Want to read you exactly what happened behind closed doors. He asks are you aware that quid pro quo literal lirr means this for that. And taylor says i am. These exchanges are part of what rocked washington when these first occurred. We didnt have the transcript on that day, just video of lawmakers walking out gasping and saying things like this. In my ten short months in congress, its not even noon, right, and this is my most disturbing day in congress so far. Very troubling. Very troubling. Now were reading the lines, the exact exchanges that so moved them. And theres one other key thing i want to show you tonight, taylor was diplomat who called out the bribery plot in realtime in the now famous text going back and forth with trump ally Gordon Sondland. There was trump and sondland claiming no bribery. Sondland even typing that out, typing trumps denial in that text to taylor when he had objected. Then of course you have this whistleblower come forward alleging bribery blowing this thing open, but in october sondland was still in trumps corner there. No bribery, playing down this plot to congress. Then you have taylor and others testifying that there was bribery and bringing along receipts. And tonight were seeing how that full testimony for the first time, were seeing the exchange. Were seeing what moved members of congress, but it didnt only move congress. It also moved sondland himself because he has just moved over very simply to the bribery side of this equation. He suddenly remembered bribery. He amended his own testimony to show it, and tonight you have donald trump over there increasingly on an island of the people involved in the plot, not yet congress but the people involved, the dip ldiplomats thy are on the bribery side. Were not only seeing the details, were also seeing this public story from trumps own officials move away from trump and towards taylor. Its taylors account that blows the whistle on bribery and bribery in the constitution is an impeachable offense. I want to begin our coverage with former u. S. Senator Claire Mccaskill of missouri, and Michelle Goldberg. What does it mean to you having done so many of these types of investigations and hearings to not only see what taylor is saying but that its bringing other officials closer to his account . Well, i think the public hearings i just urge all of your listeners to tell all of their friends and family to set their dvrs if theyre at work. Become a juror, listen to the fact witnesses, make up your mind who is telling the truth and who is credible. I think taylors testimony is going to be front and center, and it is going to be compelling when americans hear what he has to say. Its very confusing. Its behind closed doors. There are all the accusations about closed doors, and now theres a transcript. Is it confusing . Its not confusing if youve paid close attention, but of course the other side has tried to really muddy the waters here. But if you watch taylor testify, put his hand in the air, understand his background, understand hes a trump appointee and listened to the facts, then all of a sudden the reason the president is being impeached becomes very clear. Right, and michelle, youve followed this closely, youve been writing about it for the times. Everyone remembers these texts because theyre really striking, and they read as certain things do when things get hot, they read like messages people were sending thinking about how they might look later. But it was taylor who said, quote, as i said on the phone, like waving around, hey, i already objected to this, quote, i think its crazy to withhold Security Assistance for help with a political campaign. And i want to go back to our simple chart that we opened the evening with, which, if you look at it, sondland well put this up, sondland moving towards taylor, right . Sondland is now over there, and he wasnt in response to that text initially. Sondland is the most kind of ludicrous and pathetic figure in this whole farce. This is someone who paid a Million Dollars to become a diplomat because according to most reporting he was jealous that a bunch of his other friends who had donated money to politicians had become diplomats, he wanted to become one too. And hes just so devoted to serving trump, he sees these transcripts come out and suddenly, oh, yes, now i remember there was a quid pro quo. I totally forgot about it. And you know, and so hes now said, right, his response, thats the one thing that trump defenders have been hanging on is that hes i just talked to trump. There is no quid pro quo. Hes since basically said, yes, trump said the words there is no quid pro quo, but there was one anyway, right . And so the thing that i do think might be confusing for people is, first of all, i dont know that people kind of understand the average person, you know, people who kind of cant spend a day reading a 374page transcript, some of its sifmple, the kind f wanting dirt on joe biden. Some of it is more confusing, particularly the investigations into the 2016 elections and the precise preposterous nature of the conspiracy theories that they wanted this new government to substantiate. And i want to play a little bit on sondland of it all because taylor exists as the other side of that conversation, and that is the simple part. Youve got people who are being asked to condition this money until trump gets what he wants to help him get reelected, and soe sondlands pushing it and taylors pushing back. How is it playing in the world . Of course senator as you know, we are often indebted to Stephen Colbert for his view. Take a look. According to him incriminating testimony from other witnesses like bill taylor refreshed my recollection. [ laughter ] it made me remember one important detail that i dont want to go to jail for perjury. [ laughter ] if thats something you just remembered just think of all the small stuff youre forgetting. Somewhere theres a 40yearold man still waiting to be picked up