welcome to "inside politics." i'm john king. thank you for sharing your day with us. the second whistleblower hires lawyers and house democrats prepare to interview key witnesses, saying their minds are made up despite any new facts that might emerge. plus, there's big republican pushback for the president's overnight decision to pull u.s. troops from syria, warning the kurds could be slaughtered and the president is handing russia and iran a big gift.

and the president's point man on immigration tries to make his case at georgetown university, but gives up in the face of protest. >> morning, everyone. thank you for your kind introduction. as a career law enforcement professional, i've dedicated my career to protecting the rights of free speech and all the values we hold dear in america from all threats. [ bleep ]. >> large scale immigration quote. okay. thank you. have a good day. >> we begin the hour with the republican party on a hunt for a defense strategy, especially as new twists emerge in the democrats' efforts to investigate and eventually impeach the president. many republican lawmakers being asked repeatedly to respond to claims president trump using his power in the levers of official foreign policy to pressure ukraine and now china to dig up 2020 election dirt. the newest strategy insists it's

a joke. >> i think he did it to gig you guys. >> i doubt if the china comment was serious, to tell you the truth. >> you think he was serious about thinking china was going to investigate the biden family? >> you watched what the president said. he's not saying china is investigating. >> let's get to the fact check, mr. minority leader. watch the president. yes, he did say that. >> china just started an investigation into the bidens, because what happened in china is just about as bad as what happened with ukraine. >> strategy door number 2, politicize it. senate majority leader mitch mcconnell making this pitch today in an effort to combat opioid abuse. >> it's an opportunity to advance causes like this and it's the kind of thing that gives my colleagues and i

enormous job satisfaction. there are few distractions, as you may have noticed, but if you sort of keep your head on straight and remember why you were sent there, there are opportunities to do important things for the country. >> behind strategy door number 3, just stay silent and hope the subject changes by the time the house and the senate return to work after a recess. they return next week. the subject likely won't change. with me today to share their reporting skpin sights, cnn's abby phillip, tompkins with politico, abby kosinich from "the daily beast." the idea that we shouldn't take the president seriously when he's talking about incredibly serious issues. we've heard this before. donald trump, i was being sarcastic about obama and isis. donald trump defends the lewd

videotape from "access hollywood." it's just joking, locker room talk. trump was joking about trees on. trump was joking about wikileaks. republicans said trump just kidding about losing the election. trump just joking about serving a third term. trump joking when he called himself the chosen one. >> it's a defense mechanism and it has been from the very beginning. remember in the campaign when the president announced in a press conference he wanted to ban muslims from entering the united states, a lot of republicans then thought it was hyperbole or some kind of campaign gimmick. and then he was elected and tried to do just that, so this is a strategy the republicans have been using to cope with trump since trump was a candidate, and now we're seeing it applied to this situation in ukraine. the issue, though, with china in particular is that we -- cnn has reported that the president did raise the issue of joe biden

with china's president xi jinping in a conversation. why would that have ever happened? just on its face, why would the president have ever raised joe biden in a conversation with china's president is something i think a lot of republicans ought to ask, and there are a lot of democratic candidates and democratic senators now saying, actually, maybe we should see those calls because i think it certainly seemed unlikely if the president would raise this ukraine issue if you would have asked him a couple months ago, and now we know as a matter of fact that he did exactly that. he made a request, do me a favor, investigate joe biden. >> and one would think given how outrageous and out of the norms it is to ask the president of ukraine, do me a favor, look into biden, while holding up security aid, or asking china to look into biden. you would think some republicans would say, democrats are way out over their skis. i don't think this is an

impeachable offense, but let's get some answers. but you don't see that. i want to read some of your reporting in the "washington post." trump is shaking the foundations of the republicans. he's poking his fingers in all of the places where we have norms and traditions and things both parties have respected for years, and he's blown all of those out the window. that's katie kircher of the republican majority -- kerry kircher of the republican majority. you have establishment figures in the republican party, especially those not currently in par power, looking at the party of the moment saying he's taken it to the next level. >> if republicans of today stick with trump and they're not willing to say this is not acceptable, they're worried this will alienate people who traditionally vote republican will side with democrats. i think what you're seeing right now is republicans throwing spaghetti on the wall.

