>> so i have spoken to a lot of trump voters not only here in pennsylvania and across the midwest and all of those states that flipped from obama in 2012 to president trump in 2016. i have never heard them so open and candid about why they cannot support him in 2020. it is going to be a long, interesting year. erin? >> it certainly is. fantastic report on the front lines. anderson starts now. good evening. we began last night's program noting the day's historic significance. today is no different because we now have a rough transcript, not a verbatim transcript, provided by the white house of the president of the united states asking a foreign leader to investigate a u.s. political rival, joe biden. as far as we know, that has never happened in the history of the united states. also this afternoon, members of the house and senate intelligence committees got their first look at the whistle-blower complaint connected with the call. late today reaction from the president.

we're going to talk about all of it in this hour as well as in a special report with "the lead's" jay tapper. we want to focus on the call itself. the key points from july 25th which is the rough transcript is not verbatim. the president saying, i will say that we do a lot for ukraine. we spend a lot of effort and a lot of time. then after a brief digression the president continues, quote, the united states has been very, very good to ukraine. i wouldn't say that it's reciprocal necessarily because things are happening that's not very good. but united states has been very good to ukraine. then zelensky replies, you are right. not 100%, 1,000%. when this is taking place president trump had already delayed $391 million in aid to ukraine. 250 million of that was in military assistance, aid that was approved by congress already was being held up by the

president. that's what's dangling or hanging over president zelensky's head, i would also like to thank you for your great support in the area of defense. we are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps, specifically we are almost ready to buy more jaff livelins. president trump then replies, i would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and ukraine knows a lot about it. i would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with ukraine. they say crowd strike, he later adds, i would like to have the attorney general call you or your people and i would like you to get to the bottom of it. now crowd strike is the cyber security firm the dnc called in when its servers were hacked in the 2016 campaign. it's also at the center of a conspiracy theory that seems to deflect blame from russia for the hacking. then the president asked for more help. the other thing, president trump

says, there's a lot of talk of biden's son, that biden stopped the prosecution. a lot of people want to find out about that. whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great. biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution. if you can look into it, it sounds horrible to me. finally president trump said i'll have mr. giuliani give you a call and i'm going to have attorney general barr give you a call and be we'll get to the bottom of it. i'm sure you will figure it out. that is the heart of it. that's all the president talked about beyond spreading pleasantries. there was no talk about current corruption. no talk of ongoing concerns the president claims to have about corruption. no information the president would have gotten from his intelligence services about current corruption. just biden. a short time after the transcript of it came out members of the two congressional intelligence committees got a look at the whistle-blower complaint. joining us is raja chrisn

raja chrisna morthey. >> i know there's a lot you can't say. what can you say about the whistle-blower's complaint that you read? >> sure. thank you for having me on. most of it should be declassified tonight and it should be shared with the american public. i think transparency is absolutely essential here, but what i can say about the complaint is that it's thorough, it's careful, it's credible, it's consistent and it raises a lot more questions than it answers but it's obvious why the inspector general who, by the way, was appointed by the trump administration found it to be both urgent and credible enough to pass along to the dni. >> can you say how much more there is in the original whistle-blower complaint beyond what was laid out in the rough transcript that was released today? i mean, was it solely based on that conversation? >> i can't get into the specifics of that particular complaint, but what i can say,

anderson, is that it talks about a lot more witnesses. it talks about more documents. it talks about more materials that have to be pursued to get to the bottom of what exactly transpired with regard to this national security situation. >> your colleague on the intelligence committee was on copacabana beach earlier saying in the complaint the whistle-blower evokes other witnesses to disturbing contact that the whistle-blower -- disturbing conduct, i should say, that the whistle-blower was alarmed by the number of people who knew what was going on and hadn't said anything. can you say approximately how many other people did know what was going on? >> it was a bunch. i'm sorry for being so vague. the main point which i do want to hammer home, there are other witnesses here who need to be talked to and who need to quite frankly be interviewed or brought before our committee to

