simply a shipment. was neil armstrong. was his destiny starts july 20th on t.w. . look at the fact that. this is deja vu news live from berlin party for germany as they are knocked out of the world cup but joy for sweden as they prevailed 21 in a tight quarter final down now face the netherlands in the semifinals. and talk of deals instead of threats of tariffs at the g. 20 summit u.s. president donald trump and his chinese counterpart xi jinping agree on a truce in their country s trade war we ll review some of achievements and shortcomings for you from osaka japan. and italian authorities arrest the skipper of a ship carrying migrants rescued at the met a trip brilliancy captain carlotta caro wrecked catcha had defied in order to stay away from italian sports. unexpired sir welcome to the program germany is out of the women s soccer world cup after a tight 21 defeat by sweden in the quarter finals. germany took the lead in the scorching heat in france through lena mccool one of the best goals of the turn it was sweden hit back soon after thanks to sofia jacobson. you see it. then grew from strength to strength and got the winner early in the 2nd half. and there you have a jonathan fraying. look at those celebrations jonathan crane from sports joins me now. what happened well what happened indeed massive disappointment for germany one of the for each one of the favorites it s as well for them of course they took the lead and i hate to say i told you so but i was worried about jeremy s defense and ultimately they were undone by that defensive frailties beaten as well by the best team on the day jamie never really threatens their rights at the end when they were throwing everything at sweden had a couple of head this maybe could have scored with one of them but unfortunately they go out of the tournament also will not qualify for next year s olympics and how much of a disappointment will this be in germany it s going to be a huge disappointment as i said they were one of the pretty favorites and germany had to be going from strength to strength in this tournament they were getting better with every game but those defensive frailties they were talking about caught out by a long ball for the 1st goal then bore watching for the 2nd one so huge disappointment could they have started with jennifer mares on that play playmakers she d been recovering from a broken toe they certainly missed creates if that person is important for her to i spoke to her before the tournament she said she was dreaming of playing on that side club side that s where the semifinals and finals are going to be but take nothing away from sweden they 30 deserved to go through the fs competitive victory over germany in 24 is well so looking forward to having great for germany no sweden versus the netherlands. how did they get through their their game earlier today yeah that s the other semifinal game you played in today on a wednesday night the netherlands a really emotional contender in women s football in recent is that the reigning european champions it was a difficult game against. tough. but eventually they proved too strong they have made the breakthrough in 70 minutes that set the on to. the highest in the set piece and then they sealed the win 10 minutes later he was a mirror of this fiasco but from the other side free kick from the right and there was stephanie on the ground with the head. since their 1st ever women s world cup semifinal in the courses in this tournament and they re accompanied by so many fronts not just played in the long just across the border from the netherlands thousands of them came a sea of orange it really was the fight to behold some great football their great goals thank you jonathan crane well beyond out of the g. 20 summit marked by trade deals as u.s. president donald trump hailed what he calls an agreement to restart trade talks between his country and china the 2 countries nearly a year long trade dispute has disrupted the global economy. and reported on the summit from beginning to the final communique. this was the handshake the world had been waiting for so much hinged on the bilateral meeting of the 2 presidents that you could almost hear a relief going through world markets when donald trump said it was this we had a great meeting and we will be continuing to negotiate. for at least the time being we re not going to be lifting tariffs on china and addition of the focus here of course being on the wording disordered least the time being $50000000000.00. at last year s g. 20. something very similar but that didn t keep us chinese relations from deteriorating afterwords. the e.u. had much more solid results to share with the world after 20 years of negotiating finally an agreement with the south american trade bloc. this. is the real message in support of open fair sustainable i m told space 3 because 2 it creates good jobs. for all concerned it shows that in the spirit of modes agreements can be reached mutually beneficial compromises can be felt. but it s getting harder the negotiations to reach agreement on the final communique were tougher than ever before and lasted through 2 nights straight the sides trade there was another contentious topic. climate change the united states wanted to kick the topic out of the communique altogether but in the end there was just too much opposition. in the end 19 countries supported the paris agreement that s supposed to limit global warming to under 2 degrees and one country didn t in these times this qualifies as success. this is still only now next mission until after negotiating day and night it s not possible to have a 19 plus one statement seen in which the 1960 trees of the paris agreement commit themselves to the same things we did. we say this process is a reversible dog s up it says. so overall the worst outcome was averted but this can t hide the fact that each year the g 20 is under increasing pressure. also at the g 20 summit chancellor merkel made her 1st public comments about her health since experiencing a 2nd bout of shaking at a function before heading to japan responding to a reporter s question played down the incident insisting that she was fine. i can tell you that firstly i understand your question but i have nothing special to tell you except the time well i m convinced that just as this reaction came up it will also go away again. let s take a look now at some of the other stories making news around the world donald trump is has said he may meet with north korean leader kim jong un when he goes to korea s demilitarized zone on sunday he is currently on a visit to south korea at a reception in the capital seoul south korean counterpart in the idea of. iran s news agency says the country will soon exceed enriched uranium limit agreed to in its 2015 nuclear accord on friday iran s envoy said european countries had offered too little at last ditch talks in vienna to persuade tehran to stick to the nuclear deal. and the philippines has sent back nearly 70 containers of garbage to canada a cargo ship loaded with a canadian waste docked in vancouver on saturday the trash was sent to the philippines more than 5 years ago mislabeled as recyclable plastics in april philippine president threatened to quote declare war against canada if it didn t take back the trash. italian police have arrested the captain of a humanitarian ship after it entered the port of lampedusa without permission. authorities had banned the sea watch of 3 vessel from docking in italy but early on saturday it did just that colliding with an italian border patrol boat and allowing dozens of migrants to disembark the ship had been waiting at sea for more than 2 weeks 4 days needed the rest of the ship s german captain calif i kept for refusing to obey a military vessel she faces up to 10 years in jail italy s government has closed its waters to all migrant rescue ships accusing them of aiding traffickers i kept his arrest follows a long standoff with the italian coast guard. an angry crowd greeted the commander of sea watch 3 as she was let off the humanitarian vessel but police. to cries of go get out but also a round of applause rolled a rocket so it was taken into custody after the ship illegally docked at a port on the italian island of lampedusa it followed a 3 day standoff with the taliban authorities who refused to allow the 40 remaining migrants on board to disembark the government had previously warned the situation was unacceptable. crew and commander that must be stopped and arrested and expelled. expect the european union to tell me where and when these 40 people will go and for me the question ends in 2 minutes. we re going to figure the interior minister material salvini also said that a deal could be struck with germany france finland luxembourg and portugal over providing havens for the migrants they had been stranded at sea for more than 2 weeks. see watch 3 and a ship run by the spanish pro open arms and geo are the only privately run vessels patrolling the mediterranean after the italian and maltese governments introduced stricter anti immigration policies last year. but for those migrants still making hazardous journeys across the mediterranean the ships could mean the difference between life and death. and to shed a light on the situation i m now joined by chris ski an activist and spokesperson for the organization sea watch chris thanks for joining us to tell us what kind of help if any is the captain getting at this point what s going on with her well of course he s getting all the help we can give her she s she has an amazing team of lawyers she has legal fund legal costs will be. provided from and before everything else she s receiving a lot of a lot of solidarity from all of europe especially also from italy from civilian people who are just totally in favor and supportive to cola certainly not the perspective though of material salvini the interior minister of italy who said that she risked a catastrophe. in. you know bringing her boat into port well who risked a catastrophe other people who actually provide for actually bringing about a catastrophe of the people who are letting thousands and thousands of people drown in the mediterranean of which salvini is one. of the people who risk a catastrophe other people who have our ship barred 16 days from entering the port and who have even after we declared a state of emergency didn t let our ship into the port those of the people here he also says that she watches a criminal organization. you know give me an idea as to why he s saying that you feel like you are one and if not why is he saying such things while we are forced or not we have always acted in accordance with international law with international refugee law as well as with with the law for c. . however vini and his friends all over europe have tried to criminalize the watch and other sea rescue n.g.o.s for years now there s a case on going against 10 people from the event talked to a ship that was seized one year ago who might face up to 20 years in prison but who 1st of all they face a long. jurist is interesting procedure and finally. what i would answer to this is that the criminal it s what i said before the criminals are those where that s in people drawn in the mediterranean and who are funding libyan militias to pull back people which europe is not allowed to do just a quick last question we talked about the cap and what happens to the boats you watch 3 it s been confiscated if you were kenya or continue without it well for sure it can we have massive support these days as i said especially in italy the port support is skyrocketing and we will not give up before there are open legal passageways into the european union and safe routes for refugees ok chris cannot ski in the organization see watch thank you very much. for thousands have turned out for one of spain s most popular fiesta is the annual wiener battle. it takes place in the hearo in the country s real one growing region after an early morning mass participants wearing white trench each other with around 70000 liters of wine their equipment includes water pistols water garden sprayers and buckets the event celebrate st peter and the region s plentiful wine output. over again you can always get news on the go just download are out from google play or from the apple store the app store that will give you access to all the latest news around the world as well as push notifications for any breaking news you can use to send us photos videos as well. as all the news for now up next it s our documentary a trip to outer space with a look at black holes and cosmic rays i ll be back at the top of the hour with more news you get all the news any time on our web site www dot com that s it for. the 1st clue listen to the doors grand moment arrives. join her journey back to freedom. in our interactive 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think it will be true after 2016. so i think you re going to have a minuscule third-party vote. it s going to be up or down. charlie cook, thank you very much for joining us tonight. really appreciate it. thanks. that is tonight s last word. the 11th hour with brian williams starts now. tonight, john bolton is out after a rocky tenure as national security adviser. it s either a firing or resignation depending on which story you believe. now the white house looking to hire its fourth national security adviser in just three years. this comes amid a conversation already spun up over the president s changing the weather forecast, denying a business arrangement in plain sight, which may help to explain some big, bad, new polling numbers just out. plus, a former counterintel chief of the fbi is here with us for an update on that russian asset who alerted america to putin s meddling in our 2016 election. and steve kornacki at the big board with the north carolina special election results tonight as the 11th hour gets under way on a tuesday night. well, good evening once again from our nbc news headquarters here in new york. day 964 of the trump administration. real quickly here tonight, in political news, nbc news projected a short time ago that when all the votes are counted, dan bishop, the republican, will hold the north carolina 9th congressional district for the republicans. that special election in the district that trump visited last night. and as we get into the rest of today s news, the headline tonight, yet another staff shakeup in the trump white house. national security adviser john bolton is out. after 17 months on the job. bolton was trump s third national security adviser in less than three years. that means tonight, put a different way, they are searching for their fourth national security adviser in three years time. trump announced he d fired bolton this morning on twitter writing, i informed john bolton last night that his services are no longer needed at the white house. i disagreed strongly with many of his suggestions as did others in the administration, and, therefore, i asked john for his resignation which was given to me this morning. i thank john very much for his service. i will be naming a new national security adviser next week. minutes later bolton responded with a post of his own. i offered to resign last night and president trump said let s talk about it tomorrow. he also in a text message to nbc news wrote, i offered to resign last night. he never asked for it directly or indirectly. i slept on it and resigned this morning. bolton s predecessors had equ equally abrupt exits for their part. mike flynn, you may recall, lasted all of 24 days. he later pleaded guilty to lying to the fbi about his communications with russia. ironically, flynn was in federal court just today on related matters. at the same time, bolton s departure was being announced. then there was h.r. mcmaster, he was pushed out in march of last year after disagreeing with the president on several foreign policy issues. in another twist, nbc news reports trump has been reaching tout mcmaster for advice on national security issues of late even while bolton was still serving in the post. today white house spokesman hogan gidley echoed the president s explanation for john bolton s departure. john bolton s priorities and policies just don t line up with the president s and any sitting president has the right to put someone in that position that can carry out his agenda. that became no longer tenable so the president made a change. hogan gidley in the drivedri, a reminder they have a briefing room there. great and detailed reporting out tonight takes advantage of a deeply leaky white house to point out the tensions between bolton and the president. washington post son tis on th board with this. bolton did not like trump s repeated meetings with kim jong-un and had argued against directly meeting with iranian officials. he also did not like the president s repeated insistence that russia rejoin the group of seven nations. it had been reported one of bolton s main adversaries in the administration is that man, secretary of state mike pompeo, a smiling pompeo talked about bolton during a white house briefing held in the actual briefing room. that the now-former national security adviser was supposed to attend, himself, less than an hour after trump s announcement. the president s entitled to the staff that he wants at any moment. he should have people that he trusts and values and whose efforts and judgments benefit him in delivering american foreign policy. there were many times ambassador bolton and i disagreed, that s to be sure. were you two blind sided by what occurred today? i m never surprised. the times writes pompeo, has proved more adept at managing the president and subordinating his views to mr. trump s while mr. bolton kept pushing his beliefs even after they were rejected. mr. pompeo did not see mr. bolton as a team player but as someone who undermined the president s policies. and politico is reporting for months the fox news channel host tucker carlson had been lobbying president donald trump to fire john bolton and frequently told trump that bolton not only wasn t on his team but was using the news media against him. that would be something approaching full circle for john bolton who came to trump s attention initially because of his frequent appearances on fox news. ultimately, i think our objective should be to overthrow the regime in tehran. i think the only diplomatic option left is to end the regime in north korea. the question, how do you know that north korean regime is lying? answer, their lips are moving. then came this. once bolton was on trump s team, signed up, trump often referred to bolton s aggressive stance on national security issues. john bolton is absolutely a hawk. if it was up to him, he d take on the whole world at one time. i have john bolton who i would definitely say is a hawk and i have other people that are other side of the equation. yeah, john s very good. john is a he has strong views on things, but that s okay. i actually temper john, which is pretty amazing, isn t it? nobody thought that was going to i m the one that tempers him, but that s okay. bolton s departure puts him at the end of a very long and growing roster of trump officials who have either been ousted or resigned since the beginning of this still young presidency. deputy national security adviser charles cupperman is taking over bolton s job on an interim basis which brings us to our leadoff discussion on a tuesday night. phillip rucker, pulitzer prize winning white house bureau chief for the washington post. jeremy bash, former chief of staff at the cia and pentagon as well as former counsel to the house intel committee. and kimberly atkins, senior washington correspondent for wbur, boston s npr news station. welcome to you all. phil, i d like to begin with you. just tonight, tucker carlson, by the way, is quoted as calling this a great day for america and saying of bolton, he s a man of the left. what is your after-action report? was this loyalty problems or leaks? was this outside voices or actual policy? brian, it s basically all of the above, and by the time bolton left the administration, the list of his detractors, of the people inside the administration who did not admire him, was quite long. it included, by the way, the first lady and the chief of staff, mick mulvaney. trump and bolton have disagreed from really the beginning of this relationship, especially on north korea, but also on afghanistan, on iran, on other issues. the problem for trump in recent weeks, however, is that bolton s disagreements increasingly became publicly known through media reports. bolton, of course, denies that he has leaked those sorts of details, but it bothered the president that the disputes that these discussions they were having especially on afghanistan and those peace talks with the taliban were coming into full view and there was really a breakdown in the way that the national security apparatus of the administration was working. bolton in the final weeks, according to my colleagues reporting at the post was not even on speaking terms with the secretary of state mike pompeo and trump saw that as a real problem and started to really resent bolton. i talked to a senior administration official, former official, earlier today, who said that bolton really acted like a big shot in the white house. he had a big entourage. his aides were more loyal to him than to the president, himself. the president ultimately got sick of that. jeremy bash, two points here. number one, this is hardly the first time we have seen tension between two powerful jobs in the modern era. national security adviser and the white house. henry kissinger and secretary of state. point number two is an example from rand paul of some of the reaction today. let s listen together. john bolton out of the white house, the threat of war around the world is greatly diminished. the president really does want to end the war in afghanistan. i think he could, but he needs people around him who support the vision he s putting forward. so, jeremy, after all this, do you think this marks any change in direction on policy for this presidency? well, i think the president makes it up as he goes along. you know, he he improvises foreign policy. there s no doctrinal north star. for that reason, john bolton who very much came out of the school of being a muscular internationalist, really favored military intervention in the context of iran, did not like cozying up to putin, did not like the bromance with kim jong-un, and obviously was very wary of doing a peace deal with the taliban that would remove u.s. troops and intelligence professionals from afghanistan during the 9/11 anniversary week. and so this clash in some ways was inevitable and i think it shows you the extent of the chaos, the ex-temtent of the dysfunction. these are critically important jobs because donald trump is very lucky, we have not had a major national security crisis, a no-kidding full-blown crisis, an attack on the homeland or some significant military confrontation, and when that happens, you need professionals around you who can give you the honest facts and the best advice. yeah, jeremy, i was thinking earlier tonight, we have a look at one of the testing sessions for what we re going to see tomorrow evening. this is, after all, the eve of the 9/11 anniversary. hard to believe it s been 18 years. and tomorrow evening over lower manhattan, we will see those two shafts of blue light that still puts a lump in your throat. to your point, god forbid we have not witnessed a genuine crisis because that s the day you realize the job of national security adviser in the white house is one of the most consequential in the free world. absolutely. the fundamental aspects of the job are to bring together the folks from the other agencies, the director of national intelligence, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, the secretaries of defense and state and the other cabinet leads and to provide options to the president, to amass the facts, to consult with allies, partners around the world, and to give the president options to respond to a crisis. john bolton had basically become a cable tv commentator in the white house. with no mandate other than to push his own views and his agenda. that s what got him crossways but also shows how dysfunctional the national security process has become under president trump. kim, at the start of our broadcast, we showed a piece of video that we didn t explain, and that was while this was all going on, shortly before the announcement, the camera crews that are always camped out in the driveway and the briefing room saw john bolton all by his lonesome on his cell phone come out of the northwest portico there in the west wing, no marine present, just standing there, still the national security adviser to the preside president, making a phone call. next time we heard his name, it was his departure. kim, you covered this crowd for a long time. you ve talked to a lot of people. is the lesson of this that if you manage up, your chances at longer tenure are better? essentially. i mean, this is the white house that is run by president trump. when he was first elected, there was a lot of talk, particularly when it came to things like the national security apparatus, that president trump might be sort of an empty vessel or a blank slate through which others could kind of govern and just use him as a means to get there. we re seeing increasingly that that just isn t the case. president trump likes to surround himself with people, as secretary pompeo said, who he trusts, but the problem is finding people who can trust him and trust that they would listen to his advice and do the job that they allow them to do the job that they re there to do. president trump is very interested in who contradicts him, particularly publicly. i think this all came to a head, clearly, because of the reports that there was dissension within the white house, not just between bolton and the president, but of dragging the vice president into it, too, with news reports suggesting he was on bolton s side when it came to that meeting with the taliban leaders that never happened. that seemed to really anger this president. one thing that i m hearing from the hill, of course, from a lot of lawmakers, you talked about some of the republicans who were not sad to see bolton go. certainly the democrats were not fans of bolton. i think tucker carlson is wrong there. there s a lot of there s still a lot of dismay because they re saying at a time where there s so many big issues in national security and foreign relations, we have foreign we have prime minister benjamin netanyahu, for example, just as all this was happening was claiming that the united states was going to assist him or be cooperate with him in annexing parts of the west bank. there s a lot going on, and the national security apparatus is in complete disarray. there s no sense of who s in charge. the president is firing people on twitter. and all that makes it very difficult for the united states to lead. so it s a lot of chaos and confusion. it s something that the president doesn t seem to mind so much, but certainly folks on the hill and elsewhere are very concerned about it. terrific point, where netanyahu is concerned. one of the stories that did get by today. hey, jeremy, newspaper reporters love the expression, being mentioned for the job. who is being mentioned for the job? i think i ve read 10 to 12 names today. who wants this job, phil? well, it s hard because this person will be the fourth national security adviser and i think they were worried that their tenure would end badly just as the three predecessors had to worry. there are a couple people throughout the administration. there are some ambassadors currently serving in posts and there are some others from the outside who i guess trump likes their commentary. none of these are sort of the most prominent senior national security progressfessionals fro establishment. someone will fill the job, although i think effectively pompeo will be like kissinger and serve effectively as both secretary of state and national security adviser at the same time. because everything goes back to henry kissinger. phil rucker, your paper among those out with new polling and the number is rather shocking. washington post poll, 38% approve, 56% disapprove. c, cnn poll, 39% approve, 55% disapprove. either way, that s a long way underwater for a sitting president. he s shown he has a ceiling that s under 50%, but phil rucker, a lot of people are drawing a clear red line from what we ve been covering to numbers like that. yeah, brian, those numbers are clearly alarming for the president and his campaign advisers as they look ahead to the re-election campaign. that is not a good place for any incumbent to be. he, of course, has time to make up ground, but he had an opportunity this summer to try to, you know, build a stronger political foundation and did not do so. it turned out to be in his own advisers telling a summer of self-sabotage and missed opportunities and that in turn has been enraging the president in recent weeks. it s the reason you ve seen him ramp up the attacks on twitter and at his rallies against the media, against polling, specifically. he went after that washington post /abc news poll this morning as somehow inaccurate even though it s obviously a scientific study of public opinion. and it s just a sign, i think, for the trump team that there are some real dangers here as they look ahead to the re-election and they try to, you know, focus on an agenda that can broaden his support. to kimberly atkins, to jeremy bash, to philip rucker, our thanks for starting off our conversation so nicely on this tuesday evening. and coming up for us, the fallout from extracting a cia asset from deep within the kremlin, apparently. and later, despite a revolving door of departures, the president repeatedly denies any chaos in his administration. all of it as our allies and a adversaries look on with great interest, as you might imagine. all of it as the 11th hour is just getting started on a tuesday night in view of the executive office building. of course i have- ever since i started renting from national. because national lets me lose the wait at the counter. .and choose any car in the aisle. and i don t wait when i return, thanks to drop & go. at national, i can lose the wait.and keep it off. looking good, patrick. i know. 