they're trying all different things to see what is the best defense? are they going to deny it? are they going to divert the strategy to democrats? what is the best strategy here. it was interesting to see mitch mcconnell saying this is bad but not impeachable. are democrarepublicans going to saying that? i don't think they know how to respond. >> that seems to be the fourth path, right, let's look into this. i don't know if it's impeachable but there needs to be an investigation. will hurd said some version of that last night on "60 minutes." even that is few and far between. >> you both make very key points here, because lindsey graham, who is out there defending the president, said i don't care. think about that. he would be on the jury for the senate. if you have an impeachment in the house and then it goes to the senate. he has a committee.

if he thought there should be something done about hunter biden, he could call a hearing and call the epa a. they don't want to talk about it. to your point, the it's the president's hold on the republican party, saying if they get in his face, he will chop them. and number two, if the president comes down, they might lose the senate. this is about power. >> and what makes this different than what's happened in the past, there is a lot of muscle memory built up among republicans of just hunkering down and waiting it out. unlike the other ones where a new cycle comes along, geechm t impeachment is going to drag out for months, so republicans will be asked this every single day for months to come, and it's unclear if this old strategy will work in this new context. >> close to the election year, whatever the fallout is will carry over.

ron johnson is the senate chairman of the homeland security committee, very important committee when it comes to elections. he was quoted in the "wall street journal" saying he called the president because he was very upset. the ambassador to the european union was holding until they convinced him they weren't doing investigations. ask him in a way that makes the president mad, and this is what you get. >> i just want the truth. the american people want the truth. >> do you not trust the fbi, you don't trust the cia? >> no, i don't. absolutely not. after james cohen, i don't trust any of these guys in the obama administration. >> do you trust them snnow? >> no, i didn't trust them back then. >> he's got a committee. again, he has a committee.

if they can't be trusted, if there's really a deep state and you can prove it, use your gavel and prove it. otherwise that's reckless. >> this is the party of law and order that is now saying you cannot trust the fbi, you cannot trust the cia. ron johnson is particularly interesting because everybody thought he was going to lose his reelection in 2016 and it was actually the president who really pulled him through and got him -- >> he was left for dead by the party. >> the party had left and pulled out of wisconsin. so he was never in any danger of turning on the president, but it sounds like in this interview with the "wall street journal" he admitted someone came to him and told him there was a quid pro quo and it made him cringe. people clearly got to him and said you better walk this back, and it got attention. >> sondland, the person who told him that, is going to be testifying. he's going to have to answer for why he told ron johnson that in a private conversation. i mean, i think this is -- this is a lynch pin moment for

democrats who are trying to pry open the question of whether or not even people in the administration believed there was an explicit quid pro quo. >> right, so we'll cut to the evidence, that part, in just a moment. but again, as you try to get there, if you're a republican, you can say the democrats are out there too far, already trying to impeach the president. but here's mitch mcconnell, the senate majority leader, essentially the foreman of the jury, the man who would be deciding how it goes. so he should keep an open mind, right? then see where it goes, right? then make a decision? nah. >> they finally decide to do impeach the president. all of you know the constitution. whenever impeachment stops is when the senate majority, with me as the majority leader. but i need your help. please contribute before the deadline. >> he would actually make that decision this year. he's up for reelection next year, but that's just your

government at work, send me money to help me with my reelection and i promise you before i've seen any evidence that we will just turn a blind eye. great. >> nakedly political is what it is. that's what this is. that said, he probably should advise the president to stop dragging potential jurors who are republicans on twitter if, in fact, there is going to be a trial. >> and then if the polls are changing in the next few weeks, we'll have to see because they seem to be moving with democrats and independent voters, right? so how long can mitch mcconnell make this a campaign pitch remains to be seen. >> trump's campaign has already raised millions and millions of dollars just off an impeachment threat and we're not even close to a house vote yet. >> that's a great point. it may work for mcconnell in red kentucky, susan collins in maine, cory gardner in colorado. there are a few others out there where it's a much more interesting climate for them. we'll talk to a judge delivering a big blow to the