understand the full extent of the misconduct here. i just want to say one other thing, which is that this whistle-blower needs to be commended. he's courageous in coming forward and for that matter the inspector general is also to be commended for his professionalism. you know, there's no incentive for him to shade his analysis in favor of forwarding this whistle-blower complaint. if anything, telling the truth on the inspector general's part puts his career in jeopardy as well. >> i'm not asking obviously who this whistle-blower is or what their position is. do you know after reading this what position -- maybe you probably don't know their name, but do you know what position they hold? or how they would have gotten this information? >> no. no. and the inspector general actually invokes a certain provision of the law which allows him to mask the identity of the whistle-blower. >> because i ask that question

because the president today had started to -- i mean, started doing it yesterday but today started basically impugning the whistle-blower, calling him -- sort of so-called whistle-blower saying that, you know, basically implying that they are democratic operative or just -- tangential to this and is there anything that raises anything about this whistle-blower? >> no. actually, inspector general does a very good job of actually -- we got to see the classified determination or analysis that the inspector general performed on the whistle-blower's complaint and he himself made an independent judgment that it was both credible and urgent. and as you know, the inspector general doesn't have a liberal or democratic bias. >> so justifiably the -- what you just said about the

inspector general had looked into this whistle-blower and the complaint and judged it -- >> yes. >> -- worthy of moving forward. does what the inspector general has already done on assessing this complaint and the names that the whistle-blower has said are eye witnesses or, you know, have some information and should be talked to, is that essentially providing you roadmaps forward? i mean, specific people to talk to to call in? >> i think it's fair to say that he's definitely giving us some indications of further investigation that needs to be done so i think that both the inspector general and the whistle-blower point us to other avenues for inquiry for sure. >> congressman, i appreciate your time. by the way, is it -- >> yes, sir. >> you said you think this should be declassified? >> absolutely. >> you're saying that could be easily done, there's just some

things to -- >> well, i think, look, there's certain appendices or certain materials that are classified in nature or sensitive that should probably be withheld, however, the vast majority of the material should be declassified immediately. and the fact that the white house has not done so just begs the question why. why do they not want us to see the full -- why do they not want the american people to see the full whistle-blower complaint? why do they not want the press to see the full whistle-blower complaint at this point? >> justifiably, the president has talked about this whistle-blower. to your knowledge, would it be inappropriate if the president had been told the identity of this whistle-blower? >> i personally think so. i think that quite frankly given all that we know about how certain witnesses have been treated in different investigations, i think it's best for this whistle-blower's identity to be shrouded at this point. i just want to say one last

thing, anderson, which is that, you know, this is a national security issue. i hope that folks can come at this with an objective point of view. i was heartened in the last hearing that we had, which is closed door, that the republicans on my committee seem to show an unusual amount of engagement with the inspector general. i think they had no choice because he was so credible. i hope they can display the same viewpoint coming into tomorrow's hearing and going forward because it's national security. we cannot afford to let this get bogged down. >> thank you very much. >> yes, sir. >> he's talking about meeting tomorrow the director of the national intelligence will be coming in. joining us is gloria borger and jeffrey toobin and david axlerod who served as a top advisor to president obama. jeff, this rough transcript not verbatim as it itself says, how

damaging is it? yeah, how damaging is it? >> i think it's extraordinarily damaging. i think it is an definition of an abuse of power of the president. as you pointed out at the beginning. there has never been in american history a president who in such explicit terms went to a foreign p power who is in debt and in need of the united states and said, give me dirt on my political opponents. it has never happened before because it is a violation of the president's oath of office and as the president likes to say, we'll see what happens because it looks like the republicans are going to rally around him. and we may be back to just another mueller report but the magnitude of the misconduct cannot be misstated. >> the president basically

poo-pooed it by saying i didn't do it but this is what obama did to me. this is what senators and congress people do all the time. >> right. and i think that's moral relativism at the core of trump's message always which is this is a cold, hard world. nothing's on the legit and everybody does these things and, therefore, it's okay that i do these things. but the truth is that this is not what everybody does as jeff pointed out and you pointed out. no president has done this before. what makes it so start is it's right there in black and white. there's no speculation there. this is a little bit different than the mueller investigation which was a little bit hard to follow because witnesses were secreted and there was no direct sort of testimony from the president. this is an attestation really in