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[crash] what?! haha, it happens. and if you ve got cut-rate car insurance, paying for this could feel like getting robbed twice. so get allstate. and be better protected from mayhem. like me. because there s always another team looking to punch one in. a spectacular touchdown grab with nfl redzone from nfl network on xfinity, you get every touchdown from every game on sunday afternoons, all season long. watch every breakout star, every heart-pounding running attack, and every big time defensive stop. sundays were made for football on xfinity. that s simple, easy, awesome. add the sports entertainment package for nfl redzone. click, call, or visit a store today to learn more. a former russian asset who had been living in the washington area has been moved to a secret location after his role as an informant to our country came to light this week. new york times reported the man who was one of the cia s most important assets was a key to their conclusion, in fact, that putin, himself, ordered the 2016 meddling into our election. the source was extracted from the kremlin in 2017. the times puts it in perspective, and we quote, the move brought to an end the career of one of the cia s most important sources. it also effectively blinded american intelligence officials to the view from inside russia as they sought clues about kremlin interference in the 2018 midterm elections and next year s presidential contest. russian state media today identified this potential source, said he did work for the russian government but downplayed the role he had. here for more, frank figliuzzi, former fbi assistant director notably for counterintelligence and michael schmidt, pulitzer prize winning washington correspondent for the new york times. frank, in order to have practiced counterintelligence for as many years as you did, it means knowing a lot about intelligence. how valuable would someone like this have been to us? brian, this is the kind of human source that you can go an entire career and never be exposed to. to have someone that s called a recruitment in place at this level reportedly with access to vladimir putin s office is exceptionally rare, and americans through this unfortunate leak are getting a very rare glimpse of the human stakes involved. this human being risked his life, risked his family, to work for our team, for the united states, and reportedly among the information he provided was information detailing putin s direct involvement in russian interference with our 2016 presidential election, putin s personal desire to see trump win. that s the kind of thing that americans need to understand. people who ve never read people in the senate, in the house, who ve never read the mueller report who write it off, laugh it off, as something insignificant, need to understand the human toll and the human side and this story depicts that in great detail. michael schmidt, does this first of all, the warning from robert mueller at the hearing about their current meddling in our political process was one of the few things that came through from that day. that soundbite may be the most repeated in our media. second, the loss of this asset, has it added to the view, the government types you talk to, that our preparation for their interference in 2020 is either flatflo flatfooted or straight-up hampered? well, whatever information the government had in 2016 that got them to that conclusion that putin had played a role in trying to tip the scales for trump will not be there coming into the next election. and that just means that the intelligence community will be at a huge disadvantage as they try and figure out what is actually going on around the election. and that means that they ll have to rely more on intercepts. that means they ll have to go out and find sources. but developing a source like this takes a very, very long time. it s not just something they can just go out and get. so my sense is that coming into 2020, they will be flying blind in a way that they weren t in 2016 because if you remember back to that period of time after trump got elected and the intelligence community came out with this document, it was such specific information. the intelligence community put its full weight behind this document and you sort of understand why they did that if they had such a good source. so, frank, for our viewers who have not read into the depths of this story, it s reported this asset was close enough to putin, physically, and in his political orbit, to have taken photos of the papers on put putin s desk. having established that, might just use the expression, flying blind. that s scary enough. if we re flying bind is the worst-case scenario that russia also changes its playbook a bit in how they come at us. yeah, every time you have one of these leakages, and every time you have to exfiltrate a source at this level, you have to understand the damage assessment and the adversary will change their methodology in order to try to avoid this kind of detection again. but michael touched on some of the short-term ramifications. the broader ramifications are not just with russia but imagine now trying to recruit high-level source from china, north korea, iran, and they look you in the eye and say, am i going to get exposed on the news? am i going to be my name provided to the president and might that president leak this information? isn t this the same president trump who said he doesn t like human sources? isn t this the same president trump who said he would never have allowed the cia to recruit kim jong-un s half-brother as a source, so it s a difficult time for the intelligence world. we re headed into the 2020 election and we may be facing an intelligence desert. and, mike schmidt, one of the guys you ve written a lot about, mr. flynn, back in federal court today looking for all the world kind of cool and rested. still a free man able to breathe free air. and it had us thinking about asking that question all over again, why all the lies about russia? and is it possible, mike, we re getting further from knowing that answer? it s been three years almost since mike flynn made his false statements to the fbi about his contacts with the russian ambassador. we still, as a public, do not have a great clarity on why he made those statements. we still don t really understand that. and now there s more questions about what s going on. his lawyer saying that he doesn t want to pull out of his plea agreement but trying to cast doubt on this case. it s just another curious development here. it was only a few months ago that mike flynn had a deal from the government which would recommend no prison time and now that has sort of been all thrown up in the air and they re trying to throw mud at the government on their case here and it just doesn t make sense. so as we see with the story today about the source, issues on russia, counterintelligence, spying, these things take a very long time for any of us to get clarity. two of our returning veterans. our thanks. frank figliuzzi, michael schmidt, gentlemen, thank you both for coming on tonight. the question one of trump s top advisers called, quote, the most ridiculous question he ever heard, happened today. we ll play it for you when we come back. tech: at safelite autoglass, we really pride ourselves on making it easy for you to get your windshield fixed. teacher: let s turn in your science papers. tech vo: this teacher always puts her students first. student: i did mine on volcanoes. teacher: you did?! oh, i can t wait to read it. tech vo: so when she had auto glass damage. she chose safelite. with safelite, she could see exactly when we d be there. teacher: you must be pascal. tech: yes ma am. tech vo: saving her time. 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absolutely not. that s the most ridiculous question i ve ever heard of. mnuchin there today in the briefing room as trump officials appear to be taking great pains to downplay the optics of a white house in any kind of chaos like the search for a fourth national security adviser in three years time. the president, himself, taking to social media just yesterday to declare dishonest media likes to create the look of turmoil in the white house of which there is none. yet a majority of americans may no longer be buying what the president is trying to sell. this was a consequential number that came across our desks today. here it is. according to a new cnn poll, 71% of people surveyed, more than two-nir two-thirds of our fellow citizens say they don t trust either some or any of the official communications coming out of this white house. again, a consequential number. here to talk about it, tim o brien, executive editor of bloomberg opinion. he also happens to be the author of trump nation: the art of being the donald. and michael steele, former chairman of the republican national committee in its former makeup. mr. chairman, thank you for coming on. tim, i m going to start good to see you, brian. with one of your colleagues at bloomberg opinion. a column on the ousting of bolton. agree with bolton or not, he was at least arguably qualified for his job. given every other day of the trump administration is a re-enactment, recruiting qualified grown-ups to fill jobs keeps getting more difficult and the chance of a terrible error keeps rising. earlier i referenced the blue lights that we will see tomorrow night over lower manhattan. that remind us of the worst day in our modern history, there they are, 18 years ago tomorrow. 18 years ago tonight, we knew nothing. a good many people were getting ready to go to work tomorrow morning in current time. god forbid what happens with this president, this white house staff, if we have a national emergency. that s where i think the buffoonery, the chaos, the lack of process, the lack of interest in policy detaidetails, trump s inability to recruit and retain mature, experienced, leaders, all comes home to roost because at some point we re going to have another national security event that will require teamwork. it won t require donald trump acting on his own and he s not going to have the people around him he needs to make effective decisions. i thought this press conference today that steve mnuchin did with mike pompeo was quasi farcical because they came out, i think, in a demonstration of force to say we have a national security apparatus here and we stand up if for that. here s the reality. the top two slots at the department of homeland security are vacant. the national security advisory is vacant. dni is vacant. there s not a white house appointee atop the army. there s not a white house appointee atop the air force. as they start an investigation into scotland. as they start an investigation into scotland. it s rudderless. donald trump like all presidents needs advice. donald trump especially needs advice because he s ill informed and undisciplined. michael steele, should we stay up late waiting for a lot of reaction to the departure of bolton and fellow republicans calling for rigor in the selection process of the fourth national security adviser if three years time? no, i don t think we should so we can all kind of turn in after this show and get a good night s rest because that s exactly how donald trump wants this to play out. keep in mind as tim has just laid out, there are several very key important vacancies still in existence in the national security space, alone. before you get into other aspects of the government writ large that have an acting in charge or in some cases no one, so that s how trump likes it. it s laughable when you hear him tweet out or see him tweet out that he doesn t like that there s no chaos here. everything is under control. this is the man who tells us that he thrives in that space. to tim s point about being informed and educated and republicans should be concerned about this, particularly given, you know, the question you raised at the beginning about what happens if we have a national security emergency, is the fact that donald trump does not want to be instructed. he does not want to be informed because he knows it all already. and so we should take comfort from that and i think americans will have to weigh that going into the next election cycle whether or not what they hear and see from this president does, in fact, give them comfort, that should another 9/11 happen, god forbid, that this administration would be able to handle it because right now, it is the the bet would be it would not be. tim, a good number of people, a lot of them admittedly in newsrooms, heard the bolton news this morning and thought, what else is going on that we re going to miss while covering this? susan glasser of the new yorker tweeted tonight, does anybody remember sharpiegate? we do. just days ago the president tried to change the weather forecast. and that got us to thinking about his first full day in office when this president, indeed, tried to change the weather. let s remember together. it was almost raining. the rain should have scared them away, but god looked down and we said we re not going to let it rain on your speech. in fact, when i first started, i said, oh, no. first line, i got hit by a couple of drops. and i said, oh, this is this is too bad, but we ll go right through it. but the truth is that it stopped immediately. it was amazing and then it became really sunny. then i walked off and it poured right after i left. it poured. tim o brien, you ve written the guy s life story. what have we learned? what we have learned is that donald trump is so counterfactual and in his own sort of reality bubble that he s willing and constantly denying the very thing that s right in front of him. and the reason he does it is in part because i think he s remorseless and he doesn t really have a conscience about telling lies. or misrepresenting what s going on. he does it routinely. i think what s catching up to him now, however, are facts and data. the difference between inauguration day and people throwing ponchos or plastic cloths over their heads while he s saying it isn t raining, and what s happening now at the national weather service is over the last two years he s gotten his hands onto the wheels of the federal government. and he is now bringing other people along with him into this game and it s unfortunate and i think it should concern americans of any political stripe because what he s trying to corrupt here is his data and facts. the national weather service came out in order to keep the residents of alabama calm in the interest of public safety to say, no, there s a storm not coming here. trump said there was. this absurd sharpiegate debate ens ensued. we re in the ninth day of it at this point. and trump pushed it so far so get the head of noaa to come out on his behalf and say, the national weather service was wrong, mr. president, you were right. even though the data and the facts show that not to be true. and that actually ties together a lot of the events we ve seen over the last week. mike pence staying at doonbeg, the air force staying at turnberry, bill barr deciding to have his christmas party at the trump white house. all of these various institutional players are essentially kowtowing to the president either by not observing the fact pattern or paying him this sort of patronage in order to please him and that s not the way good government is meant to run. and to me, that s not even a partisan or ideological issue. we should run a government by the facts. you have a president who s not only ignoring the facts, he s trying to deceive the public. michael steele, let s back the bus right up and go over it again. perhaps lost in the argument over crowd size is the fact that his first day in office, the president said it didn t rain during his inauguration speech. all those pictures on the right-hand side including 43 shrink wrapped were during the course of the inauguration speech. nothing was time shifted forward or back. remarkable to look back on. yeah. between marco rubio and george bush 43, it was priceless moments of, like, yeah, it s kind of raining out here, but, again, i think tim laid it out the absolute correct way. it s counterfactual. it is a narrative that is created from the very first day on that podium looking at the nation. he started this reality television presidency. and every day there s a new episode and within those episodes there are episodes at times, and so if truth and numbers, facts, and information comes out that s contrary to that, he is going to consistently and insistently say that this is the truth as i see it. and then you get the sycophants who value their job and pleasing donald trump more than they do serving the american people will come out and say what they say and host parties at his hotel and claim that, oh, yeah, we always land the planes 2,000 miles out of the way or we always take the presidential the vice presidential party and plant them 130 miles away from the event because that s that s more cost effective. i mean, it just doesn t make any sense, but in his world, it does. both of these gentlemen have agreed to stay with us over the break. coming up, you may have heard last night, we put it this way, there are two kinds of impeachment. regular and diet. which kind do you think the democrats are serving up right about now? 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the president isn t asking me to. he s competing in a private enterprise. it s nothing something he controls in that process, so if if it s in the process, they can stay there. may have sounded like the trivago guy but that s the top republican in the house of representatives. our two guests remain with us for this conversation. tim o brien, what do you make of that you can stay in a marriott or a trump hotel? here s the difference, brian. the man or woman running the marriott isn t the boss of the attorney general, the vice president, or the head of the air force. the person running the marriott is not the head of kevin mccarthy s party. whether or not the president of the united states is directing any of these people to patronize his hotels at a bare minimum, the fact that they go there creates a very bad look. it s atmospherically wrong. it looks like you re patronizing the president to line his wallet. even if you re not. at a minimum, that s a problem. the reality is this can t be far from anybody s mind that it might make good sense for them to go to a trump hotel. we know that when mike pence first went to doonbeg, his own chief of staff, mark short, said he decided to look at doonbeg because the president suggests to him, hey, you re going to be in ireland, you might as well stay at my hotel in doonbeg even though it s 125 miles west of dublin and far from where most of your meetings are going to be. pence later walked that back and said the president didn t push any of that along. this is all conflict of interest issues that hung over trump when he got inaugurated coming home to roost. and by the way, a lot of those people are staying at properties, particularly the ones in scotland, that are losing money so it also raises the question of whether or not he s using taxpayers funds to put the military up at his hotel to help his bottom line. hey, michael steele, i m watching meet the press daily today as all good americans should and i hear chuck todd with an explanation of what the democrats are up to that was unique to my eyes and unsparing, so we have put it on the screen and we re going to all read it together. and it begins the house judiciary committee is launching an impeachment investigation for the purpose of investigating the possibility of an impeachment inquiry. now they re taking a big step to formalize the rules of the impeachment inquiry that doesn t officially exist yet but one the democrats say now it s gone past me they ve been doing and they re now going to do more seriously to potentially recommend articles of impeachment to the white house which the senate is not going to consider no matter what. or to put it more succinctly, congress is back in session. michael, what is this we re looking at? because speaker of the house is not impeaching the president. they don t know what they re doing. they don t know. i mean, come on. that is the worst word salad you could possibly come up with. i have no idea what that means. i don t think anybody knows what that means. the fact of the matter is no one s talking about impeachment. i mean, you re going to bring this conversation up again, that s fine, maybe maybe a lot of folks on the progressive left are really still hyped up about it. just do the work. just come back, put some good bills on the table that forces both sides to have to push this president to make decisions and lay out your case for next year. all year. all of this other stuff is just at this point i think, brian, a lot of noise and confusion like that paragraph or two that you just read. two guys who have done the work. returning veterans tim o brien, michael steele. gentlemen, thank you. wbr id= wbr30290 /> as always, for coming on. and coming up, north carolina held a special election tonight. we have steve kornacki at the big board after this. fact is, every insurance company hopes you drive safely. but allstate actually helps you drive safely. with drivewise. it lets you know when you go too fast. .and brake too hard. with feedback to help you drive safer. giving you the power to actually lower your cost. unfortunately, it can t do anything about that. now that you know the truth. /b> are you in good hands? 