republicans as the impeachment inquiry enters a new phase. gop members have submitted requests for testimony from several key figures including the anonymous whistle-blower and joe biden s son hunter. this as the house prepares for the first public testimony in the impeachment inquiry next week. meantime, the white house is pushing back on having other key witnesses appear behind closed doors. acting chief of staff mick mulvaney shirked a subpoena on friday and is now trying to join a lawsuit to avoid testifying all together, this despite testimony from two top level white house officials who put mulvaney right in the middle of the ukraine controversy. cnn s kevin liptack is here with us. what are the names besides hunter biden on this witness list that republicans are putting fort worh? there are eight names on this list and it provides an indication of where republicans want to head. aside from hunter biden, there s another member of the burr ees ma board, that s the ukrainian natural gas company at the center of this controversy. clearly republicans want to probe the propriety of hunter biden s actions in ukraine. there s no evidence of any wrongdoing by either hunter biden or his father joe biden in any of this. they also want to hear from the whistle-blower and all the people that the whistle-blower talked to, clearly looking to find any vulnerabilities in their accounts, trying to find areas where they may not have had direct knowledge of what was going on. they have three names on this list, three u.s. officials, who have already testified in closed depositions. they want to hear from tim morrison who worked on the national security council, kurt volker, the former u.s. essential envoy to ukraine, and david hail, the undersecretary of state for political affairs. these are three witnesses who in their private definitions were said to have provided a more favorable account to president trump of what was going on in ukraine and in ukraine policy. there are two names on this list who indicate that the republicans want to probe these unfounded claims that ukraine somehow interfered in the 2016 u.s. presidential election. one of them is nelly orr. she works for fusion gps. that s the opposition research firm. they also want to hear from a dnc staffer so clearly they want to go down that route as well. now, whether these witnesses actually appear before the committee, it s not a great likelihood. democrats will have to approve of them. they want to probe what president trump actually knew about all of this as it was going on. fred. kevin liptak, thank you so much. with me now, francesca cham beh bers and matthew rosenberg. good to see you both. francesca, you first, this gop request to have the whistle-blower and hunter biden testify in the impeachment inquiry, democrats will likely reject this request, but will this give republicans an opportunity to try to make the case that this impeachment inquiry is simply not fair to the president? well, that s what they re going to try to do but if they re able to get some of the witnesses that they re requesting in front of the committee, then they will have the opportunity to ask some of the questions that the president and the president s lawyers would like them to ask. but the idea of getting the whistle-blower up there is something that, like you said, is not likely to happen, and that s mostly what the president wants. they want to be able to put that person there and ask them about firsthand or even secondhand knowledge and try to make the point that this person really had no idea what was going on in the call. we don t know that but that s the point they want to try and make. matthew, this week will kick off the public hearing phase of the impeachment inquiry. we ll hear firsthand from people who have already testified behind closed doors but first up will be career diplomat bill taylor, and taylor was involved in those text messages that no one can forget with ambassador gordon sondland and it said it s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign, that coming from bill taylor. matthew, how important will bill taylor s testimony be? taylor covers a lot of ground here. from taylor s testimony we learned that he believed it was giuliani s idea who get these investigations to help the president. he spoke a lot in his testimony about this shadow foreign policy, this alternative foreign policy that wasn t about securing america s best interest, it was about securing the president s personal and political interests. look, there s a real difference. we know a lot of what taylor said obviously but there s a real difference between a person getting up there saying it and the way it s captured on camera, broadcast on nightly news that people can really see and kind of reading a transcript and the other side saying these are manipulated, these are cut up. i think that does have the potential to have some real impact here. i wonder if the same applies to say the former ukraine ambassador maria voyovanovitch o was scheduled to testify. in the transcript she did talk about how the president wanted her removed based on a campaign of false claims about her, and then under testimony she said this, quote, what i wanted was the secretary of state to issue a statement that said i have his full confidence or something like that to indicate that, in fact, i am the ambassador in ukraine and that i speak for the president. i was told there was caution about any kind of statement because it could be undermined. that s what she said. then congressman adam schiff asked, by whom? yvonovanovitch replied, the president. francesca, she ll have to, i guess, repeat a lot of that testimony but it will have to be in kind of a more truncated form in order to really resonate with people. that s the downfall about this strategy for republicans of having the public hearings. they wanted them to be public. they didn t want them to be behind closed doors, but now these will be clips that you ll be able to air over and over and over again of these current and former state department and white house officials potentially testifying on capitol hill. she is not one of the people who can directly talk about whether or not there was a quid pro quo so to speak. those are the people who the white house will be more worried about. whether or not a john bolton gets up there, mick mulvaney and even a rudy giuliani later will be of the most importance to both democrats and the white house. then it pertains to a kind of this for that, matthew. george kent will also be testifying publicly and in his transcript kent testified about the president saying potus wanted nothing less than president zelensky to go to the microphone and say investigations biden and clinton. will that underscore that quid pro quo? absolutely. i think the biggest question here is going to be, have the president and his allies done such a good job of convincing their base that this is a deep state plot, these people are all closet trump haters or pro democrat or whatever, that they ve done such a good job of that that no matter what any of these witnesses say, nothing is going to move the needle. then you are in a situation where you need a bolton or giuliani to kind of acknowledge this, and we re going to find out. francesca, can the president try to, you know, be louder, you know, be the megaphone ahead of these transcripts and these potential testimonies? listen to what he said yesterday on the south lawn. i m not concerned about anything. the testimony has all been fine. for the most part i never even heard of these people. i have no idea who they are. they re some very fine people. you have some never trumpers. it seems that nobody has any firsthand knowledge. there is no firsthand knowledge, and all that matters is one thing, the transcript. and the transcript is perfect. i don t know them very well. this sounds really familiar. michael cohen? the president, he recently called the ambassador, gordon sondland, a good man, a great american and now he says he hardly knew him. this is someone who made some pretty significant donations to his campaign and then he got this job. how effectively can the president try to send this message that there s this distance between he and all of these people who say this is what happened? just because gordon sondland gave $1 million to his inaugural committee doesn t mean that he necessarily knows the president very well. what is more concerning is the fact that gordon sondland was on air force one with president trump in may and i recall this because i was on the plane that day. they went down to louisiana and he spoke at an event and he said that sondland is doing a great job, so we know that they at least know each other a little bit. we also know that because sondland calls him up and that s when trump said, according to the documents we already have, that there is no quid pro quo and then he relays that to bill taylor. that was after that five-hour delay from the text of this is crazy stuff and then it was call me and then it was there s no quid pro quo. i have a feeling, by the way, we re going to hear a little more about that today. i don t know if you can hear it but the copter is overhead because the had the is going to be departing soon for another event where he s likely to take questions from reporters. on the way to the big college report reporti game. thank you both. for the first time in two weeks president trump is set to attend a sporting event. sara is in tuss tucaloosa for t game. the president has received mix reactions at sporting events crowd as of recent. why is he confident that he ll get a good reception and that it s pivotal and important for him to attend this game? reporter: it s a huge game, president trump heading here just moments from now. he has attended two other sporting events in the past two weeks. this will be his third, and he has had those mixed reactions at those other games. he went to the game five of the world series in washington, to a ufc fighting championship in madison square garden, had a bit of a mixed reception there, perhaps expecting a better one here. we ve been speaking with folks who are tailgating ahead of this game, and many of them defended the president against the impeachment inquiry that he s facing in the house. take a listen. it s a bunch of bull [bleep]. bottom line, i think they re fishing. it s a fishing expedition. it s been like that for three years now. how much are you following what he s actually being impeached for? something in the ukraine where he told the president to take a look at biden for his misdeeds, why he was in office. if he was corrupt, he was corrupt, put him in jail. did you vote for trump in 2016? absolutely and i ll vote for him again, even if i got to go in there in a wheelchair. crazy. it s just crazy. there s no basis for it. do you think he s being treated fairly? i don t. no? no. what is your understanding of what the impeachment inquiry is about? made-up stuff. we have the transcripts. read the transcripts. reporter: unlike washington and new york city, alabama is trump country. it s a state that he won by nearly 30 points in 2016. this university, the student body government, initially sent an email discouraging disruptions at this game and then later clarified that the student body government did not wish to infringe on anyone s first amendment rights, so fred, we will be watching to see if the president finally gets that friendly reception at the football game today. all right, bring it to us as it happens. sara westwood, thank you so much. still to come in the cnn newsroom, new signs that billionaire and former new york city mayor michael bloomberg could jump into the 2020 race. hear why congresswoman alexandria ocasio-cortez is heading to iowa. born to be wild. born to be wild. 25 cent boneless wings at applebee s. get em while they re hot. it also has the highest growth in manufacturing jobs in the us. it s a competition for the talent. employees need more than just a paycheck. you definitely want to take advantage of all the benefits you can get. 2/3 of employees said that the workplace is an important source for personal savings and protection solutions. the workplace should be a source of financial security. keeping your people happy is what keeps your people. that s financial wellness. put your employees on a path to financial wellness with prudential. for all of the heroes who serve us, t-mobile is here to help serve them. that s why we re offering 50% off family lines for military, veterans and first responders. so they can stay connected, on our newest, most powerful signal ever. and now, we are also offering half off our top samsung phones for military, veterans and first responders. our service is just one way we say thank you. for theirs. geico would like to take a moment to say thank you to our military service members at home and abroad for all their hard work and sacrifice. we all sleep easier knowing you re out there keeping us safe. and on a personal note. sfx: jet engines . i just needed to get that off my chest. thank you. geico: proudly supporting the military for over 75 years. if you re stayingcessful businessat holiday inn.is easy, we re there. so you can be too. only lexus asks questions like these, because we believe the most amazing machines are inspired by you. experience the rewards of our curiosity. billionaire michael bloomberg is positioning himself for a potential presidential run. the former new york mayor has filed paperwork to get on alabama s democratic primary ballot. he also plans to file in arkansas in the democratic primary before the state s tuesday deadline. already bloomberg s potential presidential bid has democratic candidates talking. just hours after bloomberg filed in alabama, senator bernie sanders tweeted this, the billionaire class is scared and they should be. meantime, sanders is out on the campaign trail. today in iowa he is joined by congresswoman alexandria ocasio-cortez who endorsed the senator less than a month ago. this will be the congresswoman s first appearance outside of her home state on behalf of sanders. cnn s ryan nobles is in des moines, iowa. ryan, what kind of reception can we expect for the congresswoman in the midwest, and what is it about this strategy to help the sanders campaign? reporter: fredricka, sorry, a little loud here at drake university where senator sanders and representative alexandria ocasio-cortez are set to hold a climate summit talking about these specific issues that the two of them are aligned with and what they can hope can drum up support for him here in iowa. they had a huge rally in council bluffs on the western side of iowa. alexandria ocasio-cortez telling the crowd this was her first trip ever to iowa and she wanted to come to support bernie sanders in his campaign because she was inspired by his political movement four years ago when he ran for president, and she wants to see him get elected this time around. what s interesting about alexandria ocasio-cortez as a political figure is that she s a superstar. she is a celebrity. she draws out a big crowd in a way that few other politicians can, so the sanders campaign doesn t necessarily see her as expanding their base of support. in other words, bringing people into the fold that weren t already there. but instead they view her as someone that can excite and motivate their base to make sure that they come in caucus and actually right now as we speak, alexandria ocasio-cortez is hitting the streets of des moines, knocking on doors encouraging people to come out and caucus for bernie sanders. as you can see, she draws a big crowd wherever she goes. if you are somebody that s thinking about caucusing and you hear a knock on the door and it s alexandria ocasio-cortez, that s going to get your attention. this endorsement came at a key time, his first trip on the campaign trail after suffering that heart attack and they re hoping the momentum continues over the next few months into the iowa caucus. what we re going to see is sanders essentially doubling down on the big issues that young, prerogatiogres progressi about and that s climate change. they re going to have a day-long summit where different people focusing on the climate change issues are speaking to this crowd and then capped off by a q&a session with sanders and alexandria ocasio-cortez. her first big trip to iowa, evidence as to how you re going to see the sanders campaign use her support as this campaign moves forward. ryan nobles, thank you so much for that. still to come, a warning from an unanimous administration official. a new book about what s happening inside the white house and the shocking things president trump allegedly says behind closed doors. it s time to sell or trade in your car. with truecar, just enter your license plate and see your car s value in real time. sports package and low mileage? 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(announcer) switch now and you ll get access to thousands of tickets on us and get up to $750 toward our best phones. because the network more people rely on gives you more. they can save you these. in fact, if you had a dollar for every time they said it, you d have a lot of dollars. which makes it hard to believe, especially coming from a talking lizard. pip, pip, cheerio! look, all i, dennis quaid, know is that esurance is built to save you dollars without skimping on service. and when they save, you save. the only way to know how much is to get a quote. chances are you ll save time, paperwork, and yes, dollars. when insurance is affordable, it s surprisingly painless. about the explosive accounts in that new book written by an unnamed senior trump administration official titled a warning and it paints a chilling picture of life inside the white house. here s cnn brian todd. we re kicking their ass. reporter: his top officials would wake up in a full blown panic over his tweets. wrking for donald trump at the white house is like showing up at the nursing home at day break to find your elderly uncle running pantsless across the courtyard and cursing loudly about the cafeteria food as worried attendants tried to catch him, only your uncle didn t have to leave the u.s. government once he puts his pants on. these quotes from an explosive book called a warning, exerted by the washington post, some which say will likely drive the president crazy. donald trump as we know is pretty loyalty obsessed and he is, in particular, concerned with this idea of trechry inside the white house. this is a moment where trump is going to be particularly worried that he is surrounded by people he fundamentally can t trust. reporter: the author is the same unnamed person who wrote an op-ed in the new york times last year claiming to be part of a so-called resistance to trump within the white house ranks. it s not clear if the person is still working for the president or has left. according to the post, the book says senior administration officials considered resigning en masse last year to warn the public about president trump s behavior. if it was a lot of them it would have not only affected the actual operations of the government but underscored and made very real one of the big concerns about this administration which is that people are concerned about the president s very erratic nature, and i think it could have had a big impact. reporter: the author says the officials decided against mass resignations, fearing it would destabilize the government even further. the book depicts trump as incompete incompetent, a danger to the country, paranoid of those around him, including note takers and profoundly cruel. be quiet. reporter: the author says trump once spoke with a hispanic accent in the oval office to make fun of migrants across the border and when discussing women, quote, he comments on makeup, makes jokes about weight, critiques clothing, uses words like sweetie and honey. that s the kind of amazing thing about donald trump. he makes racist remarks in private and he makes racist remarks in public. he says anti-woman things in private and he says anti-woman things in public. reporter: the white house is calling the author a coward, saying the book is nothing but lies, a work of fiction. one trump biographer warnings the pushback won t stop there. god help you if you occupy an important position in service to the president and you evidence any lack of loyalty. he s going to come after you hard, and there s no threat that he won t make. reporter: last year when that same author published the anonymous op-ed, the white house went on a mole hunt, a furious effort to out that person with trump said to be obsessed with uncovering the person s identity. analysts say that s likely going on now as well, but according to the post the author claims to be ready to reveal his or her identity in due course. brian todd, cnn, washington. swinging might seem like an outdated term from the 1970s. even today millions of americans have dabbled in what s called the life-style. in this week s episode of this is life lisa ling attend the largest swinger party in the country. here s a sneak peek. as couples filter in for the evening, i sneak a peek at the clientele, leopard print, tight dresses and low neck lines. i m feeling a little overdressed for the occasion. who are these people, like if we saw them outside of here what would they look like? you wouldn t think they re swingers. they come from all occupations, attorneys, teachers, doctors, housewives. it s really just a slice of americana. we got nine grandkids coming tomorrow. it s still sinking in that tonight many of these couples will invite someone else to have sex with their partner. hey, how are you? good to see you. if these club goers are the texas establishment, i get why this happens behind tinted windows. this is going to be fun. all right, for more, watch this is life with lisa ling tomorrow night at 10:00. i m happy to give you the tour, i love doing it. hey jay. jay? charlotte! oh hi. he helped me set up my watch lists. oh, he s terrific. excellent tennis player. bye-bye. i recognize that voice. annie? yeah! she helped me find the right bonds for my income strategy. you re very popular around here. there s a birthday going on. karl! he took care of my 401k rollover. wow, you call a lot. yeah, well it s my money we re talking about here. joining us for karaoke later? 