>> announcer: this is cnn breaking news. i'm brian stelter. we do begin with breaking news. we need a new name for the scandal. the lawyers representing the first intelligence whistle-blowers who came forward with accusations are now confirms they are representing a second whistle-blower. here's a tweet from one of the lawyers say -- my family now represents multiple whistle-blowers in connection to the august 12th disclosure. the lawyers say no further comment at this time, but the information we are hearing is this new whistle-blower does have firsthand knowledge that supports the claims made by the initial whistle-blower.

it's a lot to keep up with, but the reports are and the confirmation first reported by abc this morning is that a second whistle-blower is now involved. now, my take on this is this is another sign that the legal whistle-blower process is working. checks and balances are looking. look, i was going to start the show today by bemoaning how dark these days are. a president blowing his top, asking foreign government to find dirt on hits opponents. calling the press corrupt. chuck todd was right, this national nightmare is upon us. frankly it will get worse before it gets better, but i think there are reasons to be optimistic right now. i think the ugly truth is coming out, congress is getting to the bottom of it. and the nation's leading news outlets are leading the way blowing the scandal wide open. decoding it to the text messages and other messages.

interior viewing sources from d.c. all the way to ukraine, showing how all the evidence in the words of "the washington post" front-page story, how the growing evidence buttresses the initial report. in some case prompts trump to admit to misconduct right there on live tv, and they're diagnosing up more information like this from "the washington post." trump's calls with foreign leaders have long worried aides. some of those aides are, quote, genuinely horrified by the conduct on these calls with world leaders. i read that and wondered, when were they going to tell us? but here is the point -- the process is working. inch by inch, one story at a time, we are finding out more. first keeping up with the torrent of news. daily explainser, he's the latest, newsletters, all of that is helping us keep up.

number two, keeping an open mind. let's not assume we know what's going to happen here. nobody hoses how this will end. i think the third challenge for the press and public is keeping a wary eye on the disinformation campaigns going on, without getting suckered by it. right now trump is protected by a force field of falsehoods, claiming that the deep state is out to get him. you see what he's doing on twitter all weekend long, where media is trump's ultimate wall, with clips from his favorite fox shows,% there are a few signs of cracks in the wall. this real it's distortion force field may not be working as well as it used to. let's start with expert analysis, masha gessen is here, oliver darcy, and julia huddy.

thank you all for being here. let's unpack what is going on. oliver what is the current right-wing media defense. is it presenting a firewall? >> sure. if you watch outlets like fox,en an inversion image of reality. what i mean by that is if you watch fox, it's not president trump who has potentially abused the powers of his office, it's hillary clinton and joe biden. if you watch fox, it's not trump lying to the america people, he's the truth teller. if you watch fox, it's not the right-wing fever swamps spreading conspiracy theories, it's the mainstream media. total inverse image of reality. if trump does happen to senior vive this deepening scandal, he can only credit this right-wing media machine for poisoning the dialogue to the point where people can't tell what is happens. >> so they just throw up their hands?

>> right. >> you used to work at glenn beck's "the blaze" web side, dodds cracks in the force field? >> one of the things i've been paying attention to is the drudge report. he seems to have completely turned on the president. he has, for a while, been sort of the assignment editor, if you will. so him potential turning is huge. >> right now his headline is second whistle-blower comes forward. he's not shying away from the news. >> no, he's spotlighting the news, and also spotlighting the commentary of some of the people the president doesn't like, like shep smith, like judge napolitano. tucker carlson is now saying the call is inappropriate. >> he's saying there's no way to spin the call. >> that's what he's saying. there's a caveat, obviously. he is defending the president,

saying that while he may have made an inappropriate phone call, it doesn't rise to the level of impeachment, but it's a bit of a retreat from the right-wing narrative where the president's calling was perfect, there is noing to look at, and hey, look at joe biden and hillary clinton. this is a big of a retreat, maybe repositioning, but constituent noteworthy. >> julia, you worked at fox for many years, what do you see happening today? how does this look to you? >> i think -- tucker carlson is a great example. he's getting out there, putting something slightly negative, but by the same token, he immediately follows with, but this impeachment thing, so they're trying to play both sides. that's one of the things that fox is very effective at doing. it's not so much that it's particularly clever or so much