president trying to keep his tax returns secret. the judge throwing out the lawsuit. that suit was to try and stop prosecutors from gathering eight years of the president's tax returns. the president rejecting the claim that the white house has immunity from it at any time. now the security says they'll hold off on this case and comply with whatever the final court decision is in this case. the president says, this is another extension of what he calls the democratic witch hunt. the curveball has some on capitol hill saying the president is leaving the kurds to die. at t-mobile unlimited talk, text and data is just 30 bucks a line for 4 lines.

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a giant american foreign policy shift overnight that some worry opens the door now to genocide. the united states now says the kurds are on their own. the kurds say today they've been stabbed in the back, this after the president ordered the pullout from u.s. forces from syria, that order coming late last night. the president this morning explaining himself on twitter. he says the decision delivers on his america first promise to get out of what he calls, quote, ridiculous, endless wars. but the decision goes against the advice of the president's military advisers who worries a turkish slaughter of the kurds might happen and would be a big gift to isis. some of those warnings being echoed today by republicans on capitol hill. >> this is a policy you can

support? >> absolutely not. if i didn't see donald trump stating it on a tweet, i would think it was obama's rationale for getting out of iraq. this has undone all the gains we've made, thrown the region into further chaos. iran is licking their chops, and if i'm an isis fighter, i have a second lease on life. i think america is sad today that we've given back the battlefield to the enemy. >> cnn's ben wedeman is live for us in bi rrbeirut. ben, take us through this. >> reporter: once again the kurds are being betrayed by those who helped them. certainly there is an air of shock when we speak to anybody who lives in that part of syria. one of our producers contacted one of the fixers we've worked with before who lives near the turkish border, and we called him to see if he would be able to work with us, and he said,

listen, i need to leave with my family as soon as possible. i cannot work with anybody at the moment. so there is a real sense of impending doom in some parts of northeastern syria since this announcement came out. not everyone, however, is reacting with doom. the syrians, for instance, are saying that this is another instance of united states and turkey plotting against syrian sovereignty, and we saw a statement from javad zarif, the iranian foreign minister, saying that iran is ready to help. john? >> ben wedeman for us in beirut ready to help. admiral john kirby joins the conversation. to the geopolitics that ben was touching on in the end here, and then i want to get to the

details. turkey has now moved troops to the border. in a minute i'll get to the warning the president just issued. who benefits here, russia or iran? >> not only have they been good fighters against isis, they've been fighting against the regime. this eases up tension on the assad regime. >> the president sending this tweet trying to explain himself. help me translate. some of the language is interesting, to say the least. as i have said strongly before, and let me reiterate, if turkey does anything that i, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be offer limits, i will totally destroy and obliterate the economy of turkey. what is he trying to say here? >> it seems he's gotten pushback since his tweet storm this

morning when he said he would stand back and let turkey get at it. someone has told him about the repercussions of the turkey power grab, which is what it would be in north syria. he's trying to say, i'm not weak, i'm not advocating american leadership here, i'll fall back if turkey goes too far. but what's too far? he's already said he's not going to impose this, and where are the red lines he's going to draw in terms of how he'll react to turkey? we don't know that. >> we've seen it in the past when he said he would pull out of afghanistan and out of syria. the pentagon has pushed back, the state department has pushed back and ultimately he has moved at least mostly back to where they want to be. you heard lindsey graham at the top of the block. this is the former ambassador to the united nations which is loyal to the president. we should always have the back to our allies. the kurds were instrumental in

our successful fight against isis in syria. leaving them to die is a big mistake. liz cheney, the republican congresswoman from wyoming, said withdrawing forces from syria is a catastrophic mistake that puts our gains at risk and threatens national security. terrorists thousands of miles away can and will use their safe havens to launch attacks against america. >> we still have interests there against isis. while the physical caliphate has been destroyed, they're still recruiting there, they can still train there, they still want to resurge there and elsewhere. nikki haley may have political ambitions of her own which may answer why she pushed back on the president, but the main point is accurate. when you look at it from a counter-isis perspective, this is a foolish mood. >> we'll watch it. we'll see if that tweet was the beginning of the retreat, but it's hard to say.