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i don t think so. there s been very little law that addressed this issue. the most recent case was a case where the house asked for the testimony of former white house council under george w. bush, harriet meyers, and the court there rejected this absolute immunity argument saying it would make the branch of government the non co-equal. i m trying to think of the exact language. he said it would put the house at a disadvantage to the executive branch, and he rejected that argument. so the only law on this rejects the executive branch absolute immunity position. i think mulvaney is in a worse case than harriet meyers was because this is in the context of an impeachment where the house has even more powers than it did under the other scenario. so that is the opinion, that if there was that kind of absolute immunity, then that really undermines congressional oversight authority. i mean, the whole checks and balances, if that body cannot talk to people around the president. exactly. and especially so in an impeachment context where the house is essentially proceeding as if it were a judicial body. so that gives even more impetus to the house s argument. interesting. so far no one has testified that they received orders directly from president trump, but there is this. take a listen. china should start an investigation into the bidens because what happened to china is just about as bad as what happened with ukraine. what you just described as a quid pro quo. it is funding will not flow unless the investigation into the democratic server happened as well. we do that all the time with foreign policy. i have news for everybody, get over it, there s going to be political influence in foreign policy. so with that, in addition, do lawmakers need, michael, direct orders from the president in order to establish abuse of powers? no. they can get that information derivatively from the president through his advisers. it was quite clear in the nixon impeachment that nixon spoke toto to ir lickman and other advisers, mitchell and holdman, and there was no immunity from president nixon for that criminal behavior. likewise here. if the president is behind this scheme to extract a behavior from the ukraine before anything would proceed militarily or as a matter of white house appearance, then it doesn t make a difference that it didn t come directly out of the mouth of the president. and that perfect call transcript, he used the words, do me this favor. so attorneys for the president s former national security adviser, john bolton, are dropping hints to the white house and to lawmakers saying that bolton has relevant information to share but he ll only testify if forced to. so how important, a, could bolton testimony s be, and can he set these kind of conditions like that? well, he shouldn t be able to set these sort of conditions. bolton who s an honorable guy, conservative thinker but nonetheless honorable, should understand that the president s adviser does not enjoy absolute immunity as we just discussed and in the context of an impeachment he should come forward. that said, if he doesn t choose to do so, the house should enforce a subpoena against him and try require his testimony. i think that this gam bit of waiting for the judiciary to decide is a delay tactic and should not be acceptable. all right, michael zeldin, thank you so much. thanks, fred. coming up next, berlin celebrates 30 years since the fall of the berlin wall. cnn is near what is left of that wall. my joints. they hurt. the pain and swelling. the psoriasis. cosentyx treats more than just the joint pain of active psoriatic arthritis. it even helps stop further joint damage. don t use if you re allergic to cosentyx. before starting, get checked for tuberculosis. an increased risk of infections and lowered ability to fight them may occur. tell your doctor about an infection or symptoms, if your inflammatory bowel disease symptoms develop or worsen, or if you ve had a vaccine or plan to. serious allergic reactions may occur. get real relief, with cosentyx. only roomba i7+ uses two multi-surface rubber brushes. and picks up more pet hair than other robot vacuums. and the filter captures 99% of dog and cat allergens. if it s not from irobot, it s not a roomba™. anyoonly marco s can deliver america s most loved pizza. hot and fresh, and right to your door. every day, get two medium, one-topping pizzas for just $6.99 each. hello to america s most loved pizza. hello marco s. for all of the heroes who serve us, t-mobile is here to help serve them. that s why we re offering 50% off family lines for military, veterans and first responders. so they can stay connected, on our newest, most powerful signal ever. and now, we are also offering half off our top samsung phones for military, veterans and first responders. our service is just one way we say thank you. for theirs. happening right now, germany is marking 30 years since the fall of the berlin wall. celebrations are taking place at the city s brandonburg gate where earlier today german chancellor angela merkel today part in more somber ceremonies. the wall was built in 1961 and marks the split between the east and west, but on november 9, 1989, people from both sides swarmed to chip away, tearing down that wall that divided the city of berlin and that paved the way for eventual reunification. cnn s fred pleitgen is near the application of celebrations. what s happening? reporter: hi there, fredricka. they do have lots of those celebrations. tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands at the brandonburg gate. this is one of the final stretches of the berlin wall that actually still stands. it s called the east side gallery, and as you can see there are a lot of folks who have turned out here to also take part in those celebrations and celebrate the wall going down. now, you re absolutely right, the mood was a little more somber today than it has been, for instance, anniversary five years ago in the past where a lot of folks are saying right now, that feeling of freedom, that feeling of unity in germany and in europe is something that can t be taken for granted anymore. of course some of the political developments you ve seen here in europe with the rise of the far right wing in places like germany, in other countries as well, brexit, a lot of folks also speaking about some of the political divisions in the united states saying, look, channel that feeling of 1989 in berlin, that feeling where the folks in east germany went and just pushed through that wall and essentially made it go away and try not to lose that feeling today. that s certainly the message that this city, they say, is trying to send out to the world and to the many places where they feel that unity and freedom might be in jeopardjeopardy. fred, while you were talking there were a few people behind you near that car and there are still people there, but there were folks taking pictures. what s the significance of that? reporter: so the car is actually our own car. this is the cnn car and few people know that one of the main attractions here in berlin is actually our own car. so this was the epitome of communist east german automotive engineering. it s made of pvc plastic, the entire shell, and 40 horsepower and this is basically what people were driving and also what a lot of people drove through the berlin wall, through the gates when they opened, so it became an iconic picture. i m 6 5 . i actually drive this car. i ve been wanting to show you this for a very long time because getting in is an adventure in itself. i basically have to get like this. the legs are the biggest problem and then i just try to go like this oh, no way. that s what it looked like in east germany. it s a stick shift. can you imagine four guys my size going on holiday? it s very difficult because my legs are up here. it s difficult. that is not advisable. somehow it works. that cannot be safe for you. not for anyone probably over six feet. reporter: i can t get out but this is basically what it was like. you re going to have to roll out of there. but safely. fred pleitgen, we ll let you do that in commercial break. thank you so much. still to come, a new study from the u.s. secret service and what it says about how to prevent school shootings, but first, meet one of this year s top ten cnn heros who is giving donkeys a second chance at life. donkeys speak to my soul. that lip will come loose, won t it? 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they have also now conducted a comprehensive study on protecting americas schools. the u.s. secret service national threat assessment reports show most school attackers showed warning signs and many of out mass shootings could have been prevented. it is the most comprehensive review of school attacks since the column bine shootings since 1999. most of the attackers had mental health issues and they were bullied in school. they also found disciplinary issues at school and run ins with law enforcement. most of the attackers warned of inthreat threaten or kill. jonathan, what jumped out to you? it is a very comprehensive report, timing i think it key on this. they did not release this report in the aftermath of some sort of crisis. so that is indicating that this report is looking towards preventive issues, not reactive. a couple of things that really stuck out to me were the fact that there is not one single profile of a student attacker. they come from all types of walks of life. that coupled with multiple motivational vak tors thfactors place in this. i think that is where law enforcement has the challenge that there is not one single solution that will solve for targeted school violence, but this report does show some commonality around the 4 is 1 incidents they assessed. and to me one of the biggest indicators is, what you highlighted here, almost in every single incident the attacker had communicated his or her intent to cause harm. and i think that is something that law enforcement and school officials need to focus on in the future. how might this study be able to help in the prevention of attacks? the secret service has laid out a really comprehensive model of how to address this is a strategy, it s not one single solution. and discuss from school go administrators how to have that model. so how do you do that in the school environment? what you need to do is bring forth a multidisciplinary approach to that success. they have mental health practice practitioners. so you need to bring that all togeth together. we tried to see other indicators. here the secret service is indicating all of that for you. if you follow the model you can prevent the tragic events from happening in the future. by addressing things in advance of them transcending into a violent act. so important all of this information, thank you so much. thank you, fred. all right, i ll be right back at the top of the hour with more on the impeachment inquiry and what president trump has to say about public hearings. celebrating a successful business trip together is easy, if you re staying at holiday inn. we re there. so you can be too. but a company develops a way by tto actually attack it.in, what drew me to capital allocation in health sciences was the potential to help many people through investments that help fund medical innovation. my team and i often choose to invest at the very early stages of human trials. investing lets me use everything i ve learned as a doctor to help make a positive impact. so that s why i go beyond the numbers. verizon up gave us tickets to the super bowl! we were able to meet shawn mendes. verizon got me into the nfl combine. they don t even sell tickets to this thing. 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51% of registered voters want donald trump to be impeached and moved from office, up nine points since july. that is something the white house and the president should certainly be troubled about. and as far as his business with joe biden, it says only 36% find it deeply troubling about the president bringing up his son s dealings with the ukraine and china. 36 puts it at just about a little shy of the trump base. it being fox news, it s a little bit relevant. good for them for having the gumption to put out a number like that. but it still keeps a high bar on the democrats. this is a good play for trumpets to say, what s the crime, what s the crime? i can argue all day that it s not what impeachment was contemplating. it s not about a crime. but it still sounds good. yeah. and you need bipartisan buy-in, and that could be enough to keep from getting it. there s also nothing in the constitution that says they have to do what matt schlapp is saying and what other republicans are saying. no, schlapp was a little schlappy tonight, a little sloppy with the arguing. i like to have him on the show. it s important to have that voice. but the republicans changed the rule that guide how subpoenas are done, and the house has to do nothing. and the rights that he wants are present in a trial, not in the investigatory phase. yeah. well, you got it. listen, i got to tell you, this poll for me, especially coming from fox news and from republicans, registered voters which includes republicans, that is a very big deal. i m not sure if the tide is turning, but this poll, i think people are watching the polls to see exactly what happens. look, politicians do that. i would argue they should not. i would argue they re not just an echo, but it does show that it s getting traction. you will see the president respond to that. he s very responsive to feedback. but it still keeps pressure on the democrats. impeachment was not supposed to be a majority push-through. it may be the only time, though, that fox news viewers or conservative viewers see anything that has to do with what is actually going on when it comes to the situation with ukraine and this president. i ll tell you something to watch. yeah. he made his party so angry with what he did in syria. i wonder if it doesn t bleed over into their reckoning of how he uses or abuses his office. turkey meets with russia. then he gets a call from the head of turkey, and all of a sudden he changes policy. there s a lot going on. we re going to talk about all of it. see you chris. nice show. this is cnn tonight. i m don lemon. here is our breaking news right now. the president s new impeachment strategy you ready? seems to be lashing out at his own party. a source telling cnn he is going after republican senators that he sees as disloyal or even he may see them as insufficiently supportive. he s calling leader mitch mcconnell up to three times a day with panicked demands to rally the troops. mcconnell has reportedly told a handful of people about the president s call. just one day after the white house declared war on the impeachment inquiry, democrats are launching their own. they re launching a counteroffensive with what could be an avalanche of subpoenas, multiple rudy giuliani associates are in congress sights tonight along with state department officials including that ex-ambassador to the ukraine, marie yovanovitch. she is scheduled to appear for an interview. that s supposed to happen on friday. but there are real questions about whether she ll be allowed to testify. remember the last person wasn t allowed to go and testify or give depositions. questions that secretary of state mike pompeo is continuing to just dodge. mr. secretary, will ambassador yovanovitch be allowed to appear at her deposition on friday? so this is happening as sources tell cnn a few influential democrats, a few of them, well, they think it makes sense to hold a formal vote on the impeachment inquiry, something that house speaker nancy pelosi has been avoiding. the president today definitely speaking out. watch this. if pelosi holds a vote on the floor on impeachment and dmcomms to the rules of previous impeachment proceedings, you ll participate in that investigation? yeah, if the rules are fair because i don t know i don t know exactly your definition. if the rules are fair. funny, that letter from the white house counsel yesterday didn t mention that. it didn t mention anything about the president cooperating if the house takes a vote. well, maybe it s not so funny. after all, this is the president who told us time and time and time again that he was looking forward to speaking with robert mueller and then said it was up to his attorneys. then he didn t do it. i ve said it before. he sure has learned lessons from the mueller investigation. this is happening as cbs news is reporting that rudy giuliani is attacking the source who told the whistle-blower about that ukraine call. remember that source is a white house official, okay? giuliani calling that official a, quote, poor little sissy. a poor little sissy for being shaken by the president s call and adding, i hope he is in a mental hospital. ladies and gentlemen, the attorney for the president of the united states. a poor little sissy. i hope he s in a mental hospital. and there s new impeachment poll tonight to tell you about that is really bad news for the president of the united states. i just talked about it with chris. this one is from fox news. yep, it s from fox news. this may be the only way that viewers of the president s favorite network get a dose of reality. the poll finds that just over half of the voters, 51%, they want president trump not only impeached but removed from office. that s a new high for this poll, up from 42% in july. and at a time when the president needs all the allies he can get, he is infuriating republicans by allowing turkey to attack u.s. allies in syria, trying to defend his actions by saying the kurds didn t help us during world war ii. the kurds are fighting for their land just so you understand. they re fighting for their land. and as somebody wrote in a very, very powerful article today, they didn t help us in the second world war. they didn t help us with normandy as an example. they mentioned names of different battles. okay. just so you know, a little history lesson here. the kurds didn t help us fight world war ii, didn t help us with normandy. for starters, they didn t live in europe. you know where they do live? they live in syria, among other places in the middle east. you know who they do help us fight? they help us fight isis. they help us fight isis on the ground, and they do it very successfully at the cost of thousands and thousands of kurdish lives. and then this president just abandons them. it s disgraceful. and in the face of all this, the president of the united states, the most powerful man in the world, is repeatedly playing the victim here, the victim in chief, the victim in chief, interrupting himself multiple times today while reading an executive order to joke/not joke about how unfairly he thinks he s being treated. guidance has frequently been used to subject u.s. citizens and businesses to arbitrary and sometimes abusive enforcement actions. ha, it sounds like they re talking about me. i think they re talking about me. i think you might be speaking about me or to me. no american should ever face such persecution from their own government, except perhaps your president. don t feel bad, kevin. they treated you better than they treat me. i do believe that s true. the man can t even read from an executive order without making it all about himself. i said he s playing the victim, but this is really no game. this is a president of the united states reacting to congressional oversight, which is mandated by the constitution. reacting to that oversight is as if it was a personal insult is what he s doing. this is a president who really doesn t seem to believe in the separation of powers, the foundation of our democracy. he thinks all the power rests with him. then i have an article ii where i have the right to do whatever i want as president, but i don t even talk about that. you know, part of playing the victim, the victim in chief, is this president s obsession with his predecessor, president barack obama. he did it again today. i want to thank president obama for leaving us 138 empty slots. well, he s talking about judicial vacancies left over from the obama administration, a number that he can t quite get a handle on. so he s actually trying to blame his predecessor for leaving vacancies on the bench when, let s remember, it was mitch mcconnell who refused to even consider barack obama s supreme court nomination of merrick garland, insisting until waiting after the election. and there s more of this president s obama obsession, tweeting, quote, why is someone a good or great president if they needed to spy on someone else s campaign in order to win, even though there s absolutely no evidence that the obama administration ever spied on the trump campaign. in that same tweet, he is harping on judgeships again, this time claiming there were 142. the brooking institution says that number was actually 104. and you got to hear this. the man the president wanted ukraine to dig up dirt on, setting off the impeachment inquiry, is fighting back, his democratic front-runner, joe biden. he s fighting back for the first time, calling for the president to be impeached. with his words and his actions, president trump has indicted himself by obstructing justice, refusing to comply with the congressional inquiry. he s already convicted himself in full view of the world and the american people. donald trump has violated his oath of office, betrayed this nation, and committed impeachable acts. you know [ applause ] to preserve our constitution, our democracy, our basic integrity, he should be impeached. i told you about this president s increasingly frantic efforts to get his party in line. will it work? 