good evening. we begin tonight with breaking news. new indications of just how seriously president trump is now taking the impeachment inquiry and how seriously he's pushing to keep republican senators, potential jurors remember, in line. cnn's evan perez is breaking the news. what have you learned? >> one of the things we've learned is that the president is so consumed with this impeachment inquiry that he's now calling senator mcconnell as many as three times a day. now, this is something that the majority leader has had to deal with before. at the height of the mueller inquiry, the president was so exercised that he was doing the same thing. what the president is doing about is keeping senators in

line. he is worried about disloyal senators, something he's already started tweeting about in recent days. he said that some senators are not being loyal enough and they should be holding the line. now, this is something that mcconnell is going to have to be dealing with for the long term obviously. he wants to make sure senators who are going to be the jurors should nancy pelosi and the democrats impeach the president, he's going to need those people to hold the line. and the president is increasingly lashing out, telling the majority leader that he believes that some of these senators need to hold the line on what the white house is telling them to do. >> evan, stay with us because i want to bring in snan legal analyst laura coates, david gergen and joe lockhart. he served as press skecretary i the clinton white house. david, first of all, what do you make of evan's reporting because the whole notion that the president is conducting business as usual and isn't solely focused and consumed by the

impeachment inquiry -- if he's calling mcconnell three times a day, that seems to suggest otherwise. >> it does. he's been aptly compared to king lear, you know, fighting off the darkness. and he's obviously preoccupied, and you can understand why. but i must tell you in none of the reporting about what he's preoccupied with is there any mention of what's good for the country, the principles we ought to have as a people, what it is he's trying to uphold. it is all about personal survival and personally, you know, beating the other side. >> well, it's also, david, about revealing who the whistle-blower is, which, again -- >> yes. >> i understand why he wants that for his own reasons, but in terms of for the good of the country, i mean if he reveals -- if the whistle-blower is blown on this and revealed, i mean that's a chilling message for anyone else who may ever want to even consider being one. >> i think that if he were to

blow the cover of the whistle-blower by whatever nefarious means, they could potentially add that to another charge on the impeachment. that would, in effect, be an obstruction because he really is trying to put a chill on anyone else coming forward. and by the way, he's obviously subjecting the person who is the whistle-blower to enormous personal risk. >> yeah. joe, i mean even by, you know, saying publicly this person is not a real whistle-blower, this person is a liar, i'm not even sure this person exists, tant amount to being a spy. we don't want spies in the white house. he is sending a message to other whistle-blowers and trying to intimidate them. what do you make, though, of calling mcconnell up to three times a day, telling him he's going to amplify attacks on republicans who criticize him? >> well, he's worried about the right problem, which his problem is not with democrats. democrats, he's lost. his firewall is the republicans and the republican senators in

particular. a strategy of going after them and trying to intimidate them works when you're in a position of strength. his position is weakening day by day. so i don't know that that will work. you know, in 1998 with president clinton, we focused almost all of our efforts on democratic senators because that's -- you know, that's what protected us. but i completely agree with what david's saying. you know, the big difference between then and now is this president is consumed with it, and he's letting the public know he's consumed with it. he's not worried about the people. he's not worried about his job. he spends all day long and increasingly all night long tweeting about this, whining about it, showing how afraid he is. and he's revealing, i think, it very much weakens his case. and if you're a republican senator, you're looking, and you don't like the trend. >> laura, just from a legal standpoint, has he already set himself up for perhaps more

obstruction charges or at least compounding the things he's already said? >> he is compounding it. what he's doing essentially is giving more ammunition to say that he is going to engage in obstruction of congress essentially. the president saying i'm the law and order president, and one of the roles of the president of the united states is to faithfully execute the laws. if he's taking a position and saying, look, i'm not even going to comply with a subpoena at this juncture, where we are right now, anderson is saying this is before even one article of impeachment has been drafted. he's saying he's not going to cooperate. he wants to be a part of the investigation. he wants to know as if it was a grand jury witness. he wants to know who that person is and sit in on the proceedings. that is not done. it's really a premature request and a premature anxiety. but on the other hand, doesn't this help his court of public opinion argument that says, look what happens when you have an impeachment. your president is being consumed. your president is being consumed by things other than what you care about in terms of kitchen

table issues. health care is not in my wheelhouse right now. gun control is not an issue. it's this. in that vein, that has an impact on -- the larger issue of abuse of power, that's still going to be there. the more he abuses it, the more ammunition they get. >> i'm not sure gun control or health care has ever been in his wheelhouse. evan, what more are you learning about the president's overall view of this impeachment fight? >> he looks at this as a purely political thing. that is why in his phone calls with mitch mcconnell he's pressing him to keep these republican senators in line. he believes the strategy here is simply to make sure this is a partisan issue. this is about his re-election after all. by the way, i should note i failed to mention that we reached out for comment from mitch mcconnell's office, and we did get a comment from doug andres, and i'll read you a part of it. it says that they're disputing that mitch mcconnell ever related some of this to some of his fellow republicans.