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back now to new developments in the impeachment inquiry. just this hour democrats rele e releasing new subpoenas for the pentagon for documents related to administrative policy in ukraine.

two diplomats will testify about the president's efforts to time military aid in ukraine to greenlighting investigations to joe biden and his son hunter. rick perry said, quote, yes, he absolutely did, urged ukraine's preside president. but it was about war, not ukraine. >> i never heard, and i talked to the president about this, i had a phone call with rudy giuliani about it, i talked to the previous ambassador, i talked to the current ambassador, i talked to kurt volker -- i mean, gordon sondland, the eu ambassador, every name you've seen out in the media, and not once, not once, as god is my witness, not once was biden named. not the former vice president or his son ever mentioned. >> significant there because there have been some rumblings

and some finger pointing within the administration, if you will. rick perry saying i was doing my job and the bidens didn't come up. if you read the text messages from last week, biden did come up in other conversations. rick perry saying, not me. i have nothing to add to your investigation. >> you notice he didn't defend the president, either, so he doesn't necessarily feel he has to show extreme loyalty as he's on his way out. >> you have two key witnesses this week, gordon sondland who is the president's ambassador to the european union, and the former ambassador to ukraine who was pulled back, and the story there was giuliani went to the president and said, she's not doing what we want her to do, therefore, pull yavonovitch back. so that happened, and there was word there was a second whistleblower who has hired an attorney. the question is will we see the whistleblower come up. this is lindsey graham who we talked about earlier talking about, if we're going to have whistleblowers, then --

>> if the whistleblower's allegations are turned into an impeachment article, it's imperative the whistleblower be interviewed in person, under oath and examined. they can >> is that an effort to intimidate whistleblowers that if you keep pushing your complaints, i'm going to unmask you and your anonymity, which you are guaranteed by the law, will be taken away from you. >> the president has been accused of trees ason and has threatened them. >> i think we should be clear here. an impeachment inquiry is not a criminal proceeding. so the idea that we should treat this as the president is going to potentially be sentenced to some kind of prison time, that is not that kind of thing. so not only is the whistleblower

entitled to anonymity and the protection of the law under retribution, no, the president is not entitled to necessarily, in this case, meet his accuser, so it seems like lindsey graham is changing the subject than to do what the white house would prefer for them to do, which is talk about the whistleblower, talk about the person making the claim, not what is being alleged. >> if there is a house person and the senate had a serious trial, the rules for such trial could allow the president's defense team to at least have access to the whistleblowers in private, could allow them to at least have access to that testimony. it is possible if the republicans were to proceed with a serious truly aial and wrote . >> graham wants it to be a public flogging which is a very different type of animal. >> we see these emerging public defenses, if that's what we want to call them, for ways to distract attention from the president's call. here's one from the white house press secretary. it doesn't matter how many

people want to call themselves whistleblowers about the same telephone call, the telephone call the president has already made public. it doesn't change the fact the president has done nothing wrong. leslie grisham, it's not about the call, it's what was done before the call and after the call. the president said, we released the call. >> they're not just waking up and calling themselves a whistleblower, either, they're going through a process that is set out in the intelligence community to get to this point. and you had all -- many different levels inside the intelligence committee, particularly about the first complaint, say this was serious. they are. they're trying to distract. they're trying to make it about the transcript which, in and of itself, when you read it is shocking and does have a lot of questions. >> in the meantime, you have democrats on the hill who are trying to find more things to cooperate with what this