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when i needed to jumpstart sales. build attendance for an event. help people find their way. fastsigns designed new directional signage. and got them back on track. get started at fastsigns.com. . president trump clearly feeling the heat from the expanding impeachment inquiry and leaning on senate majority leader mitch mcconnell to keep his party in lockstep. i want to bring in now kirsten powers and max boot. max is the author of the corrosion of conservatism: why i left the right. good evening to both of you. good to see you. good to see you. so he s calling mitch mcconnell, max, reportedly as many as three times a day, tweeting all night. he is consumed by this impeachment inquiry even though when he talks to the media, he pretends like it s no big deal. which in some ways might be for the best, don, because you think what he does when he actually focuses on policy. he creates disasters wherever he goes. i wish he were more consumed with impeachment on sunday night rather than having a phone call with erdogan which led him to pull u.s. troops out of northern syria and allow the slaughter of our kurdish allies. but there is no question trump is consumed with impeachment. we were actually discussing this in the green room earlier. some people suggest maybe trump actually wants meempt because he thinks it will rally his base. it may rally his base, but i don t think he wants to go down in history as only the third president in 230 years to be impeached. he is flipping out over impeachment. he does not want this to happen. that s why he s calling mitch mcconnell so incessantly. and keeping gop senators in line is what he wants to do. i think the end game, he knows if he s going to be removed from office, kirsten he s not going to be removed from office. but what s the strategy here? we actually disagree on this because i actually think you know, whether it s you know, maybe he goes back and forth and starts to freak out like if he sees this fox news poll, for example, although most republicans still don t support impeach and remove. it was only 13% in the fox news poll. you know, he is losing some independents. but i think he thrives in chaos, and he likes to create chaos. and i think that he believes that they wouldn t be pushing they wouldn t be pushing for this vote if they didn t think it was going to work to their benefit. there s no reason to do that. i think on some level he does believe that it will work against the democrats. they particularly want to get them on the record, right, so that the democrats who are in districts that trump won could be in peril. so i m not saying that he s right that it works to his advantage, but i do thivel, the that thinks that it works and maybe he freaks out because he feels like he s losing control. but we just disagree. i don t think he thinks about what s going to be in my obituary. i don t think that s how trump thinks. interesting. you don t think he thinks what is his legacy going to be. reportedly, max, he s saying he s going to we ve seen the last shot at gop, right, people who don t support him. but supposedly he s going to amp that up. that s what he reportedly told mitch mcconnell. how much will the gop continue to allow these sort of attacks on their members? are they just that, sort of feckless and they don t i would say, yes, they are that feckless and craven. they have no backbones. they have long ago given up any pretense of political courage or principle. they occasionally will kick back at trump over something like syria bau syria but that s only because they know it s basically a cost-free sound bite because attacking trump on syria policy is not going to lead to any blowback in their districts. it s not going to lead to trump creating primary challenges. but they re not going to go against trump on the existential issue over whether he should remain in office or not, and that s very sad because the evidence is overwhelming that trump has violated his oath of office. he has invited foreign election interference. he has misused his power for personal political gain. if any democrat had done this, every single republican would be calling not just for impeachment but for capital punishment, but they just have no principles when it comes to trump. i m prepared to be pleasantly surprised, and i would be if you see even a handful of republican members in either chamber voting for impeachment. but i think the vast majority of republicans are just utterly spineless in standing up for the rule of law. they re just going to give trump whatever he wants. which is why you left the right. exactly. that s it. they have no principles. why do you think the former vice president now, who is also running for president, why is he now saying, okay, he should be impeached because he held off for a long time. well, i mean i think, look, for one thing the public seems to be in support of this. if you have 51% of people in a fox news poll supporting this, then that shows that the polls are moving against the president. so i think it s a fairly safe position to take. it s also just fundamentally the right position to take, right? i think that this is such an open and shut case. it s so obviously, and that s why what you re saying about republicans is so accurate but also so concerning because it s just something that there s just no question that trump did something absolutely outside the bounds of what a president should be doing. and it s absolutely an impeachable offense. there s just no question. right. and if they don t impeach him for this, you got to ask, what would they consider to be impeachable conduct? well, i was going to i wanted to ask, as i see the apologists for the president, especially on conservative media, they seem gleeful in their ignorance. yeah, that s a great way to put it. what is so gleeful about being ignorant or about misleading the public? well, that s i mean that s the reason why they re promulgating these crazy conspiracy theories and saying things that are flat-out untrue. they re repeating trump s claim that the transcript of the phone call refutes the whistle-blower s account, which is false. it actually confirms the whistle-blower s account in every point. they can t argue on the facts because the facts are against them, and so they re just making things up. they re just making things up out of thin air just to say stuff and basically, you know, trying these schoolyard taunts like, you re not going to impeach me. i m going to impeach you. what they do is make things up and they continue. they don t let the interviewer get the question out and they continue to make things up and just go on to the next thing. what about this, and what about this, and what about the fbi? you re like, that has nothing to do with anything. because they have no argument. they need to say something to convince their rabid base to stick with the president. even the underlying claim by trump about biden is so easily disprovable, right? i mean it s not there s a letter from bipartisan senators, republicans and democrats, having the same position that biden had. thank you both. i appreciate it. joe biden blasting president trump tonight and making his first public call for impeachment. i m going to ask the co-chair of the biden campaign, congressman cedric richmond, why now? t to cf of the ivory billed woodpecker. what??? no, no no no no. battery power runs out. lifetime retirement income from tiaa doesn t. guaranteed monthly income for life. nooooo! performance comes in lots of flavors. 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well, yeah. the house is doing a legitimate inquiry into impeachment, and if the president is not going to comply with turning over documents, telling people to ignore subpoenas, then you are obstructing a legitimate investigation of congress. you re abusing your power. and so at that point i think that you leave us no choice. they say they want you guys to vote, though. what do you think of that? they want you guys to vote and make it official so to speak. look, that s their talking point this week. the constitution nor the house rules require us to take a vote before we open an impeachment inquiry. and so this is what usually happens. president trump will give the talking points. we know that he and facts don t live on the same universe. once he says it, all of the republicans, like a choir, will just repeat it no matter how absurd it is, no matter how untrue it is. they re just going to repeat those facts over and over again. and i m just looking forward to the day that in a bipartisan manner, both republicans and democrats look at it for what it is, and that is just lies and untruths. well, he says he s going to cooperate earlier if the democrats would authorize a vote. watch this. do we have it? we would if they give us our rights. it depends. if they vote and say you can t have lures. you can t ask questions. you can t have anybody present, all of these crazy things do you believe that this white house is going to start cooperating meaningfully with congress? absolutely not. this white house and all of the cabinet secretaries that are still there know one thing deep down in their heart. that they broke the law, that the evidence is there to prove it, and under no circumstances is this president going to turn over the evidence that clearly shows he broke the law. for example, the transcript of the telephone call, a 30-minute telephone call, and they only turn over 2,000 words. where s the word-for-word transcript? hidden in a vault somewhere so that people will never see it. so i don t trust this administration. i m not even sure if republicans trust this administration. they re just too scared to buck their president because he wields so much power within the republican party. i want to get a quick answer before we run out of time. i recently asked david plouffe his thoughts on how biden should handle the attacks on him and his son hunter. here s what he said. i would take advantage of that. even if you re going to get tough questions about your son, i think those are easily handled. this is a phony, you know, scandal that trump s trying to create, and just say that he s afraid of me. so go toe for toe, i d be out there more than he is and trying to seize this moment, which doesn t come along very often in a crowded primary field. you ve got the opportunity, i think, to elevate. so i would seize it. what do you think of that? is that what joe biden is doing today? i think david has a legitimate point, and then at the same time, you have to realize that this vice president hates bullies. and i think that president trump has finally crossed that line, and so vice president biden is going to square off with him. and i think it is because donald trump is afraid. all of this stuff started when the polls started showing joe biden beating trump by over ten points. that s when the telephone calls started and all the other things. so, yes, we re going to take him straight on. we re going to do exactly what you do with a bully, and that s punch him in the mouth and expose him for what he is, a weak and scared person. and i think that vice president biden is prepared to do that and today started a very direct confrontation with a guy who abuses his power and picks on people. congressman richmond, thank you for your time. i appreciate it. thank you. president trump panicking over the impeachment inquiry with one source telling cnn that he is calling mitch mcconnell up to three times a day to lock down loyalty from republicans. but will all this lead to a gop backlash? 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what s your reaction to that? i think there s a huge difference between the news part of fox news like brett bair and chris wallace, who i think are very good. and the prime-time shows, which apparently don t report on the polling that fox news does, which by the way, is also quite good. that is part of the story here. we really live in a world now where there are certain people who don t actually get information. you know, you could if you only watched fox news, you might be unaware of a lot of things. iwell, matt, hold on. you remember the woman from the interview who was at the town hall, and she didn t know there was anything negative about the president in the mueller report. remember? because she said she watches fox news. i mean i haven t flipped over there tonight, but, you know, the big story today has been how donald trump has abandoned the kurds and fox news on twitter has done some really good reporting from some of their foreign policy experts, talking to american soldiers and people in special forces who are very demoralized and saying that we ve hung these allies out to dry. i don t know if fox on twitter? is covering that or not on their prime time shows. oh, you said you saw it on twitter but okay. i haven t paid attention this evening, the full evening, because i m actually in here. by the way, that s part of what ana was just saying. it s not just the ukraine story that was a huge story, and i think worthy of impeachment in my personal opinion. but then it turns out he had a conversation like this with china. turns out there s diplomats who were texting about this. and then it turns out he abandons our allies, the kurds, and hangs them out to dry to be massacred by turkey. so if you re a republican, it s like maybe you could sustain the ukraine story, but every day trump does something else or there s another shoe to drop. ana, you know the one place that the poll is featured in conservative media? that s the front page of the drudge report. cnn is learning that influential conservative matt drudge is souring on the president. another crack in the teflon armor, you think? look, i think they want to send him a message. i think that finally after three years of complicit silence and cowardice, some republicans have found their spine, reacquainted themselves with their conscience and traditional republican values and are actually speaking out against trump. the problem is trump thinks he owns them. he thinks he owns them the way i own my four-pound poodle, who can t live without me, who won t eat without me. so he thinks he can get away with doing anything he wants with or without republicans and congress approving of it or not because they need him to win their primaries, and they need him to win their elections, and because they ve let him get away with it for three years. this is a guy who boasted of sexual assault and they supported him, who paid hush money to a stripper and they supported him, who has enriched himself and violated emoluments clause, and they ve supported him, who has a $1 trillion deficit, raised it to a $1 trillion deficit, and they ve said nothing about it. so they have stood by a guy who has eviscerated traditional republican values for three years, and finally they find their voice, and he doesn t care. he doesn t care because he doesn t need them. hmm, interesting. matt, just before we go, i just want to talk about the other big story. right now cnn is reporting the president is telling mitch mcconnell that he s going to amplify his attacks on republicans who criticize him. you say if president trump s behavior isn t impeachable, then nothing is impeachable. why do you say that? well, i just i d like to know so right now by the way, i m one of the few people you ll meet who thinks there s a chance that there will be 20 republicans. i m not predicting it. i wouldn t bet on it, but i think there s a chance. we can go down the list. so you re saying there s a chance? i m saying there s a chance like jim carrey. i wrote about this at the daily beast. i think donald trump is obviously very, very nervous about this, and he is doing everything he can to push back against it. but, you know, you go through. there are people retiring like lamar alexander. you ve got people like mitt romney who actually might do this because of principle. you ve got people like mike lee, who live in utah. he can get away with it, and he s a constitutional conservative. you ve got people like lisa murkowski, who won a write-in campaign in alaska. she can do whatever she wants. so i actually think there s a shot that republicans can get their act together. and, look, if the vote was held today, maybe not. but every day something else comes out. donald trump is the chaos candidate as i think jeb bush once said. you know what? in 2016, maybe we wanted a little chaos. we wanted some excitement. i think after three years, maybe we want to calm things down a little bit. it s called the republican senators most likely to turn on trump. thank you. yeah. by matt lewis. i appreciate it. and who he doesn t have on the list are some of the ones in swing states with really tough races. thank you very much. i appreciate both of you. i ll see you soon. guess who s back? laura coates is here right now. she s hosting a special hour tonight, the white house in crisis, the impeachment inquiry, coming up right after this show at 11:00. what do you have for us? don, i am very excited. we re going to have preet bharara on tonight. he s got an exclusive interview with george conway for his podcast called stay tuned with preet. conway is both one of the president s harshest critics but also the husband of white house counsel to the president, kellyanne conway, and he s got some, let s say, really interesting things to say about the president s fitness for office and also how he thinks democrats should be responding to the president s stonewalling. so i cannot wait for that. i can t wait to see it. we ll see you at the top of the hour in just a few minutes here. house democrats planning a new wave of subpoenas, but how do they get around the white house that won t comply? 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julian epstein is here as well. so good to have both of you here. secretary pompeo said they are directing the response and the state department is going to take its cues from the white house. if the white house fails to comply with it, who bears that responsibility, the president or secretary pompeo. executive of privilege is a very thinly veiled reason, it would be the white house. if it was the secretary of state, he would have to come up with a reason. in either case, they re not going to have a very good argument. i think the tell here is that the white house has made the decision that obstruction is a better strategy than cooperation. why? because if they cooperate, i think the white house and the administration realizes there is all the appearances here of a massive cover-up involving not just the white house, the state department, the intelligence agencies, the foreign service. if they cooperate, things are going to get much worse for them. poll numbers are probably going to go down and the plot is going to thicken. if they don t cooperate, and this is their calculation, what they do is essentially they try to shut off the information flow and they try to call nancy pelosi s hand sooner rather than later on an impeachment vote, hoping that she hasn t rounded up the votes or that the numbers the polling numbers haven t switched against them in a different way. we re at a tipping point right now and the white house feels like this is getting away from them, so their strategy is to try to obstruct an impeachment vote as quickly as possible. everyone wonders what happens next because you have zero expectations that the white house will comply with the subpoenas. how do they enforce them? no way will they comply. they made it crystal clear in a letter. even if nancy pelosi holds a vote for impeachment inquiry, it won t matter. i think the democrats need to play hardball. a, get it right into the courts, get it expedited. get it to the supreme court. that s what happened in the nixon case. the problem is that takes time and time is not there for the democrats. say, fine, you re going to obstruct. we don t need you. we have enough to impeach and we re going to add an article for obstruction. i think he s right and i think there are people inside the state department that want to talk, and committees right now are going to find people willing to talk. there is a lot of exposure for a lot of officials for obstruction of justice and all kinds of potential crimes. i think what the committees are going to do is build the case with the material they have, and they have material. i watched chris cuomo s show and he goes on every night about whether there were crimes committed here. there were clear crimes, bribery statutes, misappropriation of funds, obstruction of justice. i could name half a dozen statutes. campaign finance laws. i could name half a dozen statutes here that were violated. what the democrats are going to have to do if the republicans play this obstruction game is they re going to have to make this public case that not only was this corruption, this was illegal conduct. this was, i think, perhaps one of the most unpatriotic things a u.s. president has ever done followed only by the unconstitutional thumb nosing at the united states congress. the democrats have done a pretty good job making that case, but they ll have to get the numbers up to 50 and 60 before they move with impeachment. the secretary under fire tweeting an image in support of the men and women who serve in the military. the only problem, one of those groups isn t in the photo at all. day 23. we re about to catch the proof of the ivory-billed woodpeculiarer. lifetime retirement income from tiaa doesn t. guaranteed monthly income for life. nooooo! guaranteed monthly income for life. oh, come on. flo: don t worry. you re covered. 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(vo) quickbooks. backing you. to the wait did frowe just win-ners. prouders everyone uses their phone differently. that s why xfinity mobile let s you design your own data. now you can share it between lines. mix with unlimited, and switch it up at anytime so you only pay for what you need. it s a different kind of wireless network designed to save you money. save up to $400 a year on your wireless bill. plus get $250 back when you buy an eligible phone. call, click, or visit a store today. take this. take this image from the oval ofls. it s from a sweet by the secretary of defense, ma mark esper. thank you for hosting me at the dinner at the white house and for leadership and for support for the incredible men and women who serve the nation at home and abroad. take another look at this picture. do you see what s missing? for starters, women. even though women make up 16% of the active duty military force, and they re not the only ones missing. what about a person of color? i know a person can t tell us everything in everyone who is in the room, can t tell us if there was a white race or the ethnicity. it s not something that can be seen. but there is no doubt that the leadership in that photo does not represent the demographics of the men and women who serve our country. the d.o.d. says about 47% of active duty service members identify as a racial or ethnic minority. so if nearly a fifth of our active duty military are women and almost half are minorities, would you know that by looking at this image? they should be represented. thanks for watching, everyone. our live coverage continues right now with the white house in crisis, the impeachment inquiry, with laura coates. laura, tell us what you have tonight. i want to comment on that photo if we can. it s so important to think about our armed forces, and right now when the commander in chief is being asked a number of questions, it would have been nice to have some representation there, wouldn t you think? it would have been nice to have some representation. you can t tell the ethnicity, if everyone is white, but it certainly does not make up our men and women in uniform, what they look like. wynn that they are mostly minorities, and i think that the president of the uni