particularly diabolical, it's doing something that we did as also kids, lying by omission. that's what some of es did. they leave on the the context, they leave out facts, they spin it so that it gives just enough information, about you the information it did give out, it pushes their narrative. >> you witnessed this firsthand during the obama years when you were hosting "pockets & frien i >> it's so much more hardcore from when i was there. once president obama was elected, i felt a shift. the outline of the shows, the introductions to the guests, the introduction to the segments, the banners at the bottom of the screen. that's very subtle. they do it very well, but those are things they're effective at pushing the narrative that don't seem to blatantly obvious.

for those of us in the industry, we know, we get it, but the lay person at home may not get that. i would sit on the set and see a script for the first time and tell prompter live on air, and i'm not going to say obama is the devil. i have to edit on the fly here -- exaggerating a bit, sort of, but that's -- you have to kind of take what they're saying with a grain of salt, because you're not getting the whole story. >> the president is watching, watching, watching, consuming and then spitting out via twitter. i wonder, masha, as the author of books, if what we are seeing here in the united states reminds you of state-run media, what we're seeing similar? >> a bit. what you see in a totalitarian country which of course this country is not and most countries are not, but what you see is a forced reality.

>> a forced reality. >> yeah, where basically the subject of a totalitarian state is you have had to inhabit this reality, this is the only available reality. observable facts are not part of the thing that's available to you. that relies on state terror. what's amazing about trump. he's created this completely encapsulated reality without relying on state terror, right? it's a much softer -- all he does is tweet insults at mitt romney. that's all he does, but it's a perfectly encapsulated universe. all of us are living in a state of this incredible anxiety and have been for about 2 1/2 years, where, on the one hand what is observable to us as fact, and on the other hand what is coming at us through the tweets, through fox news firms you can't live in that space.

>> basically crediting sean hannity. here is what he said. if it wasn't your show, sean, they would destroy him absolutely. you're the different between richard nixon. in nixon's case, if he had someone who stuck up for him, he wouldn't have been motivated to cover up that burglary. >> her recalledo -- >> juliet, is your former colleague right? >> i will say that hannity is kind of the king of the lying by omission, leaving the facts out. i think he pretty much is the goo i that has kept truck as a hero. i don't think hannity is one of them. more with the panel.

a quick break here. so much more ahead this hour, including alligator-infested waters and electric fences. that's some suggestions for the southern border. michael shearer is here with the book. we're going out to iowa to robert leonard. he's going to give us a perspective from the midwest. much more coming up on "reliable sources." help prevent this! talk to your doctor or pharmacist today about getting vaccinated against whooping cough. talk to your doctor or pharmacist today pain happens. saturdays happen. aleve it. aleve is proven better on pain than tylenol.

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we're back now on "rye liability sources." words and facts still have meaning. i feel like we have to say that these days. take, for example, the word "treason." it still means something and not what trump thinking it means. the constitution says -- so when the president says that congressman adam schiff created treason, that's not treason. i think it's a statement about where we are in this news psych the we now nude u.s. constitution graphics now on the screen. that's not the only word being manipulated. the president wanting to talk about arresting people, civil war fractures. his fans on fox are also using the word coup quite a bit. a sudden violent overthrow of an existing government by a small group.

keep in minds these comments from fox in the last ten days, this is the arc of how the word is being used on air. >> this leak and coup campaign. >> every time you heared word impeachment, is you hear coup. >> this is not an impeachment. >> this is nothing less than an attempted coup d'etat and end run around the ballot box. >> where is the violent overthrow? anyway that's another word that's being misused. it gotten from the right-wing fever swamps, and then to the president's twitter feed. there are other words being manipulated. masha gessen points this out as well. there is lots of headlines about trump wanting investigations, wanting ukraine and china to investigate joe biden. trump is not looking for an investigation, not a systemic