print of what happened. it's shocking. it's shocking not just because of the way in which he appeared to be delivering this message but in the references to the attorney general and involving the united states attorney general with ukraine and going after a domestic political opponent, incredibly explosive. >> yeah. >> then the role of rudy giuliani in this mix. it is a really, really stark document. >> gloria, it's also remarkable, you just kind of step back for a second, wait a minute, the president of the united states is telling the ukrainian president how great his personal attorney is, really smart, really capable guy. take a call from him. he's going to fill you in on the details. i keep coming back to when marlin bran do you in "godfather" sends him out into

hollywood to make a deal. >> right. >> what is giuliani rolling around creeping around ukraine to talk to the president of ukraine which is such a ridiculo ridiculous fig leaf. >> you scratch my back, i'll scratch yours. this is what we do in real estate. he's never adjusted to the fact that there are different norms and behaviors awhen you're president of the united states. rudy giuliani, this relationship as you know and all of us know from the mrt, ruueller report, was the tv attorney. they gave them heartburn. he's always been the trump whisperer. i think once you have this, the

president and rudy got together and said, okay, what can we do for 2020? 2016 is over. we have to discredit biden and by the way maybe ukraine can help figure out the hillary clinton server thing. both of them are false conspiracies. they love trading in that together. i think they feed off of each other. >> to that end, this celebrated notorious phone call was the day after mueller testified in congress where he didn't make a big or great impression which the president refers to in his conversation. >> yeah. >> the other thing to point out about giuliani is that in one of his many fox interviews, i was just operating at the instruction of the state department. what? >> we'll hear about that. >> but it also seems like if

what congressman stallwell and the others said other names and people. certainly the former ambassador who giuliani launched a giuliani attack and got him removed from office. they must be somebody who would be worth while talking to as well? >> absolutely. i think that ambassador who got sent home, about why she was sent home and trashed really by the president in the conversation with the president of ukraine. rudy giuliangiuliani's work is . >> i also wonder, anderson, about the recently departed nsa

director, john bolton. he certainly has an incentive to be forthcoming on this having been apart from it and now being dispatched by trump and the way he was. it will be interesting to see what he has to say. >> unless he wants to be a fox analyst or be on the lecture circuit. >> we want to hold that thought. there's a tentative agreement. we'll have that next. talk about it as well. rather remarkable press conference responding to all of it. i'll show you parts of that as well. at fidelity, we believe your money

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we just learned we could be a step closer to the whistle-blower telling his or her story to congress.

according to correspondence obtained by cnn, they have agreed to meet with lawmakers. pamela brown is on the phone. what have we learned? >> reporter: this is according to correspondence that cnn has obtained showing that this anonymous whistle-blower, which includes as we know allegations about donald trump, has agreed to meet with congressional lawmakers. this is all contingent on whether the individual's legal counsel is there. now we know adam schiff, the house intelligence chair, wrote a letter to maguire making that request today after the whistle-blower's lawyers agreed to meet with the lawyers. they requested assistance in expediting approval for the acting dni.

this certainly is a step forward in the whistle-blower actually appearing before lawmakers. just remember, last week the dni wouldn't provide anything having to do with the whistle-blower complaint. it will be tough to find tomorrow. we are expecting the classified version and it's going to be released by the ends of the week. now we're learning a sensitive deal has been released and it's going before lawmakers and the house intelligence committee pending the lawyers getting their security clearances. we're told this won't happen tomorrow. >> the original complaint, was it classified? or was it just declass -- was it classified after the fact by the

white house. do we -- >> the original complaint did contain classified information. the original there's a separate process going on to then declassify the complaint so it could go out wider and not just to lawmakers. >> pam, we may not know this, but the president spoke today as if the president knew who this whistle-blower was. kind of racing doubts. is it known -- would the president know who the eye at this of it. this whistle-blower and yet as you pointed out, the president continues to attack. raising questions about the whistle-blower, whoever he or

