Tweeting republicans who oppose him are quote human scum. The president of the United States used that phrase. As the addage goes, if you cant pound the facts, pound the table. And here we are just one month into a formal impeachment inquiry and the facts are overwhelming and apparently pretty damning. L u. S. s top diplomat testified yesterday there was quid pro quo. And he testified tdhat to ukrai by one of the president s point men. That pointman, Eu Ambassador gordon sondland. He testified that he was all but ordered by the president to take his cues from rudy giuliani. Giuliani has publicly admitted numerous times. The president himself has admitted he wanted ukraine to target his rivals, his acting chief of staff admitted to quid pro quo before trying to walk it back. Numerous diplomats have testified about how alarmed they were at what was going on and the notes from the president s phone call with ukraine only corroborated it all. Folks, the impeachment conversation now no longer seems to revolve around whether democrats have the evidence to make their case because its clear they have the evidence to make their case. Instead, its question of how are they going to lay it out publicly . Potentially open to impeaching the president. My guess is he wants to know how is this process going to work . Lets start with the latest from our nbc correspondent. Jeff bennett is in capitol hill. Hallie jackson is at the white house. Jeff, let me start with you in todays bizarre standoff. It was clearly a planned stunt. The timing of it and all of that. Where do things stand right now . And when are we going to hear when are they going to resume their ability to hear testimony . You know what, chuck, i have to credit dan balls i think for perfectly distilling the current moment. He says its no longer a question of whether or not President Trump withheld this Ukrainian Military aid to compel ukraines leaders to investigate trumps political rivals. All of the evidence points to yes. Even the evidence that the white house put out points to yes. He says the question now is how does President Trump explain it . And how do republicans respond to it . Well, weve seen how republicans have responded to it. They have been making this process argument for days, if not weeks. Complaining that because this Factfinding Mission that democrats are embarking on, because that is not happening in the light of day, it is somehow not on the up and up. And so that culminated today with matt gates, the florida republican, a group ofn the respective committees doing this deposition work. Barged into the secureo use a phrase from one of the democrats. Some of them in the process taking their personal devices, Electronic Devices into the scif. Which is the kind of violation that anybody with security clearance, any regular person with a security clearance could lose that clearance over. Now, they say they were trying to they targeted this hearing for a reason, though, because they thought they could get around that, right, jeff . Right. They did. And they say they were trying to bring transparency to the process. What they were really trying to do was shut the process down and for at least five hours, they were successful. The view from democrats was this was intentionally timed to take attention away from that sweeping and devastating testimony that you mentioned that house investigators heard from ambassador bill taylor yesterday. Theres been some reporting that that that gates, what he did was done in concert with President Trump directly. We have not confirmed that. Gates for his part says thats not the case. But what we know is that President Trump likes people who defend him the way he wants to be defended. And in that group were all people who are either elected to congress off the back of donald trump or they have furnished their reputation by tying themselves closely to President Trump. Jeff bennett on the hill. Hallie jackson at the white house. Hallie, do you get a sense that the white house was following todays theatrics . Yes, i do. And i think that part of that is because the president has wanted his republican allies over on capitol hill to get tougher. He could not have been more clear about that early in the week and i dont think that is any coincidence that today you are seeing this unfold and you are seeing some of the president s allies literally yelling into microphones to defend the president today. This is what the president wanted to see. He wanted to see his people, if you will, his conservatives, surrounding him and fighting for him. This is something that the president has been wanting for a while now. Hes starting to get it. Its a question of how effective its going to be, of course. But i have to tell you when i have conversations with my sources that ive had today, over the last 24 hours or so, its not just about impeachment strategy. You have a west wing here that seems rather leaderless at the moment. The guessing game at least from the folks that i talk to is who is going to end up being the next chief of staff if Mick Mulvaney doesnt, right . On top of Everything Else going on. I think its notable today senator Lindsey Graham, again the president s very good friend, on this matter if not other matters of Foreign Policy was asked specifically should the white house have a better impeachment strategy . Senator graham just said yes and walk a walked away. They want the white house to have more of a strategy here. I have been told for weeks now by my sources here that they dont want to set up a war room because that makes it look like theyre under siege. Well, you have battle lines that are drawn, chuck. So you either sort of get in the battle or you dont. Let me pause you there because let me put up the statement Stephanie Grisham put out last night on bill taylor because what was amazing about it is how it didnt deny a single part of the actual testimony. It felt like it mightve been written by her boss. President trump has done nothing wrong. This is