by killing qassem soleimani, the head of the iranian revolutionary guard corps kuds force, a u.s. designated foreign terrorist organization. general soleimani was actively developing plans to attack american diplomats and service members in iraq and throughout the region. general soleimani and his quds force were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of american and coalition service members and the wounding of thousands more. he orchestrated attacks on coalition bases in iraq over the last several months including the attack on december 27th, culminating in the death and wounding of additional american and iraqi personnel. general soleimani also approved the attacks on the u.s. embassy in baghdad that took place this week. the strike was aimed at deterring future iranian attack plans. the united states will continue to take all necessary action to protect our people and our interests wherever they are around the world. now this from the president a few moments ago. he tweeted just an image of an american flag. we re covering every aspect of this story from iraq to washington. cnn s arwa damon is in baghdad. ryan brown is at the pentagon. jim sciutto is here in new york. boris sanchez is with the president in florida. let s start here with jim. you ve been following this all night. what are your sources telling you? i think americans have to understand how significant a figure soleimani was in iran. arguably, the second most powerful man in all of iran after the supreme leader. from the american perspective, rightly so, a terrorist leader. responsible for the deaths of hundreds of u.s. soldiers in iraq. iran shipped in highly sophisticated ieds responsible for so many of the deaths of u.s. troops there. in iran, he is seen as a revered military leader. there were some in iran who thought he might be the next leader of iran. so, he had enormous respect and position there. that gets at both his power, in terms of orchestrating these attacks against americans around the region, but it also gets at how iran is going to see this and how iran may very well react to this in terms of retaliation. speaking with officials who cover the region for the pentagon tonight, a key concern are u.s. diplomats and soldiers deployed not just in iraq but around the region. the quds force that soleimani led, it s a terrorist organization with positions and abilities and capabilities around the world. so not just u.s. diplomats and soldiers deployed in iraq but elsewhere. could be vulnerable tonight in terms of retaliation. so, hugely significant for iran. hugely significant for eliminating a leader responsible for enormous number of u.s. deaths but also hugely significant because we can expect as a country, as americans, retaliation here, escalation. that should be a major concern. that s the point, you re going to be with us all night, that i want tole to back to, a line in the statement in which we hear that this was an intent to deter future attacks and how realistic that will be. let s go to arwa now in baghdad. what are you hearing on the ground about this shelling as it s described, how it happened, what happened, and what we know at this hour. well, victor, it s being better described as a precision targeting of what it would seem to be from the images that we re seeing two vehicles who were hit just on the outskirts of baghdad s international airport. when these reports first came out it was initially reported as being three katusha rockets. now we know that that convoy contained not just qassem soleimani, the head of the quds force, but also a very prominent commander here, a member of what s known as iraq s popular mobilization force. this is a predominantly shia paramilitary force. the leader of kataeb hezbollah, that, victor, is the very same group that the u.s. had targeted on sunday, and it is members of, or supporters of, this paramilitary force who were the protesters who were outside of the u.s. embassy, who were attempting to scale those walls. i think one of the many reasons why what has unfolded is so shocking to a certain degree is that it seemed as if at least on a very temporary, perhaps, superficial level, the situation had reached a standstill in the sense that those protesters had withdrawn, they were going to be allowing the iraqi parliament time to go through the motions that it needed to go through to begin debating a bill about the potential u.s. troop withdrawal from iraq. this targeting of qassem soleimani and of the head of kataeb hezbollah really puts us right now, victor, in uncharted territory. let s take that now to ryan brown at the pentagon. uncharted territory, we hear from arwa damon. what are you hearing from your sources at the pentagon and what they re expecting, i think what we ve heard from jim and from arwa, there will likely be some retaliati retaliation. what are you hearing about the preparation for that? well, it s interesting, victor, i think before this strike took place, the pentagon had been moving significant new military resources into the region. at the time, they were saying it was because of these militia groups attempting to penetrate the outer perimeter of the embassy in baghdad, but now those forces are also in place to respond to any potential crisis. i mean, that included more troops and marines to the embassy, itself, but also a battalion of paratroopers to neighboring kuwait with another brigade on standby. the u.s. had been anticipating some kind of activity by iran for some time. the threat levels had been raised in recent weeks. the u.s. blamed iran for some 11 rocket attacks on u.s. bases so they ve been moving a lot of forces into the region to defend against iranian threats and, again, those forces would likely be called upon if there is any kind of retaliation, but interesting enough earlier today, secretary of defense mark esper kind of laid out some of the rationale behind this strike without talking about the strike, itself. he said, he blamed iran and the islamic revolutionary guard corps for these attacks on u.s. military facilities, for the demonstrations at the embassy, and he said that the u.s. would not wait, that they would take preemptive action if they detected a threat saying the game had changed. now, he didn t reference the soleimani strike specifically but it s clear now this strike very much fits in with that new strategy by the u.s. let s go now to kaitlan traveling with the president, she s in florida. pentagon statement says this was specifically at the direction of the president. the president tweeted just an american flag moments ago. what are you hearing from the white house? yeah, so far, that s the only thing we ve heard from president trump. he s been silent on this ever since and we just heard from the white house official who said that we should not expect any statement from them tonight, instead, they re simply referring us to this statement from the pentagon instead. now, as far as what the president is doing, we know that he s at his club there behind me at mar-a-lago. he s been there for several hours. he briefly went to his golf course earlier today for a few hours. where cnn cameras saw him out on the golf course. though it s unclear who the president was with. he returned about 5:00 eastern time. now, since then we know the president has gone to dinner, but it s unclear what his other activities have been. as far as who s around him, we know there have been several white house officials here, but one notable one is the national security adviser. robert o brien who had been here earlier briefly this week when he came down on sunday with the secretary of state mike pompeo and the defense secretary mark esper. that s when they talked about how they briefed the president on those strikes the united states had carried out earlier this week. they only spoke with reporters for about three minutes and didn t take any questions and then they got back on a flight about two hours later and left. only being on the ground here for about three hours total. well, o brien has since returned. we know the defense secretary is not on property tonight but o brien is here with the president and we re essentially still waiting to see what else we hear from them while watching the reaction come in to this, seeing the president s allies praise this saying that they believe it was a measured response, it was proportionate to what the what iran has done. provocations over the last several months. while you re also seeing some democrats and critics of the president come out and question this decision by the united states, which, of course, we should note in this statement, it does say this was done at the direction of president trump. jim, the supporters of the president calling this a proportionate response. everyone we ve spoken with calls this a dramatic escalation. put into context what we re hearing from the president s supporters. well, listen, ultimately that will be up to iran, right? iran is going to decide how to retaliate here. keep in mind, americans at home need to be prepared tonight for an escalating conflict with iran, arguably we ve already been in that for a number of months. iran has attacked tankers. the persian gulf. it shot down a u.s. drone, you ll remember. it attacked saudi oil facilities. it orchestrated a protest around the u.s. embassy there and attack on the u.s. embassy and the u.s. blames iran for a strike that killed u.s. contractor, which led to air strikes against iranian forces this past weekend. so already we ve been in something of a simmering conflict with the exchange of military action. this raises it significantly in light of the fact that you have killed a senior iranian official here who america views as a terrorist. enormous amount of evidence, he s guilty of terrorist attacks on u.s. forces in iraq, killing hundreds. iran, though, views him as a significant official. in their leadership. so they will feel the need to respond. the question is what they consider proportionate at this point. and as i said earlier, the quds force that he led is expert at doling out this kind of violence and not just in the country such as iraq against military targets, but, sadly, outside of iraq around the region and around the world against soft targets. and we should note that soleimani in the past has publicly threatened attacks on the u.s. homeland as well, so a real concern is to how iran, again, it will be up to iran to decide what in their view they consider proportionate. and back to you, ar wa, in baghdad. jim says this now, the next step would be up to iran, but what are we hearing from the iraqis and the position that this puts them in after the death of someone who has had this profile for decades now, and what their response will be as iran decides what comes next. well, we haven t yet heard anything official from the iraqi government, but one can just imagine that they are shocked right now and probably trying to figure out exactly how they re going to respond to this. remember, baghdad and tehran are fairly close. whether it s economically or politically, they share a very long border. the iranian government does have a lot of influence here, whether it s through politics or through the military. when we talk about this popular mobilization force, which is made up of these former shia militias who did cut their teeth, many of them, and gained their battlefield experience during the time of the u.s.-led occupation of iraq when they were actively fighting american forces, when they were developing this sophisticated technology to create even bigger and better bombs to be able to pierce through u.s. armor, baghdad has very often found itself in a very tenuous position especially as it ends up being stuck between washington and tehran. this situation that the iraqi government is going to find itself in right now as it tries to figure out how it s going to navigate all of this, they ve never been here before. iraq has never been here before. the iranians, yes. the reaction to this is going to be in their court and there is very little doubt in anyone s mind that there is going to be some sort of a reaction and the question now is, where is this reaction going to really unfold? they do have a number of options on the table. they do have a number of very, very powerful proxies, not just here in iraq but also in countries like lebanon and elsewhere, and the u.s. right now, even though the president is saying this was meant to keep america safer, is going to find itself in potentially a very vulnerable position. not to mention, of course, the effect that this is going to have on the relationship between washington and baghdad. yeah. ryan, to you at the pentagon, the president has told his supporters at rallies, often, that the u.s. is getting out of the middle east. despite the numbers showing the increases across the region of additional personnel and what was announced just a couple days ago. what does this mean for military personnel there in the region? well, i think as several people have mentioned, i think the military will be bracing for some kind of response, but i think they had been braced for some time given the increased tensions, you know, earlier today, the pentagon talked about the 11 rocket attacks on various u.s. military installations throughout iraq, attacks that the pentagon said was increasing in sophistication and intensity with the intent to kill. so from in some ways the u.s. military has been in a braced position for iranian attacks for some time, moving those additional forces into the region to help bolster that response, but, you know, again, this is definitely a step of escalation in terms of the u.s. as jim mentioned, some of these iranian provocations in the view of the united states, the attacks on the tankers, the attack on the saudi oil facilities, the shooting down of a u.s. drone, none merited a u.s. military response but this rocket attack that killed the american contractor, the embassy situation, you re now seeing the u.s. military directed by president trump to carry out responses so it appears that tehran, at least, has found america s red line for military action right now. all right. jim staying with us as we continue the report. we got much more on the breaking news tonight. the pentagon says president trump ordered the strike on the baghdad airport that killed a senior iranian military official. breaking news continues. 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iran s enormous, somewhat shadowy influence of countries like lebanon, syria, yemen. he is the, think of the french foreign legion, if you will, he was the guy in charge of it. much loved by the troops. obviously from an american point of view a very bad guy. i think the state department estimates he s responsible for the deaths of 600 or 700 american troops. he also organized a lot of the stuff in syria that killed lots and lots of civilians so there s no question that from the point of view of getting a bad guy, this is this was justified morally, but it is huge politically, geopolitically, because the iranians will probably feel that they have to respond. it also places the iraqi government in a very precarious position because iraq, remember, has always had to balance its two patrons, the united states which we always think about but the iranians who have also been very supportive of this iraqi government and now this, in a way, explodes that, it makes them choose. i m reading reports, for example, that talk about there s anger in iraq because people think iraqi government intelligence was provided to the americans which is almost certainly true which is what made this strike possible. if that s the case, that suggests the government of iraq essentially helped to kill one of iran s most important figures and, remember, iran is also a patron. so, this is going to get very messy very fast. and this is going to get when you say very fast we could be talking by morning we re going to see a different footing there in iraq. i think the iraqis are under pressure instantly, but the iranians typically take their time, figure out how they want to respond, but they have a lot of opportunities in the area. the thing we have to remember is, the united states has embassies all over the world. has consulates all over the world. think of benghazi. you know, there s places like lebanon, i bet you u.s. embassies, consulates, are under full alert in all of these places. and given that this is all going to get so messy so fast, you wonder what, exactly, the objective is because president trump campaigned as the guy who wanted to get us out of the middle east. he kept talking about how it s not worth being in there, we spend all this moneys have all these troops in there, yet, he s the one who keeps ratcheting up the pressure. the iranians, following the iran nuclear deal, tensions were actually quite manageable in the region with iran. trump explodes the nuclear deal, puts more pressure on the iranians, designates the revolutionary guards as a terrorist organization. just a huge push and not surprisingly, the iranians pushed back in the ways that they can. they shot down a drone. they attacked saudi oil facilities. sure. they attacked, you know, american contractors. and now we ve escalated, so you can see it s kind of we re ratcheting up. i m not quite sure why for a president who said his whole objective was get out of the middle east. yeah. how this fits into a larger strategy toward ing during the k about the statement released from the pentagon. i read it at the top of the broadcast, they point out they believe soleimani had his hand in the december 27th attack, also the attack on the embassy, but that general soleimani, as the pentagon writes here, was actively developing plans to attack american diplomats and service members in iraq and throughout the region. so this was from their perspective preventative to save more american lives. it appears the u.s. was acting on intelligence, if you take the statement at face value that soleimani was already planning attacks and i think crucial to note not just in iraq but around the region, so the concern, it seems, is that this was a way to prevent those attacks, you know, whether it does is another question. but i think it does get at establishing what donald trump s red line is for military action because we ve seen the president withdraw from military action. you ll remember after the shoot-down of the drone, the planes were in the air to carry out the strikes. he called it back. when the president was informed of the estimated death toll on the ground in iran, the number was 150, at least, the explanation he gave for that late decision, he pulled back. that did not merit military reaction. but in this case, the line appears to be danger to u.s. personnel. whether diplomatic or military. because, again, the strikes over the weekend that sparked these demonstrations and the attack on the embassy was in response to the u.s. blaming iran for an attack that killed a u.s. military contractor there. so this appears to be, you know, we often say, you know, what is trump s policy, what are his measures for action like this? that appears to be his red line here, which is information about danger to u.s. personnel. now, of course, question is, are those personnel in the region, in iraq and the region, safer today after this strike or less safe? yeah. i think we can reasonably expect a very, you know, pointed and violent iranian retaliation. you know, one has to wonder what iran s allies are seeing tonight with this announcement of the death of soleimani because there were those military exercises with iran and china and russia, the exercises were not significant but just the show of support and solidarity. when you see what happened, what do you think is going through putin s mind as he sees what happened? so, you know, the rest of the world, particularly the europeans, the russians and the chinese, had been very supportive of the iran nuclear deal, and when the united states, when the trump administration, blew up the deal, they were very upset and they tried to do things that helped the iranians sell their oil, trade. didn t work because the power of the dollar is so great that if the u.s. makes it impossible for you to do business internationally, it essentially means you can t do business internation internationally, but then once the iranians were put in this box and the screws kept getten tightened and they started lashi lashing out militarily. the harassment of ships. the attack on the drone. the attack on saudi oil facilities, particularly. the iranians have been losing allies. which is to say the europeans have turned on them somewhat. the russians and the chinese remain, but that s a very uneasy, and as you put it, kein of an alliance of convenience and fairly i wouldn t attribute too much to it. so i think putin has always viewed iran as an ally of convenience. mostly in syria. it doesn t mean they have deep, long, relationships, but in general, i think many of these countries are asking why are we going down a path of to what could be another conflagration? we ve had we just came out of ten years of a fairly bloody series of civil wars in the middle east where the united states was deeply involved. as donald trump, himself, keeps pointing out, trillions of dollars, thousands of american lives he ran on getting americans out of the middle east. right. this potentially will i don t again, it s not clear what the objective here. soleimani is a bad guy, there s no question, but we appear to be without, by the way, without congressional authorization, entering into another middle east war. all right. fareed zakaria, thank you so much. jim sciutto staying with us. much more on the breaking news. pentagon announcing a u.s. military air strike killed iran s top military leader in an air strike tonight. we ll have all the latest in the region. and presidential candidate senator cory booker weighs in, next. i love the new myww program, because it s tailored to you! take the personal assessment and get matched with a proven weight loss plan. find out which customized plan can make losing weight easier for you! myww. join for free + lose 10 lbs. on us. of course i d love to take an informal poll. i used to be a little cranky. dealing with our finances really haunted me. thankfully, i got 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what we heard from the president is that he s not afraid of going to a war with iran and it would end quickly. also, referenced that he wanted to have a conference with rouhani by phone. this seems to undermine potentially those goals. you know, look, i ve been to iraq visiting with our troops and our leadership. i ve been around that region multiple times. and you see military leaders sobered, no bravado, strategic in their thinking. we have a president who clearly has shown himself acting by impulse, to make decisions by tweet. we ve seen even, again, bipartisan voices coming out of the senate for his conduct and his stances for, in areas like syria. and so right now, under this president, there has been no larger strategy. we are less safe in that region. iran is more influential. the terrorist activities in that region from the arming of hezbollah to even israel doing strikes into syria because of growing iranian influence in that region, and what they ve been doing, again, in iraq. so all of this is showing, beginning really with the president who came in pulling us out of the iran anti-nuclear deal where you have all of our allies were joined together in doing what, imagine if iran was slipping quicker toward a nuclear weapon right now, what that would do with tensions and dangers in that region. so i do not have great confidence of this president s foreign policy, the way he s going about things, his so-called america-first policy, seems to be america isolated, america alone, and america less secure. chief national security correspondent jim sciutto with us here, too, senator. senator booker, you re, of course, running for president. commander in chief. looking at the pentagon s statement, it appears the u.s. may have had intelligence that soleimani was plotting attacks against u.s. personnel, not just in iraq but in the region, and i wonder, given the same information if you were president, would you have acted in the same way? would you have acted to order a drone strike to take out soleimani, the person who was planning attacks on u.s. personnel? that s a couple hypotheticals on top of each other, first and foremost, clearly, the responsibility of the commander in chief is to protect americans and american troops abroad from imminent attack. again, as you said, quite clearly, we are going to have to learn what the facts were in this circumstance. but to divorce this situation from what s been happening there over the last few years is taking one context and not understanding its interrelation with others. this was a bad person that was killed. has american blood on their hands. but when you look at a larger strategy, you have to balance all of the competing interests for our safety and security that are there. and the question we have, a lot of questions that have not been answered, but, again, this should not be something that s done on impulse. it should be done in a larger strategic vision and understanding what the consequences could be in taking out this significant, assassinating someone of such a significant leadership role in iran and we have to make sure we are preparing for what might be to come. so i have a lot of concerns about this. facts are still coming out. we should not rush to conclusions, but i do, again, have concerns with what this president has shown to me has being wildly irresponsible policies that have endangered this nation and our military in the middle east. quickly on impeachment, senator, sources tell cnn that leader mcconnell hasn t spoken with either minority leader chuck schumer, speaker pelosi, about the impeachment trial. the democrats waiting games hasn t seem to have gotten any real effect. any fruit here. does leader schumer have any leverage at all? what s the way forward here on the impeachment trial? well, i have every confidence that the impeachment trial will come, and i know that leader pelosi as well as chuck schumer are in conversations about doing everything we can do, we must do, to ensure that there is a fair trial. and the majority of americans, over 70%, understand that, hey, you re having a trial, you should have key relevant witnesses there, and we know people like the acting chief of staff, for example, have incredibly powerful information that could exonerate the president of the united states or implicate him so let him come to the united states senate along with other key witnesses. let them swear under oath to tell the truth and let them present in front of the american people what the truth of the matter is, and actually that can help everybody get better information about just to the extent to which this president has abused his power, done things that are impeachable, and could potentially lead to better conclusions on should he be removed from office or not. senator cory booker, thanks for being with us tonight. thank you for having me. we ll keep bringing you all the latest on tonight s breaking news out of baghdad. plus, hundreds of emails the president did not want you to see now released. what we know of the contents, next. i m happy to give you the tour, i love doing it. hey jay. jay? 