she is. the president said himself late last week. there's been no -- he has criticized leakers for going to the media. this whistle-blower did follow the proper channels and that is according to -- letters from dni general counsel saying they had ever reason to believe even by doing that. you're seeing the criticism from president trump really going after the whistle-blower. >> right. it was basically the white house and department of justice which made this into a blockbuster story because they refused to allow the dni to forward basically for the first time ever dni not forwarding a

whistle-blower complaint. >> that's exactly right. the inspector would determine whether it was kret dibl and then it would go along. it wasn't going to do it because the complaint didn't meet the requirements under the intelligence whistle-blower law. >> right. >> that is has been a big sticking along with this. ma gur will be testifying. we're gb to be seeing the "d" classified complaint. i remember them testifying once they work out the security clearance. >> more now as the president has this break out. he was eefrsing the ever

perfect. it was entirely disconnected by easily verifiable facts. we're joined from trump tower with a lot of rambling. this one was low energy and rambling. the one thing the president didn't get answered on. >> that's right, anderson. a lot of angry denials and false conspiracy theories spread by the president, unproven conspiracy theories. he did not explain as to what he was mentioning -- what he meant when he was telling the president of ukraine that he wanted the president of ukraine to do a fair for him. just after the president much ukraine was saying in that transcript all earlier and then at that point the transcript

said we'd like to you do a favor for us. they were asked about the role of conducting government base talking to the ukrainians about this desire on the part of the president and his political team to investigate joe biden. the president tried to explain all of that. is trying to root out corruption and that sort of thing. during this press conference he was asked what he thought about the prospect of impeachment. this is when he started to laugh at the teacher. >> they covered me well pause i wouldn't have thought of it. this is wonderful.

my family. >> all of these people, they work so hard. we have the greatest economy we've ever had. we have a military, 2 1/2, 3% ropes. the viciousness and when you see little adam schiff go out and lie and stand at the mike, smart guy, by the way, stand at the mike and act like -- he goes into a room with nadler and they must laugh their asses off. >> reporter: the other thing that was notable from the president's press conference off, you see the president laying the groundwork leading up to this to really disparage and undermine the credibility. >> anderson, you saw it was

worth second ham. there's a declassification process for the whistle-blower complaint. the idea is to declassify that. but, anderson, we're already starting to see wall makers walk out of those briefings. walked out of his briefing, looked at some of the information that was in that whistle-blower complaint and he was concerned about what he saw. what is contained in the whistle-blower complaint. the big question is whether or not the white house will follow through with what they've been saying over the last couple of days. >> it's always so interesting to hear the president talking about laughing, that adam schiff is

laughing. to the president, that seems to be the worst possible thing, people laughing in his direction? >> that's right, yeah. he was essentially saying impeachment for what? it stood up that he might become an impeached president, that is not always the case when president's go down this road. they don't always emerge from this unscathed. talk to hillary clinton whether or not the baggage from that old saga worked out well. >> thanks. back with jeff, gloria, david. he was trying to reflect questions on you krien. handed things off to secretary pompeo for a little while.

he typically likes to hammer anything that he deems unfair and obviously there were a lot of legitimate questions to be asked. >> yeah. look, i think that his problem is that this is unlike anything else he's had to deal with. this is something where the evidence is right in front of them and it's much harter to spin it. there are ways that you could anticipate. and they will try and go after the whistle-blower. the lawyer representing the whistle-blower having had democratic context notwithstanding the fact that christian borthe suggested. this is a much more difficult problem for them because of this summary that was released today. you have to suspend belief to --

or what your own eyes tell you to dismiss this and same. he went out of the president's news conferences to say how not normal this is as standard operating procedure saying everybody does this. i mean, nobody knows this. we don't even know so many of the surrounding circumstances. these investigations take some time and they get more complicated not less. if you want to do a serious investigation, you need to find out, what is it of the clon sz -- the prose said well, it's

fine. you have a transcript of my first phone call with the president of ukraine. >> if you want transcripts of the vice president's context. >> you could be sure. democrats will take him up on that offer. the role of rudy giuliani is, you know, begging to be explored but the idea that this is normal or precedented is simply not true. >> the backyard dealing with stormy daniels and then what they denied and it turned out to have taken place and they have more than folks with it. wherever else. >> i mean, he was aum shinrikyo attorneys kind of trying to figure out a party.