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[ cheers and applause ] the 9th district! you could almost hear what he was saying there, but that was republican dan bishop who akorlding to nbc news is the projected winner tonight. north carolina, 9th congressional district. the battle of the dans. bishop running against mccready for the democrats. mccready s second time out. if you ll recall, state officials would not certify the results of this race when they ran it in 2018. that s after evidence surfaced of an illegal scheme by the campaign of mark harris, who ran as the republican, the last time around. bottom line, a red district since the era of kennedy stays red, but we have steve kornacki to look at how it all went down at the big board. hey, steve. hey, brian. it s a fascinating story here. what happened in this district. you mentioned the bottom line, dan bishop the republican wins this district by two points. will now represent it in the house. this was in 2016 a trump district, a big trump district. the president won this thing by double digits in 2016. comes down to a two-point republican victory. tonight why was it close? why was the republican ultimately able to prevail? there were two different storylines that kind of c converged in this district tonight and eech of them is a microcosm of what we talk about nationally. one of the stories was right here in the suburbs that circle might even be too big, the area i m talking about. the densely populated suburbs of south charlotte, about a third of this district is in mecklenburg county. and this is that we talk about it all the time. higher income, college educated suburbs. a place that trump won that portion of the district by three points in 2016. mccready tonight wins it by 13 points. so that s the kind of swing we ve been seeing in metro areas, suburban areas across the country, in the trump era, away from the republicans, toward the democrats. if you had said it at the start of the night, that s where mccready was going to end up in mecklenburg county, you might have thought mccready was going to win the election outright. why didn t he? why did bishop survives? it s the other major storyline in american politics. we saw here. and that is the rural vote. the eastern part of this district when you get away from charlotte, you get away from the suburbs, these are more blue collar, rural, exurban areas. that s where the election day vote, half the vote s early vote, half the vote s election day in north carolina. it was the election day vote, folks who went out in the rural parts of this district came through big for bishop the republicans. does it have something to do with the rally trump held on election eve in this district? that s certainly possible. but it was a big rural turnout. republican turnout for bishop. big suburban turnout for mccready. two different storylines. bottom line two-point win for the republican. steve, stay right where you are. i want to expand this conversation by one to include bill kristol a veteran of the reagan and bush administrations editor at large of the bulwark. bill happens to be teaching this semester at davidson university in north carolina. lucky for those students. also lucky for us to bring in bill to talk about this from north carolina. so bill, i heard it said tonight on cable television that a 51-49 win for the republicans in this district will send such worrisome signals about the suburban vote to sitting members of congress that we re going to see another round of retirements. do you concur or should it not be viewed that harshly? it s possible. if you represent a district like davidson s just outside the district. but i ve been there a day or two a week. i ve seen the race fairly up close. i think steve s analysis is exactly right. the suburban swing wasn t quite big enough to offset the rural swing the other way. there was also some underperformance among minority voters for the democrat in the district. but at the end of the day the big picture, the forest as opposed to the trees, an 11 or 12-point margin for romney and for trump goes to a two-point margin for the trump-like candidate, the trump for whom trump came in this district. obviously you can t extrapolate exactly from that. mccready s a more moderate democrat than the democrats are likely to nominate nationally. trump is maybe a better candidate than bishop. but i would say just stepping back and looking at the big picture if this happens across the nation trump is not going to get re-elected. if this happens across north carolina trump won t carry the state. that is to say, trump carried the state by four points last time when he won the district by 11 or 12. so if he wins the district only by two, he ll lose the state. if he wins the district by five or six, he ll lose the state. so i think, you know, democrats would be very disappointed. mccready was a very good candidate i think and would have been in my opinion a good congressman. but nonetheless, if things go where we are now is not a good place for trump or for the republican party. hey, bill, i just wanted to give you a heads-up. the leader of the free world who for the record tweeted out a cat video saturday night is now on the board having tweeted this. just this. trump 2024. your reaction. well, maybe he expects to lose in 2020 and then he ll run again in 2024. i ve always wondered everyone assumes if trump loses in 2020 we re done with him, but why do we think that? bill kristol, thank you. steve kornacki, that s why they pay bill kristol the big bucks. steve, this broader question. and i know you never do opinion. but if you re looking for danger signs for the republican party in the american suburbs writ large, i know a guy like you could find them. it s right there. it s mecklenburg county. it s that we could zoom in here. i say it s geographically tiny. it s right here. look, dan mccready, it s a 12-point win for dan mccready. this is actually better than mccready did last november in this part of the district. he won it by 10 then. he wins it by 12 tonight. in this same slice of the district i m showing you right here trump won by three in 2016. so this is an area densely populated area that trump was able to carry as a candidate but as president twice now in a congressional election it s gone double digits for the democrat. if you have that happening in mecklenburg county and you have that happening in places like that across the country that s a big trouble sign. we re flattered to have you both, gentlemen.
so, you know, as claire was saying, there are so many more substantive allegations now including this misuse and abuse of a highly classified intelligence community computer network system. and for people to say that this didn t fall under the dni s purview is wrong. the dni is responsible for maintaining the integrity of those systems. and if it is being used to cover up political corruption, that requires an investigation. and whether or not the senior official was asked to hide that material inside that computer system. so i do think that donald trump and his associates are in a heck of a lot more political trouble right now than they were 48 hours ago because of the substantive flow of these allegations coming through, again all reinforcing the theme that this is a corrupt white house that will stoop to doing anything in order to prevail in elections as well as to cover their krucht trackcorrupt track. weigh in on the idea that president trump took all of the conduct detailed in the two volumes of the mueller report, 150 contacts between his orbit and the russians, and he seemed to improve upon that, he seemed to have been emboldened by getting away with in his view the russia coordination if you will. yeah, the timing is interesting sorry, we ll come right back to you. we have to listen to the president. for the economy, we have the best economy anywhere in the world. by far. we ve done so many things that are so incredible with tax cuts and regulation. and i have to put up with adam schiff on a absolutely perfect phone call to the new president of ukraine. that was a perfect call. but adam schiff doesn t talk about joe biden and his son walking away with millions of dollars from ukraine and then millions of dollars from china, walking away in a quick meeting, walking away with millions of dollars. he doesn t talk about joe biden firing a prosecutor. and if that prosecutor is not fired, he s not going to give him money from the united states of america. they don t talk about that. my call was perfect. the president yesterday of ukraine said that there was no pressure put on him whatsoever. none whatsoever. and he said it loud and clear for the press. what these guys are doing, democrats, are doing to this country is a disgrace. and it shouldn t be allowed. there should be a way of stopping it. maybe legally through the courts, but they will tie up our country. we can t talk about gun regulation, we can t talk about anything because frankly, they are so tied up, they are so screwed up, nothing gets done except when i do it. i m using mexico to protect our border because the democrats won t change loopholes in asylum. when you think of that, and i tell you, i want to thank mexico. 27,000 soldiers they have. but think of how bad that is. think of it. where we use mexico because the democrats won t fix our broken immigration system, we need their votes. if we don t get their votes, we can t do it. and the republicans are all on board. they want to fix it. but the democrats won t do it. they don t want to talk about infrastructure, about lowering drug prices, they don t want to talk about anything because they are fixated on this and nancy pelosi has been hijacked by the radical left and everybody knows it. thank you. that was donald trump standing where lots of other presidents have stood but saying things that i m not sure we ve ever heard. director brennan, donald trump repeating some of his smears and lies against the bidens, obviously convinced that if he says it often enough and amplified enough on fox news, enough people will believe it is true. those claims not true. but the whistleblower was someone who worked for him. the whistleblower complaint went to an inspector general who was appointed by him. the inspector general went to his boss the acting dni who was also appointed by him, a man who on the job 42 days today went up to congress and said that the whistleblower followed the letter and spirit of the law and was indeed credible. so i m not sure how that lands at the feet of the democrats, mr. president. director when in abrennan, we w talking about the problems that this president has because of the pace of the story and really because of the president corroborating some of the worst and most devastating allegations about his conduct, about his holding military aid for ukraine, which is at hourly risk from the russians over their head until and unless he investigates the bidens. yeah, i think that trump is hoping that he has sufficiently lowered the standards of what is acceptable on the part of the office of the president and has gas lighted the american public that he can push these things out and not be held accountable. but i think with this growing crescendo of allegations and evidence that are sort of reinforcing thesethemes, what i hear is he knows that he is on trouble, he will go on the counter attack. but i think that right now what will be most interesting to watch is whether or not the republican lawmakers and those from the republican party, the administration, william barr and others, will go down with the trump titanic because i do think that it is listing badly, or are they going to at this late hour find a conscience of us allnd do wh and do what is right. so i think the coming days are going to be quite worthwhile to watch in terms of how there is going to be i think a weakening and erosion of support for mr. trump given just the volume and extensive nature of these allegations now. director brennan, thank you for spending some time with us. matt miller, there a story in the new york times that just crossed the wire that should shock us all. trump attacks whistleblower source and alludes to punishment for spies. the president told a crowd of staff that he wants to know who provided information to a whistleblower about his phone call with the president of ukraine saying that whoever did so was close to a spy. and that in the old days, spies were dealt with differently. the remarks stunned people in the audience. these are all really career civil servants at usun. i think a total of four political appointees. according to a person briefed on what took place who has notes of what the president said,ed president made the statement several minutes into his remarks until the group of about 50 people intended to honor the u.s. mission. he at the outset he condemned the former vice president joe biden s role in ukraine at a time when his son hunter biden was on the board of a ukraine company. so debasing not just his office, but the usun. those remarks are tir guying becau terrifying. the thing that they have attacked the whistleblower for is not having firsthand information and that s right because the whistleblower talked to a lot of people. if you read the complaint, the whistleblower cites multiple u.s. officials who told him about the quid pro quo unless he agreed to relaunch the investigation into joe biden. he reports conversations with multiple u.s. officials who told him about the white house trying to hide the account of the president s conversation by putting it into a classified system. multiple officials at omb who stated that the pd personally ordered the funds to ukraine be withheld. the president obviously is nervous about it and he is trying to send a signal the whistleblower knows who you are, i m going to find out too. and if you talk to adam schiff, if you report what you know, there will be consequences. that is a terrifying message for the president of the united states to send. and if you are a whistleblower or thinking about bloii blowing the whistleblower and you look at how jim comey was treated, andy mccabe who is still facing legal jeopardy for opening a full field investigation into the president, i look at how all the national security officials have sounded some sort of alarm, this is the playbook. this is the playbook and usun are diplomats. this is an embassy, an official united states embassy. so you are saying to american diplomats that the former vice president of the united states is according to eli stokele s twitter, he had a tweet on this saying that he called him sleep li pi joe, asleepy joe, all the slurs, a political speech to an embassy. this is take liis traditionallyk them all and this reminds me of his trip to the cia. and nothing has changed. mike pompeo at the same time only moments before had given or maybe moments after was giving a news conference and said that he had not had a chance to read the whistleblower complaint except the first couple paragraphs. but i ll ultimately get a chance to see it. and as i understand it, it is from someone who has second hand knowledge. so he is already diminishing the impact of it taking the talking points. and that each of these actions undertaken were entirely appropriate. so mike pompeo who has according to all reports big political ambitions and has frequently every week either gone back to kansas or duncan satisfion cont media, he has signed on to this. oh, yeah. jeremy, let s take this head-on. the whistleblower complaint has been investigated by the intelligence community watchdog, the icig investigated the complaint. corroborated the complaint, has spoken to witnesses. and i m guessing it has been transmitted and before he could give it the good housekeeping seal of approval, he had to corroborate some of its contents. all of that is correct. although interestingly one of the things that the ig inside the intelligence community did not have access to was those detailed notes about the july 25th phone call. essentially the ig said i don t think that the white house is going to give it to us, so we can t review it. lo and behold now that we ve all seen it, we realize not only backs up exactly what the whistleblower complained of, but it actually is a lot worse. and i just want to kind of step back and note that this is the most significant allegation against a u.s. president in our country s history. the two impeechachments before this is about national security, it is about the sanctity of our elections. we ve never had an allegation like this leveled against an american president. we ve never had an impeachment discussion on the floor of the united states congress in which national security and sachkity y i sanctity of elections was what members of congress would be voting on. and i pl and i predict that we will see a very rapid effort probably before nancy pelosi to have a narrowly tailored impeachment vote on the floor related to this one issue. did the president say to the president of ukraine i need a favor though. if you want defense support, you re going to have to play ball with us, you will have to help me in my presidential election. yes or no. as beto o rourke would say, don t we already know the answer to that? we do and i don t know how anybody will say that somehow that is appropriate for the president of the united states do. ben, if you are still with us, this is also an extraordinary time to be a whistleblower. we have a president who moments ago went to a u.s. embassy and described whistleblowers as spies. who are deserving basically of the treatment that spies used to get. he also described andy mccabe and jim comey as carrying out acts that were treasonous. what are we dealing with in terms of the risks right now for this whistleblower? well, nicole, first of all you and i are familiar with embassy greets. you go and thank staff for the hard work that they do. but what we re dealing with is a pattern of corruption and bullying that we ve seen for three years in this administration. where essentially if you don t get on board with the president s political conduct, if you don t get on board with his sometimes criminal behavior, you are relentlessly attacked by him publicly. existing civil ser vantsds of the u.s. government characterized as a deep state. intelligence community that found that russia intervened in our election to help trump again dismissed standing next to vladimir putin. the process could you go thatse. so this is a president who september a message to his own government that if you don t get on board with my corruption, i m going to come after you. this is what we expect to see in dictatorships. i don t think that we can use strong enough language here to describe how unamerican this is. that this is a person who doesn t see the sanctity of the office of presidency and the oath he took to our constitution to defend this nation as guiding his actions in office. all he cares about is his political survival, his attacks on his political opponents. and again at the core of all of this, let s not lose sight there will be process discussions, the attacks that trump launches. there is a clear and already demonstrated allegation that the president sought the help of a country under attack from are russia by investigating his political opponents. they have to impeach him. that is why this was put into the constitution. you can t have a president run rough shot, krucht the foreign policy for his own electoral purposes. we can t have this as america. did yo you see any irony in fact that donald trump seems to have been emboldened by the investigation that he says totally and full plly exonerated him? he carried out an act that may result in his impeachment. it is very clear that that is what happened. and that was enabled by bill barr who mischaracterized the mueller findings. i think trump felt like he had a team in place that was due his bidding and he could fight it out in the court of public opinion. but they had to prove a complex case and prove collusion. here it is very clear, we can read in the transcript the collusion. and it is not with trump associates, it is happening with president trump himself. unbelievable state of affairs. my thanks to ben, jeremy, andrea, claire, matt. ali velshi will continue our special coverage. it is unbelievable what is going on here. that point is remarkable important not to get lost. everything we are talking about now, everything that donald trump is alleged to have done was done after the mueller report. you know, you d almost think most folks after having gone through something like that would sort of say all right, let s be careful not to step in it again. and now it seems that is not the case. he is colluding anew and he will do it bigger and better than before. remarkable. today we got our first look at the whistleblower complaint which says the actions of the president andly team posed risks to national security and undermined efforts to counter foreign interference. the complaint revolves around a call between president trump and president of ukraine in which trump discussed an investigation into former vice president joe biden and biden s son hunter. according to the complaint, the whistleblower believed that the president of the united states is using the power of his office to solicit interference in a foreign country in the 2020 u.s. election. also, for more than three you are hours, the acting director of national intelligence joseph maguire was grilled by the house intelligence committee over the whistleblower complaint that led to the current impeachment inquiry into president trump. i m not familiar with any prior instances where a whistleblower complaint touched on such complicated and sensitive issues including executive privilege. i believe that this matter is unprecedented. you don t believe are the whistleblower is a political hack, do you, dwreblgirector? as i said before, i believe the whistleblower is operating in good faith. you have not investigated the veracity or the truthfulness of this complaint. that s correct, ranking member. the determination on credible was made by the ic inspector general. we consulted with the white house counsel s office and were advised that much of the information in the complaint was in fact subject to executive privilege. a privilege that i do not have the authority to waive. at anytime over the last month that you held this complaint did the white house assert executive privilege? mr. chairman, i have endeavored i think that is a yes or no question. did they ever assert executive privilege? they were working through the executive privilege procedures in deciding whether or not to exert privilege differenexecuti. so they never exerted it? if they did, we would not have released the letters yesterday and all the information that has been forthcoming. do you think it is appropriate that you go to a department run by someone who is the subject of the complaint to get advice or who is a subject or implicated in the complaint for advice as to whether you should provide that complaint to congress? did that conflict of interest concern you? mr. chairman, when i saw this report and complaint, immediately i knew that this was a serious matter. sir, i have to work with what i ve got. this latest gambit to overturn the people s mandate is unhinged and dangerous. they should end the entire dishonest grotesque spectacle and get back to work to solving problems which is what every member of this committee was september he sent here to do. judging by today s charade, the chances of that happening anytime soon are xi zero to non. the inspector general found the complaint credible. did you also find it credible? i did not criticize the inspector general s decision on whether or not it was credible. my question was whether or not it meets the urgent concern and the seven daytime frame that would follow. my question i have no question in his judgment that he considered it a serious matter. the issue that i dealt with and you would concur would you not, director, that this complaint alleging serious wrongdoing by the president was credible? it is not for my to judge, sir. do you believe that the whistleblower was spying on one of our intelligence agencies or spying on the president? s a i said several times so far this morning, i believe that the whistleblower complied with the law and did everything that they thought he or she thought was responsible under the intelligence community whistleblower protection act. i want you for just remember that last thing that the dni just said. because he was asked by a member of congress about whether or not he thought the department of director of national intelligence thought the whistleblower or other staff were spying on the president. and the director of national intelligence said he believed that they were working this good faith in the interest of the country. because we ll come back to that whole issue of spying on the president in a moment. but right now i want to take a look at what that whistleblower complaint is all about that lays out the concerns over president trump s july phone call with ukraine s president. the whistleblower makes clear that they are describing secondhand knowledge according to the complaint he or she says quote, multiple white house officials with direct knowledge of the call informed me that after an exchange of pleasantries, the president used the remainder of the call to advance his personal interests. the whistleblower reports that the white house officials told me they were directed by white house lawyers to remove the electronic transcript from the computer system in which such transcripts are typically stored. can you imagine this? this appears to cause the whistleblower to get concerned about a coverup. so the whistleblower later says, quote, this was not the first time under this administration that presidential transcript was placed in to this code word level system solely for the purpose of protecting politically sensitive rather than national security sensitive information. you are not supposed to put stuff in the code word protected system, prevents a number of people from getting access. you do that when there is a national security issue, not when you just don t want people to find out what you said on the phone call. the complaint names multiple officials including president trump, vice president mike pence, attorney general bill barr, rudy giuliani, a dozen white house officials, counselor of the state department kirk volcker who was special representative for ukraine, gordon sundland and u.s. attorney for the district of connecticut. and apparently to highlight the gravity of rudy giuliani s involvement specifically, the complaint reads state department officials had spoken with mr. giuliani in an attempt to contain the damage to u.s. national security. a lot of interesting reading there. we have it all on the website. joining me now charlie savage who just wrote a piece about his takeaways. and also reporter on counterterrorism for the national post. and jill wine bank, she served under nixon s impeachment and later as general country sell of the army. and richard painter, et licks lawye etices lawyer. and new york times reporting that president trump told a crowd of staff from the united states mission to the united nations that he wants to know who provided information to the whistleblower about his phone call with the president of ukraine saying that whoever did so was close to a spy. quote, close to a spy and that, quote, in the old days spies were dealt with differently. what do we know about this, what is the implication here? that s right, this is new reporting by my colleague maggie haberman. what appears to have happened, trump was up in new york today as part of the u.n. general assembly effort and he spoke behind closed doors to a group of diplomats almost all of whom except for the ambassador to the united nations herself are long time career diplomats, not political appointees. and he went after whoever it was in the white house who had told the whistleblower about his phone call to the ukraine president in july, the one that we all saw the reconstructed transcript of yesterday. and implied that this person was or those people, sources to the whistleblower, was a traitor, were traitors. and hinted that they should be shot essentially. entirely amazing in a world that nothing amazes anybody anymore. the whole point of protecting whistleblowers is so that they can feel safe usually from losing their job. generally speaking in 2019, protections shouldn t be that someone gets shot for telling you that there is a national security concern in the white house. well, psychologically deranged and it will get worse. we re already dealing with a president who refers to the press as the enemy of the people. that is language that was used by adolf hitler in his campaigns in 1932. and this is a dangerous man, donald trump, and he will get more dangerous. he is referring to a whistleblower as a spy. he refers