and he said, we -- where is it here? okay. this story, based on a single anonymous source, is categorically false. leader mcconnell never said anything like this. they're disputing mitch mcconnell has told fellow republicans about some of his interactions with the president. and you can understand why. the president and mitch mcconnell have forged a very tight relationship in the past year. for so long the president was criticizing establishment figures like mitch mcconnell. he needs mitch mcconnell very, very much now, and mitch mcconnell frankly needs the president to stay focused in order to protect him. >> david, the president's also going after the person or persons who gave the information to the whistle-blower, saying he doesn't want to have spies in the white house. it's interesting to me that he's so focused on the whistle-blower because it seems like the whistle-blower at this point isn't even really the question anymore. i mean everything the whistle-blower has said has turned out to be true or mostly

true, and there's the transcript and the president's own comments which prove that. >> well, i think that conceivably the whistle-blower has some details that haven't been drawn out yet. so i wouldn't dismiss the whistle-blower's account. i do think it could have some importance. but i also think, anderson, when the american people have a sense that the rage and the obsession and sort of the craziness that's coming out of the white house, that's going to make more and more people feel uncomfortable about having him serve as president for another term. i think this is -- the way he is acting is making it worse, not better in my judgment for his command and leadership of the country. >> joe, it's interesting, though, to hear evan's reporting that the president is concerned that, you know, senators aren't being loyal enough. really the senators haven't really -- most republican senators haven't really said anything other than mitt romney.

they have been critical of what the president has done to the kurds, the betrayal of the kurds. i'm not sure if that's part of his calculus that he doesn't like what lindsey graham is going around saying, and that's part of this. >> yeah. listen, i -- >> it's also true -- >> sorry. go ahead, joe. >> i think there's been a little bit of a trickle and i think that worries the president and his team. you've seen senator collins, senator portman, senator sasse say things like, you know, the president shouldn't be reaching out to china and, you know, making that while staying silent on ukraine. you know, listen, the president's relationship with both the house and the senate when anyone has crossed him is to try to crush them. you know, mark sanford is running for president right now because he crossed the president, and the president got hum defeated in a primary. he has a stranglehold on the republican party right now. the problem is these senators, many of whom are up for re-election in the cycle in

2020, have to face their voters, are sitting and waiting to see what else will come out. that's what this big struggle is. will the president be able to keep all of the details, you know, at the white house and keep congress from getting them because as this gets worse, republicans will make a calculation at some point, you know, whether it's in their interest to continue supporting the president. that's what the president is so fearful of. >> yeah. joe, david, stick around. laura, thanks. i know you need to work on your live 11:00 show, white house in crisis, that we encourage everyone to watch tonight. coming up, susan rice on the president's recent decisions and actions on the impeachment question as well as in northern syria. later, vice president pence, who as you know has spoken out several times against foreign interference in u.s. elections, but that of course was a long time ago. we'll ask him if he still believes it now. with advil liqui-gels,

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before the break, david gergen referred to the way the president is acting and how it's affecting his presidency, which on top of the breaking news is really part of a larger question tonight. namely, are we now witnessing what people, including those who used to be close to president trump, have long worried and frankly warned about? are we seeing on several fronts the consequences of a president without guardrails, without what used to be called, fairly or not, the adults in the room, people who at the very least had experience and could steer him away from impulsive decisions and protect him against his own worst instincts, advisers to stop him if only in his own best interest from leveling a threat at the whistle-blower whose complaint touched off the whole ukraine affair. the president saying the whistle-blower, he or she, should be, quote, exposed and should not be protected. are we witnessing the effects of their absence or lack of influence? are we also seeing the lack of

so-called adults in his surprise decision after a call with turkey's president to pull troops out of northern syria, which has now led to a turkish invasion aimed at this country's staunchest ally in the fight against isis? a whistle-blower who is entitled to protection from a boss's retaliation is now facing an open call for just that from the president of the united states. the president who is supposed to uphold the rights and protections that are enshrined in our laws even if they're not in his personal best interests. this president cannot do that. it is all about him. it always has been and likely always will be. tonight whatever else you might think about the larger american involvement in the middle east, the kurds, who fought and died alongside u.s. troops, who did the bulk of the fighting, 10,000 dead, are now being bombed by turkey. some will almost certainly die in the wake of the president's reportedly snap decision. so tonight the broadcast is dominated by that and the at happens when the guardrails