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well, look, i mean, these were emails that the administration was supposed to hand over as part of a foia lawsuit. they handed over very redacted versions and just security, a website, managed to get their hands on unredacted versions and tell us what thing. first, they make it very clear the president was the one who decided to hold back this money and decided to release it and there s one email that really gets to that. it s on august 30th, it s from a top omb official, michael duffy, to a pentagon official and it says clear direction from potus to continue to hold and this email comes as the pentagon is raising all kinds of concerns that continuing to sit on this money, this aid to ukraine, could violate the law, that if this hold continues that the defense department can t ensure it will all make it to ukraine in time. you know, there was another email on august 27th from the comptroller at the pentagon to mark esper s chief of staff and in it the comptroller writes, recognizing the importance of decisions. the situation is very unworkable. made particularly difficult because omb lawyers continue to consistently mischaracterize the process and the information we have provided. they keep repeating that this pause would not impact dod s ability to execute on time. so that gives you an indication of how the pentagon felt that omb, the office of management and budget, wasn t taking their concerns seriously about the legal constraints here and, frankly, they didn t feel like omb was representing their concerns to the rest of the administration, either. so, of course, this is not happening in a vacuum, right? this is this line of revelations following what we learned from the new york times earlier this week about the ukraine aid saga, is happening parallel to this fight, this standoff, over the impeachment trial. what s the overlap here, and what kind of impact could these emails have on the impeachment case? right. i mean, it s happening at a hugely politicized time. we ve already heard from a number of democrats today, we heard from chuck schumer, heard from adam schiff, saying that this is why the senate trial needs to have witnesses and documents. i want to show you this tweet from nancy pelosi today. she said, trump engaged in unprecedented total obstruction of congress hiding these emails, all other document and his top aides from the american people. his excuse was a phony complaint about the house process. what s the excuse now? why won t trump and mcconnell allow a fair trial? yeah. of course, particularly interesting since nancy pelosi is still sitting on those articles of impeachment and has yet to transmit them to the senate. kaitlan, the president has been on a tear on twitter. he says on camera he doesn t care about the start of the impeachment trial but his tweets tell a very different story. yeah, they certainly do. and so do our sources who ve been speaking with the president while he s been down here for two weeks. now, a lot of people who ve seen the president, spoken with him, said he seemed to be in a pretty good, upbeat mood throughout these last two weeks. out on the golf course, dining with friends, seeing them him in the buffet line as mar-a-lago. there are oath who are say the president does bring up impeachment regularly. you can see from his twitter he brings it up there essentially airing the same grievances you heard from him before he left washington to come down to palm beach. of course, this is coming at a real critical time. as sara was saying fro ining th talking about new information coming out over the break and what white house officials were worried about, concerned the longer the president was down here, the more time there was for outside influence on him which they worried would affect what he wanted to see in the impeachment trial, the kind of strategy they d been trying to hone before he came down here. they worry about the duration of time. they say the longer before this trial, the more time there is for emails, things like this to come out. so far, we ve not gotten official white house statements from these released emails, though. kaitlan, sara, thank you both. more on the breaking news tonight, the pentagon announcing the u.s. killed a senior iranian official on an air strike on the president s orders. she wanted to move someplace warm. but he wanted snow for the holidays. so we built a snow globe. i ll get that later. dylan! but the one thing we could both agree on was getting geico to help with homeowners insurance. what? switching and saving was really easy! i love you! what? sweetie! hands off the glass. ugh!! call geico and see how easy saving on homeowners and condo insurance can be. i love her! the wait is over. t-mobile is lighting up 5g nationwide. while some 5g signals go only blocks, t-mobile 5g goes miles. beyond the big cities to the small towns. to the people. now, millions of americans can have access to 5g on t-mobile. and this is just the beginning. t-mobile, the first and only nationwide 5g network. a breaking news tonight president trump ordering the pentagon it launch an attack that killed a senior iranen military official. attack happened at baghdad airport. back with me. we have discussed throughout the hour how this is an escalation of the tension between the u.s. and iran. what does the next step potentially look like? war if it comes. it won t look like the iraq war in 2003. the invasion. or the gulf war in 1990. it may not look like anything before. it will not just take place on the battlefield. iran has capabilities. which is demonstrated. in a number of fields. they can carry out terror attacks. in the region. soft targets or military. they can attack shipping. or cyber capabilities. you can expect more of that. what s known as hybrid warfare. a whole host of fronts with technology. that take aim at whole host of targets. and keep in mind not just military targets but the potential of diplomat and civilian. u.s. embassy in the region and economic targets as well. killed in the strike was the leader of the force that carries out expert at these attacks and that s the kind of retaliation you can brace yourself for. let s focus on him. as we discussed that morally no question there had to be justice for him. the question is where does this fall in a broader conversation? tell us about what people who don t hear that name often don t know the context. why this is such a major development. hundreds of american families many who might be watching tonight who lost service members. sons and daughters to attacks carried out by him and his force in iraq. 600 killed thousands more wounded. think of that. they re watching this closely. that s the person and leader he was. he s not longer on the battlefield. how does iran respond. stay with us for more live coverage. too early. or too l. or make me feel like i m not really there. talk to your doctor, and call 844-234-2424. this is cnn tonight. sitting in for don lemon. breaking news tonight a u.s. air strike on baghdad kills a top iranen military leader. and a senior official. the pentagon announcing tonight the attack was ordered by the president. he s part of the statement. at the direction of the president theist military has
impeachment trial is front of mine. he played golf as well. it s unclear when the senate trial will begin. speaker pelosi has yet to send over the articles from the house to the senate. if senator lindsey graham has his way, it could be days away from history. the sooner this trial is over, the better for the american people. so what i would do if she continues to refuse to send the articles as required by the constitution, i would work with senator mcconnell to change the rules of the senate so we could start the trial without her if necessary. we ll see if that happens. let s go straight to white hous and our congressional correspondent manu raju, thanks to both of you. kaitlan, let me begin with you and your reporting on how the president and his aides have been preparing over the holidays for the senate impeachment trial, however it comes to be. what are you learning? reporter: there are some questions, poppy, whether they ve been preparing enough for what s to come. there are still questions about what is even to come. president trump just got back to the white house a few moments ago. he didn t speak to reporters and instead went straight into the residence. he s coming back to a washington that s very different than what he was expecting when he left to go to florida two weeks ago. he and aides thought he would be coming back ready for this trial to start nearly immediately, and the president hoped he would be vindicated. now he s returning to a washington where the articles of impeachment have still not been sent over to the senate. there are still questions about what that trial is going to look like or when it s even going to start. and that has left questions still back here at the white house. one of those being, what is their strategy going to be. we ve been told by multiple sources instead the white house counsel s office has been left to essentially draft multiple avenues of strategy right now because they don t know what that trial is going to look like. our sources are telling us that the biggest obstacle still facing the president and the biggest unanswered question is really who it is that s going to represent him in this trial. we know the white house counsel pat cipollone is still expected to take the lead. the president has made clear he wants his outside attorney jay skek sekulow to play a big role in this. there are questions whether someone from the outside like a trey gowdy figure will come and play roles in that whether publicly or behind the scenes in the impeachment trial. pat cipollone, white house counsel, was initial expected to go down to mar-a-lago to help the president start drafting and making these decisions. but instead he and other white house attorneys largely were absent from mar-a-lago, stayed back here on the second floor of the west wing working from here, interviewing people who could play a role in that trial instead of going down there where the president was golfing multiple days, often seen with people like alan dershowitz, lou dobbs, senator lindsey graham, people like that who have been a big outside influence on trump. and also big cheerleader for the president. manu, you cover the hill. the key demand from democrats is to get witnesses for this trial, particularly witnesses the white house blocked, witnesses we know that have been discovered by journalists who had direct knowledge of the president s involvement here. will there be witnesses in the senate trial? it seems unlikely. senator mitch mcconnell has enough of his conference in line. it doesn t seem like there are enough republicans to break with mitch mcconnell right now. chuck schumer wants four witnesses, mick mulvaney, john bolton, mike duffey mentioned in some of those emails you re referencing. what mitch mcconnell said is, no, let s wait til later, let s deal with the opening arguments first, then we can discuss witnesses at that point. that is something that democrats don t want to agree to because they believe mcconnell will move quickly to dismiss the case or move to acquit the president without getting any witnesses to come forward first. as a result, what we re seeing is nancy pelosi withholding those articles of impeachment and waiting for the understanding of what that process will look like in the senate. and the big question is when nancy pelosi will in fact send those articles of impeachment over to the senate. now, one of her top confidants, adam schiff, house intelligence committee chairman, was on cnn s state of the union today. jake tapper asked when those articles would be sent over and he indicated they would not be held indefinitely. one success this has already had is flushing out mcconnell, showing he is working in cahoots with the president. both democrats and republicans are having to go on the record to say do we want the american people to hear the evidence, do we want a real trial, or do we want a coverup. it s clear from the president and mitch mcconnell, they don t want a trial anymore. they don t want witnesses. they don t want documents. they don t even want, jake, a verdict. they want a dismissal. interestingly, he was asked directly what do you think those articles will be sent over. he said he didn t know because he said this is the speaker s decision. that shows you how tightly she s controlled every step of the way throughout the impeachment process result along. we ll get a better sense when she comes back to washington this coming week, when she talks to her members, how much pressure she s under, what signal she gives when she talks about this publicly. at the moment it s a guessing game here in washington. so quickly, and again, this could change, but that there are votes among republicans to call witnesses, but are there votes for dismissal? because that s a separate question. when they get to that point, will there be enough senators to vote to dismiss? you only need 51 senators to dismiss. that means if three senators decide to break ranks, that could lead to more pressure to bring in witnesses. so this is going to take some time to play out. thanks, manu, thanks, kaitlan, we appreciate your reporting. former house counsel sophia nelson is with us, also former adviser to u.s. presidents, david gergen joins us. and cnn chief political analyst gloria borger. good evening, one and all, thank you for being here on a sunday night. gloria, let s rewind two weeks, because it seems like forever ago, before hopefully all of you got a little holiday vacation in, it did seem to many, i think, that speaker pelosi held the leverage, held more cards, says, you know, i m not transmitting these articles you to in the senate until we get what we think is a fair trial. so much has transpired since then, including mcconnell saying, great, i don t want a trial anyway, then the strike on soleimani. does she go into this week with leverage? i think it s really not so much a question of leverage, poppy, as it is a question of what is she heading into. i think that she and chuck schumer are working in tandem. i was just emailing with a democratic leadership aide, they re on the same page on this, they want the witnesses they believe they deserve. they also believe that the news that transpired over the last a couple of weeks about the question of the president s involvement in the holding up this money for ukraine can now be potentially explored. and so she didn t want to walk into a dark would mean. she wanted to put some lights on and say, what are we heading into. as schumer said earlier today, mcconnell could have called for a vote of dismissal if she had given him the articles and tried to get rid of it before christmas. they re trying to deal with the caucus, look at the terrain they re heading into. as manu was saying earlier, i don t think she s going to hold onto these articles forever. i don t think what s going on in iran is going to affect them one way or another, affect her decisions or the democrats decisions one way or the other. so they re taking a little bit of time, but i don t think they re going to delay it indefinitely. i think she knows at some point they ve got to go over there. sophia, on the question of evidence and witnesses, the fact is, since the house impeachment inquiry closed, there has been new evidence, some from unredacted documents which show a direct line to the president, that this was under the direction of the president that this aid was withheld. politically, what risks are republicans at on their end for pushing away the possibility not just of witnesses but of considering new evidence that s been exposed since the close of the house impeachment inquiry? well, a couple of things. one, i think nancy pelosi was brilliant in what she did, i said this before the holidays and i ll stick with that position, she did force a process of sunlight. now we have those emails, we have that new york times article you were referencing, jim, about mulvaney and bolton and pompeo and others telling the president, hey, you need to go ahead and send this aid, withholding this is not a good idea. and i think that what this is going to come down to is a few things. one, how much is the public actually paying attention, particularly in those senate districts that run for reelection in 2020, because that s really what mitch mcconnell is going to be looking at, the winds of public opinion, does it shift one way or the other in those districts where he has vulnerable people like collins and others? does he have to give them some wiggle room to vote with the democrats to allow some witnesses or do whatever? i think that s what they re looking at. to your point, every trial that any citizen in this country faces, and by the way, this is not like a criminal trial, this is different, this is a political trial. and i think that s a distinction that the american people need to understand. it s not like the trial if i did something wrong and i got indicted by a grand jury and i have to go and they do jury selection. it s very different. this is a political process. but i think republicans are going to have to walk a very fine line about motions to dismissive, et cetera. i also disagree, i think they re going to get witnesses. i think they re going to get witnesses the way the senate handled the clinton impeachment, which is if they can survive these motions to dismiss, if the republicans don t have the votes, ultimately if they get that far, they may have to cave in to allowing mulvaney or bolton or others. i think they ll follow the clinton model and that s what, if you pay attention to mcconnell, he s backed off his really aggressive position and says, let s go to the clinton model and we can vote on witnesses later. don t be surprised if they get witnesses. they make an interesting point, but david gergen, the key difference, when schumer was asked this morning by george stephanopoulos, he said it s very different than the clinton trial this time around because those witnesses had already spoken, you had the starr report, et cetera. so he said this is different. on one side you have schumer saying that he thinks they will be able to get four republican senators on their side to vote for witnesses. ideally for the democrats, they want that going into this thing. on the other side you have lindsey graham now saying he s going to lobby mcconnell to go ahead and start it without even holding the articles, without the articles being transmitted. that doesn t sound like anywhere near an agreement. no, they re very far apart at this point. i just have a different perspective on this, and that is that something dramatic has happened in the last couple of weeks and that is that the country is on the brink of war. we ought to take that seriously. i must tell you, in white houses i ve been in, if you have two crises going on at the same time, it s hard to imagine and you can make big mistakes. for all those reasons i think it s important for the country for nancy pelosi and mcconnell to sit down and work this out to some reasonable agreement that allows something about witnesses or ensures some degree of fairness about this thing and get it done. let s not play games of the kind that lindsey graham has put forward. i do think if we do not work this out what you re going to see is what we ve been seeing the last two weeks, four weeks, actually, five weeks, from the iranians, and that is the north koreans and others are going to commit mischief and probe and try to find the weaknesses in the u.s. and try to push us. then you re worried about looking weak. it could have a larger conflagration. i really think the country needs to be seriously focused on what s going on in the middle east, get this other thing done in a reasonable way and move on. gloria borger, is there any constituency now on the hill, mcconnell, other republicans perhaps, to delay an impeachment trial in consideration of the fact that you have an international crisis at hand right now? no, i mean, look, everyone s just coming back into town. i have not heard that. and i would agree with david that in a way, it s in everyone s effort in everyone s interests to get this moving, because you won t be have other issues that you need to deal with. you don t want to put off impeachment if you think it s not going to take forever. if it s going to take a week or two, then do it. i think it s also fluid right now. you re in a situation, as david pointed out, where you don t know what s going to happen tomorrow with iran. and congress has to react to that. you have congress reacting already to the president s tweet this evening about a response to potential iranian action. so there s a lot of issues they have to deal with. but i do not expect democrats to say, oh, never mind, we re not going to deal with this. they re just not going to do that. i do think, however, that timing has to be taken into consideration. maybe nancy pelosi hands them over by the end of this week and they get going next week, and they can agree on witnesses, as david points out. you know, it may be in the best interests of the country for them to do something together when it comes to impeachment and how they re going to proceed. you know, and in all this we should not discount the possibility well, we know iran is watching events in the u.s., this as the president is arriving back from vacation. does iran look for opportunities in the midst of this to strike at what it perceives to be a vulnerable moment, poppy, right? the president standing on the senate floor on trial, is that when they strike? these are open questions at this point, but serious ones. absolutely, serious ones. you see the first lady, the president, their son baron, coming back to the white house after two weeks plus on holiday in mar-a-lago. thank you, all of you, we appreciate your expertise. we know it s going to be a busy week ahead. ahead, the iraqi parliament with a critical vote to end the u.s. troops presence in iraq. what does that actually mean going forward? we ll take you live to baghdad. and president trump says that his tweet should serve as official legal notification to congress of any future military action against iran. up next, i m going to speak to a democratic senator, ben cardin, about whether that s sufficient as far as the constitution is concerned. cnn s special live coverage continues after a short break. i m happy to give you the tour, i love doing it. hey jay. jay? charlotte! oh hi. he helped me set up my watch lists. oh, he s terrific. excellent tennis player. bye-bye. i recognize that voice. annie? 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(wood clattering) stop chuckin that wood! with geico, the savings keep on going. just like this sequel. 