investigation. he wants dirt. he wants dirt about his political opponents. let's talk more about that with our panel. masha is here along with oliver and juliet. do you think words are being twisted. >> i was looking at the headlines, when "investigation" is a word that has something to do with the concept of truth. i think really and truly he believes the whole word is rotten, if you dig into anybody, you're going to find something, so investigation is just a weapon, a tool, a countudgel. he wanted that to be against his opponent. he's fully convinced investigation always works in the same way. as journalists we have a problem, for example, when nancy pelosi made her announcement, i counted that "new york times" story had the word "investigation" 14 times to mean

entirely different things from the impeachment inquiry to the investigation that trump wanted to launch, right? the problem with that is, you know, when a word can mean nothing at all, because it means everything, then we as journalists have a problem in conveying facts to our readers. >> what do we have to make sure we do in this environment? >> we have to be incredibly intentional about using language. sometimes that means thinking for a long time how we're going to phrase this. what did he want? let's use the phrase he was asking the president to dig up dirt. use that phrase every time, be intentional about it. >> i notice another word that sometimes being misused is "unsubstantiated." theant doesn't have evidence -- what it means is he's promoting a conspiracy theory based on a bunch of lies dredged up on the web. i wonder if news outlets are meeting the moment well enough

by saying he's saying it without evidence. >> they need to drill this into so, this coms from the internet fever swamps, the president tweets it. it means it's just a distorted -- it's really poison, is the best way to describe it. >> you know what's interesting, the white house declined all these interview requests today. no white house aides are out on television defending trump. unfortunately, in a good way, that means there's less disinformation,less misinformation being spread today, because the white house declined to give interviews. what a sad state of affairs, the white house giving interviews means mods misinformation in the world. >> a lot of what we saw last week is a lot of talking points fall apart. whereas they still are allowed to thrive on fox. you just played that clip where people were talking about coups, civil wars, it's really disturbing stuff. i actually wonder, luachland

murdoch, how does he look at himself every morning? i can't understand how he does it. >> i wonder if we have to go back to basic points, quoting the constitution, quoting definitions of coup. we've got to get back to basics and explain what is an impeachment process? how is it legally defined in the constitution? we have a minute left. wondering, jewel yes, you're on radio three hours a today, are people able to keep up with this? >> that's the thing. again, people who are in our business, and this is our job to know awful developments, we miss things, so i can only imagine the lay person at home, they're being besieged by it. sometimes i feel like i have to go home after a day of covering this news, laying in a fetal position rocking back and forth, what is happening here?

i think we have to put the onus on the pup. they are people who support donald trump, i will say cup, this is a television, and trump says that's a television, and i swear to you it's a cuff, and it just goes on and on. >> and fox will repeat it. >> that's a television, lady. >> some of the news shows, trying to be fair, will ask, is this a television? or is it a cup? >> that's an unsubstantiated claim. >> or worse yet, some people say that's an unsubstantiated claim. >> many democrats will say that. >> i wonder if this scandal needs a name. it's not a usa crain scandal anymore, certainly not a biden scandal. that makes biden, you know, the bad guy here. masha, does that matter in the public discourse? >> of course it matters. i have time joe biden is mentioned, every time ukraine is mentioned, it's in a sense misleading. we're talking about the conduct of the president of the united states and not ukraine.

>> it's an abuse of power-gate. >> trump-stock? >> like woodstock? >> stupid watergate. >> thank you to the panel, a quick break, and then michael shearer will give us a preview of his book and new reporting about president trump and his extreme proposals about the border. that's next. do you have concerns about mild memory loss related to aging?

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you know, so many stories in the trump years make me think about the icy waters of the ant arctic, the continue of an iceberg. you see a bit above the water, there's so much more beneath the surface that we only find out about later. this is certainly true with the ukraine story. think about the bombshells about the border, about the hot desert of the southern border. president trump's proposed tactics for slowing down migrants attempting to cross the border. the most shocking proposal to

shoot migrants in the legs to slow them down. fox news confirmed some of it with an illustration of alligators. "the washington post" and other news outlets have confirmed this reporting which came from the book "border wars." the book comes out on tuesday. and michael shearer joins me now from washington. >> like, i think the most -- the bigger picture we reveal in the book is the really extreme ways that we all didn't know action your iceberg analogy suggests, we don't realize all the different ways and some of top advisers like stephen millinger were scheming and talking about, you know, even as we were all oblivious to it, an the way many in the administration were