go away? you're going to hear in at from susan rice who served as national security adviser in strong thoughts on the subject. but first, what president trump said just this afternoon about the whistle-blower. >> what the whistle-blower said bore no relationship to what the call was. then it turns out the whistle-blower was in cahoots with schiff. then it turns out that the whistle-blower is a democrat, strong democrat, and is working with one of my opponents as a democrat that i might end up running against. when you see what the whistle-blower said about the phone call -- and it was totally different. he made it up. and i don't know why a person that defrauds the american public should be protected. >> keeping them honest, in order, the whistle-blower act specifically makes reprisals subject to urgent concern complaints that need to be passed on to congress. there's no evidence the

whistle-blower was in cahoots with anyone and the president offered none. as for the claim that the account of the call is radically different from the transcript, that's not true either. the very first words on it after ukrainian president zelensky inquires about aid, is president trump saying, i'd like you to do us a favor though, followed by pressure to investigate the bidens and a 2016 conspiracy theory. faced with evidence in the president's own words, on the president's own transcript that contradict what the president himself keeps saying, wouldn't a so-called adult in the room try to stop the president from making such easily disprovable claims. similarly, would he or she try to stop the president from saying this about the staunch u.s. ally now under bombardment tonight? >> now, the kurds are fighting for their land just so you understand. they're fighting for their land. and as somebody wrote in a very, very powerful article today, they didn't help us in the second world war. they didn't help us with normandy as an example. they mentioned names of different battles.

but they're there to help us with their land, and that's a different thing. >> it's hard to know what that even means, but the president seems to be suggesting that the kurds have always been just been in it for themselves. keep in mind more than 10,000 kurds have been killed in the fight against isis, a fight we asked them to undertake. we did not do most of the fighting. we had a lot of logistical support, a lot of on the ground support, but they lost 10,000 people. he also said this about isis fighters and our nato allies. >> well, they're going to be escaping to europe. that's where they want to go. they want to go back to their homes, but europe didn't want it from us. questi we could have given it to them. we could have had trials. as usual, it's not reciprocal. my favorite word. that's all i want. i don't want an edge. i just want reciprocal. >> whatever you make of that, the president has taken steps that have now exposed them to what could become mass

slaughter. he's caused alarm among other allies in the region and he's triggered a rebellion among lawmakers. whatever you think of the president's statements, decisions, or policies writ large, does any of this look like anything but a president determined to say and do what his gut and no one else tells him? to say and do anything to protect himself? i misspoke on what he said to zelensky. he said to do -- i would like you to do us a favor. perspective now from former national security adviser susan rice, who is also the author of "tough love: my story of the things worth fighting for." the book is just out this week. i want to talk to you about your book because there's a lot in it. i do want to start, though, with just the latest on president trump's comments about the whistle-blower. he tweeted today that the whistle-blower should be exposed and questioned properly, and now is saying that the whistle-blower has perpetrated a fraud and therefore shouldn't have any sort of protections at

all. when you hear this from a sitting president of the united states, i mean i know on election day i read in your book, you said you kind of convinced yourself maybe it won't be as bad -- >> day after election. >> day after. maybe it won't be as bad. can you imagine a president of the united states calling for the essentially whistle-blower protections to be completely tossed out the window? >> anderson, it's appalling, and it's so much worse than i imagined. every day a lie, a disparagem t disparagement, and a trashing of the institutions and the norms that we all believe have held us together. and what's so extraordinary is it's all about him. i mean we talk about foreign policy, and he says his doctrine is america first, what i think we're seeing is really me first. that's how he is governing. everything is about him. and so the notion that you could

attack a whistle-blower with legal protections in our system which is set up to enable transparency and to guard against precisely the kinds of abuses he's perpetrating and to assume that that's -- he's called it worse than that. he's called it close to being a spy, treason in effect. >> not just the whistle-blower but the people who the whistle-blower talked to in the white house. >> yeah. so he is arrogating to himself the institutions of the state. >> he is the state. i am the state. >> right. that's what we're seeing now. that is not an exaggeration. that's how serious it is. >> it clearly seems -- i mean i don't know how much of what he does is really, truly by design or just instinctual. but it certainly has got to send a chilling message to anybody else in the government about the possibility of coming forward. i mean it would stop, i think, a lot of people from considering coming forward. >> well, it could.