15 minutes could save you 15% or more on car insurance. if your glasses aren t so will we. no we won t. use your 2020 vision insurance on your first pair and get 50% off a second pair. visionworks. see the difference. the u.s. senate, back in session tomorrow. and majority leader mitch mcconnell said that nothing moves forward on the impeachment trial until the speaker of the house does her part, which is handing over articles of impeachment from the house. we want to speak to ben cardin, democrat from maryland, who will soon be sitting as juror in the impeachment trial. thank you for spending time with us this evening. jim, good to be with you. your republican colleague, lindsey graham, said he would push for a rules change in the senate that would allow the impeachment trial to start without receiving the articles. do you consider that a serious threat? no, i don t. we need to come together, the majority leader and the democratic leader, with rules that are fair to all sides, to the house managers, to the president, that allows for the necessary witnesses to be heard by the united states senate. we needed to do that in a bipartisan manner to show that the united states senate is conducting a fair trial. so that s what needs to happen. i think the reason why nancy pelosi hasn t acted to date is because there hasn t been that assurance that we ll be hearing from the right witnesses that know what happened and that we have a process that can be signed off by both democrats and republicans. what evidence is there that you ll get what you want, those ones? mitch mcconnell commands the majority. you would need four, i believe, republicans to break with their party to demand those ones. given that you unless you ve heard from your republican colleagues that they re willing to do that, given that we haven t seen at least public evidence of that, is it time to send the articles over? it s just not clear what leverage the house speaker has here. i think we have to move forward, and i think nancy pelosi understands that. but the united states senate, its reputation is very much on the line here. we have an opportunity to show the nation that we will give the president his opportunity to present his defense, that the house managers will have their chance to present their case, and that the senate will act as an impartial jury. that s how we re supposed to act. how can you do that if you don t hear from the witnesses that have the direct information about the president s involvement with the president of ukraine? just so i m clear, you say it is time to send them over. are you saying that this week speaker of the house nancy pelosi should transmit them to the senate for consideration? we should get the articles this week but we also should have an agreement to have the witnesses necessary and the documents that need to be presented, both need to go together. i m not suggesting that nancy pelosi act without knowing the circumstances in the senate. but we should act now. okay. i want to move on to iran because of course tensions are brewing there. you have an enormous amount of experience with foreign affairs. no one s going to say that qasem soleimani was a good person, he committed horrible acts responsible for 603 deaths of u.s. soldiers in iraq, many more wounded. but for next steps, do you believe president trump has a plan for where this standoff with iran ends? jim, i really don t. he certainly hasn t shared that with congress as he is required to do. we all understand in our national security interests we need to find a diplomatic way to deal with the middle east. a war with iran is not in our national security interests. yet this administration has driven us further and further away from a possible diplomatic solution. the president has isolated america rather than isolating iran, when he pulled out of the nuclear agreement. so we re in really serious issues about america s national security. and that should be paramount. so no, i don t think the president has a game plan. he tweeted today what he said was legal notice that his tweets sh should amount to legal notice of future military action against iran. as a sitting u.s. senator, does his tweet qualify as required notice? absolutely not. the law is pretty clear about the consultation requirements by the president with congress. and the fact that the congress has sole authority on going to war and that there is no authorization for the use of military force authorized by congress against iran. so the president does not have that authority. he s acting now on the statement that there is an imminent threat against the united states, yet he has not articulated that imminent threat. so no, the notification issues are not adequate. as you know, before i let you go, president trump, other officials, have implied or said straight out that there was a threat to u.s. forces in the region. do you believe u.s. forces are safer today than they were before soleimani was killed? i think there is a much higher risk of a confrontation with iran today than prior to his death. i think there is higher risk for our national security. as we re seeing, we re already sending more troops to that region. that s not the answer. the answer is to find a diplomatic answer and not to go to war. senator ben cardin, thanks so much for joining the program tonight. thank you. all right. so the president is back in washington tonight. you just saw him arriving with his family at the white house. this as the situation on the ground in iraq becomes more perilous. the iraqi parliament just voting today to end u.s. troop presence there. what does that actually mean? we re live in baghdad, next. ncey says they can save you dollars. which makes it hard to believe, especially coming from a talking lizard. cheerio! esurance is built to save you dollars. and when they save dollars, you save dollars. so get a quote. when insurance is affordable, it s surprisingly painless. when insurance is affordable, wthat s why xfinity hasu made taking your internetself. and tv with you a breeze. really? yup. you can transfer your service online in about a minute. you can do that? yeah. and with two-hour service appointment windows, it s all on your schedule. awesome. so while moving may still come with its share of headaches. no kidding. we re doing all we can to make moving simple, easy, awesome. go to xfinity.com/moving to get started. look at these pictures here, this is the body of qasem soleimani back in tehran, this after the u.s. killed iran s top general, a powerful political figure there in the country as well, with a drone strike, saying he was an imminent threat to americans in the region. poppy, i have to say, watching this here, it s a remarkably similar scene to when ayatollah khomeini died. it shows you how revered a figure soleimani was. the shadow commander, and for how long? for decades. iran vowing swift retaliation. the military adviser to the supreme leader saying today iran s response will be military and, quote, against military sites. you can be rest assured tonight that the u.s. commanders in the region are focused on force protection there. president trump is also threatening action, tweeting in part, if iran strikes any americans or american assets, we have targeted 52 iranian sites, some at a very high level and important to iran and the iranian culture. now, i spoke today to two senior officials serving in this administration who say there is widespread opposition to attacking cultural sites and poppy, that s because, a number of reasons, one being, it s against international law. right, it violates the u.s. resolution that the u.s. agreed to a few years ago. our senior national correspondent arwa damon joins us from baghdad. arwa, the fact that today iraq s parliament voted to end the u.s. troop presence in iraq, can you explain to us what that actually means? reporter: well, it was a fascinating session in the sense that he did have quorum that was achieved. but that was mostly because shia parliamentary representatives went. the vast majority of sunni representatives did not. the iraqi prime minister was making the case that parliament should vote to end foreign troop presence. he said that given all the developments that had taken place, iraq could no longer guarantee the security of foreign forces within its homeland and that they could not ultimately protect themselves. it clearly seems as if the government has made a calculation that given how much of a physical battlefield iraq is becoming already between the u.s. and iran, it is perhaps in iraq s best interests to ask foreign forces to leave since that is the easier option than trying to disentangle itself from iran both politically and militarily. what happens next? that is what we re going to have to wait and see. does the government actually take the move and ask foreign forces to leave? the prime minister spoke with the french president and already said that relevant iraqi government bodies were beginning to take those steps at this stage. arwa, you ve covered iraq for a long time, and you know as well as we do that oftentimes iraqi politicians will say in public, yeah, we want them to go, but in private, hey, please stay, the country needs you for security. we understand that president trump has just told reporters that the u.s. might sanction iraq if it does follow through on this threat. do you sense that now the moment is truly different, that there is a groundswell of political support there to follow through on a threat, let s be frank, iraq has made before but not followed through on in the past? reporter: the dynamics here have changed completely. even iraqi politicians who are pro the u.s. staying here are finding it very difficult to speak out in light of what happened. i mean, look, this targeted killing is not just being viewed as a violation of iraq s sovereignty. it s also being viewed as an act of aggression against iraq itself. that being said, prior to this parliamentary meeting, there were other proposals being put forward, attempts that would perhaps see the u.s. stay here exactly because the country is still fighting against isis. and we all know what happened the last time the u.s. withdrew when the iraqi security forces weren t capable of handling the situation. isis came to be. this withdrawal, if and when it happens, is giving isis a win without isis having to actually do anything. there are great concerns about that. but right now, no politician really has the political capital to be able to stand up and say, hey, american forces should say, especially since so many now point out that president trump a while ago said that u.s. forces were here not necessarily for the fight against isis but to actually spy on iran. and we know the criticism that trump laid on president obama for withdrawing troops from iraq, of course that helped lead to the rise of isis with u.s. troops forced out. thank you, arwa damon. poppy, you have to wonder if president trump would open himself up to criticism that he allowed the isis fight to be subjugated or stopped by the consequences of this. absolutely. we ll have more on that ahead. up next, a look at the last impeachment trial for a sitting president. wolf will join us to talk about his special report, the trial of william jefferson clinton. we may forget in the deluge of news, but the last impeachment trial was 21 years ago. the president s lawyers made some of the exact same arguments today on the question of calling witnesses. folks are often making the opposite arguments now than they did back then. wolf blitzer is here to talk about his special on tonight. we have young viewers out there who don t remember the details. tell us how tonight s special will walk them through it but also connected to what s happening today. it s really timely because it goes through the impeachment trial in the u.s. senate of bill clinton. and many of the arguments , as you say, that democrats were making again, republicans are making now, and vice-versa. they decided when all was said and done that they would open the formal trial in the u.s. senate with arguments from both sides. the house managers in that particular case, the republicans, would make their case why the president of the united states who had been impeached in the house should be convicted and removed from office. and the president s lawyers made the opposite argument that yeah, he did some bad things but it s not worthy of being removed from office. and they decided to hold off on the sensitive issue of witnesses until after the opening arguments and then they decided they would call some witnesses and republicans wanted three witnesses, basically, but they would do it in private and then release excerpts of course of the trial. so crucially, they did allow witnesses in the trial then. right. different potentially from what we see here. folks who often say, no time has been more partisan than today, and there s a lot of evidence that have, but remembering covering that impeachment, it was pretty darn partisan back then as well. it was very partisan. i was the cnn white house correspondent so i covered it from day one, in january of 1998 when we first heard the name monica lewinsky, until the following january, 1999, when there was a real senate trial. it was intense. was it fundamentally different from today? there were folks from each party who went to the other side, in effect. there were democrats who voted for clinton s impeachment in the house and there were republicans who voted against it. is today fundamentally different in that it s purely by party line? it s much more partisan today, although it was pretty partisan then as you ll see in the one-hour documentary tonight. for those of us who lived through it, it will bring back a lot of memories. you lived through it, i lived through it, we remember a lot. for those who didn t pay tens n attention then or weren t born yet, they ll learn a lot about how this unfolds. i remember reading the starr report live on the air. i had to do that. my mom wasn t very happy with some of the words i was using. there was some colorful language. wolf blitzer, we re looking forward toe that tonight, 9:00 eastern time. it s going to be a fascinating report. that is ahead. also, of course, congress comes back to work on capitol hill this week. with impeachment at an impasse, will speaker pelosi transmit those articles of impeachment to the senate or will senate republicans move forward with a trial without them? that s next. . and your mother told me all her life that i should fix it. and now it reminds me of her. i m just glad i never fixed it. listen, you don t need to go anywhere dad. meet christine, she s going to help you around the house. the best home to be in is your own. from personal care and memory care, to help around the house, home instead offers personalized in-home services for your loved ones. home instead senior care. to us, it s personal. this week congress returns from recess to a changed world. the u.s. is now staring down the potential for war with iran. while at the same time, the impeachment standoff picks up pretty much right where it left off. one senator republican, josh hawley, will try to use the impeachment stalemate as grounds to push it aside and vote to dismiss the articles if they re not sent over from the house. now iran threatens to overshadow all of that. louisiana republican mike johnson is with me, good evening, thank you for joining me. hey, poppy, great to be with you. let me get your reaction to something the president said literally a few moments ago on air force one, reacting to iraq s parliament voting to basically expel, to try to push out all u.s. troops from the ground in iraq. the president just said on air force one, quote, if they do ask us to leave, we will charge them with sanctions like they ve never seen before, quote, it will make iranian sanctions look somewhat tame. is that a good idea? we are awaiting a briefing to congress when we get back and we re looking forward to getting all the information. of course the president is privy to all the intel that we as members of the house don t have yet. he has the full scope, the full picture. look, i m not sure exactly what s going to develop with that. we saw and watched with interest what iraq did today and those developments are important. we have to be very careful about our actions going forward because we don t want to further destabilize that region. these are or further sanctioning iraq, would slapping sanctions potentially harsher than on iran, on iraq, would that in your opinion destabilize the region? it depends on how they re administered and how much they are. there s a lot of information we don t have and won t until we get back to washington and get intel briefings. i m looking forward to that and other members are as well. in the meantime i trust the president is doing the right thing. congressman, do you believe, as secretary of state mike pompeo has argued, that the world is safer today because qasem soleimani has been taken out? i heard that statement, and i agree with it. look, soleimani was a known terrorist, a murderer. he killed thousands of people, hundreds of americans. and when the secretary of state and our intel says that he had further attacks planned on americans and others, i think that it s beyond dispute that we are a safer world without him in that position. of course there are consequences, of course there s fallout. we ll deal with that as it occurs. i think a strong america is good for the whole world. and we have shown that we re strong on this issue and i think that s welcomed by most americans. i ask you because history has shown us that often when you take out the head of a terrorist organization, that the threat does not something away. and we now have the state department that has ordered all americans to leave iraq immediately. we have thousands of additional u.s. service members going to the region after soleimani was taken out. and you have dhs bracing america for the very real likelihood of a cyber attack from iran. so how is that a safer world this sunday night as you and i are talking, how is it safer in this moment with those responses? iran has been effectively on the attack against the u.s. for 40 years. they ve been chanting death to america in the streets. the interesting development there, though, is that the people are now turning against that. there s been a great tide, an uprising that i think has been welcomed in the west that we ve seen that develop. and i think there is a lot of instability on the ground. we ve always been at odds with iran. taking out soleimani, because we had the intel that showed he was plotting further worse attacks, look, i take the secretary of state, the president, at their word. i think it was a necessary action. and of course we have to deal with the fallout from that action. we ll see what happens. the president overnight tweeted that if iran strikes americans or american assets, the u.s. has targeted 52 iranian sites, some at a high level and important to iran and iranian culture. here is how senator chris van hollen responded to that. listen. you just heard the president this morning talk about targeting iranian sites including cultural sites which is in fact a war crime if the president was to carry that out. do you agree with him that it would be a war crime? it certainly would be a violation of the u.n. resolution 2347 that the u.s. and the whole security council agreed to two years ago. would it be a war crime? i agree with what secretary of state pompeo said this morning clearly on the morning talk shows. he said we are going to follow the law. we ll follow international law you know, i saw all of those interviews that he did but i m just asking you, do you believe that as a violation of that u.n. resolution, it would be a war crime. look, i don t know. i think it depends on the circumstances. it depends on which sites. it depends on, you know, the conditions. and i don t think that we can make that call as a hypothetical. i think it really is a hypothetical question about a hypothetical set of facts that we don t know. i do take great solace in what the secretary of state says. our state department is committed to following the law. i think we will. i don t know how hypothetical it is given that it is a statement from the president. but let s move on to the other development, which is what s going to happen in the senate this week. is there going to be an impeachment trial of the president, will speaker pelosi hold on to the articles, do you believe the senate should hold an impeachment trial for the president? i do, i agree with the sentiments said on your program this evening, i ve been watching what s said. these are consequential times, delicate times. i think impeachment is a huge distraction from this hugely important issue going on in the middle east. i think we should put the trial behind us. i hope that nancy pelosi will transmit the articles over there. remember that the language of the resolution that they passed, the single party impeachment that they passed through the house, said that it had to be exhibited in the senate. it s not an if/or proposition. i think it s time to do that. you would like the trial to start. the final question would be, as you know, a recent washington post /abc poll showed actually about two in three republican voters want the president to allow his aides to testify. and i wonder if you re among the 64% of republicans in this country who want to hear in a senate trial from mick mulvaney, from john bolton, from duffey, from robert blair. do you want to hear from those witnesses? i don t have any problem with that, i don t think the white house does either. there s nothing to hide here. they have an ironclad case and they re ready to try it. and look, i think the sooner we get to that, the better. i m sorry, what did you say? you don t think the white house has an issue with it? the white house is blocking this. no. no, they re not blocking the witnesses at a senate trial. that hasn t come up yet because it hasn t been they have blocked them throughout the house investigation. but you do want to hear from them in a senate trial, is that what you re saying? poppy, we can talk about why the white house has not turned them over in the house proceeding. it was a sham. and i can go through all the details of that, you don t want to belabor the point tonight, i know. what i m suggesting is that leader mcconnell is right to say we should follow the only real precedent that exists in the modern era and that s the clinton impeachment trial which senator schumer voted for, those rules which says that you decide which witnesses to hear after the first two stages of the trial. each case or each side puts on their cases, the senators and then you determine what, if any, witnesses are needed and under what circumstances. that s the only procedure and the only precedent that exists, and that s the one that ought to be followed. i think it s very reasonable for leader mcconnell to take that position. we ll see what happens. everyone s going to be back on tuesday. thank you for being here. we ll be right back. thanks, pop. you got it. so you can quickly check the markets? yeah, actually i m taking one last look at my dashboard before we board. excellent. and you have thinkorswim mobile- -so i can finish analyzing the risk on this position. you two are all set. have a great flight. thanks. we ll see ya. ah, they re getting so smart. choose the app that fits your investing style. if your glasses aren t so will we. no we won t. use your 2020 vision insurance on your first pair and get 50% off a second pair. visionworks. see the difference. oh, hi, samantha. you look more like a heather. do you ever get that? it s nice to finally meet you in person. you re pete nocchio? oh, the pic? that was actually a professional headshot. i m sure that s it, yeah. i, uh, i think i ve lost a few pounds recently too. i m actually doing a juice cleanse. wait! you don t. (glass breaking) (gasp) ah! oh.! with geico, the savings keep on going. just like this sequel. 