pushing back, trying to stop the president from pushing ahead. what they repeatedly told julie and i for the book is that he didn't come to these ideas once and then talked out of them. he would bring up an idea, the administration officials would say, no, sir, i can't do that, it's not legal, not moral, not practical, and he would come back to it again and again and again we all think we know he knows what he's talking about, but the truth is despite that sort of illusion of transparency there's a lot going on that we don't know. that's what we tried to do with the book. >> often times author can get at that at the time. how did you get under the surface and see the iceberg. >> we have been covering immigration for years, but there's something about a book

where you can say to a source, we would like to get befleet the surface, like to understand a specific meeting, specific discussions, and we won't put them in the newspaper the next day. this is a long process. we worked on the book about a year and a half. you can tell sources, this won't appear just in a single story. it's put in context in a broa r broader -- >> don't we need to know right away? don't we need to know as soon as you know? >> well, look, in an ideal world as a journalist, i'm all about getting inspection out thereon. in an ideal world, if somebody says to you here's a dramatic piece of information, and you can use it tomorrow, absolutely i would use it tomorrow. we both pushed back on some of our sources to say can we use this sooner? in some cases we did. the truth is this is how you

ferret information out. when a source says i'll have this conversation only under the condition that the information doesn't appear until the book, that's what you have to do. when the first excerpt came out, the president ranted about it. >> obviously it's fake. almost everything "the washington post" does is fake. >> he kept going. obviously you work at the "new york times." what do you make of this mistake? >> i don't know, there was some speculation maybe he did it a purpose, because he wanted to deny us publicity for who we actually are. if that's the case, it backfired. i suspect we got more coverage for those people who had to correct his mistake, but it's also possibly december look, he rants about "new york times" and "the washington post" kind of equally back and forth, sometimes maybe he just got minksed up. >> do you care.

two and a half years do you care when he complains? >> sure. i covered eight years of the obama administration. i cared every time the administration criticized our work. you want your work to be -- you know your work is accurate. you don't want people to challenge it, but the president's complaints about the accuracy of that story were about as correct as his, you know, assessment of where we worked. we are fully confident in the sources. we had multiple sources describing these conversations to us for the book, and look, i think as you pointed out, even fox news and most other news organizations have since confirmed it, so i thinkic looks a lot of his other criticism, they're just not right. >> they're noise. michael, thank you very much. the book is "border wars." more right after a break. aetna takes a total approach to health and wellness

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unfit for office, the headlines on a new piece from the husband of kelly anne conway. george conway is getting more serious. he says, you don't need to be a mental health professional to see something is very seriously off with trump, particularly after nearly watching three years of his behavior. before conway, that was barbara ress, the construction engineer, also the author of "all alone on the 68th floor" and barbara sgroins me now. i was wondering if you could help us unpack this week, this especially dramatic week. wee get into conway in a minute, but had you seen this anger

before? >> no, i've seen it before. yeah. he was always very quick to react, never responded to anything, always reacted to it. he got very, very angry. he had this notion that everything that happened that was bad was directed at him, like people were after him, even with the new thing, the impeachment and the whistle-blower's her. immediately the whistle-blower is a hack, a democrat, you know, he makes it not that they're after something he might have done, but after him. that's the way he was. >> that's a conspiratorial streak. >> in a way, yes. >> you also wrote in the '80s about his narcissism. you noticed it a long time ago. >> i did, but somebody on the crew used to take the train from connecticut, read the times, and he brings me in the article and definition of a narcissist, and we're all looking at it with

seven or eight things listed, it might have been a biography of donald trump. yeah, he was always like this. >> in a way you're saying people should note be surprised. >> absolutely. >> do you think voters knew that? >> no, i don't think anyone really knew. i am surprised a bit too with some of the things he does. >> why? because it's worse? better? >> i say it's worse. it's worse. one of the things that surprised me was the comment about women, assaulting women. i never ever heard him talk anything like that. so that kind of thing. telling the russians that he didn't care about election middling. that was a stupid thing to said. i never thought of him as stupid. that surprised me. otherwise, no, this is trump. sometimes i say trump squared. since i knew him, he's had many, many years of fame and fortune, getting richer, now he does believe he's a stable genius and