he got himself in that. i think giuliani is doing the president's bidding here and wanted to find a look into joe bide deb and joe bin then the president cows -- the whistle-blower has some problems. i think he put it certain things have come out about the whistle-blower that are interesting. >> people are talking. >> people ever saying n-n-o, nn. hunter biden and no validity to what he's charging. this is how the president fights. joe biden in fact may have a problem in the end with this. this is not going to be great for him because he'll have to respo respond. jeff, david axlerod.

more to come on in just a few minutes. banjo? (man) hey. go home. (woman) banjo! sorry, it won't happen again. come on, let's go home. after 10 years, we've covered a lot of miles. good thing i got a subaru. (man) looks like you got out again, huh, banjo. (avo) love is out there. find it in a subaru crosstrek.

juul record. they took $12.8 billion from big tobacco. juul marketed mango, mint, and menthol

flavors, addicting kids to nicotine. five million kids now using e-cigarettes. the fda said juul ignored the law with misleading health claims. now juul is pushing prop c, to overturn san francisco's e-cigarette protections. say no to juul, no to big tobacco, no to prop c. president trump's performance today was like none we've seen from any president even this one. again when he released the not verbatim transcript with the ukrainian president. he told the president, quote, do us a favor. when asked about selling u.s. anti-trump weapons. he accused several democratic

senators without a shred of evidence of trying to strong arm the ukrainian president. chris murphy had, quote, literally threatened ukraine's president. more on this, i'm joined by a man who has worked the highest levels of the white house, leon panetta. secretary panetta, you served as secretary of defense, director of cia, chief of staff, director of office and budget. in all of that time have you ever heard of anything like this? >> anderson, i've served in one way or another under nine presidents. i've worked directly for two presidents. i have never seen another president do what this president has done. >> do you have any doubt after reading -- it's not really a transcript, but do you have any doubt after reading the elements of the conversation that were released about what the president's intentions were here? you know, basically setting it

up and handing -- wanting to hand it over to rudy giuliani, his personal attorney, asking for a favor? is it clear to you what went on here? >> i don't think there's any question but that that transcript is a smoking gun that points to a president having used his office and his responsibilities as commander in chief in dealing with military aide. having used that as leverage to try to get the president of the ukraine to investigate a political opponent. there isn't much question when you read that transcript as to what the president was trying to get the president of the ukraine to do. now there's obviously a lot of other facts that have to be looked at. the whistle-blower's complaint.

i think there has to be testimony from the inspector general. there has to be testimony from rudy giuliani. there are a lot of things that have to be looked at, but there's no question in my mind that a prima fascia case against the president was clearly laid out in that transcript. >> i still don't quite understand how with a straight face rudy giuliani can claim that's normal. he's the personal attorney for president trump. he's not working in the government. he is going allegedly investigating corruption in general in ukraine. there are plenty of ways to do this through the arms of the united states government, intelligence services. there's a lot of current corruption and that the president probably has access to intelligence on that he could

have brought up to the president of ukraine. sent by marlin bran do you, he's clearly to talk about the bide dense and focus on that. >> this isn't rocket science here. rudy giuliani has been trump's hench man to either confuse the issue or try to raise political arguments with the issue. i don't think there's any question that both the president and rudy giuliani's attorney and in order to give them something after on joe biden.

to fulfill this political environment. i don't think there's any question that that was involved here. rudy giuliani frankly will have to testify and there's not that was crazy. in order to violate the law dealing with getting foreign assistance for political purposes, that could become an issue for rudy juul. what do you make of nancy pelosi's outfit. in fact she wasn't point she essentially was saying they will so it's not on anything new though it was certainly dramatic. is that something that democrats

might regret come election day? does it all -- i guess it all depends on what they thought. >> this involves an allegation of an offense committed by the president of the united states. this is a moment in time with both democrats and republicans. they swear to the constitution. now you and on the basis of carrying a responsibility to and then determine what the consequences should be. that is a sacred responsibility. one that i hope both sides respect. >> secretary panetta, appreciate your time, thank you. >> thank you. >> just now even more breaking news. new details on what is in the