to democrats as enemies of the people. he continues to violate the constitution. and now he will try to drag mike pence into this and mike pence may very well be culpable, but donald trump is turning on his vice president and pointing to him and maybe sending a message to the senate republicans that if he is asked to resign, he may take pence with him. this is a very dangerous situation for our country right now and it is amazing that we continue to let this man be in charge of nuclear weapons and have the ability to start a war. jill, let s talk about some of the things that came out of the complaint today. one which i thought most interesting was this idea that transcripts are kept, full transcripts, but yesterday we got reconstructed memo. and you remember from watergate that reconstructions of conversations or everyone what richard nixon called transcripts, didn t turn out to be the transcripts of all the tapes. transcripts stay on one computer unless there is a national security reason for them he to stay on a different server. and this complaint suggests that there was no reason no national security reason why people shouldn t have had access to the president s conversation with the president of ukraine. there were very good political reasons to keep that from happening. you have very correctly summarized the situation. only difference between watergate and what is happening now, during waterwatergate, ric nixon did provide totally fake transcripts. he omitted all the parts that were incriminating and made up things thatredacted and also ma things. if this summary that we now have is anywhere near accurate it is very damning. completely in-krichl natucrimii acts of the president. which mean that s is not very good at creating a fake transcript. so i can t even imagine how bad the actual transcript is that this is what we ve been shown. then he starts it is a hoax, democrats are bad, you should be looking at them, they are the ones who did all the wrong things. this is not a witch hunt, this is right in front of the american people. all they have to do is go on the website and they will see the actual language that he used in talking to president zelensky, they will see the complaint, they will hear what else fills in the context of this. this is a clear and simple case of an impeachable and criminal offense because it does violate laws to ask for something of value and no question this is something of value. people pay a lot of money for opposition research. so now you re asking a foreign government who cannot contribute to your campaign for that kind of help. it is illegal, it is impeachable in addition. i ve got democratic senator from maryland ben cardin standing by. i know that you have to go in a micht so minute so i want to get your take on everything we ve heard. we know that you support an impeachment inquiry. but tell me where you are now, what has changed in your mind in the last 72 hours or so. we now have direct information about the president of the united states setting up a phone call with the president of ukraine, the purpose of which of course ukraine needed the u.s. help, needed the funding, needed military equipment. and the president set it up for him to ask ukraine to do a favor for him to get dirt on his opponent. you couldn t be anymore clearer the information that is in this transcript. so it is not a full transcript, so there is still a lot more information. today we heard in the hearings that we ve had about the whistleblower, there is certainly a lot more information that congress needs to get. the process needs to go forward. the house has impeachment inquiry, they need to proceed with that. it needs to go where it needs to go and we shouldn t pre-judge, but allow the prz ocess to go forward. so are you satisfied that if an impeachment inquiry goes forward as it seems to be about to happen in the house, that that will get the necessary information in addition to things that perhaps were not covered by the mueller report? do you think that is the process? i know it has been extremely difficult to get information out of this administration. so i hope that they can get everything that they need. looks like in this particular case there are enough witnesses that were present during this one conversation, there has been other conversations that have taken place. i think that we have the capacity to get to the source of the information about the president s intent with the president of ukraine. and i want your response to maggie haberman s reporting in the new york times that just now president trump has said to a gathering of staff from the united nations, he wants to they who provided the information to the whistleblower about his phone call saying whoever did so was, quote, close to a spy and that, quote, in the old days spies were dealt with differently. that is some kind of inflammatory language, never mind the kind of thing that puts a chill on actual whistleblowing which we depend upon in business and politics to keep lights shining into places where there is no light. democracy depends upon checks and balances and abuse of power. whistleblowers are critically important in that. the president s language is outrageous in this regard. you think that he would have learned. interference in 2016 elections, now he is trying to get interference in the 2020 elections and now trying to say that the people trying to do their constitutional responsibilities are traitors. that is outrageous. senator, good to see you. thank you for joining me, senator cardin of maryland. back to my panel. devlin, what is your takeaway from what we ve heard this morning? it is a complicated layered issue. did anything come into sharp relief for you as a result of what we heard from the director of national intelligence? not so much from the director because he was largely trying not to be too committal in this process. but i think what stands out to me when you read this complaint, it is not republicans are trying to argue that this is all hearsay, all secondhand information. what is remarkable to me about the complaint, it is a roadmap of other people to ask about this besides the whistleblower, other witnesses, other places to find evidence of what this whistleblower says happened. so i think in that way the document is very important because it is a roadmap to congress to say to the degree that you care about this, and clearly a lot of people care very much, you just have to go talk these people and they can tell you that this is a real problem and it really happened. it is all entirely provable or disprovable. so 2340b has to put any weight on this whigs other than to follow the leads. right. it exists in the computer system and in the memories of those people. so richard, why does it become complicated? what devlin said would solve this problem entirely. we wouldn t have to have the right and left on this, we wouldn t have to have republicans and democrats. i mean i m sure we would, but the fact is we could just check this information out. well, absolutely. and house of representatives needs to do that immediately. and start drafting articles of impeachment so this can go over to the senate. we have a president who has been caught red handed and now he is saying that whistleblowers should be shot. this is the man who is in charge of our military. this is a very dangerous situation unless the house of representatives moves quickly to impeach him and the senate has a trial, we need to find out the facts. it is right there in the records. they can call those people to testify. rudy giuliani, attorney general, everyone else mentioned can get the electronic records and by the way, this transcript of the call needs to be released, the entire transcript. that is not classified. there is no national security interest in that. ukraine has a copy, search a recording of that phone call. this is not a conversation during world war ii. is this a transcript of a call in which our president thought to extort assistance from a foreign power. we need the entire transcript, all the backup records need to be september to tnt to the sena proceed we removing this president. jill, let me ask you about the where is waldo in all of this, rudy giuliani. this guy pops up everywhere. why would rudy giuliani where in your mind would you understand rudy giuliani getting an assignment from the state department to represent u.s. interests in ukraine while being donald trump s personal attorney? rudy giuliani has never represented the interests of the united states. he has always represented his clients interests. and there is no question about that in terms of my view. i think what congress needs to do is to go to fact witnesses. that would of course include giuliani, but it would also include all the people who overheard this conversation, who know about the storage of the data and why it is in this strange code named protected area instead of just in the normal place that it should be. that is what we need to do in the same way that the mueller investigation shouldn t have started with mueller. this shouldn t start with the dni. you need the fact witnesses, the sub be stastantive witnesses wh tell what happened. that is where you get the credibility and where you get a persuasive case that is com spelling to people. that is where i d like to be. but i would say that the president has made a big error in judgment because he thought thatuld ex-cull pay the him and he released it. that is the same mistake richard nixon made when he said this tape is not so bad, i ll just release it. and that was the smoking gun that led to his resignation and this could be the same. and that version of the transcript, whatever you want to call it, is not exculpatory, so i don t know why anybody thinks that nothing happened. thanks to all of you. joining me now, congressman sean patrick maloney who is on the house intelligence committee and questioned director of national intelligence this morning. i want to play an exchange that you had with maguire. when you were considering prudence, did you think it was prudent to give a veto power over whether the congress saw this serious allegation of wrongdoing to the two on people implicated by it? is that prudent? i have to work with the situation as it is, congressman maloney. only the white house can determine or waive executive privilege. there is no one else to go to. and as far as a second opinion, by only avenue of that was to go to the department of justice office of legal counsel. so congressman, you put a fine point on something that i think a lot of my viewers are struggling with. a whistleblower according to the dni acting in good faith said he thinks, he or she thinks, someone may have broken the law and not acted in the u.s. national security interests. follows the process exactly what he or she was supposed to do and then the director of national intelligence goes to the people who 4i6 be might have been doing something inappropriate and says do you think we can talk about this. right. i mean, it screams conflict. and unfortunately, i think that the director is it a good man, but he put himself in a box and really the walls in that box were constructed by the president s lawyers and the attorney general s lawyers and of course those are the two peoplism pli it came d implicated. you can t have a whistleblower go to the boss and say can i tell the public, you know, the things you are doing wrong. that is not how it works. and we wrote a statute specifically to guarantee that whistleblower s information would come directly to congress because in that statute, there is no provision for going to the white house. there is no provision for checking on a privilege that has not been asasserted, in provisi for going to the department of justice for some routine jurisdictional review. that is not in the statute. what the statute says is 7 days goes to the congress and you can comment on it. instead, the director of national intelligence clearly because of how weighty these allegations were went to the white house and the attorney general but in so doing put the fox in charge of the hen house. and there is a lot of danger with that including that we have laws to protect the whistleblower for a reason. there are others referred to in the complaint from whom he or she says that they got the information from. the response to that from the president at the united states mission at the united nations was that he said that whoever did this, whoever talked to that whistleblower, was close to a spy and in the old days smis were dealt with differently. we don t have a great history in the united states of deciding the people who have either political motivations or other motivations that go against the president are spies. and treating them properly. this goes into very, very dangerous territory. well, it also underscores how what follow folly it is to go t people hired by in a man and ask if you can disclose his wrong doing to congress. but beyond that, i mean, just think about what the president is saying. he is basically putting a bull s-eye on anybody who disagrees with him, anybody who has the temerity to step forward and point out that there is egregious wrongdoing. this ain t some process conversation, this is about as i m sure you have been covering the president leaning on a foreign leader threatening to withhold u.s. aid and asking him to smear a domestic political opponent back here. that is soliciting foreign interference in the 2020 presidential election and of course for the president to act as though the person revealing that wrongdoing should be somehow punished or worse is outrageous. but it is a long pattern with this president. director of national intelligence pointed out that he is committed to protecting the identity of the person, but i d also like to have the person have security furnished by the congress. i m worried about this person s safety because we want to encourage other people to come forward, not to silence the one who did. that is exactly what the president is not doing by saying that they are like spies. congressman, good to see you. thank you for joining us. joining me now, democratic senator and presidential candidate cory booker. your committees would be very interested in this topic. senator, good to see you. i want to ask you again about this particular reporting from the new york times, maggie haberman reporting that the president has just told a crowd of staff from the united states mission to the u.n., quote, i want to know who the person who gave the whistleblower the information is because that is close to a spy, you know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart with spies and treason, right? we used to handle it a little differently than we do now. putting aside what he said shoot them is what we used to do. the treason thing. the idea that someone identified that there might have been some problem with the way the president was dealing with the president of ukraine as it related to national security, donald trump is now referring to as treason. well, it is not surprising that donald trump doesn t know the difference between patriotism and treason. if there is any treasonous actions here, it is coming from the white house as being indicated by what we re discovering. so here again donald trump sounding more like a threaten e thug. and his rhetoric, you know, he gives license to people to do dangerous things. from hes failure to condemn white supremacists to even the way that he talks about what is patriotic duty. and so right now, we have a courageous individual who basically wasn t served right by the director of national intelligence who did wrong by the law and should have gone right to congress, but now we have implications of a betrayal of one s office. and so this is weighty stuff. and this ruthless recklessness of this president is what has gotten him into this situation in the first place and it is time that the country puts aside partisanship and begins to do what will be a very historic potentially nation-changing investigation that must go forward. kind of interesting, my. caller: league nicolle wallace was making the point that the president got through if better or worse the mueller report, continues to call it a hoax and witch hunt and then this happened after that. almost feels like the president was emboldened by the mueller report. now something has happened that actually takes him closer to article of the impeachment than the entire time the mueller. reporter: was on treport was table. in the mule remembeller repo are ten counts that indicate obstruction. pretty outrageous things that came out of president s mouth that were bullying tactics, trying to influence individuals to do things against their constitutionally sworn duties. so i just see a consistent behavior of this president who doesn t understand that the office he holds is the people s office, not his. and as a member of the foreign relations committee, i ve been to ukraine. i ve gone to eastern ukraine. the region that is under attack. met with military soldiers, seen their vulnerability, have them talk to me about colleagues that have been lost to russian aggression, saw how desperate they were for american support and aid, it was a difference it between life and death for them and we as congress in a bipartisan fashion approved that aid and now we re realizing that this president was withholding that aid not for national security purposes, to pursue his own personal benefit. that is outrageous and in my opinion, that is treasonous. and let me ask you about the attorney general bill barr. he is mentioned in the memo about the phone call. the president brought bill barr up in the conversation with the president of ukraine. now bill barr may be a material witness to this whole thing including if there is an impeachment inquiry or whether are or not you on the judiciary speak to bill barr. this becomes very difficult for bill barr to be at the head of anything going on with this investigation because he is a material witness. you said may be a material witness. he is a material witness. he is squarely implicated by the president s words alone. not to mention other points of evidence. and he will have to answer for his conduct during this period. this was not the president alone. remember, we now have a whistleblower saying that people around the president moved to cover up the actions because they felt they were implicated. we know from the iran contra favor to the nixon watergate crisis that the people were engaging in coverups engaging in potential criminal activity as well. we have a lot of work for dto d. the public needs to know what happened, they deserve to know the truth and i think that we as congress republican and democrat have to get to that truth and bring to light. senator cory booker, thank you for joining me. we re joined now by another 2020 presidential candidate julian castro. good to see you again. i want to ask everybody i speak to today about this reporting from maggie hash man berman tha president told the u.s. missions staff, he wants to know who provided information to the whistleblower about his phone call with the president of ukraine saying whoever did as to was close to a spy and in the old days spies were dealt with differently. coming from the president of the united states to government officials, one could say that is a call to action, a call to arms, a call to figure out who these people were and by the way we used to shoot people like that. yeah, these last two days and with the explosive testimony we heard this morning and now the president s comments which make it even worse, these are sad and disturbing days for our democracy to realize that this is what a dictator does. target political opponents, hang military aid on whether a foreign country will do your political dirty work. and then when somebody comes forward to report what happened in a true spirit of patriotism and what they should do suggests that that person should basically be killed. he has it completely wrong. and whether you are republican or democrat, liberal or tari conservative, i hope the american people see that man like this doesn t belong anywhere near the oval office. that is becoming clearer he have si every single day and what we saw today is the beginning, not the end of what is clear here that there was a coverup, there were other witnesses, and now they need to be held accountable and to testify about what happened. it is also true that you still have republicans that are mouthing these talking points. and i hope that they go and get each of these republicans both in the house and senate especially these folks like cory gardner and john cornyn who know that they are living in states that, you know, they could lose their election next year. this is all substantive, but there is also of course a political element to it. why don t they tell the people that president behaves like this deserves to be in that oval office. 10 that so that is the essence of how this compares to thing. republicans were not in favor of pressuring richard nixon but as hearings came out and evidence brought to bear, people understand their political friendship, never mind doing the right thing, but people were made to understand their political fortunes were now tied to making the right decision. for some reason, republicans have to the come to that conclusion. there is no republican calling for an impeachment inquiry, not articles of impeachment, but an impeachment inquiry as a result of this. what may be happening, there is some evidence to suggest that even though those politicians, the republican politicians have not yet seen the light, that actually republicans themselves, just every day americans who are republicans, may be. there was a poll today that suggested that 22% of republicans strongly support impeachment if it s shown that president trump strongarmed the ukrainian leader zelensky to investigate joe biden and his son or he would withhold military aid that and 10% more than that somewhat support impeachment. you have 32%, a third of republicans out there, that say they could support some sort of impeachment if these are the facts. i believe that s going to grow, just like it grew during the watergate era. that s the thing that mitch mcconnell and donald trump are so afraid of. they re trying to deflect and deny right now, but they can t avoid when the american people see this evidence and hear this evidence for themselves. they re scared of that. you were what the first presidential candidate to call for the impeachment of the president. nancy pelosi has resisted this and there may be political calculations in that, there may not be, it s hard to know where the country is on this. we have not had hearings that expose some of the stuff that might change people s minds. what does the process look like to you? this impeachment process could be a long process and you re in the middle of running for president right now. what it looks like to me is that they re going to focus right now on this matter of trump s dealings with president zelensky of the ukraine, that is the matter in front of them and other committees doing their own investigations, but my understanding it is the formal impeachment inquiry moves forward it s going to focus on that. if these other committees in the house uncover other evidence of other potential crimes, then i think that should be added along the way to the impeachment inquiry. they have something that they need to move forward with right now and they have other witnesses who can be identified and other information that should get in front of congress, so there s nothing stopping them from going forward now. they need to begin that immediately. we saw we talked last week at the climate frepconference, tomorrow you and i are going to be speaking as part of the latitude conference that is under way in san diego. i look forward to seeing you again tomorrow in san diego. thank you for joining me. see you then. up next, what went on before and after president trump s phone call in ukraine. we re going to be live in kiev. still to come a live interview with congressman jim hooims who questioned the director of national intelligence earlier today. national intelligence earlier today. .but dedication can get you there. easily set, track and control your goals right from the chase mobile® app. chase. make more of what s yours®. panera s new warm grain full of flavor, color,. full of- woo! full of good. so you can be too. try our new warm grain bowls today. panera. food as it should be. - [woman] with my shark, i deep clean messes like this, this, and even this. but i don t have to clean this, because the self-cleaning brush roll removes hair while i clean. - [announcer] shark, the vacuum that deep cleans now cleans itself. and i recently had hi, ia heart attack. it changed my life. but i m a survivor. after my heart attack, my doctor prescribed brilinta. it s for people who have been hospitalized for a heart attack. brilinta is taken with a low-dose aspirin. no more than 100 milligrams as it affects how well brilinta works. brilinta helps keep platelets from sticking together and forming a clot. in a clinical study, brilinta worked better than plavix. brilinta reduced the chance of having another heart attack. .or dying from one. don t stop taking brilinta without talking to your doctor, since stopping it too soon increases your risk of clots in your stent, heart attack, stroke, and even death. brilinta may cause bruising or bleeding more easily, or serious, sometimes fatal bleeding. don t take brilinta if you have bleeding, like stomach ulcers, a history of bleeding in the brain, or severe liver problems. slow heart rhythm has been reported. tell your doctor about bleeding new or unexpected shortness of 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. welcome back to velshi and ruhle. the whistleblower complaint about president trump s phone call with ukraine s leader is shedding new light on apparently what happened after the call. according to the complaint a day after the call, u.s. special representative for ukraine negotiations kurt volker visited kiev and met with president zelensky. volcker was accompanied in his meetings by u.s. ambassador to the european union gordon suddenland. the ambassadors reportedly provided advice to the ukrainian leadership about how to navigate the demands that president had made of mr. zelensky. joining us now, richard engel, chief foreign correspondent from ukraine, reporting on ukraine closely since 2014 and covered the political uprising there, investigated paul manafort s dealings there and you just spoke to the former deputy foreign minister moments ago. what have you learned? well, officials here in kiev are terrified about what s going on in washington right now they are in an incredibly weak position, a position here many felt president trump tried to exploit. this country is fighting a war against a superior rival and adversary namely vladimir putin s russia. they are completely dependent on the united states for political support, for military support, so when the trump administration withheld about $400 million worth of military aid and then had this now public phone call in which the president asked for this favor to reopen what had been a closed investigation into then vice president biden s son, a lot of people here felt pressure. the former deputy foreign minister told me that ukraine wants to stay out of this and wants this to go away. they don t know who is going to win. they don t know if president trump is going to prevail because he s prevailed in other cases in which case they don t want to say anything bad about him. many government officials have gone silent. i can t tell you how many phone calls we ve made today and people don t want to speak on this because they don t know if the democrats are going to get their way or if president trump is going to remain in office and perhaps win another term in which the ukrainians there have to watch their language very, very carefully. richard, is this the is this occupying as much of the ink and time in ukraine as it is in america right now? is this a big deal for everybody who follows ukrainian politics? it is not occupying a lot of time. if you talk to people on the streets, they are not openly talking about it. it is not getting extensive coverage in the media. they are afraid of this. officials here are and the people are aware that this