but i think what we're seeing, in fact, is more people come forward. now we have a second whistle-blower with firsthand experience of what happened, corroborating exactly what's already out there, and indeed president trump's own transcript corroborates exactly what's in the whistle-blower's statement. so i actually think, anderson, that we have enough patriots still working in this government all throughout the agencies who have to be deeply disturbed about this. >> when you hear the president saying repeatedly that it was the perfect phone call, nothing wrong with it, then asking china for help, that china should investigate the bidens, i mean you've read the transcript of the call. the president clearly believes in just repeating a lie over and over and over again until everybody becomes so exhausted, they just give up and let him have it. >> and he confuses people. that's his whole tactic. that's how he has -- you know,

that's how he has arrogated to himself so much power. he's got several tactics that he repeats. one, lie, lie, lie. two, confuse, deflect. three, what we're seeing in this biden thing is take what is trump's greatest weakness, the perception that he's corrupt, that his children are corrupt, that they abuse the office to enrich themselves, and try to make it his opponent's greatest vulnerability. >> when you went on the sunday shows and talked about the early reports and the intelligence community assessment of what had happened in benghazi, and there was very early reporting and some of it was not accurate, that obviously brought you into a whole maelstrom and you dedicate an entire chapter to this. you've had people on capitol hill making up stuff about you. you've had people on capitol hill, for political reasons, going after you. when you see what the republicans, the silence on the side of the republicans regarding the president on

ukraine, regarding the president on china, asking a regime like china to investigate, you know, the bidens is -- i mean i don't even really know what to say about it. but when you see the republicans' response to this, the senators and congress people, does it surprise you? even with all you've seen, does that surprise you -- the silence, or the saying he's only kidding? >> it's galling, and it's disappointing. you know, congress set up eight committees to investigate benghazi. not one of them found that i deliberately misled the american people, including the one led by trey gowdy, who is now going to apparently defend donald trump. what we see now is mike pompeo, who is, you know, one of the most avid prosecutors of the benghazi so-called scandal, refusing to cooperate at all with congress.

the obama administration provided documents. they provided testimony. secretary clinton sat for 11 hours. i sat for four hours before gowdy and his crew behind closed doors. you know why? because we had nothing to hide. >> the situation in turkey, the president said today the kurds are fighting for their land, and as somebody wrote in a very, very powerful article today, they didn't help us in the second world war. they didn't help us with normandy as an example. in addition to that, we have spent tremendous amounts of money on helping the kurds. i'm not sure what the article he's talking about. >> what is he smoking? i mean -- >> yeah. >> the kurds were the pointy end of the spear who fought isis on our behalf. >> 10,000 casualties. >> they plbled and died because they believed in the partnership they had established with the united states. >> they believed they would be protected. >> absolutely. >> and honored. >> yes. and we just threw them under the

bus in 24 hours. it's appalling, and it's disgraceful. and then today when the turks quite predictably are bombing the bejesus out of syria, and trump allegedly orders the u.s. military not to come to their defense, not to protect them, we've crossed a rubicon here of betrayal that i think is going to haunt us for decades to come. >> i mean, you know, the end of when south vietnam finally fell, there were a lot of people who had helped the united states left behind, who weren't evacuated. you know, there's been criticism of not enough visas have been given to iraqi translators and afghan translators who risked their lives. >> all of this is wrong, but this is an order of magnitude worse than that. we are handing over our kurdish allies to slaughter, and that blood is going to be on donald trump's hands. >> the book is "tough love." thank you so much. >> thank you. coming up next, joe biden's big announcement today on

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our breaking news. a source tells cnn that president trump is phoning mitch mcconnell as many as three times a day, lashing out in his conversations with the majority leader about senators he sees as disloyal over the impeachment issue. this comes as polls show a clear majority of americans in favor of the house impeachment inquiry. the latest one is from fox news showing 51% of those polled believe the president should be impeached and removed. that's up nine points from july. that's a fox news poll. only 40% believe he should not be impeached. today joe biden stood before new hampshire voters in rochester and for the first time called

for president trump's impeachment. >> to preserve our constitution, our democracy, our basic integrity, he should be impeached. we have to remember that impeachment isn't only -- isn't only about what the president's done. it's about the threat the president poses to the nation if allowed to remain in office. >> president trump later called the comments, quote, pathetic. back with me are david gergen and joe lockhart. david, what do you make of the former vice president coming out publicly in support of impeachment? it wouldn't surprise many people, i suppose, but did it surprise you? >> i thought it's about time. you know, i've been surprised frankly, anderson, that he hasn't been more in the forefront and he's been as cautious as he has been all the way along. one of the reasons i think elizabeth warren has done so well is that she was out early. she was back last spring calling