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>> in your report you say that the inspector general, quote, found reason to believe the complainant was not in a position to directly listen to the call or see the memo that reconstructed it before it was made public.

obviously that's part of what the president is alluding to in his comments today about sort of impugning the motives of this whistleblower. >> that's right. that is the reason that element of the justice department memo is what led mr. trump to make those allegations against them. we don't know how serious this is, if this is a minor bit of part sisan partisanship, if this is a whole sale so wholesale sort of anti-trump person. we do no the inspector general found reason to go forward and forwarded it on to the dni and asked for it to go to congress. >> the inspector general, a trump appointee, even pointing out this person doesn't want the president to get re-elected and

didn't actually hear the call, they felt this was credible and urgent and wanted congress to see it. all the details are in the the "new york times" report. julian barnes, thank you very. appreciate it. i want to bring in rick santorum and kirstjen powers. there was concern even among democrats they may have jumped the gun yesterday. was that concern misplaced? do you have those concerns still? >> i definitely don't have those concerns i don't see how any gun can be jumped in this situation. i think this is like slow motion watching democracy die. we've been watching it and i think what we've seen in the last couple of days is absolutely horrifying and the fact there are people defending is a horror. donald trump has admitted to doing this. we have at least a partial

transcript of a call that confirms this is in fact what he did. he is also blatantly lying about joe biden. the entire reason he even is asking for this never happened. it's actually the opposite of that. so i think that this is, you know, absolutely a crisis and that the democrats are absolutely correct in treating it as such. >> senator santorum -- >> you may be surprised to hear that i disagree with this. >> let me ask you because the president today said essentially look, senators, congress people, everybody does this. would you ever call up the president of ukraine if you were in power, if you were the president and say, hey, do me a favor, i got this aid hanging over your head, do me a favor not for the country but against one of my opponents? >> did you -- you guys need to read the transcript. i'm listening to this throughout the whole show. >> i read the transcript. >> i just read it again because i thought maybe i missed something. the transcript says "do me a

favor" and he doesn't mention joe biden's name. he talks about crowd strike. he talks about election meddling. he finishes his thing talking about the mueller report and how all this started in ukraine and i want you to look into this. then the president of ukraine says, you know, we'll look into this, mr. president, i got good people around me, we're going to look into it and then he brings up rudy giuliani, who, by the way, has been talking about the biden situation. the president of course knows that he's been talking about the biden situation. he finishes -- the president of ukraine finishes talking about juliangiuliani and that's when president brings up, yeah, okay, well then he goes into i agree with you, that needs to be looked into also. >> no, it's not oh, i agree with you. that is not what it says. >> that's not what it says. >> i just read it. >> that is absolutely not what it says, rick. this is outrageous the way you're trying to cast this, that this was not him looking for a favor from them. and also, by the way, let's talk

about the foreign policy implications here. where issin iyour condemnation? i remember when the republicans were outraged when the democrats weren't supporting ukraine enough and president trump has withdrawn support from them. >> let me read this. the other thing, there's a lot of talk about biden's son -- >> after he mentioned giuliani. >> by the way, mentioning giuliani is acknowledging that he knows that giuliani is skulking about and missing with officials in ukraine and elsewhere. >> the president spoke at length about mueller and about the -- >> this is the second part of the favor. the other thing -- >> there's a disconnect from the favor? >> it's not. it's no the at at at all.