to participate and actually defend itself a on the substanc? or was does it do? is it all bombast all the time until we get to potentially an impeachment vote. i want to delve deeper into that point and also tell our viewers here, as we re at the top of the 11:00 hour on the east coast in washington, you re watching msnbc s special live uninterrupted coverage of what all agree is a historic day on capitol hill.c this is the preparation for a house vote on resolution 660, providing for the rules for the potential impeachmentth of the current president donald trump. what you see on your veen is a countdown that will result in proceeding to thatsu vote. so the current count you see on your screen has not yet arrived under the house procedure on the phone. what i can tell you, in a matter of moments when you sigh this count run down,u within the ne nine minutes, we expect the house to, proceed then to the actual vote on the impeachment resolution and trules. we also are told in a departure from then normal course, speak pelosi will be presiding over this, speaking and going up in front ofnd the entire congress there to preside over this vote. speakers also, asis you may kno from watching the news, speakers don t usually vote on each provision becauseea the speakerf the house controls everything and can control when there are votes and when there are revotes. we re told thel speaker may also we re watching to see if the speaker votes on this resolution as well. i want to bring in garrett haake who has been keeping an eye on all ofpi this directly for us o the dihill. what happens next, garrett? reporter: i m still seeing the s majority of members have t yet voted in this first series.i usually the first votes of the day are the first time a lot of members set foot onme the house floor. folks are coming from their offices, from their apartments around town. a lot of membersou starting the day rolling m in for this first vote. we ll see thiss timer probably expire and then have some additional time before the second advote, the key vote of e day takes place. ida want to point back to kevin mcincarthy, the republican lead in theth house who just finishe his remarks. he made a couple of political points that i think you can expect to heart a lot more, particularly as the process changes here and the process arguments having been used by republicans up to this point become less valid. first is ais circular argument, but you ll hear it a lot. that this cannot go forward if it s not a bipartisan impeachment. he will b be calling back to nay pelosi s party line, essentia y essentially, for the last year and a half. the impeachment has to be done on a bipartisan basis. pelosi would talk about that a lot as a means to forestall impeachment on earlier issues brought forward in this administration. but republicans, by whipping veryan aggressively to keep the membership in line can prevent this from becoming bipartisan. inmi fact, the only republican that s come outt, in favor of impeachment so far, justin amash from michigan is no longer a congressman. they don t want to talk about the ideato that this is what democrats are investigating hert is the idea that the president is trying toth influence the election in 2020. but i they want to try to turn f independentff voters, independent-minded americans who are justed so tired of the mueller-russia-2016 story line. any time you hear republicans refer back to the impeachment vote is an invalidation of the last election, that s what you re seeing signaled here. here is the president trying to change theth results of the 202 election, you ll get a different reaction from people, than anything that reminds peoplem the long relate gags of the 2016 campaign. mccarthy laid down the marker there.he expect to hear those two lines of political spin here for the nextn month or so. garrett haake, we are six minutes out of this vote, thank you.te we ll be coming back to you. i want to turn back to jeremy bash. as you know, jeremy, most members come down to the house floor and that s where they make their votes known. in a social media era with a twitter presidency, we sometimes get otheren indications. everyone knows that justin amash who left the republican party has broken with r the president already. heth has a new tweet that may ge a sense of where he is today. pretty striking. his tweet says, quote, this president will be in power for only a short time, excusing his misbehavior will forever tarnish your name. to my republican colleagues, quote, step outside your media and social bubble. history will not look kindly on disingenuous, frivolous and falsesi defenses of this man. jeremy. congressman amash has been a leading voice outside of the democratic caucus for holding the president c accountable for this conduct. i don t know whether or not he s going to have other people join him. right nowotop it looks like abo half the democrats and half the republicans have voted. right now it s breaking almost entirely on party lines with the exception of one democratic who hasra voted no on this initial resolution. i thinkal what you ll see from here over the next five or six minutes, the rest of the house members will come to the floor. the bells are ringing around the capitol to signify minutes taking down onig this vote. they d will extend it to allow almost everybody to vote. they vote by an electronic key card they slide into a slot in the house well. then you ll see nancy pelosi at the podium. she probably will get a number ofl inquiries from republicans trying to sort of gum up the works,f but she will ultimatel gavel down the proceedings, call probably a five-minute vote and that will be the vote on this resolution, and that we expect toat largely break down along party lines. ing the next couple weeks, arii think you ll see open hearings on tuesdays, wednesdays and ne thursdays. you ll hear the familiar names, vindman, volcker, sondland, taylor, fiona hill. beyond that i don t thinkfi there s a lot more evidence beyond thatre testimony, the te messages and the july 25th phone call. we ll be back here watching the house floor probably around thanksgiving or before the december holiday break. jeremy, lau do you view those depositions? as you mentioned, some have details leakingso out.ta mr. bolton and others are still being summoned and they re figuring that out. this set of rules, if it passes today, brings all of those out intol public view. reporter: that s right. one of the provisions in the house resolution isvi that the chairman of the committee, adam schiff can make public, essentially posting on a website the depositions. this was done in the benghazi inquiry and others, where essentially you see a live transcript of those depositions. that s going to set a foundation for the hearingso so members kw what to ask the witnesses, know where to go. it s roadmap to the substance of their testimony. i thinkbs once you see those depositions in public, you hear the s testimony, you see the evidence. i think again members will have basically everything they need toy know to know whether or no they can impeach the president of the united states. jeremy, thank you. we ll beer coming back to you. gene robinson is here as part of our special coverage at headquarters. we re a couple moments away from this procedural vote and then we get to the bigvo show. what are you watching form, particularly when we see reporting out of the white housh that the president has done something which he s known to do, call republicans and askwn r help. we re looking to see if republicans if anyone who strays. justin amash is no longer a republican. we expect him to vote for impeachment. do any of the retiring republican members of the house, will hurd, for example, the other 20 or so have announced they re retiring. do any of them vote for the impeachment rules? that would be a shocking thing for the white house to see any republicans. i predict it would probably launch a tweet storm. meanwhile, there s nothing on the president s agenda today, as i think was pointed out. he s doing thes same thing we doing. he s sitting there watching. they re watching carefully. of course, as there may be a few republicans whoma stray, there e also potentially democrats who stray or who the speaker doesn t feel are s needed to get over t majorityve hurdle here and may allowed to stray. i want m to go to kristen welke keeping a keen eye on this both from the white house and working your sources on the hill. what are you hearing? reporter: ari, we know the white house thinks, as many as four to five democrats actually may flip, to your point there. they ll be watching that closely. we know president trump has been working the w phones. he started his day in the residence. as of about a half hour or so ago, so likely making his way over to the west wing where he and others will undoubtedly monitor theseun proceedings ver closely. the president tweeting about it, yet again calling it a witch hunt. the question becomes what will the white house strategy be moving forward. we know themo president has bee working theha phones. he maywo meet with lawmakers lar today. the white house signaling they re going to beef up their communications strategy. before this vote, ari, the ar administration, the white house argued thisni was an illegitima process because there i hadn t been as vote. the question becomes will that have to zmang will they have to fight this battle on substance moving forward? i put that question to kellyanne conway earlier today. she made the nwcase, look, it i both substance but is also the process. i think you re going to see both. let me ask you about that. that s so fascinating. senator mccaskill was discussing this set of rules, if it passes, affords the white house more options toth engage and send people down and make their case. it alsoma threatens them with a remedy where if they continue in the view of the house defy lawful subpoenas and requests, they may lose those rights. its wonder, at this point, any indication who the white house would tisend? do they send white house counsel and government hilawyers? do they send rudy giuliani, jay sekulow? do you have any clues or tea leaves to ready there? i would be very surprised if it was rudy giuliani. my anticipation it would be likely, if not the white house counsel, someone who hashe been working very closely with the white house vecounsel. of course, the leader there. that would be my anticipation. i think you did hit the nail on the head here, ari. right now the administration feels it has a strong argument to make to say, look, administration officials cannot testify because they would undoubtedlyld be testifying abo material they re arguing is protected by executive privilege. that argument getsby tougher to make once this vote takes place. thatke doesn t mean they re not going tosn try to block testimo. for example, all eyes are going to be on john bolton. if he s subpoenaed, will he show up? his attorney is saying he s not going to show up unless he s subpoenaed. what legal recourse would the administration have given that this vote would basically say, look, the white house could bring its, own counsel into the proceedings, ari. senator, you look like you might want to get ngin. int wanted to note that we have thet triple zeros. you can explain how this works. we have no time remaining, but a lot of voeks bmissing. if you total it up you have 351 members of congress voted. it s not like they didn t know today was a big day. this is oneda of my pet peev, they let the mother control the time of t the vote.th we would quickly cut off the vote whenut the vote was suppos to be cut off. invariably they let it go on and on, so g members know they ve g a graceno period with which the can get to the floor and cast their vote. i predict this thing stays open for another ten, 15, maybe longer. i feel like what m you re saying when it comes to deadlines, members of congress, like us. st exactly, procrastinate and know you can still get in under the wire. the point i wanted to make before, as we were talking about members conflicted about this vote, there are two kinds of memberser conflicted by this vo. one are the democrats that took out republican members of congress in districts that t ar veryn divided on this issue. the other are republicans who remain in congress that are in districts that are very divided by this issue. and if you look to the senate, the president is not only making calls,nl he s doing something ee that is remarkable. some people would say this is like bribing a i jury. he put out a fund-raising plea forin joni ernst in iowa where he s upside down in favorability, tom tillis in north carolina where he s upside down in h favorability and mart mcsally in arizona where he s upside down in favorability. they will get millions of dollars in their campaigns from the s president s efforts just the last 24s hours.th that is really outrageous. we re so busy talking about so luchin outrage, there hasn t be time to focus on this. think about that. he is basically providing cash for candidates who are very conflicted about this vote because they re from states where this is not an easy call for them. there is a whole lot of folks in their states thatfo believe wha the president has done is just flat wrong. jury tampering i think. or bribery, whichever way you want toor go. dicey. it s extraordinary. the president has the fact of his control of the republican base, basically, and his power to essentially determine whether members of congress or members of the senate get re-elected or get primary. you know better than i do what that feeling in the pit of the stomach would be like for a senator ine that position. i certainly do. the day kennedy resigned. so that s another avenue where you ll see the president exercising his power along with the bombastic tweets, along with the complaints about process. along with whatever sort of obstructionist parliamentary things the house can do about process in the house itself. what does it all get you in the end is the question when the substance is there? melissa, i want to reset again here again, at 11:15 on the east coast. the house has finished the allotted time andni is still tabulating, as the senator is explaining, some procrastinators who have come to the house floor. the 227-187, those have been be rising, which gets us closer to the actual vote. that gets use back, professor,o whatto is proverbially known in the constitution as the big enchilada. i wonder if you can set the table for folks, what does it mean that the houselk is about set up the blueprint for the potential impeachment of donald trump? for viewers watching saying, oh, my god, this looks like a big day. what does it mean that the president have done so many things objectionable, ideological, lemorally, politically, in the eyes of so many, that this scandal about ukraine brought us tos this point. you have to first understand the constitution is document about limiting government, limiting the congress, the executive, thegr judiciary, so each has an opportunity to check the other branches so no branch can aggrandize power and overwhelm the people. that s the whole point of the constitution. this impeachment process is not about subverting the election, about overriding the will of the people. w it s about allowing the will of the people to be heard because the president has exceeded the bounds of constitutional authority, and congress and the other branches are supposed to check that. eugene s point is really right on. congress created impeachment as a remedy. what they didn t anticipate is you d have constitutional law oa the side of the godfather. the idea that senators who will function as jurors would receive payments from the president for their high ln contested you say like aou condiment. it s constitutional law. thenit you have this mob lawyerg on the side. it s incredibly suspect to go and provide these kind of paymentses to senator ernest an these senators that are in conflicted dikts, martha mccosally, knowing they will be theno ones ultimately to vote o whether or not this president is rude. it s handhanded, tight fisted. ultimately it may be very y effective. that s not something the constitutionom contemplated. ns it s corrupt is what it is too. to vote the prosecutors first, in the johnson impeachment, there was also a lot of horseim trading and ultimately historians say, bribes, which is quite striking considering thatui bribery is a impeachable offense. you re speaking to what you see as the potential further influence campaigns to try to get theseto votes back. i do have to ask you, aside of the y godfather, would only if there s a horse head in your bed. i thinkea the framers always expected, regardless of of how tough things got, individuals would put country over their own individual y interests, over pay interests if those are at play. that s not what we re seeing. this is perhaps the failure of this document. it expected too much. that s why it s going so crucial to have these hearings play out incr public. if we start from the premise that perhaps t the ultimate jurs in this case, the senators, may not be completely impartial jurors as we would hope to have in the criminal context, the real audience has got to be the american people. if wes have these hearings playing out in public where the people can see the witnesses, can see who they are, what bias they , bring, what credibility they have and what they know, ultimately they re the ones that can put pressure on the senators to say, look, the facts support this. this is something we re hearing from republicans who don tin have a strong take on ts which is to say there are republicans we ve spoken to in washington, not attaching names to this, said, look, we d rather there s no impeachment to deal e with. their concern is that televised hearings with people with a chest full ofle medals and diplomatic history could actually move people in red parts of the country. well, it could. we ve all looked back through the history books of how public opinion moved during watergate and during the nixon process. as those hearings on television, alexander butterfield and the tapes and everything. you saw most republicans and most voters who had voted nixon stuck with himni up to a point d then the needle really moved and it was afterly that public exposure. we have a conversation about the founders and what they d think of what s goingrs on now. one thing they were totally concerned with ista the impact foreign powers on our government. so the constitution is also like aio giant sort of dam to try to keep that out. the emoluments clause, for example. why ise. that in here? rich countries like spain and england from influencing when you talk about foreign money. this is something that was f on the table very recently until the president completely backtracked one using his hote for theng g7. i want to bring in more reporting, viewers will note we veno been on triple zeros foa few minutes. most of the votes are in. garrett, i want you to walk us through what you re hearing and i ll bringar in heidi as well o of i washington. to both of you, really teeing up the question, what will happen next when you look at the people who may leave their party on this great. reporter: it looks liketh they re calling this first vote here so we may stop when they start the second. this is the vote we ve been watching for all day. this will not be an exact party line vote. we know of two democrats who our team expects to cross over and vote with republicans against resolution. they have very different profiles here. jeff van drew, a freshman member from new jersey, just elected as part of the blue wave, just told one ofav our colleagues in the basement he i m going to jump in to listen to the speaker. those in favor please say aye. those opposed say no. the ayes have it. the res dugs is adopted. on that i would request the yeas and nays. the yays and nays are ordered. members will record their votes by electronic device.d. this is a five-minute vote, colleagues, a five-minute vote. garrett, we re proceeding to the key r and critical vote. walk us through exactly what s happening right now. thisha vote should go much quicker. all thed members m are in the chamber. they came during the last first vote.het you re starting to see numbers on the board. two democrats have voted against. i can t see the big board with their names. i cane tellwi you they probable jeff van drew, the freshman congressman from new jersey and collin peterson, a long serving congressman from minnesota, one of the last conservative blue dog democrats. both of them have signaled for quite a long time they were unlikely to up sfupport impeachment. i would be much more surprised if weuc see any republicans crossing over to vote with the democrats here. you see a present vote. that s interesting. that will take some explanation. that may come off the board. republicans are unlikely to vote with democrats here even if they are concerned about the president s behavior, in part because they simply don t have to. in pure naked lizard brain political terms here, there s no reason tol vote with democratsn a procedural vote here that i don t know democrats can carry and stick your neck out for the next month to just get hammered by your republican colleagues. we re going to leave the escalating numbers on the screen as berereport this out in realtime. rarely is the floor of the house this exciting. that climbing yea number, 183, joined by one independent is this united states house on the road to passing rules to provide for the potential impeachment of the sitting president. what is the magic number they need toe hit? 218 if everyone is present. i didn tne see the totals on th last vote. i believe that will be the number today. democrats have the number to clear it here. t they can afford to lose a half dozen or more wouldn t be politically problematic. if you lose more than that, you re having a you saw the two nays pop up very quickly. if there are other wavering members on the hefloor, i suspe they re being spoken to in hush tones on the floor as we speak by thes member of the whip tea from thesehe parties. look, this is part of the case that nancy pelosi made when she came out to run for speaker again, that she is a master vote counter. they re not going to make mistakes in terms of knowing they have the i votes to carry this. i saw that republican vote pop up and r come down very quickly here. iqu expect the republicans to b in lockstepi on this as we approach the magic number. i might point out that, if you are going to vote in a way that there s going to be extreme pressure on you by your party, there is a saying that you re told, and that isg vote early d get out of there. because if you stick around, whether you re a republican trying to defy the republican party oro a democratic that s votingoc differently than the majority of the fedemocrats, if you stickjo around on the floor it gets very painful. your elbow gets twisted so hard that you have to go see the chiropractor. you vote andse you get out so there s no more pressure put on you. senator, i m jumping in to say it would appear that the democrats have passed the majorityse hurdle at 220 votes, 221, rising, as we report in speak in favor of this resolution providing for rules for the potential impeachment of president donald trump. garrett, we are looking at the democrats. asg t you see, speaker pelosi count. it would appear she has counted up enough votes with plenty of room. nothingnt official, formal or wh the support of the house authority until thise is final and gaveled. the speaker doesn t usually we see her in red at the top of the screen by theat flag.sc the speaker does not usually physically preside in this manner. garrett, when you look at these numbers hitting 227 votes, it would appear the house is on the way to passing this resolution of the rules for impeachment. that s exactly right. what we always caution not to getys ahead of ourselves until these votes are called, you re operating with a pretty healthy margin here, and you re not seeing really any party crossover beyond the two democratsso voting with republicans who wevo suggested earlier. this speaks to the partisanug nature of s this, and i think bh parties will use these vote totals asot talking points here democrats voting to what will be a strong majority here, keeping all their members home to vote inmb favor. republicans will turn right around and say thisan is a partisan exercise, that there were no erepublicans, at leastt appears, with still three not voting, to cross over and support democrats on this issue. so in their partisan lanes going forward, and as i said earlier, no one is making on this vote -s no one is making it in the way that it needs to be done, the argument towards patriotism, country over party and so forth. it sh. very easy for republican membersor in particular to shru that off given that this is a procedural vote. there s not a lot of political upside spending the next month defending a proceed yurl vote being made d here. above 232 hvotes, this is well beyond the margin for error for democrats here. how does the house floor look to you as they ve just finished the time? we ll jump in the moment we hea the speaker preside. does it look any busier, different, more intense to you on thisou historic vote? members sticking around, the galleries were packed as we got toward the start of the vote. a lot of staff present. there was the feeling that this was ath meant tuesday, not a normal everyday n vote.da to senator mccaskill s