15 minutes could save you 15% or more on car insurance. cnn special report, the trial of william jefferson clinton, tonight at 9:00. are you a christian author with a book that you re ready to share with the world? get published now, call for your free publisher kit today! all right. as congress returns from vacation, how are voters across the country actually viewing the impeachment of the president and the impending senate trial? cnn national correspondent miguel marquez has been covering the story and has found that in voting states they are paying less attention than here in washington. reporter: impeachment barely a blip on the radar for some democrats here. do you and your colleagues, your friends, do you talk about impeachment or politics? not particularly. it just depresses us. reporter: do you follow impeachment closely? not so much. i watch videos here and there, but i wouldn t say i m an avid listener. reporter: many republicans here view it as pure politics and a rallying cry. do you think it will motivate for republicans to come out? yeah, for sure. it s a waste of government money. they just wasted 29 million on that mueller thing. so now what are we going to waste, more money? reporter: the grand canyon state and its 11 electal votes now a full on battleground. once reliably red, it s now trending purple. bested hillary clinton by only 3.5 points. and democrats flipped a house seat and a long-time republican senate seat. arizona not only a battleground for president. i am listening to my constituents. reporter: but in 2020, another epic senate race that could decide control of the chamber. i have decided that i m launching a campaign. reporter: republican incumbent martha mcsally and her likely democratic challenger mark kelly have already raised tens of millions of dollars, and the race could be the most expensive senate contest of the cycle. christi black, mom to angela and luke, left the republican party in 2016 because of donald trump. i definitely didn t feel like his moral character was that of a president. reporter: now an independent, she plans to vote democratic in 2020, but is concerned impeachment will tip the balance. i worry more that it will fire up the republicans, that maybe people who are feeling a little more wishy-washy, not feeling real confident with president trump, that they will feel a renewed sense of wanting to defend him. reporter: steve ellis, i.t. consultant by day, musician by night, voted for obama in 2012 and trump in 2016. does he have your support in 2020? uh, no. reporter: he says he will vote democratic in 2020, but thinks impeachment is only fueling an already angry and divided country. get it done and move on because i don t think anything positive is going to happen out of it either one way or the other. and it just makes us as a country look like we re a little unstable. reporter: impeachment not changing many minds but raising questions and concerns about how it will play with voters in battleground states. now, most people i spoke to said that they don t think it s truly going to change many minds. if you liked donald trump going into it, you re still going to like him. if you didn t like him, impeachment s not going to change much. but they do say there is a small number of people in the center who are going to go after hammer and tong. arizona and wisconsin, those 11 electoral votes could be critical to which party takes the white house. back to you guys. well, no question it s a big issue. we don t know how it s going to affect people s minds when they step into the voting booth. thanks, miguel. still ahead, senator lindsey graham gives the house speaker an ultimatum of sorts, or, quote, take matters into our own hands. let s be honest, every insurance company says they can save you dollars. which makes it hard to believe, especially coming from a talking lizard. cheerio! esurance is built to save you dollars. and when they save dollars, you save dollars. so get a quote. when insurance is affordable, it s surprisingly painless. when insurance is affordable, you sureyes.ut this? [ suspenseful music playing ] no! we need to keep moving. the whole things coming down. come on! i can t see. i can t see! you need to trust me. jump! i was on the fence about changing from a manual to an electric toothbrush. but my hygienist said going electric could lead to way cleaner teeth. she said, get the one inspired by dentists, with a round brush head. go pro with oral-b. oral-b s gentle rounded brush head removes more plaque along the gum line. for cleaner teeth and healthier gums. and unlike sonicare, oral-b is the first electric toothbrush brand accepted by the ada for its effectiveness and safety. what an amazing clean! i ll only use an oral-b! oral-b. brush like a pro. very good sunday evening to you. i m jim sciutto in washington. and i m poppy harlow in new york. we want to welcome our viewers from the united states and the world. this is a cnn special report, the impeachment of donald j. trump. tonight the president is back in washington after more than two weeks at his florida resort and he s facing not one but two trials that could change the a trajectory in his presidency. the other is commander in chief as thousands deploy to the middle east after the
and of course, it s wednesday, so that means wednesday with jesse watters. he s here tonight. first, we go back to the big question of the evening. who scored points today! one democrat aide was quoted in the washington post this morning, said, we are screwed. no bombshells, no revelations. the onus is on us to wow the people this week. but where there wow moments? just to remind you what those look like, here are some big ones from the past. have you know decency , sir? i am here as a lawyer, that is my job. is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who, in any way, day and to think for themselves. what is different at this point, does it make a! martha: over the history books say about today in the days to come? democratic eric swalwell is here. this was perhaps has big take away moment of today. mr. kent, are you a never trumper? i m a career professional who serves whatever president is duly elected and carries out the foreign policies of the president of the united states and i have done that for 27 years, 43 republican presidents and two democrat presidents. ambassador taylor, are you a never trumper? no, sir. martha: congressman, thank you for being here tonight. long day for everybody. what were you trying to achieve in that moment exactly? i want to the american people to see that these were two patriots who came before congress just by the telling them not to to share what they saw as far as wrongdoing. i thought ambassador taylor said it best, which was that the shakedown scheme by the president was just wrong. but that they don t have dogs in the fight. they are career public servants. they have served all over the world. ambassador taylor signed up after being forth in his class at west point to go to vietnam, and they just wanted to do the right thing. they share that with the mega people today. martha: i think you are right that people would absolutely see them that way, has committed public servants who have been around a very long time, work for presidents of both stripes, as we have all heard. but it seems like some of that is what it is. i think people look at them and they say, they ve worked in the government a very long time, that is what they do, sort of the institution of government in many ways. but when it came to sort of push came to shove with the cross-examination, the questions of them, so what happened because of all this, and those kind of fell a little bit flat in terms of what was actually the outcome of the things that they were so disturbed about. what did you think about that? i don t think it falls flat when abbasid or taylor says that he heard from ambassador sondland so that the president was everything on the lines for the ukrainians, including security assistant come if they did not investigate vice biden s son. this was offensive because of not what we do as americans. we don t ask them to investigate our political opponents. the facts are not in dispute. i think what is in dispute, is this who we are as a country? we have to answer that in the coming weeks. martha: i think you are right. i think the people watching us all across the country, they are trying to figure out if it rises to the level of impeaching a prh as nikki haley said outcome of the most extreme punishment that you can give someone, who is elected by the american people in an election year. that is something that every american is going to have to decide for themselves as they look at this. my question for you, as an attorney, in terms of how well your case was made, when it turns out that the things that were disclosed don t actually end up happening, is that a convincing argument in this courtroom that it is to congress right now? this shakedown scheme was happening, martha, until the whistle-blower complaint came forward. you don t get points as a president when you stop this shakedown because now someone has pulled the fire alarm and the first responders are showing up. but second, in america, you are still held accountable for an attempt at wrongdoing. i think there is no going back. if we decide as a country that any president, republican or democrat, can ask foreign governments to investigate their opponents, that is no longer america. i think the american people are going to say, we don t want to go there. martha: what about the argument that republicans put out there today, which was, when you sort of go through the different points here, the argument that they have laid out, that it falls over all, it falls short. these guys had second and third hand one of the most powerful moments was jim jordan, just sort of putting up points on both sides of people were scoring was when he said, he read that part of the transcri transcript. he told him and he told him and he told him and he told her and then she told him five or 6 degrees of separation. neither one of these people had ever had a conversation with the president about any of this. the most powerful evidence was the president s own words which he put out, which he never mentions the word corruption but he does mention biden. these witnesses were witnesses to what agents of the president were doing. ambassador volker, sondland, rudrudy giuliani, they also laid out what was at stake. what it meant for the ukrainians in a life or death manner to not get a say. finally, martha, if the president of united states is innocent, he will send the first-hand witnesses john bolton and mick mulvaney to congress. if he is guilty, he will stop us from hearing it hard to stop. martha: what about executive privilege? those people are associated very closely with the president. most white houses would argue that that is the case. those conversations are just simply privileged. executive privilege does not cover wrongdoing or crimes. it certainly does not cover people who are no longer in the white house and we ar were talkg to other people who were not the president, again, the interest is not executive privilege. martha: let me ask you about the bidens. do you think that they are immune from those same kind kind of questions that you just raised in terms of business relationships? towards countries that today. he said that that did not look good to him, he wanted that to be investigated, he thought it was not a good look. should you speak with them about that? we are talking about a vice president with potential wrongdoing. i don t think we should case the president s conspiracy theories, especially when mr. kent said mr. biden was only carrying out the foreign policy of united states. he also mr. kent said there is never a formal request from our attorney general to the ukrainians through the established channels to look into this. this was only coming from the president. i think that is a consciousness of guilt. if you went through the proper channels, he knew that it would be rejected because there is no evidence there. he ran a smear campaign with an ambassador and then he was trying to, through sondland and giuliani and others, smear martha: i will ask him some of those questions and all of us. let me ask you this because if eric trump got a job on the board for a company in turkey, okay, would you be okay with that? would you think that should be something that would be looked into? you would need to give me another 20 minutes to talk about the trumps. ivanka trump getting trademarks granted to her while she is working at the white house from china, john jr. martha: i ask you yes, that s a whole another segment, martha. martha: they ve been in real estate for 25 years. the corrupt practices of the trump segment would take a whole segment. i m focus on martha: would you, or would you not, if one of them, after he became president, suddenly became an advisor to an energy company in turkey or ukraine, you would say, i m not interested in that? that is what you re saying on right now. we have open investigations into the drum family for their corrupt practices, martha martha: those situations are not parallel! i m asking you a specific question. i m saying if they had never been in those businesses before, they got into them only after their father became president, wouldn t you want to investigate that? i would want to go through former channels formal channels. i don t think it is okay for the president to ask another leader to involve ourselves in the policies. martha: that is established. go nikki haley said that today. nikki haley said that. she thought it was inappropriate. martha: she did say that. thank you very much. good to see you, congressman swalwell. thank you for being here. here now, as after mention, eric trump, executive vice president of the trump organization. i want to ask you some challenging questions as well. your dad asked this president zelensky of ukraine to look into the bidens, and very specifically. in fact, on a call that we learned about today, this is what was said by bill taylor. listen to this. in the presence of my stuff, at a restaurant, ambassador sondland called president trump and told him of his meetings and key have played a member of my staff asked ambassador sondland what president trump thought about ukraine. ambassador sondland responded that president trump cares more about the investigations of biden, which giuliani was pressing for. martha: welcome, first of all. what is your reaction? first of all, as an american, i do want to know about the corruption of the bidens. thank you for being the first journalist that has held one of the democrats accountable for what the bidens were doing. it s unacceptable! i would be murdered if i did half of what hunter biden did. you know, i mean, what i m really excited about, martha, i don t think the democrats are playing a long game. even if they go through this whole impeachment thing, goes to the senate, i can t wait for the senate to call witness number one, barack obama. what is number two, joe biden. what is number three, hunter biden. let s find out what was actually happening. let s find out if barack obama was okay with hunter biden getting $50,000 a month to sit on a ukrainian energy board while his father was in charge of ukrainian energy martha: coming back at you there, that is totally irrelevant. the issue at hand with regard to this impeachment is whether or not your dad was soliciting the help of a foreign president and holding impeachment you will not get the money unless why want to be investigated where they were with the dossier? any of the democrats if there was really stuff that happened there, why won t they find out what happened with the dossier? this week that under the rug. nothing happens! why won t they investigate their own politicians? they were clearly martha: that s an ongoing investigation, john durham and horowitz, we will cover that a great deal. we are all looking forward to that information. we better be. what is happening to this country, the way the media covers them, that is why i love the way you pushed him, but the way the media covers for the bidens and other democrats who are doing very, very questionable, at best i use questionable at best it is disgusting, it should not happen. this is a sham. i looked at the stock market today when i was leaving work right up 100 points. another record high today. our country has never done better. we are the strongest we ve ever been. economically, we are the envy of the entire world. we have best job growth, lowest on employment martha: i ve asked this question several times because it does interest me. the day after the mueller investigation is lifted off your dad s shoulders, something that has dogged him since day one, why, when he is on the phone with its ukrainian president, would he open the door to asking a question about his political adversary who he is probably going to run against? he gave them this on a silver platter with that phone call, and now they are going to run with it, and we are the middle of an impeachment hearing. a martha cover that whole transcript was perfect. i read it 100 times. it was perfect. here is the deal. the person you had on the show, swalwell, he was in the democratic primary candidate, he made it exactly six weeks. he was holding at exactly 0%. he wasn t going to make a second debate. all of a sudden, here s the authority at impeaching my father? the reality, they have a bunch of dog candidates on the other side. biden can t get through two sentences without stuttering. warren has zero chance of winning. i mean, i could go through the list. they are not going to do it. bloomberg? you think people would like middle america? he has zero chance in the world. i could keep on going. they know they don t have anybody. at the same time setting record highs, this country doing incredibly well. i was walking down the street to come here tonight, people were chanting usa, usa, tell your father to get these guys, a total sham. there is not a single person outside the washington, d.c., beltway that gives a damn about what happened today. it s boring. that if they were supposed to put it on theater, they did a horrible job. no one was watching it. no one cares. this is going to change one person s mind. they flop horribly. martha: i know you don t think there was anything wrong with a phone call. your father said he thinks it s perfect. it s a subject of what is going to go on over the next several days. we ll continue to cover it. let me ask you one more question with regard to rudy giuliani, who came up a lot today. there was a report and asked yesterday by a uber connected republican that said rudy will be cut loose if he is broke. if there is any way, that your dad looks oof the senses, i don t really know what rudy was up to? i know rudy very well. he s a good man. i think rudy is really disturbed by the corruption that he saw every day with its fake dossier that was produced by rogue agents in trying to take down a presidential candidate. rudy is a prosecutor. i think, quite frankly, somebody better get to the bottom of that. martha: he is still going at it? i don t know. ask rudy. somebody better get to the bottom of it because it is not right for this country. i know exactly why as a personal attorney, but he would be so upset about that. somebody better get answers to these things. it s wrong for this country and i am telling you, these guys are desperate and they are doing foolish things, and just like kavanaugh and just like the russian hoax, they are going to come out of this looking like idiots. i thought they did today. they gained exactly nothing today. they will we will win us again. martha: thank you for answering the questions. good to see you tonight. we will be covering this. eric trump. coming up, nikki haley s first impression of the impeachment hearings on the hill. very interesting. plus, her first response to the new rumors about her plans for 2020. all joe might also come a walker republican center and a tight race for reelection will be standing behind the president unconditionally, or will he take another path in terms of what comes next? when we come back. hi honey, we got in early. yeah, and we brought steve and mark. experience the power of sanctuary at the lincoln wish list sales event. sign and drive off in a new lincoln with zero down, zero due at signing, and a complimentary first month s payment. the unitedllaxin . explorer card makes things easy. traveling lighter. taking a shortcut. woooo! taking a breather. rewarded! learn more at the explorer card dot com. you have power over pain, so the whole world looks different. the unbeatable strength of advil. what pain? i want to also think i will tell you, he s been a warrior for the last three months, really a warrior, when we needed him the most senator tom tillis. [cheers and applause] thank you, tom. he s been really good. we got to get out and work and make sure he gets reelected. martha: that was july 17th. eight days before that july 25th phone call which led to today s impeachment hearing. he alongside north carolina thom tillis, a tight race ahead of the reelection for 2020. like many of his fellow republican colleagues, susan colleagues in maine susan their face could hinge on the president s impeachment trial which may be underway. joining us now, republican senator tom tillis, member of the judiciary committee. senator, good to have you here tonight. good evening, martha, martha. martha: is that what you think it s headed? you just heard eric trump saying that he helps us all because he hopes that you all will be able to call some witnesses that we are not sick th time around i think so. what we saw today, this is nothing more than a public version of what they have been doing for the past several weeks. their star witness today admitted he s never met the president. he wasn t on the phone call with him. he was provided a second and third hand account by the fact of the matter is, that aid floated ukraine. there is no evidence in the transcript that we all read, there was any offer of a quid pro quo. this feels a lot like the special counsel investigation. every other attempt for the democrats to try to impeach the president since he won the election. martha: you have a challenger on the g.o.p. side, garland tucker, who is pouring a lot of money into this race. how concerned are you about that? what is the temperature of the people in north carolina? do they care what is going on with impeachment and where do you stand? i think that people in north carolina care about what s not going on in congress. we ve got a national defense authorization act that has been passed for my 58 straight years that is hanging in the balance now. we have a number of things that the american people want to see done, and their patience, i think, is beginning to run to the end on this continuous march for impeachment. let s get the usmca past. let s get the national defense authorization martha: do you think there is any hope of that at all at this point? i hope so. if there is not, i think nancy pelosi and chuck schumer need to know there is going to be a consequence for leaving a trade agreement that is going to help farmers and workers in the united states in an ash heap on the house side. i think that the national defense authorization and funding our military are things that people in north carolina care about and if they don t act on it, they will regret it next november. martha: there is a political peace that says that there is a surprisinglsurprisingpath that t ballot, and it s as if he went through the secret ballot that way, it would only take three republican senators to turn the impeachment vote. is that a path that whatever happened? secret ballot in the senate? let me tell you this. the secret ballot could only happen if every member of the u.s. senate agreed to have a secret ballot. count me in as an objection. there is no way that people are going to run away from the vote. the president deserves a fair treatment. he has been treated unfairly to this point. every single one of us needs to listen to the testimony and see a pattern of behavior that started before he was ever sworn into office. there is no new information coming out this week. i don t expect that there will be any before we see the articles of impeachment potentially come to the senate. martha: senator tom tillis, thank you. good to see you tonight. coming up next, nikki haley s first reaction to what happened today and all of the speculation about her future plans. 