whistleblower said. we've seen the transcript, we've seen the whistleblower complaint, and democrats feel that in and of itself is damning enough to impeach him. that's what they think. what they're doing is trying to collect as much evidence as they can so republicans can't just point to this whistleblower and say, oh, you know, who is this whistleblower? he or she is alleging something that's not fair, there is some sort of political bias or something like that. so they're going to all these different sources and collecting information. last week kurt volker came in and actually gave text messages, proof there, showing there were state department officials who were in touch with people in ukraine saying, in order for the president to meet with your new president, we've got to have a public commitment that you're going to investigate joe biden. >> and that's why sondland is so important in the witness chair. he finally responded after four and a half hours to one of those texts where bill taylor said, i'm worried about this, why are we doing this, it's crazy, withholding aid in a political

campaign. i want to get to this. tucker carlson, who on fox news has been very loyal to the president. writing this op-ed over the weekend with another friend of hiss. donald trump should not have been on the phone with a foreign head of state encouraging another country to investigate his political opponent joe biden. some republicans are trying, but there's no way to spin this as a good idea. like a lot of things trump does, it was pretty over the top. >> is he trying to point the direction forward how to message this thing in order to avoid impeachment? i think there is division of whether or not he's -- he's criticizing in order to save him. >> the president himself has shown he's not taken well to this sort of criticism. he hasn't gone after tucker carlson yet, but he's gone after mitt romney and mitt romney said the same thing, this is not okay. >> it does seem like this is a road map of republicans if they need to get to this point to figure out how they navigate the

waters saying, we don't like this kind of behavior, this is not what we want presidents to do in general, because there is an implication. what happens if a democratic president did this? there are some like tucker carlson who are concerned about setting that kind of precedent. this gifves them a road back to say that, but to take the mitch mcconnell direction saying, we're so close to election, we shouldn't even bother with impeachment because the voters will decide in a year next november. i don't know if that argument will fly if a lot of independents come to the side of democrats and are persuaded this conduct is really unacceptable and warrants some kind of consequence that's set out in the constitution, impeachment. >> we're still in the early chapters. we shall see where the book ends. up next, elizabeth warren not the only 2020 candidate that's got a plan. you'll be hunting dawn to dusk.

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simple. easy. awesome. call, click or visit a store today. topping our political radar, plans apleaplenty today from democratic candidates. kamala harris is proposing six

months paid family medical leave, giving them time to take care of themselves, a sick family member or a child. that amount would phase down for people with higher incomes. senator sanders wants to ban corporate donations to the dem convention is he is the nominee. he just rolled this out at his home in vermont after a heart attack he suffered last week on the campaign trail. and pete buttigieg unveiling his plan to cut the affordable medicine for all plan. he said it would be paid for by increasing fees on drug makers and putting penalties on others who raise prices during

inflation. biden's challenge? to go beyond the trump attacks. these are real people,

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like this device to increase volume on your cell phone. - ( phone ringing ) - get details on this state program call or visit biden tries to navigate two storms at the same time. two his left a vigorous 2020 reachout most notably from senator warren. and most likely scathing attacks from president trump. most of them false but all of them are fierce. biden finds himself in a fight with an incumbent even as he

enters the stretch in a violent race. even his closest advisers acknowledge the uncertain terrain. jeff zeleny reports, quote, i'm not going to sit here and say there is no concern. if this drags on, we just don't know. no one knows. jeff zeleny joins our conversation. that is an interesting moment where there's a debate coming up next week. then you're in this stretch where we're 18 weeks from iowa, 17 weeks away from iowa. he has to worry about his primary race and he has the president of the united states in his face all day. >> absolutely, and all of that was planned. they knew one day bernie sanders or elizabeth warren was not going to eclipse but certainly match him. the attacks from the president were not planned, specifically on hunter biden. the official line from the biden campaign is, no, no, this is good for the former vice president. it elevates him for a head to head match which joe biden has

long been wanting. it looked like that initially but now it is uncertain. david ignatius from the "washington post" saying he's largely friendly to biden, but what was he thinking with hunter on this board and takihaving a ukraine portfolio? should there be children on board members? most definitely no. so this is an uncertain future for him, but the warren stuff is political problems. that's why they're hearing a wrath of advice here and he's trying to make his way through it all. >> it says it particularly unwarrants support for the proposal. but they have no plan to use a scorched earth against the massachusetts senator, largely because they believe it would backfire, and they hope other political rivals would assume that role. sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. >> i would think they will. there is already anxiety in the