point, there s another six votes in this series. for folks trying to avoid the uncomfortable feeling, they have votes to t come if they want to head to the exits. we see the speaker consulting there with the house staff and stepping towards s looks lik she s stepping towards the microphone and the gavel. let listen in to this moment on the house floor with the majorityhi of votes. on this vote the yea are 232. the nays are 196. the resolution is adopted. without objection, the motion te reconsider is laid upon the table. you hear the gavel at 11:29 a.m. does the gentleman from missouri seek recognition? i request permission to speak for one minute e any objection? without objection, the gentleman is recognized. there s an objection. is heard. t the united states house of representatives, 11:29 a.m. on the east.m coast, has passed th resolution providing for the rules for the impeachment of president donald trump. this is the first time the full house has held any floor vote whatsoever on impeachment. the party line vote provides a preview, and we hear this from both sides, of what is coming. democrats completely united, moving forward on impeachment on a way they were not united even within the past few months. republicans united against the balance of power in the house standsow with speaker pelosi an the democrats. that s a preview of what could be in short order in the coming weeks a vote on the actual impeachment of donald trump. we re going to keep an eye here on this house floor. but i want to bring in our panel that s been assembled precisely for this reason. senator mccaskill, you ve been walking us through how this works. we had thelk t party line vote thety substance. what does it mean right now, thh congress closer to impeaching donald trump? i think now it s a timetable issue. how soon will the public hearings begin. i m told by my friends on the hill they anticipate public hearings beginning the middle of november. i think they will probably we already can kind of guess who the witness list is going to be. the witness list will be trump appointees like ambassador taylor who was brought into the state department by donald trump.de lieutenant colonel vindman who obviously is not c somebody whos onwh anybody s fund-raising lis or f is a political person in a way. volker, sondland. i think you ll see that list and beginnd to see those hearings, e beginning of november. i anticipate those hearings will complete by probably the middle of lydecember, and it wouldn t surprise me if there are articles of impeachment that work their way towards the senate before santa gets here. you re talking about impeaching donald trump before christmas. i want to bring back in garrett haake who has been following all of this. garrett, this is a turning point. it would appear now with these new rules passed that this united states congress is closer to the impeachment of the sitting president than it has ever been since it was constitutedsi after the midterm. it s very hard to see how democrats turn back from impeachment now. you ve just set the table for open hearings. first in the intel committee, these rules prescribe potentially open hearings after that.ib a lot of movement afoot. a ton of pressure on democrats to wrap up this deposition stage, the closed door process they ve been using thus far and move thishu impeachment effort intoim the sunlight. in fact, there were a number of democrats who had been cautious about supporting the impeachment inquiry or who had held off for a long time, who put their support of it in these exact terms today before this vote saying they wantbe to move this into sunlight, that they re not exactly voting for the president or the sayinghe they think the evidenc is strongth enough to do so yet but that it s time to move forward and to make this process public. so i suspect, and there s no reason to think otherwise, we r going to start seeing so much more of s a public-facing effor by democrats. they have to takeef the evidenc that s come h out of those of depositions, largely in the forms ofon leaks and releases b attorneys of openingea statemen, and turn that into a public argument. nancy pelosi has been very clear on this from day one. you cannot impeach the president without the public s support. while they may not be able to turn t very many republican members, they won tli need themn the nevotes. they need republicans, independents, regular people across the country to get on board with them, ari. that starts now. we ll go now to the white house, t kristen welker. ari, president trump tweeting just moments ago, the greatest witch hunt in american history. this is how you can expect the president and his allies to frame what they have just witnessed on the house floor. we re also anticipating a white house statement at some point today. just to reiterate a point, we know thee president has been working the phones. weg expect he may actually mee with republican lawmakers a little laterwi on today. bottom line, they re going to continue to try g to discredit this entire process. the president has already begune campaigning, trying to paint the democrats as t the do-nothing no democrats. they put out an ad last night during the world series, in fact, to that effect. it s underscored by the tweet that president trump just put ru out. what happens moving forward? we know there are a number of key witnesses that the white house is going to be focused on. tim morrison obviously among those setus to be on capitol hi today. heap announced yesterday that hs going to be leaving the administrati administration. he is the second white house official to be on capitol hill beth phone he july 25th call between president trump and the president ofe ukraine that ates the heart of all of this. of course, john bolton has been called to testify, his lawyer making it clear he s not going to dor so unless he s subpoena. you can bet the white house focused onit that potential testimony as well again, with this vote it essentially means that at some point those testimonies will be able to take place in public view. while the p white house has bee calling for that on the one hand, on the other hand, it could complicate the political procedure. thanks to kristen welker for that response. i want to bring back jon meacham, presidential historian. there are many daysia where we talk about history but they re not historic days. this now officially formally would appear to be one. particularly when you look at donald trump as an elected president facing now the potential impeachment inside his first term. only the second elected president who will ever be impeached. what do you see as the historical significance of congress being on the precipice of doing, having passed these rules moments ago? i suspect the president will become only the third president to be impeached. andrew johnson, bill clinton and i nowns suspect donald trump. whether he s removed from office is an entirely different question. in a way, the country itself is nowco on trial. the white house chief of staff, and i suspect strongly, i bet a lot of money that the president will end t up saying, yes, i di this. this is how i i govern and the bidens were in the wrong. i was trying toin find out abou this, they re corrupt, what are you going to do about it. r do we, in fact, care that the president of the united states violated, t attempted to violat the sovereignty of our national elections. i think that s for all the nuances, for all the niceties, for all the procedural points we spend a lot of time on, that is theon fundamental question confronting the fucountry. a 48-48 country with a few folks on the nerve s edge in betweene these two tribes, wha will we decide is acceptable behaviorac from the president o the united states. inor many ways, far more so tha the bill clinton example, more like the richard nixon example, more like the johnson example, it will tellhn us a great deal about who we actually are right now. what is they ar nature of th allegations, jon, tell us about the j unpredictable part of washington, that sixbl months a no one thought we would be here today.be we ve been on some of these special coverage days before. we live in a world where things are treated as impossible and then obvious, with almost no processing inos between, particularly with the hot takes in washington and sometimes online. many people said this isn t happening, the mueller report, whatever it did, did not close the circle, and we re getting into 2020 and the debates have begun. all of a sten, facts, whistle-blowers, evidence piles up and the congress gets to thir point today, fool house floor vote, these are the rules, these are the rights of the president. and it would appear i say this as a reporter watching it, it would appear the house saying, mr. president, get ready, you are about to be impeached. it s fascinating. it s a fundamental feature oft histor and reality that most of life is like an iceberg. we see part of it but there s a huge amount we don t see. often what happens is it is the province of history to go back and find these stories that were below theto surface. what s happeninge. now in this sped-up world is that we find it out far more quickly. we re on a kind of warp speed for revelations. x number of weeks ago, ukraine was not top of mind at all. it shows us that, a, we have the single most self ave. vowedly unconventional president in presidential rehistory. he sen knocked down many, many the guard rails that have kept the republic going. so they re flattened. the question now we have to answer is n do we care about the guardrails. do we care and how does the public assess t something that today out of the house was a party line vote, but when the evidence piles up, might move other people. a one-way or the other. if it s going to be a fair process, it s going to have to leave with evidence. stay with me. kristen welker, on many, many days the news comes from donald trump s impromptu press conferences, his availabilities and his tweets. is, as you pointed out, a bigger day, more formal day. we have a more formal, traditional written statement from the white house responding to frthis, not just a tweet. what aret you hearing? reporter: that s right. in addition to the tweet that president trump sent out calling this the greatest witch hunt in american wihistory, we got the statement from the white house. i ll readhe it to you. the president has done nothing wrong, itha says, and the democrats know it. nancy pelosi and the democrats unhinged obsession with this illegitimate impeachment proceeding does not hurt president trump. it hurts the american people. instead of focusing on pressing issues that impact real families like reducing gun violence, improving health care, lowering prescription drug costs, securing our southern border and modernizing our aging infrastructure, the democrats are choosing every day to waste time on a sham impeachment, a blatantly partisanch attempt to destroyem the president. it does go on to take jabs at house speaker nancy pelosi and morey broadly adam schiff and essentially concludes bynd sayi the democrats want toy render verdict without giving the administration aou chance to mot a defense. that is unfair, unconstitutional and fundamentally un-american. so that is the statement coming out of the white house at this hour. again,is ari, to underscore thi point, it s a preview of the strategy that you re going to see moving t forward, the president, this administration, the president s campaign are going focus on all these policy issues that you just heard in that statement and the fact that there s unlikely to be action on any of those issues. he s going to try to campaign on it. he s going ton try to rally support today by working the phones andby possibly holding meetings, ari. kristen welker at the white house with the new statement. the house has n voted on the rus for the impeachment of president donald trump,ac party line vote. speaker pelosi has been seen leaving the house floor. we rein keeping an eye on wheth we can get anymore availability or reaction from her. she did say when walking by reporters that it is a sad day. you can see a some of that righ there, walking by some of the hill statues with our own reporter. our special experts are here. we re also waiting, i should tell you, for the chairs of the relevant o committees who have been newly empowered including intelligence and judiciary to step to their lectern and say what they want to say about what comes next. this is a busy and tumultuous day on the hill. turning to our experts, senator mccaskill, our job is to help folks understand not only what s happening and what isnd being said, but what is true, what is unknown and what is unknown. we have evidence that suggested there was a prid pro quo and we havend denials. we ll continue to report that out. we also have the white house saying things today in the new statement thatto are abjectly a provedly false whichec is striki given that we re in this full debate with the resolution and the rulesre coming forward. what do you make of the fact that thef white house s statemh says the new rules have, quote, violations of due process, that the new hearingses fail to provide, quote, any process, quote, whatsoever. because as we ve reported and the rules are written and the public can read them and we ll see them, they not only provide a process, but they actually provide what are traditional due process rights, not required by the constitution, but exceed what past presidents have been afforded. first of all, this white house lies more often than most people brush theire teeth. b them lying in a statement is not newsworthy because n they lie constantly. but the american people will, in fact,eo decide whether or not ts is fair.ct this is goinghe to be on tv. i was thinking, as i was working through in my head when these hearings will begin and thinking aboutan the coverage these hearingse will get and that th american people will tune in an watch this.er what if a you re running for president right now as a democratic? what if november 20th is one of the key witnesses of this impeachment inquiry and there s at debate that night? what ift? the hearings run over and all of a sudden we re in a situation where we ve got the contenders to take on donald trump. and a weeko until iowa. way back in the cheap seats, way back in the cheap seats and everyone is focused on this drama? i do think it s a challenge for our candidates to manage, to keep talking about, just this week the senate had a very important vote tory protect pre-existing conditions. bunch of senators voted with trump to do away with pre-existing conditions in junk insurance plans. that barely got a peep because of the drama of this moment in american f history. it s important for ouram in the i to stay forefront as they re working right now, in really the home stretch for iowa. as we look and report on whae we re hearing in the response, melissa, i have something you wantss to weigh in on. areo you ready? i m ready. pelosi quoted ben franklin and thomas payne. others quoted founders in both directions in this high stakes, high level debate on the house floor. ivanka trump tweeted a quote of thomas jefferson writing to his daughter, quote, surrounded by enemiesun and spies, catching a perverting every word that falls from my lips or flows from my pen and inventing where facts fail them, and she adds to this, after describing, that s jefferson to his daughter, readds in a new tweet, quote, some things never change, dad, exclamation point. i went to uva so i can quote thomas jefferson with the best of them. let me just say, all of the statements coming out of this white house are not justin untr, they ret totally off base. as a professor when i listen to the president s statement, all i can think about is will this guy just do the reading? will you read the constitution, the resolution? the constitution says explicitly the opening of impeachment articles is notch the trial t itself. you will have thee opportunityo make yourll case heard. y you will have the opportunity to present the case to a bunch of jurors that you ve already seated in you behalf by providing them with campaign g funds. there s going to be an opportunity for him. this is an opportunity for the people to hear what the congressmen already know and for them to makedy a judgment about whether or not this is a a plac they want theor country to be i. thomas jefferson, for ivanka trump s ownka edification, is ao someone who thought the presidency should note be abov the law.ho he said a that over and over again. the treed of liberty should be pruned periodically. impeachment is one of the ways wef ensure we remain a republi and not an autocracy. absolutely right. there s line in that white house statement that i says the houses attempting to render a verdict, weighing in on this unfair process. of course, the house does not render a verdict at all. it wills be the senate who ultimately, if the president is impeached, renders the verdict.e i think that s really where a lot of focus we ll really have to have a split screen now. the house will be conducting the inquiry, but we ll have one eye on the senate which ultimately, i believe, will have to make that decision. i ve spoken with a number of republican senators that have come uppu with the position tha well, i may have to be a juror, so i can t comment on the substance of the president appears to have done. and perhaps h they ll stick wit that line. but i think that will make the white house very nervous, that republican senators areat not o there actively defending the substance of the president s position on the allegations. berit, this is a nation that has always been steeped in legal culture, if notd always a deep obsession with all the specific rules. since everyone has been quoting the h founders, toke ville talk about thatde and how the seatin of the jury system was so important because over the course of civic life in america, people sooner or later, they or their family, ended up on juries and it was kind of a training. he was speaking to the fact that at the time people didn t have much access to education or higher education for sure. it can beca positive or sometim negatives when people say we re all too lawyerly, even when you take thewy lawyers out of it. for viewers joining us here as we near noon on the east coast, the house hasst taken a step th all our reporting suggests is highly unlikely to be unwound, a step towards the trial of the president of the united states, something we rarely see and something that connects r with l our notions of what it means to be fair orof for those who obje to wthis, who see it as the presidentee putting it as a wit hunt or as overkill, the concern that sometimes there is nork justice inat the legal process. so, as we look to that and you think about that as a prosecutor, what should americans keep their eye on the they re wanting to wait and see whether this looks fair before theyr ultimately make up their minds? my response would be that the facts will be the best antidote to the rhetoric. what thishe next stage will giv us an opportunity to dig into is the facts. we canis put aside the rhetoric put aside claims that it s a witch hunt and focus on what the witnesses will actually be saying. we areesll talking about some o these things with any of us here having had the ability to actually see or hear what these witnesses haver said in its entirety. to have the ability to get their comprehensive statements, to see the facts itself, to see if what these witnesses are saying corroborates what the initial whistle-blower says, to see how thisay plays into what we heard from thent president s own mout in that initial transcript. that is going to be the best remedyg to all this political rhetoric. as much as the senators will be the ultimate are we. they re going to have to convince us that there is a there there. and at least from what we ve seen so atfar, the witnesses brought in bring with them an amount of contributed and knowledge that s going to be hard for rhetoric to overcome. that s brings to the fore what you and our panelists are speaking about. facts that moved the democrats and concern so many americans, the majority now backing impeachment according to polls, even before publicg hearings, d the unity of trump s defense in the republican caucus. heidi przybyla, you do a back of the envelope calculation, heidi, and one of the things we see is no republicans who are still members of the party, there s one who left the party over this, an independent, mr. amash, but no current members of the housere republican caucus crossg over. by contrast, while democrats widely and strongly obtained to the nature of the attacks and investigation of president clinton and their view of whether those were impeachable offences however objectionable the conduct was, 31 democrats backed the actual initial probe. what does it tell you that the president s party is living in its own bubble now? i can tell you, ari, based on my reporting which includes meeting with a number of these moderate republicans that they are deeply troubled by the president s behavior. but theypr view this vote todays largely a procedural vote, and that many of their objections, just like their leadership has been voicing, have been along the process lines. to garrett s point, many republicans felt like if they were going to dissent, this is not the vote they are going to dissent on.to we need to keep that in mind as we look at the vote totals. this is not comparable to previous initial votes on impeachment in that sense. i also want to correct for the record, ari, since this is a moment for history, and fact check some things that leader mccarthy said about this being un-democratic, because this vote hasn t taken place until 37 days into the process. do you know why that is? number one, this vote is not required under the constitution. there s nothing in the constitution that says that they needed to hold this vote. and also, the part about this being closed, behind closed doors, it is the republicans themselves who allowed this to happen, because the republicans changed the rules in the last congress, in the 116th congress, to allow the democrats to go ahead and issue t all of these unilateral subpoenas. they didn t have to hold a vote because they already had all the subpoena authority. now they did have the hold the vote becauseho they have to set out the rules of the road. they had to change that 45-minute questioning rule, for example. and so thatru is why you re seeg this vote today. and just one last note, it was trey gowdy himself, head of the oversight committee, who said for the initial phase the only way to actually get truth is to do it behind closed doors when you re in the fact-finding part of the investigation. important context there. i want to turn to geoff bennett. geoff, our cameras briefly caught you trying to briefly catch the speaker who obviously wasn t going to take live questions. there s that shot. what s happening now, as the congress continues to work on two tracks, passing these rules and also conducting these private depositions? reporter: right. well, two floors beneath us in the basement on the house side, house investigators are deposing tim morrison, outgoing russia director for the white house, we learned yesterday he was stepping down, he will be the third white house official to step downth from their official capacity. the last two did that in part so they would be more free in what they re able to tell house investigators. as thisou closed door investigation proceeds, they re getting closer and closer inside the white house. they ve already got the view of what happened in o ukraine. they talked to foreign service officers who were there as this ukraine pressure campaign came to be. today throughig next week you he house investigators, house democrats, requesting interviews with the nsc legal adviser, the chief of extra of to mick mulvaney. it s not clear, ari, if any of those people will show up. but house investigators want to get their testimony to really put the pieces together. morrison, we know, based in large part on the testimony of bill taylor who appeared if not this past weekend, but the weekend before that, had misgives abomi misgivmi misgivings about the phone call between president trump and president zelensky. but what s so interesting about this, witness after witness is offering these investigators different chapters of the same narrative, that president trump deputized his personal attorney, rudy giuliani, gordon sondland, ambassador to the eu, rick perry, energy secretary, and to some degree, mick mulvaney and kurt volker, to run this pressure campaign outside of the normal state department channels. and when career officials, respected career officials like marie yovanovitch raised legitimate questions about what it is they were doing, those folks were targeted by a smear campaign and ultimately moved out of the way. that s one of the reasons, house democrats say,ne that when you hear president trump make the point that the phone call was perfect, lindsey graham, his chief defenderis on capitol hil says he s not bothered about the phone call, the phone call itself isca not the entire picture. it s what happened before the call and after the call that house democrats are investigating and in a couple of weeks they will bring that allv public, ari. reporting live from capitol hill, thank you for all of that. a lot going on. i want to bring it back here as we approach the noon hour and get ready for andrea mitchell, to my esteemed experts, a quick yes-or-no question followed by your final thoughts today. yes or no, today s vote means it s almost certain the house will impeach donald trump. yes. yes. yes. yes. which is really striking. i didn t know i would get four yeses. what s the most important thing for americans to take away from all this, whether they support president trump or not, whether they know about whether it s an impeachable offense. set your dvrs to tape the testimony and theo these xamination of crucial fact witnesses, and make up your own mind. try to tune out all of the noise and listen, like you re a juror, listen from the jury box to the witnesses. and then decide where you stand. i think people are changing their mind about this. and i think the fact witnesses are going to be key for whether or not we get more than ake handful of republican votes in the senate for removal of office. and jean, a migene, a mind i terrible thing not to change. exactly. i just hope people pay attention. there s going to be an attempt toe paint this as a strictly partisan politics, essentially. there is a tendency, understandably, amongen people just sort of, oh, they re all politicians, they re all out for themselves. because it s breaking news, i have to correct myself, my apologies, i m told the chief deputy whip of the democratic caucus has found an nbc camera coming out of this vote. congressman from michigan, dan kildee, thanks for joining me. thank you very much. does today s vote mean you re going to impeach donald trump? it s a step that sets the framework for us to make that decision. a number of us have seen enough evidence to come to that conclusion. but i think the process has to play itself out. but this will give us an orderly process that republicans asked for, and of course now they object to it. but this is the way our democratic system works. we layys down the rules that wee going to follow. we re going to follow those rules and we ll come to a judgment based on the facts, which by the way are facts that so far republican members seem completely willing to ignore. you say it sets out the rules and the process, and we ve been reporting on that. within those rules, what would be the main reasons to impeach donald trump in plain english? well, for me, when the president by his own admission solicited the help of a foreign government to investigate one of his political opponentsve and tn did everything he co-uld to try to cover that up, that s a fairly plain set of facts that doesn t need a lot of analysis. but we have a responsibility to get all the evidence we can surrounding that particular question and any other questions that might come up. and that s what is going on right now. and what the public hearing process will be intended to display for the american people and for members of congress. congressman, i m sure you re familiar with some of the pushback already from the white house because it s echoed what they ve said previously, the white house saying today there s no due process, there s no fairness, they have no rights. what do you say directly to the presidentct about that?t
