy. >> thank you. big day ahead. as everybody focuses on the legal and political, there are a number of warnings about what trump would do if re-elected. our next guest published a piece in "the atlantic" warning about trump's ambitions for the military. he will attempt to turn the men and women of the united states armed forces into per toreions not loyal to the constitution but only to him. >> trump tried to use the military to break up protests in 2020 and his advisors considered using the pentagon to seize voting machines and now the republican frontrunner is threatening to deploy the national guard to crack down on crime in primary blue states and if he takes back the white house. listen. >> the next time i am not waiting. one of the things i did was let them run it and we are going to show how bad a job they do. we did that. we don't have to wait any longer. we got to get crime out of our cities. >> joining us is tom nickel, staff writer for "the atlantic." your piece is one of so many. the entire edition of "the atlantic" is dedicated to the danger of a future trump presidency. help us decipher the rhetoric versus the reality here when it comes specifically to the military. >> trump makes a great show of venerating the military in public. he talks about how much he loves the military and talks about his generals when, in fact, he actually has a deep disrespect for the military, as i point out in the piece. this is a guy who referred to the -- to america's war dead as losers and suckers. and he doesn't really understand as john kelly, four-star marine general, said doesn't understand anyone who served their country honorably. he understands the pomp and parades and the salutes and sir, and he wants to use that force as his personal muscle. we know this. this isn't hypothetical. and i think one of the things to point out about all of the articles in this special issue of "the atlantic" is that these were carefully written and fact checked articles based heavily on trump's said and done already. so the distance between his rhetoric and his actions when it comes to the military or anything else is getting really vanishingly small considering that he has already tried to do a lot of the things that we talk about. he has already tried to use the u.s. military against its own citizens. he talked about how he wishes that america's generals were as loyal to him as the officers were to hitler. he really isn't kidding. as david graham points out, he is not bluffing. and there are plans to gut any of the civilian civil service guardrails that are inside the defense department and the justice department and the rest of the government. so, in tandem, these are really dangerous things and i think he is quite serious about not making the same mistakes twice. >> his frustration with loyalty within the military, take a listen to what the former chairman of the joint chiefs, mark milley, who the president said should be executed, had to say at his farewell ceremony. >> we don't take an oath a king or a queen or a tyrant or a dictator and we don't take an oath to wannabe dictator, to an individual. we take an oath to the constitution and we take an oath to the idea that is america and we're willing to die to protect it. >> do you feel -- are you concerned that others in military leadership don't share that perspective or do you think this will bring force a crisis between military leaders having to make that decision if challenged on constitutional issues? >> military leaders have already had to make decisions that challenge the problem -- challenge to the constitution. they have had to make that decision about do i obey the president or do i obey the constitution, which is why trump has such a grudge against the military, because he sees the professional military as people who thwarted him and slow-rolled him and didn't let him do the things he wanted to do. and so what he'll do is replace those officers until he finds somebody that will do the things he wants to do. again, i think that's what he is going to do throughout the rest of the government. the same thing he will do, for example, in the justice department. he will just roll through people until he finds an attorney general that is just going to do the things he wants to do. little harder to do with the military, as you are taking people that have been in a lifetime of service. but as i point out in the article, it won't take that many officers, only a small number who decide to take trump's unholy bargain here and to serve the president in the belief that you really are serving the constitution because trump has always made the case that the president is the state. the president is the constitution. the president is the ultimate authority on everything in the country. he has a monarchcal view of his own power. i think the problem for the rest of the u.s. military is that they understand obedience to the chain of command. and so if trump corrupts even a small number of people at the top, then the chain of command and the structures of the military will do the rest. and i think he will do the kind of things that people stopped him from doing before. >> the piece is a military loyalty to trump. it's part of that atlantic i can piece or full issue out this week. tom nichols, thanks so much. >> thank you. putin's war in ukraineng onr the first time in 79 days russia lau launched to cruise missile attacks. after a nearly 80-day pa, russia launched a barrage of cruise missiles on kyiv and eastern ukraine. the vast majority interpreted but the timing is crucial as capitol hill is deadlocked over additional aid for ukraine's fight. secretary of state antony blinken stressing the importance to congress. >> this an important moment. important because the people who want to see it fail, the people to want to see it not go forward are sitting moscow, sitting in tehran, they are sitting in beijing. >> now, senate negotiators have resumed talks to reach an agreement after