does believe he can shoot somebody on fifth avenue, and so far it looks like he can. and when george conway says he's unfit for office, do you agree? >> yes, but not necessarily for the mental reasons, but because he didn't have the experience, lots of different things. >> how do you see this ending now? does it end at the ballot box at the end of the year? does he make it to a second term? does he resign? >> you know, it's funny, people ask me that, and it's hard to say my pin on national opinion, because you could be very wrong. let me tell what you i thought. i think he does a lot to save face. i could give you examples, we don't have times, but there are some things he can't control. there's now at the point he can't control this, he can't do anything about this. it would be very, very bad for him to be impeached. i don't know that he would be found guilty, but i don't think he wants to be impeached. i think that's what this panic

is about. my gut tells me he'll leave office, resign, or make a deal, depending on what comes out. >> there's the prediction. always nervous to do it on tv, but you know him, you've been there. thank you. >> my pleasure. a quick break, and then we continue about the impeachment inquiry. you know, fakes news is out, corrupt media is in. why is he changing his tone? that's next. a- (ernie) lost rubber duckie? (burke) you mean this one? (ernie) rubber duckie! (cookie) what about a broken cookie jar? (burke) again, cookie? (cookie) yeah. me bad. (grover) yoooooow! oh! what about monsters having accidents? i am okay by the way! (burke) depends. did you cause the accident, grover? (grover) cause an accident? maybe... (bert) how do you know all this stuff? (burke) just comes with experience. (all muppets) yup. ♪ we are farmers. ♪ bum-pa-dum, bum-bum-bum-bum

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president trump's persistent attacks on the press have been building for a moment like this, discrediting the media in order to distract from real scandal. if you noticed his twitter feet, he's moved from calling the media fake and crazy, to a new term, "corrupt." he's been using this term more in the past couple months. >> corrupt media. >> corruption, corrupt. >> corruption, corrupt reporting. >> i'm only interested in corruption. >> i don't even use fake anymore. i call the fake news now corrupt news, because fake isn't tough enough. so as the press uncovers evidence of corruption, he calls the press corrupt. it's the school-yard taunt thing on the presidential stage. with me to talk about it is former rnc communication

strategist doug heye, and jess mcintosh. jess, first to you, what is the most important point to make? >> i think it cannot be overstated how the role of the press has in the inquiry. this has run up to the iraq war level for the media. i think -- the president's comments which is newsworthy are often trait-up lies, so we snead more bold chyrons, more fact checking, if you have them on the air, you cannot allow them to lie to the audience. >> doug, is she right? >> i think so. i go back to cnn's motto, which is facts first. that's what has to take us to wherever this destination is, that's important for the press,

should be important for trump, also important for democrats, having worked in the house of representatives in the clinton impeachment, we went too far, and the democrats can't have that. when adam schiff reads parodies, but didn't talk to the whistle-blower, but really did, that's a problem. they need to take it seriously and not get caught in the game trump wants to take us to, these are not the droids you are looking for. >> we know that they talked, but he said i didn't. the reality is they did. that's the thing that democrats can't afford to have happened, it allows trump to cast, again, these are not the droids you are looking for. >> we have a president actively gaslighting the country, uses our institutions at our expense, i don't see the parallel between

that and whatever tactics -- >> trump is gaslighting, no doubt, he's use extreme rhetoric, republicans are backing him up by and large. i'm saying for democrats and for the media, you can't afford to get it wrong here. whenever there's a story that comes out that a week later gets not only corrected, but reextract tracted or things like that, that allows trump to say it's all fake. that's what they can't afford. i don't think he's acting in good faith. he is saying it and we do have to be very, very careful. we also can't by cheerleading for an outcome. interesting nose about what cnn did this week, trump has running a few ads that have completely misleading claims about biden. cnn chose not to run two of the ads, means rejected the money. i wonder if beal see more of that in the weeks to come. another note, the joe biden