whether or not speaker pelosi votes. it s tradition the speaker doesn t often votes but on a day like today i would think she would want to lead from the front. we ll see. it seems like unprecedented times. hagar, felipe, congressman, thank you so much. we ll hand off to ari melber. good morning. i m ari melber reporting live from nbc headquarters with coverage of today s events on msnbc. the breaking news coming out of capitol hill, lawmakers in the house about to take their first ever formal votes on how to proceed with the impeachment inquiry of president donald trump. this new resolution maps out the blueprint and rules of the road for what democrats say is the next public phase in this impeachment probe. now many are expecting a party line vote today. lawmakers will vote on these ground rules which includes moving the closed door depositions of all of these key witnesses into public hearings. we ve seen squabbling over this process. we re expecting in our special coverage to hear from speaker nancy pelosi. that could be as soon as within the next 15 to 20 minutes. for weeks she has said this formal vote is not legally or constitutionally required but that s true and she changed course in part after much pressure from republicans and the president about the process. pelosi and democrats launched their investigation after the whistleblower sounded an alarm about a july phone call about president trump and the president of ukraine. house democrats are focused on trump s efforts to push ukraine into what they say is an unconstitutional abuse of power. the investigation of domestic political opponents and conditioning it all on military aid. the president and his allies insisting nothing wrong with that call and there wasn t a quid pro quo or whatever happened is typical foreign policy. because this is our special coverage i m thrilled to tell you about some of the people and experts leading us off this morning. nbc chief white house correspondent hallie jackson. msnbc s garrett haake on capitol hill. nbc news correspondent heidi presswhat in washington. jeremy bash, former chief of staff at the cia and department of defense. john meech m, presidential historian. bob costa, reporter and msnbc analyst who has been leading coverage of this has been reverberating in the past hour. joining me here at our headquarters former u.s. senator chair mccaskill, pulitzer prize winner eugene robinson from the washington post and barrett burger a prosecutor in the southern district of new york. good morning to everyone. thrilled to have you here. feels like a big prime time evening as well. i want to go right to the hill, garrett, what are we going to see next. we re going to continue to see this debate play out over the next hour or so and could see extended remarks from speaker pelosi and house minority leader kevin mccarthy as we refer to as magic minutes one minute of time afforded to the leaders that can stretch on as long as they see fit and then i expect to see a largely party-line vote this morning. democrats have managed to bring some wayward democrats who had not yet supported the impeachment effort back into the fold on this, in part by playing up the idea that this is, in fact, a process vote, not a conviction, not a vote on a specific article of impeachment. just the next step on the road. several democrats who opposed or not supported the inquiry have come out in favor in part by saying they are in favor of opening this up and see this process open up to the public. republicans by and large have remained in lockstep on this saying this does not go far enough to expand rights for them and the minority and the president of the united states. if i had to place a bet my analysis on this is that you re more likely to see perhaps one or two democrats vote with republicans against this resolution, than you are to see republicans cross the line and vote for it at this stage. democrats will at some point make a moral argument, make a patriotic argument perhaps to get republicans to vote for whatever they produce in this process, but on this pure process vote here, i expect to see both parties largely staying within their lanes. how many votes will we see? this is i think a three-vote series. usually the second vote will be the main vote on the actual resolution here and then a motion to recommit. you could see some other process votes take place here as republicans might try to gum up the works and delay this. given that everyone i ve talked to at least on both parties expect this resolution to pass, republicans could slow this down but it may not be worthwhile to throw up a bunch of procedural roadblocks when the house is scheduled to go out today and nothing clarifies the mind of lawmakers like the prospect of going home early on a thursday. garrett, you ve given us some of the numbers and some of the rules. my last question for you briefly, is the vibe. does it feel heavy, significant, momentous there today or does it feel like any other day on the hill? it has a bit of a unique vibe to it, i will say. the debate is just getting started. there s still more empty seats than full ones in the house chamber. i was over there a few minutes ago. there s a lot of additional media and lawmakers kind of loitering around waiting for their moment. it does feel like we re on the cusp of something unusual here. fascinating to get your ground view and please stay near the floor and your camera we will be coming back to you throughout the special coverage. we turn to the white house, where chief correspondent hallie jackson is reporting for nbc and msnbc news. what are you hearing? so different vibe. it s interesting ari, hearing you and garrett talk about the vibt on the hill with the potential for this moment. president trump is behind closed doors and unless something changes that is where he is going to stay. nothing on his public schedule. white house officials have been cagey on what he is up to and how closely he is watching. based on what i ve seen from this president over last three years we know he will turn in today the whip counter in chief, watching closely if any republicans to the point that you were making with garrett end up flipping over and voting with democrats here, despite the fact that it seems unlikely. thank you. i m going to come back to you shortly. congressman adam schiff who has been the leading face on the intelligence committee for this probe is speaking. let s listen in. as evident in the july 25 call record and the events that preceded and followed that call, that work has necessarily occurred behind closed doors because we have had the task of finding the facts ourselves, without the benefit of the investigation that the justice department declined to undertake. despite attempts to obstruct, we have interviewed numerous witnesses, we have provided important testimony about the efforts to secure political favors from ukraine, who have provided important testimony about the efforts to secure political favors from ukraine. with we have reviewed text messages among key players which show how securing political investigations was placed at the forefront of our foreign policy towards ukraine. this resolution sets the stage for the next phase of our investigation, one in which the american people will have the opportunity to hear from the witnesses firsthand. we will continue to conduct this inquiry with the seriousness of purpose that our task deserves because it is our duty and because no one is above the law. madame speaker, i urge passage of the resolution and yield back. gentleman from oklahoma. thank you, madam speaker. we have been listening to the beginning of this debate today on the first ever house floor vote on a resolution to provide for rules for the potential impeachment of the sitting president donald j. trump. that was adam schiff making a brief but forceful case. we re going to keep an eye and bring you into the room as soon and whefb never we see a significant action. i want to bring back our panel. speaking with hallie jackson from the white house who nimbly stepped aside as we went to the house floor and let you continue your thought and give yours view of how the white house is dealing with what continues even as this public floor vote goes on today, there are key people who typically work in the building you re in that are reporting to private depositions. right including tim morrison on capitol hill today. he is the outgoing top adviser to the president on issues related to russia and this is going to be a significant deposition different that morrison is somebody on that phone call between president trump and the ukrainen leader, only the second person who has a firsthand account, firsthand knowledge of that conversation who is going to be talking with the house investigators. you have the prospect of somebody else coming in, john bolton, the former national security adviser who might have quite a bit to say. he and the president butted heads over issues not just this one, with other witnesses testifying that bolton repeatedly raised concerns about rudy giuliani s interactions with ukraine. his lawyer told nbc news he does not want to voluntarily testify but that left the door open to, a subpoena, which these other witnesses have had, have been brought before congress under subpoena. we re still waiting to see questions on that. you asked about how the white house is handling this. i have to tell you same as they ever were is the answer. before this vote went down and we knew that speaker pelosi would take the vote to formalize the rules i have been asking democrats, the white house is telling me, sources are saying to me hey, and saying it publicly too, we believe toss it back to you. i see speaker pelosi on the floor. tranquilly provides to the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and to our prosperity do ordain and establish this constitution of the united states. it goes on to immediately establish article i, the legislative branch, article ii, article iii the judiciary. the genius of the constitution, a separation of powers, three co-equal branches of government, to be a check and balance on each other. it s that that we take the oath of office, we gather here on that opening day with our families gathered around, to proudly raise our hand to protect and defend the constitution of the united states. and that is exactly what we are doing today. sadly, this is not any cause for any glee or comfort. this is something that is solemn, something prayerful. and that we had to gather so much information to take us to this next step. again, this is a solemn occasion. nobody, i doubt anybody in this place or anybody that you know, comes to congress to take the oath of office, comes to congress to impeaches the president of the united states. unless his actions are jeopardizing our honoring our oath of office. so i m grateful to our committee chairs for all of the careful and thoughtful investigation they have been doing as this inquiry has proceeded. today, the house takes the next step forward as we establish the procedures for open hearings conducted by the house intelligence committee so that the public can see the facts for themselves. this resolution ensures transparency, advancing public disclosure of deposition transcripts and outlining the procedures for the transfer of evidence to the judiciary committee to use in its proceedings. it enables effective public hearings, setting up procedures for the questioning of witnesses and continuing the precedent of giving the minority the same rights and questioning witnesses as the majority. which has been true at every step of this inquiry, despite what you might hear there. it provides the president and his counsel opportunities to participate, including presenting his case, submitting requests for testimony, attending hearings, raising objections to testimony given, cross coming witnesses and more. and contrary to what you may have heard today, we give more opportunity to the to his case than was given to other presidents before. and thank you, mr. chairman, for making that point so clearly. and these actions, this process, these open hearings, seeking the truth and making it available to the american people, will inform congress on the very difficult decisions we will have to make in the future as to whether to impeach the president. that decision has not been made. that s what the inquiry will investigate and make the decision. based on the truth. i don t know why the republicans are afraid of the truth. every member should support allowing the american people to hear the facts for themselves. that is what this vote is about. what it s about, is the truth. what is at stake, what is at stake in all of this is nothing less than our democracy. i proudly stand next to the flag and i thank the gentleman from new york for providing this flag, so many have fought and died for this flag which stands for our democracy. when benjamin franklin came out of independence hall, we heard this over an over, on september 17th, 1787, the day our constitution was adopted, he came out of independence hall, people said to him, dr. franklin, what do we have? he said, as you know, he said a republic, if we can keep it. if we can keep it. and this constitution is the blueprint for our republic and not a monarchy. when we have a president who says article ii says i can do whatever i want, that is in defiance of the separation of powers that s not what our constitution says. so what is at stake? our democracy. what are we fighting for? defending our democracy for the people. you know that in the early days of our revolution, thomas payne said, the times have found us, the times found our founders, to declare independence from a monarchy, to fight a war of independence, when to write our founding documents and thank god they made them amendable so we could always be expanding freedom and the genius, again, the genius of that constitution was the separation of powers. any usurping of that power is a violation of the of our oath of office. so proudly, you all, we all raised our hand to protect and defend and support the constitution of the united states. that s what this vote is about today. we think the times founders, the times have found others in the course of our history, to protect our democracy, to keep our country united, the times have found each and every one of us in this room and in our country to pay attention to how we protect and defend the constitution of the united states. honoring the vision of our founders who established a country contrary to that principle, honoring the men and women in uniform who fight for our flag and freedom and our democracy. and honoring the aspirations of our children so that no president, whoever he or she may be in the future, could decide that article ii says they can do whatever they want. again, let us honor our oath of office, let us defend our democracy and let us have a good vote today and have clarity, clarity as to how we proceed, why we proceed, and again, doing so in a way that honors the constitution. we must honor the constitution and how we do this. we must respect the institution we serve. and we must heed the further words of our founders, eplur bus unum, from any one, they didn t know how different we would be but they knew that we needed to always be unifying. hopefully as we go forward with the clarity of purpose, the clarity of procedure, a clarity of fact, a clarity of truth, it s about the truth, it s about the constitution. we will do so in a way that brings people together that is healing, rather than dividing and that is how we will honor our oath of office. i urge an aye vote and yield back the balance of my time. [ applause ] gentle lady yields back. we have been listening to speaker nancy pelosi on the house floor speaking ahead of this floor vote creating the rules and blueprint for the potential impeachment of donald trump and the speaker we hear from often spoke in grandeur terms, quoting benjamin franklin, thomas payne, the founders saying it brings her no joy to do what the house is now on the precipes of doing. historic day, certainly in the view of the woman in charge nancy pelosi. i want to turn to our panel, we ve been hearing other comments from the house floor and senator mccaskill with me in our headquarters. what type of speaker did we observe? a former colleague of yours. does seem like a different day to her. well, this is really strategic. i would disagree a little bit with the opinions that say this is because of the pressure of the republicans put on the democrats about process. i don t think that s what this is at all. i think this is very smart people in the house of representatives realizing they now have the evidentiary witnesses that are credible, that are not partisan, that can get in front of the camera and explain to the american people how serious this is. i think this is about taking the facts to the american people. we ve seen support for impeachment growing marginally. the country is about 50/50 now. i think nancy pelosi and adam schiff, who we got to remember is a prosecutor, and a real prosecutor by the way, one that was actually in the courtroom, not one who just, you know, shuffled paper, he actually now has heard these witnesses by the way with republicans in the room, and he now knows he has factual witnesses that will be very powerful to the american people and i think that s what this is about. yeah. moving it into a public process where the people of america can take a look and go, holy cow. those folks who really care about our country are tremendously worried about what this president has undertaken. you mentioned congressman schiff we saw speak on the floor noticeably before speaker pelosi is a former prosecutor and presented impeachment caseses to the senate before. to your committee. yes. congressman shift in that role as house management for the impeachment of a federal judge. he was the lead prosecutor in the impeachment of a federal judge out of new orleans and i was the judge. we had the majority in the senate then. my co-judge was orrin hatch. i new from opening statement this guy had been in the courtroom and as an aside, ari, and for barrett, i have you have no idea how fun it was to rule on hearsay objections. i bet. to finally get to rule on a hearsay obtsion. but in all seriousness he did a remarkable job in that trial, he was very competent and i think he sees this as a prosecutor, that he now has the evidence that he can take to the jury, which is the american people, in a very public way. and gene, put this in the context of washington, it s not an insult to the house floor that we re watching to observe that many days what is discussed there has no wider impact. today what is discussed is this resolution, which everyone agrees if it passes has huge impact. it does have huge impact because it sets us on a process that the nation is only gone down this road four times, right. i was able to sit down with speaker pelosi on monday. i heard a preversion of the speech she gave. senator mccaskill is right. she is convinced that the house does not need to have this vote and, in fact, she rejects any suggestion that this is because of pressure from republicans in the house. i think she s sincere on that. it s about public sentiment. she often quotes abraham lincoln as having said and i will paraphrase because i don t get it exactly right but public sentiment is everything with it you can do anything, and without it you can do nothing. and she does believe, based on the witness testimony they ve had so far, that it is time to present the facts to the american people because they are so stunning, that the fact record here is so stunning, not just the transcript of the phone call that president trump had with the ukrainian president, but the entire context of this rogue parallel foreign policy that was not in the interest of the united states. but was in the interest of donald trump s political fortunes and in the interest of smearing a former vice president, may be his opponent in the next presidential election. and they think they re ready to make the case. that s interesting of your reporting of speaking with speaker pelosi very strategic about how she sets things up. barrett, a former federal prosecutor, mentioned watching the house floor right now, we are seeing a debate over two things, is there enough evidence to go this far, you don t just begin an impeachment against any president, most never get to the point we re at this morning, and two, how do you set up rules that are fair which is a highly debatable thing. your view of what we re seeing on the floor? this part of the process is most similar in the criminal system to the part of a grand jury which as we all know happens in secret, but that doesn t mean that there aren t rules and procedures for how that works. so i think right now, what they re doing is sort of shedding sunlight for the american people on how things have worked in the past and how it s going to be going forward when we get to see what s going on. i think weig i think what s going to be most useful for the next stage when bringing this to the public is the order of how we ve learned about the events and how the public has been made waufr aware of these things is not the order they actually happened. things have come out in drips and drabs and learned about the whistleblower complaint, but we ultimately learned much happened before that. i think the most important part about this next phase will be to present a more compelling narrative for the public. they can see how each of these witnesses plays into the bigger sto story, the role they ve played, i don t know we ve been able to see it in a comprehensive manner and that s part of the next phase. another one of our washington experts, heidi prisbola working her sources through the news circle heading into this morning and heidi, what are you hearing from your sources and who are the republicans to watch as pelosi drives this out to the floor, that puts pressure on those who have to decide where they stand. i am in touch with a number of my house leadership sources on and off of that floor this morning, and what we are witnessing here is a democratic party that is really closing ranks around their leader and around this process, even some of the most endangered democrats are expected to vote for this, spare a few. the real question in their minds at this moment is whether they will get any republican support for this. i can tell you from my sources that the members that they are watching who may be most likely to break, although they have no idea at this moment if it will actually happen, are those retiring republicans, republicans like justin amash of michigan, like will hurd of texas, those are the guys, francis rooney, for example, of florida, those are the guys they are watching and they do not expect any republicans who expect to come back and set foot on that floor in the new congress to vote for this. that s for a number of reasons, ari. they may actually get more support, they think, for an actual impeachment vote than this for a number of reasons. number one, a lot of those republicans haven t seen any of the evidence that s been laid out in these closed hearings and their main argument really has been process and in my meetings over the past couple of weeks, ari, with some of these moderate republicans, even they have been griping about the process arguments. their votes are not needed for this to succeed and this inquiry to go forward and they know that very well. but why are the democrats so comfortable with having this as a party line vote, which it may very well be? because according to their own internal polling, which we obtained about a week ago, ari, even in some of the most competitive battleground districts and states, there is a lot of support, majority support, for holding this inquiry. there is not majority support at this moment for an actual impeachment vote, but there is majority support for going forward with this process and that is why you see the speaker and other democrats stressing the need to have this inquiry and to have it in a very transparent way and comparing this to previous inquiries and how those were run out of the house. fascinating. heidi reporting from washington, thank you. coming back to you. i want to tell viewers what we re looking at. you ve seen the split screen washington moment it is all happening live. we see on the house floor the different visual aids brought by different members of the congress. we ve seen them go back and forth making the case for and against moving forward on the impeachment probe. on the other side of your screen you see speaker pelosi, that is also live, she spoke on the house floor and then went directly to her lectern to brief reporters. she s going to finish this briefing and there will later be a press briefing by members of the key committees on the democratic side as well and all of that bundled together with the dramatic house floor vote on this resolution to provide for the rules for the potential impeachment of president trump. so it is by all accounts a busy morning on capitol hill and i say that without even getting to the next piece of news from the washington post and bringing in bob costa we rely on, bob, your colleagues have another one that would be the