from soccer. Well, you know, if it wasnt so serious itd be hysterically funny. I love it that our comedians do a good job of and by humor explaining some of this to people who arent following it as closely, but what really is going on here is you have a trump lackey, a trump donor trying to do everything that trump wants him to do. You have a respected diplomat that was called out of retirement by the secretary of state to come in and handle duties in ukraine, and he is the one saying, whoa, hold on. This is really wrong, and really what happened here is pretty simple. Sondland got a lawyer. Sondland lawyered up, and that lawyer did a good job of explaining you can either stick with the story youve given, or you can do a clean up on aisle 5 and maybe escape criminal and other consequences down the line when it becomes obvious you were not telling the truth the first goaround. When you read sondlands transcript, you know, side by side with some of these other ones, i mean, its just astonishing the amount of contradictions, and its not just him contradicting one person, its him contradicting three or four people, people with kind of impeccable National Security credentials. You know, and one of the sub threads of this whole scandal is that we do have these clownish figures, you know, sondland and even more so Rudy Giuliani traipsing around, you know, kind of basically trying to manipulate Foreign Governments with no notion of what that means for American Foreign policy or National Security. Well, and to your point, what we just learned from the sondland testimony in addition to confirming this and his style of recollections, which has become a National Punch line is that giuliani was literally trying to ghost write what the ukrainian president was going to do. Giuliani just today has been tweeting out, you know, please never stop tweeting giuliani, hes been tweeting out today everything i did was in my private capacity representing Donald Trumps interests as his lawyer, which you know, thank you for that confession, right . None of this had anything to do with the American National interests. This was all about Donald Trumps personal interests in trying to discredit the Mueller Probe, but the other thing i think thats really interesting about giuliani is, you know, he had these two kind of bumbling figures going around ukraine trying to make some of these introductions, dig up dirt for him, egor furman and lev parnas whos since been arrested. Lev parnas it looks like might cooperate. One thing thats important to keep in mind. They werent working for giuliani. He was working for them. Exactly. And the person who was actually paying them was this oligarch name named furtash, who is a high level echelon associate of russian organized crime. Who while youre at it as weve been reporting on last night also employs the two fox news lawyer analysts who represent solomon who was writing in the hill about the ukraine theory to begin with. Heres where it does get a little bit complicated, but i hope that people can unpack it enough to understand that part of whats going on here is that because our president is so insecure and so credulous and so kind of, you know, em peerically unbound that he can be manipulated by these Sinister Forces that have their own agendas and their own reason for wanting to get rid of somebody like Marie Yovanovitch whos an opponent of corruption in ukraine. You said because of the confessions you hope giuliani never stops tweeting. I want to paraphrase a great film, never stop never stopping. Do you know that one . No, no. No. But it is a real film, i swear. Listen, if anybody has confidence that you only quote real films, it is, in fact, this former senator from missouri. Ill take it. And form r prosecutor, u. S. Senator senator claire mccask l mccaskill, thanks to both of you. Im going to turn to two special guests in washington. Why . We are about to hear from all these witnesses including bill taylor next week in washington. Democrats announcing they will have these open hearings. The first of this whole probe, and i want to bring in pull lit zen prize winner Eugene Robinson from the Washington Post and jo Jonathan Swan from axios. What are these public hearings going to be about . Theyre going to be about building the public case. Building the case to move Public Opinion more in favor of impeachment, and from the democratic perspective, hopefully break the unity that were seeing among republicans. Based on my reporting i was in the capitol today talking to republican senators. Weve been talking to them for the last couple of weeks. Based on the facts that we have right now, i think its quite possible that you lose zero republican senators. There is a world in which they stay completely unified. Maybe you lose one, two or three. There needs to be a fundamental change in dynamics, new facts, persuasio persuasion. The Current Situation for democrats is were heading towards a purely partisan process, which is not what nancy pelosi wants. Thats something that Mitch Mcconnell has clearly been trying to organize his folks around. The impeachment revolution will be televised, and i think jonathans reporting is instructive. Thats why hes here working these sources, but the examples we have from history suggest that there are times where theres unity, unity, unity, until something breaks open in the national consciousness. Thats exactly right, and thats why next week is going to be really big. Its going to be a really important week in this whole the arc of the impeachment drama. You know, as Michelle Goldberg said, you know, you look into anything relating to donald trump and you have to wade through all these clownish figures. I think she said and, you know, on tuesday or tuesday, wednesday, whatever bill taylor testifies, i guess its wednesday, we will hear from someone whos not a clown. We will hear from a a nonclown. A nonclown in 40 years public service, who served his country in vietnam, longtime