republicans blocked foreign aid demanding strict border restrictions in exchange. one says his party should engage more. john fetterman saying i hope democrats understand it's not zone xenophobic to be concerned about the border. he said, quote, honestly, it's astonishing and this isn't a fox news kind of statistic. this is the government. you have pittsburgh showing up at the border. joining us now democratic congr congressman sheryl wearing a sweatshirt. we can get to that in a moment. i know there is a big game this weekend. i want to start with the debate that's -- >> i know we have a disagreement on that. >> we do. but another point of disagreement, how to get a very significant aid package, not just ukraine, it's israel as well, border money, indo-pacific money across the finish line. there have been calls to some in your party for the president to get more directly involved at this point. he needs to be the one in the room with leader mcconnell, speaker johnson. do you think it's reached that point? >> i know the white house is slowly getting more involved. i think right now we've seen that people are going back to the table after a lot of reports yesterday that talks were stalled. so i know the white house has been pushing this. i think you will see greater involvement as this moves forward. but it was heartening to me to hear that the discussions are now back at the table because i really don't think we should be going home until we get this supplemental passed. >> do you think the administration has made the case effectively enough? i think there is a lot of people who i think inherently understand the lie, and yet the numbers in terms of support amongst the american public have dropped consistently over the course of the last several months. >> you know, i think there are a couple of reasons why this is so critically important, because it's going to impact the very way i think people across the world live their lives, including here at home. so we are now in one of those existential times in the world where we are fighting tooth and nail for our democratic values and priorities, and if we are not successful here with our allies across the world, we will see people who have the larger say in how we move forward on the new technologies, a.i., quantum, et cetera, with more of a surveillance society, not protecting individual rights and liberties as the united states has always strongly supported. so these are really critical problems. but i'd also remind people that a lot of the money we want is actually to make sure we are pouring that into our own defense industrial base. our workers and making sure that we have the capacity here at home to fight for the things we need to fight for. >> yeah. well more than a majority of the money spent has been spent at home, which is an important point to make. some in your party want the israel aid portion of the supplemental bill to be conditioned, a growing number to some degree in the senate. what are your views on that? >> i think right now we need to make sure that israel has the capacity to defend herself. we have incursions not just -- you know, to me hamas and the fight with hamas is not actually the biggest threat. it's hezbollah to the north as backed by iran. so making sure that we give israel the capability of defending itself is so critical right now because we know that this is greater than simply the fight between israel and hamas. these are attacks that we're facing, that u.s. forces are facing from iran, from houthis. we know that hamas has met with putin. we know that the antisemitism being promoted on tiktok by the chinese communist party is egregious. so this is really -- this supplemental is really critical to the united states making sure that our allies and friends and the united states itself has the capacity to make sure we are safe and that we promote our democratic principles. >> to those who say the capability is being used to create a humanitarian crisis in gaza and israel is not as responsive as the white house would like them to be, what do you say? >> well, i think that's a huge issue of concern and a huge problem. these casualty numbers are unacceptable. and i'll tell you, i think largely part of this problem stems from netanyahu himself who has not outlined what his strategy is for this conflict, what success looks like, and in the meantime over 20,000 civilians, many of them children, have been killed in this fight. that's unacceptable and i have to agree with the white house and tony blinken on the pushback against israel right now with their lack of strategy. we also saw -- this is why i went repeatedly called to return to the humanitarian pause. that is when we saw the best results for negotiations, saw many of the hostages being released. we need to get back to that point. >> next week the house republicans are expected to vote to officially launch an impeachment inquiry. it will come a few days after the president's son was indicted for a second time. the president's approval numbers are in the mid-to-upper 30s right now. about to head into an election year. are you concerned about the standing of the president given all of these dynamics? >> you know what? i'm really concerned about here the continuing attacks by far-right extremists on the institutions of our government and really undermining the values that many of us heaold dear. so here we have an impeachment looking for evidence. the republican party decided they wanted to people the president and now they are desperately seeking evidence of wrongdoing and they have not found it yet for the president. even their own witnesses have undermined their case. so why hunter biden is brought before congress as opposed to allowing the justice system to take its course is really confusing. and then the constant idea that they are going to impeach the president but can't elucidate what their case is or what their evidence is against president biden is really concerning. and