>> they've already said there would be nothing wrong in they did this. they've admitted to do this, rick. i don't understand what you're saying. >> there's a lot of talk about biden's son. really? among whom? >> that biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out, again, the president's go to, a lot of people want to find out about it, the president, attorney general would be great, bidens around bragging that he stopped the prosecution, if you can look into it, it sounds horrible to me. >> i would agree with you that is bad judgment. i agree that the president should not have said that but to suggest that the president was somehow creating a quid pro quo or brokering a favor i think is a misreading of the transcript. >> if hanging over the ukrainian president's head is hundreds of millions in military aid that needs to fight an ongoing war in his country, he knows that, the president knows that. you're saying in order for there

to be a quid pro quo the president has to spell it out and say, by the way, i've stopped the aid, i'm holding it up even though congress passed it on a bipartisan basis and you, you know, do me this thing on crowd strike and my conspiracy theory about the 2016 election, oh and by the way, biden -- why is he bringing up biden if it's not a favor? >> because the ukrainian president brought it up. >> oh, come on. >> this has been something they've been pushing. it's also so crazy making because biden did the opposite. >> by the way, of all the things the brand new ukrainian president has top of his list of concerns is joe biden's son from years ago and his board seat. i mean, that's amazing to me. i'm out of time. rick santorum, thank you, and kirstjen. senator, i want to get your

reaction to the new reporting that the whistleblower raised alarms about how the new administration handled that. >> i'm very glad we're getting the whistleblower complaint. i haven't seen it yet. we have to get to the bottom of all of this, which is why speak are pelosi opened this inquiry and this proceeding. i think when you really look at this and i agree with what kirstjen said there is that this is about our democracy, our fundamentals of our democracy why do we have impeachment proceedings? it was james madison who said at the constitutional convention, he said that you need it because a president might betray his trust to foreign powers. they were concerned about other foreign powers back then, but that is exactly what this looks like. he was putting his own political and personal interests first. i have been to ukraine several

times. i went there with john mccain and lindsey graham and stood right after trump got elected be but before he got inaugurated. justice department want john mccain wanted to show that despite trump said that we stood with our allies. we stood there in a blizzard on the front line with the former president and i could see as we met those widows and saw those troops what this was about. it was about them, a very small country trying to hold on to their independence against russia. and they needed america. so this idea that they don't need us, they need us, they needed our missiles, they needed our help and then for this president to go on a phone call, admit that we've been giving them a lot of help, talking about that and then tying it to favors and to bringing up joe biden and his son of which there was no merit, you know it when you see it and this was it. >> the use of the word favors is

interesting. i hesitate to use it ever in conversation because if you're asking somebody a favor, it's certainly that's not in their interest or it's going to be unpleasant for them but it means something to you. if you're the president of the united states, asking to investigate corruption, that's not a favor, that's just -- that's the business of the united states. a favor is take your time and your resources and go look into crowd strike and, you know, hunter biden. >> not to mention i think what president brings up their private attorney and says go talk to him. and we know that giuliani was there for this one purpose. >> right. >> and people working with him to uncover dirt. that is exactly, by the way, when i came out for impeachment months ago, it was because this president was implying he wanted to get dirt from other countries again. this is the same tune over and over again, starting with when he stood in front of that wall,

that sacred wall of the cia with those stars honoring those anonymous people who served our country, who died in the line of duty and gave a political speech. and you just go -- you can just connect the dots, believing vladimir putin over his own intelligence officers. i like what leann panetta had talked about. this shouldn't be just about democrats coming forward. this has to be republicans as well. we have an obligation to put our country first. we have an obligation to uphold the rule of law and make sure we don't have a president that's selling our nation out to foreign entities and selling them out for his own personal reasons. that's what this is about. >> senator klobuchar, i appreciate your time tonight. >> thanks, anderson. >> join me, jake tapper, 11 p.m. eastern tonight, just two hours from now for a special cnn report, "the impeachment inquiry." the news continues now.

i want to head over to chris for "cuomo primetime." chris? all right, thank you, anderson. i'm chris cuomo. welcome to "primetime." it is a critical day for america as we start to examine the proof against the president of the united states and a pending impeachment investigation. what do you say? let's get after it. >> this is c nn breaking news. >> the latest is that congress has the whistleblower complaint. it may not all be unredacted and available to all members of congress freely, they have to go into a skiff, which is an acronym for a safe room. that's why you have lawmakers saying i have to go back and read more and see more. we'll teak yake you through wha in that complaint