a coordinated Smear Campaign from far left lawmakers and radical unelected bureaucrats waging war on the constitution. There was no quid pro quo. Today was just more triple hearsay. Selective leads from the democrats politically motivated closed door secretive hearings. Triple hearsay is a new one on me. But i am curious. This statement screams theyre panicked about the bill taylor testimony. How concerned are they . Yeah. Yeah. Heres what i think that folks would point to in that Stephanie Grisham statement. It does echo all these talking points. His own cabinet officials have picked up on that this is a Smear Campaign but its that line. There was no quid pro quo. Thats what you are hearing from the president , from his allies, from Top Republicans on capitol hill. But heres the thing. The the counter argument to that is, if i hand you a piece of meat between two slices of bread and tell you its not a sandwich, what is it actually . Right . And i think that the democrats are kind of saying, listen, if in fact based on all of these documents, all this evidence we have, the transcript rough transcript of this call that you released. You are trying to trade military aid for political help in a campaign. Doesnt matter what you call it whether its quid pro quo or not. The facts are what they are. And i think that is what the white house is struggling to respond on here. Jeff bennett and Hallie Jackson starting us off. Thank you both. Joining me now is member of the house of Foreign Affairs committee. He was present at bill taylors testimony yesterday. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me on. Let me start with first taylors testimony. It i have to tell you it was striking today to read a lot of my colleagues reporting on it because it felt more definitive than ever before. As if this feels that taylor is connecting all the dots. You were in the room. You have more than the Opening Statement that the rest of us have gone by. Is that how you saw it . Well, first id like to say that all of our professional diplomats i think have acquitted themselves very well in the hearings ive been in. And ambassador taylor was extremely clear, extremely chronological and detailoriented. And i think he filled in a lot of meat around some of the comments that the chief of staff had said or that ambassador sondland had said previously. It was it was powerful. You found him to be very credible . Oh, sure. Yeah. As was dr. Hill and george kent. These are just professional diplomats. They dont i dont know that they have agendas. They have their agenda is to pursue american Foreign Policy as dictated by the state department. 30 of your republican colleagues sort of stormed the hearing room today. Claiming that this process hasnt been fair. What would you say to them if you could . If they asked you hows the process been . Youre in the room, you know how the process works. Part of why im probably not really cut out for this line of work is im not real theatrical. You know . I just want to get the facts and make a good decision. Especially, something as important as this. Its really important to get all the facts. Get opinions of different people and understand the magnitude of whats going on around here. Is closed door better at first before you go public . I mean, this seems to be what the democrats are arguing. Its what republicans previously during the Benghazi Committee argued as well. Do you find that it is a Better Process if you dont have the cameras in the room at first . Well, theyll probably get more information transferred. What the democrats said in the chairman schiff said was the reason for this process is they dont have a special prosecutor and they cant get a grand jury. So they are kind of trying to replicate a private hearing like a grand jury would do. But that at some point, they are going to have public hearings. I think its critical that they bring the public into this discussion. And that the administration have the opportunity to question the witnesses at some point. I was just going to say, look, youve been you went public with your concerns. And that comes with political peril these days. Im sure youre well aware of that. But give democrats some advice here. What would you tell them . Youve got your case. Clearly, how they lay out their case is going to matter. Not just the facts that they have. The facts are one thing. But you can have all the facts on your side and still screw up your prosecution. What would you you can because yeah. You could overreach. All sorts of things. What would be your advice to the democrats . Theyve got to lay it out in a way that the body, the American People, as well as legislators realize the a level of gravity that would rise to the level of impeachment. I mean, you know, that thats how thats their challenge and i think the sooner they go public and have more of a spirited public debate about this would be probably in their interest. I want to make im im going to make an observation. If you dont want to respond to it, thats fine. You seem to have hit your breaking point. Is that fair to say . Thats what it looks like from the outside. You know, you just sort of said, you know what . Enough. Whether it was a decision not to run again. You seem to be very frustrated by washington. Well, as a businessman, washingtons going to clearly frustrate most anybody. But the reason i said i wasnt going to run again is i said from day one, three terms maximum. Im 66 years old. Im not going for a new career. But i ammed want to run to get money and weve accomplished those in two terms instead of three. So i think its time to move on and i started thinking about it the very day we passed the offshore moratorium bill. But as far as this situation here now, i just cant take an ideological position without facts. Ive got to know the facts and im going to pursue that in all fronts before i have to get to the point perhaps of making a very critical decision that affects our country and our institutions. Its interesting. You