2024? maybe 2020. some farms grow food. this one grows fuel. exxonmobil is growing algae for biofuels. that could one day power planes, propel ships, and fuel trucks. and cut their greenhouse gas emissions in half. algae. its potential just keeps growing. martha: nikki haley has not always seen eye to eye with president trump she supported him in the 2016 election while sitting at the same time she was not a fan. a few months later, she was chosen to serve in his administration. during her tenure as you in a batter, zelensky did not bite her tongue or hold back when it came to sharing her honest opinion with the president. she was one of the rearview good. earlier, i spoke with the author of the new book, with all due respect: defending america with grit and grace, former u.s. investors the u.n., nikki haley. martha: i want to ask a little about about what we saw happening today. these impeachment hearings just began and recovered them for 5 plus hours throughout the day. do you think that overall they helped or hurt the president s case? the bottom line is, i think this is a distraction from what the american people really care about. they want to see jobs, the economy, all of those things focused on. the u.s.-mexico-canadian trade agreement needs to get done. the country is being divided on illegal immigration. they need to get in there and debate to and come up with vetting processes, make sure that we have our security martha: i don t know if any of that is going to happen. the deficit some of the budget going forward, these are the things that need to be talked about. the thing that bothers me about impeachment as, we are less than a year away from an election. let the people decide. here you have a situation where the president clearly was having a conversation with another president, and, yes, that he asked for the investigation? that s not a secret. he s been telling everybody that. but he did not threaten him. the aid was released. no investigation happened. martha: a day after the mueller investigation ends. why would the president, on that phone call, the very next day, when he s got this thing lifted off of his shoulders, why would he go there? you know him. the only thing i can think about, first of all, not a good practice to ask a foreign government to investigate an american. just not what we want to have happen. but i think what has happened is, he has always resented how he has been in one investigation after another after another, yet the other side has not been investigated. i think it just kind of burns have a bet. i think it burns and that he doesn t think it s fair, and i think he is income after all of these things, i didn t do anything wrong. martha: it landed him right and hold another investigation. unfortunately for him as he go through all of us. do you think that call is tromping trump, as they say , he s always wheeling and dealing? a businessman, he wants to get something out of every transaction? is that what you see? when i read the transcript, i did not see him pushing him to do that. martha: you ve seen a bush a lot harder? i ve seen a bush a lot harder. that was a very casual conversation from what he s normal he had prayed when he pushes, he pushes prey that was not a push from him. martha: today, the turkish president, president erdogan, it s at the white house for the president called him a great nato ally. it is turkey a great nato ally? no, but i have seen the president do this over and over again. this is his way of disarming those who could be foes of ours. he disarms them in a way that makes them think that he sees them as a friend. martha: i want to ask you a little bit about some of the passages in your book. one of the ones that i haven t heard you talk about as much is the very emotional time for you after the shooting at the church in charleston. you are very open about how difficult that was for you as a human being. you broke down in tears at one point, and i thought it was very interesting that you wrote that even afterwards, you had what you characterized as ptsd. how does that manifest itself in you and your body? what was happening? i think it was i was a governor trying to hold my stay together and trying to lift up these families who have been through so much. went to all of the funerals. they were all open casket, watching those family members follow over those caskets, seeing the hate that i couldn t comprehend, and knowing what happened in the room just affected me. where is normally, i am an emotional person and can be, it just wouldn t go away. i would go out and i would do a press conference at i would come back and i would cry. or i would go home after a long day and i would just get into the bed. so it was really signs of not being able to snap out of it. the one thing that i did do is when we had a thousand year flood, hurricane matthew, another school shooting, i threw myself into that, feeling obsessive about making sure that no one got hurt. so i always just threw myself into it. when the symptoms weren t going away, i was having dinner with my chief of staff and her husband, who was martha: a doctor. he said, these are signs of ptsd. you ve got to get therapy. it was difficult to write that in the book. that was not something that was easy. i thought ptsd was for people on the battlefield. i thought it was for people who experienced trauma firsthand. i had guilt begging, i wasn t even in the room, i wasn t one e family members. why aren t i having it? you can get ptsd just in different ways. martha: so much of what was going on with the people you are with fred i want to play this for you, this is from steve schmidt, who was an advisor to john mccain s campaign. here s what he had to say about you. she wants to be vice president on the republican ticket in 2020. i think there is a chance that trump will dump mike pence. why do you say that? because he has an enormous problem with women, suburban women, particularly. it s funny because they came out with this book. as a personal book. it talks about the good, the bad, the ugly. everything in there. there are some people who are upset that i actually went out and said that i had a good working relationship with the president. so they are trying to create excuses for that. they are saying i want to be vice president. mike pence has been a good vice president tower president. he s a friend of mine. he s done a good job. those two are strung together. i m going to be supporting both of them. i m going to be campaigning for both of them. the reason i said what i said of the focus because it was the truth. i did have a good working relationship with the president. this is not me trying to martha: as president is so unconventional. the idea that he might decide to switch gears is nothing is out of the box with president trump. if he came to you and said, i talked to mike, he understands, he did a great job, you are up next, what would you say? not going to happen. he is very pleased with vice president pence. they ve already put their names on the ballot. i think it was in new hampshire, or wherever that was. no, i ve never had one conversation with him about it. it s just not martha: what is next for you politically? have to figure it out. i take it a year at a time. i m campaigning for some really good people, cory gardner, joni ernst of iowa. trying to fund raise and help them get reelected. so just came out with the book come on a 15 city book tour. having fun with that. we ll take it a year at a time. martha: last question, hillary clinton said that many, many, many, i think four people are asking her that she should really consider running. what do you think? i don t see it. certainly, if she wants to jump in, she can. you know what this really says is, they are not happy with the field they have. you would not be talking about it if you thought you had a strong slate. i think that democrats realize they don t have a really strong slate. i m not sure that she is going to be the one that gets them there at the end. martha: great to have you here, ambassador nikki haley. the book is called with all due respect. great to talk to you. come back soon. good to see you. thank you. martha: as we said, hillary clinton says the phone is ringing off the hook. people want her to run. they want her to do it now. jesse watters has been talking about that. calling her all the time and asking her to run. he ll be up next. i hplaque psoriasis.evere now, there s skyrizi. 3 out of 4 people achieved 90% clearer skin at 4 months after just 2 doses. skyrizi may increase your risk of infections and lower your ability to fight them. before treatment your doctor should check you for infections and tuberculosis. tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms such as fevers, sweats, chills, muscle aches or coughs, or if you plan to or recently received a vaccine. nothing is everything ask your dermatologist about skyrizi. nothing is everything a former army medic, made of the we maflexibility to handle members like kate. whatever monday has in store and tackle four things at once. so when her car got hit, she didn t worry. she simply filed a claim on 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breath any planned surgery, and all medicines you take. if you recently had a heart attack, ask your doctor if brilinta is right for you. my heart is worth brilinta. if you can t afford your medication, astrazeneca may be able to help. martha: student reporters at northwestern university under fire for essentially apologizing for practicing journalism. it all started when students from the daily northwestern covered protests of a speech by jeff sessions. when the paper published photos of students at the photos that you are seeing right now, they were reached out to buy some of the reporters for an interview about what happened that night, they faced a campus backlash. in response, the paper wrote an editorial apologizing, saying, some of our staff members who were covering the event used northwestern s directory to obtain phone numbers for students beforehand and texted them to ask if they would be willing to be interviewed. we recognize that being contacted like this is an invasion of privacy. that response caused an uproar among alumni and journalist, understandably so. joining me now, founder of capitalist hedge fund, and a fox news network interpreter. featured on the cover of the daily northwestern when he was a student there. there he is. jonathan, good to have you here. first of all, the headline is that jeff sessions got shouted out at that place, the protesters were sort of overwhelming, and it became an unsafe situation are potentially unsafe situation and he had to be escorted out of there. it seems to me is that though i won t even call them protesters, they were there to disrupt jeff sessions s page. those disruptors, and other journalists, they were the ones who should be apologizing here. i was shocked and surprised to see that the doll might the apology from the daily northwestern. when i was a student, the thing that was exciting what college was the debate, the opposing viewpoints, radical viewpoints by the opportunity to not just abate them but to challenge them and to ultimately try to get to the truth. that is what is so frustrating here, the goal should be get to the truth. meanwhile, here we have a journalist apologizing for it when it should be the proteste protesters, so-called protesters. martha: here s a quote, one of the finest historically, one of the finest journalism schools in the country at northwestern. a quote from the dean, charles whitaker, responding to the attacks by journalists. the swarm of alums and journalists who are outraged by the daily editorial and have been equally rancorous and the combination of our students on social media, i say, give the young people a break. what they need at this moment is our support and encouragement to stay the course. it seems to me, if you are covering any event, which i have done for over 20 years, you watch who is there, you try to contact them, you get sound bites from them, you get quotes from them to put in the paper, why are you here tonight, what is upsetting about this jeff sessions issue. the idea that these protesters who want to put themselves out there are traumatized by the fact that someone wants to talk to them about it is in itself very weird. what it is, martha, you are trained properly. young people, unfortunately, their education is doing them a disservice because we are seeing that at northwestern and college campuses, particularly the elite college campuses, the elevation of feelings, martha. the elevation of the motion emotion over anything. even student journalists who were doing their job. young people, if they want to come out and protest and mak maa disruption in public, they should be ready to have their photo taken at half that photo public. martha: if you don t want to talk to them, hang up the phone. i ve had it happen to me many, many times. that is part of the process, just say no. i will quickly say, these young people, they are getting is on thei there from their professors. they talk to them about safe spaces, that is where they are getting it from. it s happening on campuses all across the country. martha: jonathan, thank you very much. stick around. speaking of safe spaces, jesse watters is coming up next. [laughs] he has one step closer to being right here with us. i will certainly tell you i m happy to give you the tour, i love doing it. hey jay. jay? charlotte! oh hi. he helped me set up my watch lists. oh, he s terrific. excellent tennis player. bye-bye. i recognize that voice. annie? yeah! she helped me find the right bonds for my income strategy. you re very popular around here. there s a birthday going on. karl! he took care of my 401k rollover. wow, you call a lot. yeah, well it s my money we re talking about here. joining us for karaoke later? ah, i d love to, but people get really emotional when i sing. help from a team that will exceed your expectations. we re portuguese? i thought we were hungarian. can you tell me that story again? behind every question is a story waiting to be discovered. this holiday, start the journey with a dna kit from ancestry. this holiday, start the journey with a dna kit wheeveryone is different.ta, which is why xfinity mobile is a different kind of wireless network that lets you design your own data. choose unlimited, shared data, or mix lines of each and switch any line, anytime. giving you more choice and control compared to other top wireless carriers. save up to $400 a year when you switch. plus, get 50% off when you buy any new lg phone. xfinity mobile. click, call or visit a store today. martha: many, many, many, many people are calling hillary. they want her to run for president again. watch. as i say, never, never, never say never. i will certainly tell you, i am under enormous pressure for many, many, many people to think about it but as of this moment, sitting here in this studio talking to you, that is absolutely not in my plans. martha: this particular moment, this second, my answer is no. jesse watters, cohost of the five, host of watters world, you want hillary clinton to run again. i called her on the phone. martha: many, many and even jesse watters. the one that she did not smash with a hammer. the one phone she did not smash. she could get in. it would be really ugly to wrestle this thing away from liz and bernie and joe. i would love every moment of it because it would be expensive and brutal. the really real reason she can t is because she lacks one thing, deep well of goodwill from democrat voters. she lost and humiliating fashion. she did not lose gracefully. it was not a squeaker. he won, donald trump, major swing states martha: electorally it was not a squeaker but if she were here, she would tell you that she won the popular vote. speak about lost three big blue states, self-inflicted wounds martha: a combination of 50,000 sure. the email scandal, so much baggage. martha: no big deal, just have to show up in wisconsin, show up in pennsylvania, got to show up in michigan, and i will get this thing up. sure. it was that easy, she should ve done it last time. she is teasing us to sell books for chelsea. martha: i think that might be part of it but i think she also said in response to one of the questions, of course i think about what it would be like if i was president. i think about it every single day. martha: it haunts me. i added that. it haunts me to. martha: [laughs] she has been advised for meghan markle, and she says that she thinks that meghan markle id stressed out, because of her gender and herb race. here s what she said about that. you do think gender and race absolutely. you go back and look at social media from the time the engagement was announced, race was clearly an element and edge. and to think that some of your, what we would call, mainstream media, actually allowed that to be printed in their pages, or amplified, was heartbreaking and wrong. martha: she just said she wants to give her a big hug. she was speaking to the british press. in your papers, this is the way it was presented. i don t for member that here. people attacking her based on her race or her gender. but it s been tough. every wants to give her a big, big hug. meghan markle hast servants. why do we feel bad for meghan markle? she s wearing jewelry that cost millions of dollars. she is traveling all over the world. when i peruse the british tabloids, martha, as i do, the main problem is that between the princes, william and harry, they don t get along, their wives don t get along. martha: this whole thing apparently. here s a message from the do s version of the ground, coming november 17th , i know you can t wait. a message on how to be royal. we have all made sacrifices and suppressed who we are. it is not a choice. it is a duty. martha: it doesn t matter who you are and how you feel! don t you understand that? stiff upper lip. i am all for that. so dumbo has a disclaimer. netflix disney, excuse me, streaming service, dumbo says, this program is presented as originally created. it may contain outdated cultural depictions. because so yeah, they have a disclaimer because even you and i could agree, martha, some of the cartoons back in the 50 in 60s end 70s, a little insensitive toward ethnic group, minorities, they way they rear depicted. i understand the disclaimer. it covers them. martha: here s one of the ones they were talking about, we will play it. it could be potentially unnerving or upsetting to some people. they say there are stereotypes of african-americans, stereotypes of asians that are not necessarily the way that we would present them today. here is one from no wait, which does not have a disclaimer but it might be coming, given this moment. martha: i think that is very romantic. some people would say that she s not giving any consent. is like baby it s cold outside. you can t have any romance. too bad. i have never gotten permission for anything i have done. martha: i don t know if we want to go there. no, no, no. rewind the tape. thank you, jesse. are the allegations you heard on capitol hill today enough to undo the 2016 election? geraldo rivera has a quick theory tonight on his thoughts, joining us from cleveland on what he watched today, when we come back. ty butchemel. cut. liberty mu. line? cut. liberty mutual customizes your car insurance so you only pay for what you need. cut. liberty m. am i allowed to riff? what if i come out of the water? liberty biberty. cut. we ll dub it. liberty mutual customizes your car insurance so you only pay for what you need. only pay for what you need. liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. there s a company that s talked than me: jd power.people 448,134 to be exact. they answered 410 questions in 8 categories about vehicle quality. and when they were done, chevy earned more j.d. power quality awards across cars, trucks and suvs than any other brand over the last four years. so on behalf of chevrolet, i want to say thank you, real people. you re welcome. we re gonna need a bigger room. look, i am reserving judgment on the ultimate questions once the testimony is complete. martha: the captain of the impeachment ship not ready to prep the articles of impeachment. how did the needle move in either direction? geraldo rivera, what is your take about today? well, first of all, adam schiff just saying that s the most disengenous statement all year. with the russian collusion hoax if true would rise to the level of the of article 2 section 4 of the constitution. it would not be high crimes and misdemeanor, but this is tacky talk. my basic observation watching it is the president has the worst telephone security. worse than my aunt amy with the party line and everybody could listen into the conversation. no consciousness of guilt on the president s behalf. it s the way he does business. it s blustery and tacky talk is what i think it is. martha: joe biden just a second ago we got his reaction today. watch this. did you watch today? could we get a quick reaction? i didn t get to see anything. i heard it was devastating for the president. how so? you saw it. you know how so. martha: [laughing]. i disagree with the former vice-president. i think what you had here was hearsay on top of hearsay. this one heard this one said this happened. i would not be surprised if the president knowing the unconventional way he does business, a stream of consciousness, saying what do i care about ukraine? oh joe biden and hunter corruption. where is the crime? there is no crime alleged. they tried to change from quid pro quo to extortion and bribery. where is the extortion if the victim the president of the ukraine says it doesn t happen. how do you have a prosecution without a star witness? martha: we have all viewpoints on it today. geraldo, thank you very much. that s the story on wednesday november 13, 2019. the story keeps going on and on. we will be back here tomorrow night. have a good night. tucker is up next. dc tucker: good evening and welcome to tucker carlson tonight. if you could remember that far back, democrats formerly began impeachment proceedings against president trump on september 24th of this year. today nearly 2 months later they held the first public hearings. cnn went wall-to-wall under strict instructions to squeeze every last drop of partisan drama for the proceedings. if you were stuck in an airport and caught some is of it, you could testify how pointless and tiresome it was. it made you realize democrats had no master plan for impeachment. they haven t thought it through. they areg