headline if not for this drama, i m going to read from the washington post white house official expected to confirm diplomat s account that trump appeared to seek quid pro quo. not a headline the white house likes and it suggests again more corroboration, bob, of people going into these private depositions, that parallel track happening in addition to the floor vote right now. tell us about that story which you and your colleagues have been reporting out as well as the other depositions. when ambassador taylor stepped forward recently he made his point to congress that he believed there was a quid pro quo that was explicit in private deliberations inside the administration. it s been underscored not only by lieutenant colonel vindman, but mr. morrison coming from the national security council to tell congress what ambassador taylor said in his explosive testimony is accurate. so that s a data point for house democrats and house republicans to digest as they move forward with this process. what you re watching on the house floor is also a test for house republican leader kevin mccarthy. not just a moment for speaker pelosi. mccarthy is being watched by the white house. will he keep republicans in line, moderate from the philadelphia suburbs and elsewhere, retiring republicans mounting by the numbers because they re so weary about their chances in 20, a test for the gop as they look on and wonder what are the political stakes and standings of the party. we re going to dip in. we ve heard from the speaker and leader of the intelligence committee and see the leader of the judiciary committee which would ultimately handle any potential impeachment, listen to congressman nadler. struggle with russia, investigate his or her political adversaries. i support this resolution because no person, republican or democrat, should be permitted to jeopardize america s security and reputation for self-serving political purposes. i support this resolution because after a fair and thorough inquiry, the allegations against president trump aif found to be true woul represent a profound offense against the constitution and the people of this country. i support this resolution because i believe it is the duty of this house to vindicate the constitution and to make it crystal clear to future presidents that such conduct, if proven, is an affront to the great public trust placed in him or her. i support this resolution not because i want the allegations to be true, they sadden me deeply, but because if they are true, the constitution demands that we take action. i support this resolution because it lays the ground withwowitgroundwork for open hearings. the american public and the house must see evidence for themselves. i support this resolution because we must overcome this difficult moment for the nation. this resolution is necessary to ensure that our constitutional order remains intact for future generations. i support this resolution because we have no choice. i yield back. gentleman from oklahoma. we have been listening to house judiciary chairman nadler speaking in support of this effort to pass a resolution in providing rules for the potential impeachment of the sitting president. those rules we ve been studying, what they do is basically make the intelligence committee the clearing house for all factual allegations against the president and make the judiciary committee the final arbiter of whether and how to impeach. the person we heard from chairman nadler will have a major seat at the table if this proceeds. speaker pelosi is speaking about different topicses in her press conference we re not going back to that unless she makes more news. we re keeping an eye on everything for you. bob, ask you about the other bombshell we haven t had time to get to, reporting about the alleged cover-up and how this very significant piece of evidence and transcript was handled. what can you tell us? they are under scrutiny about how they handled the transcripts from president trump s calls with president zelensky and other foreign leaders about why the white house is sequestering them away inside of the west wing and what has been omitted from the memos and other documents that have been released to congress in the public. and you re going to expect mr. morrison and other officials who plan to testify in the coming weeks to be asked about not just what was on those transcripts and what could be on them but the conduct and the possible behavior of those within this west wing and how they put it all away. thank you as always for your reporting. i can tell you our experts are on set with us. we re looking at chairman eliot engel from foreign affairs, also touches on this inquiry. i want to bring in historian jon meacham to this conversation. i m told among other details that distinguishes this morning from most other mornings on capitol hill, the speaker intends to preside directly over this vote in her constitutional role of authority running the house but she, of course, doesn t usually physically literally do that. your view of those kind of details and what we re seeing in the eyes of history this morning? right. that s exactly what the democrats are trying to do, is frame this as a historical moment where we determine the future course. the word crisis which we overuse, actually was popularized by hip poc cra tease, a medical term about the moment in a disease where the patient either lived or died. what the speaker is doing is saying this is a moment where our democracy lives or dies. she quoted thomas payne earlier, another thing payne said was tyranny like hell is not easily conquered and i think one of the things that people need of the popular folks who need to make up their mind about whether they want to support this or not out in the country is, do we want a president who builds walls at the border, but won t build a wall around our elections. it s a question of national sovereignty in many ways. and my own sense is, for all of our nuanced conversations, for looking at the constitutional niceties here, i suspect that this is going to come down to president president trump s defiance versus nancy pelosi s vision of democracy. i think what we saw mulvaney say the other day about get over it, is going to be the president s position. just guessing here, but it s based on now four years of watching him. i think he s going to say, yeah, we did it. i did this. i was trying to find dirt on somebody and there was dirt to find. what are you going to do about it. so the question about truth that the speaker was talking about is going to be, which truth do we value more. a bombastic president who is largely lawless or a system that served us so well for almost two and a half centuries. that s going to be the existential question going forward. stay with me. want to turn to jeremy bash who has held the unique position that is so in demand for expertise right now at the intersection of law, what is allowed, and national security and foreign policy, what is the interest of the united states, a role you played at the pentagon and cia. broadening beyond the details of the resolution which we ve been covering, i m curious your view of the larger stakes because today is an inflection point the of the congress moving towards a public position that something was deeply wrong and dangerous about the president s ukraine plot as alleged. i ve sat on the house floor, ari, for many debates about house resolutions but none quite like this. in some ways, important ways, this vote today is a dry run for impeachment. it s a way to test the cohesion of the democratic caucus and put republicans on notice that they re going to have to ultimately defend the substance of the president s conduct. they re not going to be able to just take refuge in process claims they re not getting equal time or able to call witnesses. this resolution is going to lay bare that the process will be fair, equal, open and transparent, and at the end of the day the republicans are going to be faced with a very simple question, are you okay with a president of the united states asking a foreign leader to get involved in a u.s. election, yes or no. that s going to be the question presented. i think in the last couple days, ari, democrats are feeling more confident because they ve seen the way the republicans and the white house have vilified lieutenant colonel vindman, a wounded combat veteran, current serving army officer a ukraine expert who explained why he was so disturbed by the president s conduct and why he went to the white house counsel and it follows on other efforts by republicans to vilify people like ambassador bill taylor himself, member of the 101st airborne served in vietnam, devoted his life to service, serving republicans and democrats, and he was highly disturbed by the president s conduct. jeremy, you raise important points we want to get into and i mentioned you, of course, have the experience as counsel, i want to bring in another of counsel here at msnbc, professor mur fri nyu law, former clerk for judge sotomayor at the time and weigh in on what jeremy raises the question of fairness, this is a constitutional process, this is the only time the constitution is treating as a potential defendant. the rules the house could pass, basically say, we are going to treat the president with a lot of fairness and options, including melissa, the right to send his lawyers down and lodge objections and ask questions in the ensuing process. break that down for us. the constitution doesn t provide for the rules of the impeachment inquiry. not a lot of precedence to follow here, just andrew johnston and bill clinton, and so the procedures that the house have outlined in the resolutions are pretty standard based on what we saw in the clinton impeachment. the president will have certain due process rights, but not full due process rights. this is sort of in keeping with the idea that this part of the inquiry is akin to a kind of grand jury investigation where there are limited rights for criminal defendants. there will be some rights but there will also be opportunities for the house democrats to check the president s ability to stonewall on such issues like subpoenas. even as the white house can call its own witnesses or subpoena certain witnesses they cannot have free reign if they don t cooperate with the process itself. that s an important check on what has been a really obstructionist process on the part of the white house. jeremy? yeah. i think that s right. i mean if you look at the resolution that we re analyzing, what it says is that republicans will have the right to equal time. they will be able to question the witnesses for the same amount of time as the democrats in the majority and they will have the right to subpoena witnesses and gain concur rance of the chairman, the democrats for those subpoenas. they will have the right to subpoena documents and other evidence for the inquiry. and then at the end of phase one where they re gathering the evidence in public, then the congress will refer this to the judiciary committee again for impeachment consideration. it s a very carefully laid out, elaborate, fair transparent process that at the end of this, and i suspect this will sort of all come to a head probably by the end of november, early december, will have several articles of impeachment for the full house to consider. senator mccaskill, your view on that given something we touched on earlier, you re one of the few people in the country who has actually sat in the senate and heard from members of congress, managers of an impeachment, it was not for president trump but for a federal judge, but that process? yeah. i think the important thing to remember here is that this is not the trial. this is a preliminary step. it is going to be public hearings. and like the private meetings, the republicans are going to be in the room and they re going to be able to ask questions, big difference, though, is the rule that is in this resolution allowing the chairman and the ranking member to give 45 minutes of time. yeah. to the staff counsel. let me have you walk through this. we will put on the screen getting right into the heart of what the resolution does, and your party, the democrats, have pointed out in the details th r they re affording the president potential protections and rights. you see that go beyond even some of the past processes, including, for example, we mentioned this, that he can send his lawyers, rudy, send jay sekulow to ask questions during the house process. by the way, that s much different than a grand jury because we don t let defendants lawyers in the grand jury room to listen in or ask questions. so there is an added layer of due process for the president in this. but what i m really interested in, is the fact that they figured out doing five minute increments for people questioning fact witnesses is very difficult for the public to follow. if you get 45 minutes, a skilled courtroom lawyer will 45 minutes to question a witness, you re going to be able to lay out the narrative of facts that is so important to this consideration. by the way, the cross-examination for 45 minutes. the people will be able to see is this cross-examination phony, are they really do they have a point here or are they just gining up political partisan b.s. like they mostly have been doing so far within the confines of these public hearings. so i do think it s going to be interesting. i think that the 45 minute increments will allow people to understand more of what s going on and by the way, this is devin nunes. this is not tom control, but devin nunes one of the most ardent pro-trump member of the house, going to get 45 minutes a shot to try to take out these witnesses. i wish him luck. i have a feeling the witnesses are going to be incredible. the senator raises this i want to bring it to our prosecutors here many, many lawyers have observed i think we re going to jump in and listen. republican leader mccarthy on the floor. are we gathered to debate the critical national security issues regarding china, our iran? that answer would be unanimously no. we are not working for the american people. those items would resemble the achievements of a productive congress, a congress that works for the people, but what this congress counts, this congress records more subpoenas than laws. that s the legacy. it is not just devoid of solutions for the american people but abusing its power to discredit democracy. using secret interviews and selective leaks, to portray the president s legitimate actions as an impeachable offense. democrats are continuing their permanent campaign to undermine his legitimacy. for the last three years, they have predetermined the president s guilt, they have never accepted the voters choice to make him president, so for 37 days and counting, they have run an unprecedented, undemocratic, and unfair investigation. this resolution today only makes it worse. i ve heard members on the other side say, they promise rights to the president but only if he does what they want. that s the equivalent of saying in the first amendment, you have the rights to the freedom of speech, but you can only say the words i agree with. that s what you call due process. the amendment offered by mr. cole would help correct some of the transparency concerns we have witnessed over the last few weeks. but today is more than the fairness of an impeachment process. it is about the integrity of our electoral process. democrats are trying to impeach the president because they are scared they cannot defeat him at the ballot box. that s not my words. that s the words of my colleagues from the other side of the aisle that has offered impeachment three different times. this impeachment is not only an attempt to undue the last election it s an attempt to influence the next one as well. this is not what democrats promised when they entered the majority 11 months ago. in this chamber, we heard from our speaker, while we all sat here. we heard what the speaker said when she talked about words of optimism and cooperation. it was said we would work together to make america stronger, more secure and prosperous. we were told our mission was to return the power to the people. in fact, our new colleagues on the other side of the aisle were sent to washington with a mandate to do just that. so what s happening? nothing like that today. not long ago democrats recognized that a partisan impeachment would put politics over people and harm our nation, that exact same speaker that talked about cooperation that talked about and promised the american people that they would be different if you trusted with the majority. you have failed in that promise. that speaker said impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, the word of bipartisan, i do not think we should go down that path because it divides the country. what has changed since those words have been spoken? alexander hamilton wrote, there will always be the greatest danger that the decision to use the impeachment power would be driven by partisan animosity. instead of real demonstrations of inknnocent or guilt the sham impeachment by democrats have proven hamilton right. and betrays the speaker s own words. i know emotions are high. i know members would even run for positions of chair simply on fact that they would be a better chair for impeachment right after the election. but when we all stood that day and listened to the words of the speaker of cooperation we all raised our hand to uphold the constitution. tomorrow is november 1st. we re one year away from an election. not just for this house, but for the highest office of presidency. why do you not trust the people? why do you not allow the people to have a voice? why in a process that america lends their voice to all of us, that you deny us to speak for them? is animosity risen that high? is hamilton proven correct again? there is a moment in time that you should rise to the occasion. this is that moment. this is the moment that history will write. history will ask you when you cast this vote, when you cast a vote to justify something that has gone on behind closed doors, i want you to ask the historian and answer the question, what do you know that happened there? have you read anything that took place that you just justified? what do you believe the definition of due process is? what do you think the first amendment is? do you have the right to have a voice? or only the words that you agree with? you agree with? you may get elected in a primary, but in a general election,a you re elected to represent the people of america, not to deny their voice. this house is so much better than what is transforming today. i believe everyone who runs for this office runs to solve a problem. but when youso go back to the american public with the achievement of more subpoenas than laws, that is not why you ran. that is not why we are here and that s why i agree with my colleague, mr. cole, that believes in the power of the people, people before politics, that we believe and know we can do better, that we believe the speaker when she said about cooperation, we believed her when she cosaid, if you trusted them with the majority, they would be different. i guess it s only fitting you take this vote on halloween. i yield back. minority leader mccarthy on the republican side giving his rebuttal to several democrats. you may notice he went longer than several of the chairs. mccarthy and pelosi have magic minutes so they can go longer. underon the rules he spoke abou what he views as the pollicization of impeachment, about democrats running to be chairs simply for the impeachment of president trump. her finished with a halloween flourish. i kind of feel sorry for these guys in a way. what have you got? it was process first. well, nowce there s going to be very open process. it s going to be frankly giving the president more due process than d previous impeachment proceedings. then they saiden hearsay. that s gone. we have first-person accounts. they try to say it s a leftist conspiracy. yeah, right. lieutenant colonel, veteran, deck ratednt in the army who carries shrapnel in his body from iraq, that guy is doing the left wing bidding. they havele tried to keep findi something to avoid defending the president based on the facts. mccarthy today is doing the same thing.s he s trying tome find some way distract from the facts that are sost powerful. we know that the president tried to use a foreign government for hisor own political purposes. that s impeachable. they can t really get their arms around that. they re going to continue to try toon distract and defend on any basis they can. if it wasn t so lame, i could really work up some sympathy for them. i tried to hold back. tell us what you really think, claire. i just wanted to point out one thing which is we re going to talk about theic political contt because we have to, right? that s the way it works. we ll talk about democrats and republicans and how many and this and that. we really ought to step back occasionally andy look at that shot of the house floor and realize this is our government. this is the constitution. this is the house of representatives that is voting on how to potentially take action against the president of the united states. history will record what the house voted today, what the speaker of the house said, how the house leads this inquiry. and ultimately, if it does lead to impeachment, how the senate decides this president s fate. it s so there s the political, but also the real. there s also the constitutional. keep that in mind. let me say a little bit about the constitutional part. i thought what was really interesting is wewh have representative mccarthyin layin out all the talking points we re going to see over and over again. why are we doing this now? this is a way to get around thea election? why don t we let the political process play itself out. without recognizing, if the politicaliz process has been tainted by foreignca interventi, the people will not be heard. i think the one thing democrats have to press on this is this is not a process for the president, not a process for congress. this is a process for the people, and thea people have bv stymied in other parts of the political erprocess, and this w created by the founders to allow them anotherto avenue to have their voices heard. eagle-eyed viewers will note, when you look at the screen here, weave just had the gaveling of the end of this firsten part of debate. we re moving towards, as reported, this t series of vote. the first vote willof be a bit a congressional throat clearing. it will not be the vote on the actual impeachment resolution. within minutesmp after that, we expect them to turn to this event, barrett, which is the vote on the actual rules for the potential impeachment. rules matter. it s actually this is not something that s just procedural and we should write it off. the rules for this procedure could not be more important, not only for the substance, but also to reassure the public that what they are seeing here is a fair process, that there is due process, that the president and hisoc supporters will have a chance to be rsheard, to have witnesses that they think can support their case come forward. i think theom rules could not b more important because you have to have faithse in the integrit of this process if you ultimately wanted to have the resultsto you re hoping for. that brings us back to the point senator mccaskill was making. viewers who see things sometimes say why did the hearing go that way? why was it so short? why was it so full of sound bites? i ve talked to voters who say, why do all politicians say at the end of the commercial, i m whoever, and il, approve this message, likeve it s some sort habit. there s a rule that makes you do that, and there areyo rules tha give you five, minutes back an forth.mi as you know,ba under the procedures of congress, that s rule 11. what these rules do that congress is preparing to pass any moment today would suspend that rule 11, as you said, and put in place a different rule that allows for longer and deeper aquestioning, more like what we d see in an investigative context and, as you wereve saying, for professionals to do some of that. does that mean in your es view, do youur see that as some democrat politician saying, i m going to give up this precious tv time and handci it to someone most americans have never heard of, today only. this hearing only to get to the facts. i don t think the members ari real excited about rule 11 going out theul window because they a believe every member of congress believes if they can just get a shot at the microphone, they will be the star.he it s having to do partly with the personality of people who run for office. pot-kettle here. you re letting us in here on that truth. absolutely, absolutely. and it takes a lot, perhaps more than people would like to believe in the best day of what we hope fores our government, i takes a lot. but you re saying it has hit that point. let me say one thing that will be very interesting here. we ve talked about i the presidt being able toed subpoena witnesses. there is one caveat to that. one, everybody has to agree that those witnesses in other words,e the majority has to approve those witnesses. watchtn for the republicans to y to get witnesses to come in that are unreasonable. what they re going to want to do is set up schiff for an accusation that, ffoh, he s not letting us hear our witnesses. so this will be a little tricky back and forth. because they re going to try to make this look like it s not fair. they mayit do that by trying to subpoena witnesses that have no business in the hahearing. ibu think that s a trick that ti could try to pull. the othertr thing that s importt here is that the chairman of the judiciary committee has the right toju deny access or questioning by the president if they are t not complying with legal subpoenas from congress. so this is another conflict that we can predict, that there will be a t back-and-forth about whether or not the president gets as much due process as they these rules setss out based on s willingness tose provide information. because so far, the only people that have testified, have done so in defiance of the white house, not infi cooperation wit the white house. it will be interesting to see how those i two things play out the republicans are going to do everything they can to make it look unfair. this is straight out of the playbook. this is more tinkering and tweaking procedure without ever getting to the p substance of t underlying allegation. this is just more of the same, like what s wrong with the th procedure. there are so many procedural irregularities. did you pressure foreign government to give you dirt on joe biden? that s what people want to know about. that sto exactly what people want to know about. so once we hear publicly from a string of witnesses who say just that, basically, that that happened, oh, yeah, it happened. i saw it. i heard it.