called it you have to look at it instead of making an ideological decision. How many of your colleagues do you feel like are looking at this through an ideological prism . Well, i dont know. I would like to see more people focus on the facts. And ive heard a few more people talk about that. But its not really serving the president well not to get the facts out there and let the facts stand. Jonah goldberg who was with national review, he wrote, you know, he looked at the pressure that you guys successfully put on the president on the doral decision. And he basically wondered what if more republicans had stood up to the president in the first year . Would everybody be in a better place . The party and the president . What would you say . Well, i dont know. There werent that many things in the first year that i think i disagreed with him on. I mean, basically, we were consumed by trying to replace the aca with better insurance. It took the whole year to to come up to the point of failure unfortunately. Uhhuh. But you dont feel as if there was missed opportunities in the past. I mean, obviously pressure can work with the president if you apply it. Yeah, i dont know. Hes pretty strong guy. Hes done a lot of things in his life. But i would say this. I would say weve had this rash of problems lately. The doral decision was probably made in haste and not appropriate. The syria move, im much against. I think weve made a huge tactical error there to the benefit of russia and unfortunately iran as well. Can i ask you do you lump ukraine and syria together since their Foreign Policy priorities of russia and does it at all strike you as odd that these are the two biggest problems it seems your wing of the Republican Party has with this president . Well, no. I think theyre totally different situations. I mean, the problem with the ukraine is that by some, i think, weak Foreign Policy during the obama administration, russia just came in there and had their way. Im not sure that would have happened under Ronald Reagan or even maybe george bush. But its there now. So weve got to do what we can do to root out the corruption and get that country on a straight and narrow path to oppose the russians. The syria quagmire has been you know, goes back to when we invaded iraq. Youve got all these different factions in there. A lot of the sunni syrians, you dont know whether theyre isis or not. I feel the kurds have been valuable allies. Ive even written an oped that we should recognize Iraqi Kurdistan as an independent country. Congressman francis rooney. Republican from florida. Retiring now. Thanks for coming on, sir. Much appreciate it. Thank you very much. You got it. Over on the senate side of capitol hill today, no answer was a popular answer for republicans when they were asked about ambassador bill taylors testimony. Take a listen. Any reaction to bill taylors testimony yesterday . I probably wouldnt be able to talk about it. I want to look at it and hear the facts from the intel committee. Well, i am almost late for my own hearing. Im sorry. I havent gotten yet. Any reaction to bill taylors testimony yesterday . I dont. I feel like a barber there. Like getting a good look at the back of a lot of the hair lines to see how well they trimmed it there. Joining me now, heidi przybyla. Also, an msnbc contributor. Michael steele, it was interesting. Francis rooney just sort of you can tell hes not running for reelection. Okay . Im sorry. Not going to say it but, you know, thats the hes not running for reelection. Corey gardener. That guy who was late. Roger. Looking at his watch. I hope he was actually wearing one. Its more embarrassing. Look at that. About half past that birth mark there. Boy, can you tell the difference between somebody not running and somebody running. You can tell the difference and you can listening to that interview, you could almost sense that, okay, moment with him. And, you know, theres some things he still didnt want to get into as to characterizing the thinking and some of the behavior of his colleagues. He doesnt want to dance on that. Thats fine. But even still, for a lot of folks like myself, we need better profiles in courage. The walk by looking i got to go, you know, the madhatter kind of routine by the members you just showed, thats a profile. But certainly not encouraged. And you have a lot of folks who are stepping out now going, well, let me tell you what i think. Well, okay, thats nice but youre not risking anything. And the country right now i think needs, from the republican side of the aisle, someone to stand up and risk something. To stand up to the president. Not just a matter of saying, you know, this is what i believe and the president s wrong about this or right about this. Its a matter of saying im willing to sacrifice my seat, my reelection, my position. Look, in fairness to him, i dont think he knew how to i think he mightve done it differently had he known how quickly it was going to weaken him. We dont know. And look. For all that we heard from congressman rooney, there are a lot of his colleagues in the house and some republican colleagues in the senate who are not running for reelection. I dont see them out there saying, you know, im thinking seriously about impeachment or im very troubled here. They are thinking about it but they are not saying it. You know, i met with one this week on background and i have to say they are, too, also following these orders of just focusing on the process and not necessarily, you know, saying that the facts are bad at this point. And this is someone who is familiar with whats being said inside those hearing rooms. The facts are bad. But lets to your point, even right now even though theyve heard some of these things, even some of the moderate republicans even now are Still Holding back on saying that this is bad and that they believe that this is something that is impeachable. So to the congressmans point and to your point, chuck, its going to be really important how it is laid out.