diplomat, former ambassador to ukraine, brought back by mike pompeo after yovanovitch had been booted by essentially by trump, to take care of the post be kind of caretaker and he saw something that he just felt to his core was wrong, and he did what an experienced bureaucrat does in that moment. He wrote it down. He made a record of it, those texts to Gordon Sondland and ultimately in his testimony. Let me read that to you because it jumped out to us as well. This is from the new testimony we got tonight. Quote, ive always kept careful notes. I keep a little notebook where i take notes on conversations. Yeah. Exactly. I mean, thats what you do because you want to have that record, and, you know, the last thing this white house wants is people who kept good records of what was going on, you know, there are a lot of people in this administration who are allergic to the written word, and who specifically dont want things written down. This is a Public Servant who did write it down and has it there to tell the american public, and this can go a long way towards shaping public understanding and perceptions. Right, of what went down. Of this piece of the process. Of what was going on at the time. If the house is teaming up something that the senate will ultimately judge, theres two ways to look at that sort of firewall you described. One is if it really doesnt move at all, it frees the house up to make whatever broad case they want, that weve reported on members of congress who still think that the president s racial incidents should be in there, mueller obstruction, all sorts of other things, emoluments, whereas if they have a different strategy they might go more narrow. Does your reporting tell us yet anything about those strategy discussions . I think its been partly not partly, largely determined by the time line. People close to the democratic leadership in the house want to get this done by the end of this year, and if thats the case, you really cant broaden this out too far. So my expectation based again, baesed on the reporting that i have today is that theyre going to try and get this wrapped up by the week before christmas. If thats the case, you really cant expand this much wider. I think its very smart to pick taylor as their opening witness. He is the person even though he has secondhand knowledge, you know, hes relying on conversation with people who had firsthand knowledge, he actually has the most comprehensive view of this whole situation. He was this note taker sort of diligently trying to figure things out, and hes actually to tell the story and to start with him i think is quite smart. Hes also someone thats very hard to smear, even though, you know, the president said hes a never trump person. Pompeo hand picked him. You know, hes worked under multiple president s. Hes obviously a war hero. Its very difficult to smear him. So i think that it makes sense that theyre using him first. Fascinating. Jonathan swan and gene robin son from washington, thank you so much. Coming up we have a lot more in the show. Lindsey graham says he wont even read the evidence. Republicans reeling from these new confirmations. Defeats in elections last night, and we have the fox news archive clip that trump may not want anyone to see tonight. Later were going to go live to the roger stone federal courthouse. There were some really important things in this opening argument today. Im going to walk you through them and how donald trump may have lied to bob mueller himself. Im ari melber, youre watching the beat on msnbc . When you pine for the sunshine of a friendly gaze. For the holidays you cant beat home sweet home. The United StatesPostal Service goes the extra mile to bring your holidays home. O ozempic® oh oh announcer people with type 2 diabetes are excited about the potential of onceweekly ozempic®. In a study with ozempic®, a majority of adults lowered their blood sugar and reached an a1c of less than 7 and maintained it. Oh under 7 . announcer and you may lose weight. In the same oneyear study, adults lost on average up to 12 pounds. Oh up to 12 pounds . announcer a twoyear study showed that ozempic® does not increase the risk of major cardiovascular events like heart attack, stroke, or death. Oh no increased risk . announcer ozempic® should not be the first medicine for treating diabetes, or for people with type 1 diabetes or diabetic ketoacidosis. Do not share needles or pens. Dont reuse needles. Do not take ozempic® if you have a personal or Family History of medullary thyroid cancer, multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2, or if you are allergic to ozempic®. Stop taking ozempic® and get medical help right away if you get a lump or swelling in your neck, severe stomach pain, itching, rash, or trouble breathing. Serious side effects may happen, including pancreatitis. Tell your doctor if you have Diabetic Retinopathy or vision changes. Taking ozempic® with a sulfonylurea or insulin may increase the risk for low blood sugar. Common side effects are nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, stomach pain, and constipation. Some side effects can lead to dehydration, which may worsen kidney problems. I discovered the potential with ozempic®. Oh oh oh ozempic® announcer if eligible, you may pay as little as 25 per prescription. Ask your Health Care Provider today about onceweekly ozempic®. Inquiry is entering a new phase. Democrats releasing these Interview Transcripts for the first time that detail in the words of the people involved trumps attempt at bribery plot and also new tonight the first ever dates for the public hearings weve been discussing. Now, some republicans who had called for this exact type of Public Information are now saying they wont even look at the evidence. Im not going to read these transcripts. The whole process is a joke. What i can tell you about the trump policy towards the ukraine. It was incoherent. It depends on who you talk to. They seem to be