candidate race besides warren, because in the case of taking the senator race from biden, she's sucking up the oxygen from candidates like bernie sanders, pete buttigieg and even kamala harris, so i think you are going to see more -- especially as we approach this next debate, more candidates trying to find ways to undermine warren's message. some of them are kind of coming from the center left, and others are going to be coming from the far left, particularly on the sanders side, but warren is in the center of the bull's eye right now, and i think there is a lot of potential for that. >> and with warren whether she'll be a good candidate, because there is a strain that they just want to beat donald trump and there is a question of whether she can. >> in that regards, the new fox news polling out f you're joe b biden, you might not want to bring this up too much, others may bring it up for you.

in the fox news poll he beats the president by nine points. part of joe biden's case going through the primaries, iowa, new hampshire, nevada, all very close. biden has the lead in south carolina. you want to get democratic primary voters to lift their heads and think about that. the question is can he? >> trump isn't just tweeting attacks on him and republicans are attacking on tv, the trump campaign purges $4 million on ads. so they're going after him on tv, too. meanwhile he has to fend off the left. he had less than stellar fundraising this time so the war chest is not as big as they would have hoped, so the next three months, while he's getting it from both sides, will really be the crucible of his campaign and whether or not those negatives start driving up little by little. >> the president trying to meddle in the democratic primary, can it hurt? they say you shouldn't be playing in our game.

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and it's yours free. it's our way of saying thank you just for calling. so call now. welcome back. supreme court justices returning to the chamber today with an explosive set of issues on the docket. long lines forming around the block. some people even setting up in sleeping bags, trying to get a seat inside. here's what the court has on tap, cases involving abortion,

second amendment, lgbtq rights, immigration and religious liberty. we should note justice roberts not in court today. he was home with the flu. let's start with the substance list of those controversial political cases. roberts' court, the chief justice in the middle. >> he's starting his 15th term and this could be his hardest term ever, because just on friday they agreed to take a big abortion case that isn't a direct challenge to roe v. wade, but it will certainly determine access to america of abortion clinics. you just saw those lines out there? that's for tomorrow's case. it's a trio of cases testing whether a very important anti discrimination law in america covers cases based on sexual orientation or gender identity. so that's there. and then just today the justices told us they weren't going to

get rid of an important gun control second amendment case that new york had said it's moot because it's amended the law. so lots on the calendar, and this would have been -- if clarence thomas had come today, it would have been the first time that all nine were sitting because brett kavanaugh didn't make the first monday in october last year because his confirmation was still finishing up. >> that's a good point. so we'll have questions about kavanaugh, the president's most recent appointee in all of these cases. it's october 19 that some of these cases will be decided, in the middle of the 2020 campaign which makes you say wow. you're in the courtroom today, clarence thomas home with the flu, and ruth bader ginsburg had issues over the summer. >> she made some cases this morning. sounded loud and clear. she's still here is her message, but we're just on round day one of a nine-month term, so watch

for june. >> how conscious are the judges or politics in any case going into a presidential election? the court will be an issue. the democrats will be saying look what president trump did, kavanaugh will still be an issue. how much does that wrinkle in to what they do? >> they like to say they're only looking at the law, they're only looking at precedent, but they're so aware of the political overlay. and you remember what chief j justice roberts' mantra is, it's not about the election, but in the middle it will be exceptionally hard. five justices on the conservative side control the majority. but all conservatives are not created equally on this court. you have clarence thomas and neknee neil gorsuch on the far right

and brett kavanaugh in the middle and we'll see how he goes. >> thank you for joining us on "inside politics." brianna keilar starts right now. have a great afternoon. i'm brianna keilar live from cnn's washington headquarters. underway right now, as a second whistleblower comes forward, republicans are using the jokr r defense to shield the president from the inevitable. rick perry fighting back after the president throws him under the bus. and if the president is impeached, his chief of staff is reportedly projecting that the president will shoot the moon in 2020. hear how many states mick mulvaney says president trump will win. and in the middle president trump makes an