campaign is pressuring the networks not to put rudy giuliani on the air at all, or if they do, put on a surrogate afterwards. doug, what do you think? >> he some have said put rudy in all day every day. i know he did another one this morning, it's kind of like what planet is he on. as a new york yankees fan and as an american, i'm glad, because that's four hours he's not on tv spewing whatever he's going to talk about. >> should the campaigns be telling networks, or at least pressuring networks not to book someone? >> if you're going to have someone on your air who will like about your candidates, and that's what rudy giuliani does about joe biden, i as the campaign manager for joe biden would be very interested in making sure someone was on air to refute him immediately afterwards. that doesn't seem like a bridge too far notably at all. >> notably cnn did try to book

rudy today, and he declined. we have an interesting perspective from iowa, how voters from the midwest, how are they reacting about all of this? that's next. aleve it. aleve is proven better on pain than tylenol. when pain happens, aleve it. all day strong. what might seem like a small cough can be a big bad problem for your grandchildren. babies too young to be vaccinated against whooping cough are the most at risk for severe illness. help prevent this! talk to your doctor or pharmacist today about getting vaccinated against whooping cough. talk to your doctor or pharmacist today behr presents: tough as walls. that's some great paint.

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country. and i include myself. robert leonard is a translator for rural america and trump supporters. he's the news director for knia and krls in iowa. he occasionally writes op eds sharing what he's hearing and reporting on the ground. he's been doing that for the new york times and elsewhere since trump was elected. he's also the author titled deep midwest of apolitical thoroughly deep dive into the midwest experience. i would love to know what you're hearing from your neighbors and voters about the impeachment inquiry. >> well, the democrats smell blood in the water, and they're very excited. a lot of them are happy the trigger was finally pulled because trump has done a lot of

things in their mind that are it impeachable. some of the independents are moving away from trump, especially people who voted for obama twice and then trump. most of the conservatives i know, especially the religious right conservatives are standing strong behind president trump because he is a kind of a golden hammer that's what's needed to break what they see as the liberal strangle hold on our society that's dismantling america as they see it brick by brick. >> and that's the reality on the ground that is oftentimes missed. i think even when you have conservative commentators on conservative news talking about these things, even the hannitys of the world don't fully relate to that. a couple years ago a headline if you want to get rid of trump, only fox news can do it. is that true two years later? >> yes. it's true. it's absolutely true. but i've got to be more specific this time.

fox news has turned. it's a very different beast than it have a couple years ago when i wrote that. now they're starting to point out some of the problems with president trump's behavior, actions. fox's opinion hasn't. and even tucker carlson's little sidestep the other day didn't really mean anything, because most of us don't see fox news, per se. we see fox opinion. it's "fox and friends" in the morning. it's tucker and sean at night by the time we have the kids, grand kids put to bed, sit down after supper. it's all opinion. so fox's opinion would have to change big, and i don't see that happening unless we see something truly egregious that would move my republican friends, but it's going to take a lot. they really think the personal qualities, his willingness to break all rules and expectations of the presidency are what is

needed. no other republican would do what he's done for the evangelical right, the republican right that he's done. everybody else would have been too conventional. he's a kind of hero, still. >> so twenty-seconds left. as we cover this in the weeks to come, what's the one thing we've got to remember in the cable news coverage? >> well, speak to conservatives. hear what they have to say. one of the things some of your earliest panelists said in the program is speak the truth trying to reach more voters. just keep working. the -- what's ultimately going to solve this current problem, i think, and our only solution is the truth. and it's the truth that will win at the end. >> robert leonard, thank you so much. more reliable sources in just a moment.

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inc. how the media helps us despise each other. sign up for our nightly newsletter. we'll see you back here this time next week. evidence mounts. forget drip, drip, drip. a torrent of new revelations backs up the case against president trump as he openly urges another country to investigate his political rival. >> they should investigate the bidens. >> will the impeachment probe reveal even more troubling conduct? and closing ranks. confronted with the president's own words, prominent republicans struggle to find ways to dismiss them. >> i don't know if that's a request or him needling the press. >> will the bulk of his party toe the line? mark sanford and joe walsh join me to discuss, xt