for impeachment, for an inquiry, and she's been tough about it. one of the big questions that democrats are going to want to resolve is not only who's got a better chance of winning, but who's going to be more effective against trump in a debate, in a wrestling match on the debate? so far she's done pretty well in that category. >> joe, you saw biden also nudge the president on not releasing his tax returns. ambassador rice brought this up earlier. it is sort of an easy issue to turn on its head. does president trump really want to be talking about family finances and children's salaries? >> i think ambassador rice articulated it very well, which is it's an old tactic of the republicans, which is take your own weakness and project it on your opponent. you remember john kerry was swift-voted by someone who avoided serving in vietnam, and john kerry is a decorated war hero. it works if you don't fight against it. so i think you've seen in the last couple days vice president biden doing what i think is the right thing, which is you can't let these things -- you can't

chase every trump charge down a rabbit hole, but you can't let something take hold, and you've got to push back. and i think he's done that. i agree with david also that he has been late on impeachment. this should have come earlier. i would argue, though, that some of the candidates were too early on it. it's critical that the public doesn't see this as 1998 revisited, as a partisan act to punish the president and remove him, but as a constitutional act to keep him from doing more harm from the country. so i think the vice president was right on today. i just wish he'd done it a little bit earlier. >> david, it's interesting. you talk about elizabeth warren. she's one of the people in the senate who would be called on essentially as a jury on the president, and yet as you said, she was out front in calling for his impeachment. >> well, that's right. i think we've got a pretty good idea how she'll vote if it gets to the senate. but nonetheless, i just think

this is a time when issues facing the country are so grave that a person who wants to be president or a person who is president needs to go before the country occasionally with a very thoughtful speech, trying to help us understand the gravity of what we're going through, how it has to be done with great respect for traditions, needs to have a bipartisan quality and, in effect, be presidential. you know, those big speeches, that's what i've been missing in this campaign. give us -- stand up there for 20 or 30 minutes and really explore something in a serious way. so far we haven't had a lot of that. the debates are helpful, but i sure would like a little more seriousness at times. >> appreciate it. coming up next, one of many republicans on capitol hill who are upset tonight at what some in the gop have called the betrayal of our kurdish allies by president trump. - [narrator] meet the ninja foodi pressure cooker with tender crisp technology.

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as president trump lashes out in phone calls to mitch mcconnell, the republicans being disloyal during the impeachment inquiry according to a new cnn report tonight, republicans are

angry -- some republicans are angry over his abandonment of kurdish allies. a senior u.s. defense official tells cnn tonight that turkey's incursion into syria has had a detrimental effect. that's what some republicans predicted. >> this is the pre- 9/11 mentality that paved the way for 9/11. what's happening in afghanistan is no concern to us. so if he follows through with this, it would be the biggest mistake of his presidency. >> the thing i believe, if you make a commitment and somebody is fighting with you, america should keep their word. >> news from syria is ticksicke. isis fighters attacking raqqah. impossible to understand why donald trump is leaving america's allies to be slaughtered and enabling the return of isis. mitch mcconnell, marco rubio, mitt romney, susan collins, pat toomey, all republican, all

critical. republican congressman adam kinzinger of illinois sits on the foreign affairs committee. congressman, thanks for being with us. >> you bet. >> why do you think the president has gone to the mat on this? why is he giving turkey such a pass? was it just an impromptu thing in a phone call with erdogan? >> i think it's all of it. i think the president makes very impulsive decisions on foreign policy. i think he made an impulsive decision without thinking through the results of that. i think erdogan somehow convinced him with stars in his eyes that he was going to be humane. and, you know, the reality of this is it's disgusting. it's sickening. it's sad. think about the fact that the kurds have taken 10,000 deaths in this fight against isis because we didn't want to put troops on the ground. so they did it for us. we, conversely, have lost 17 in combat throughout this whole campaign. we lost basically in iraq and afghanistan close to 7,000 people. so think about the impact that's had on the kurds, but they stood

with the united states because they believe in us. they could easily have turned to iran. they could have easily turned anywhere else. they stood with the united states of america and because of a conversation with a basically dictator, president trump pulled 50 soldiers, 50 people back, and those 50 people were holding back a turkish attack. i'm sure every one of them were in tears when they heard this, these 50 special operators are watching this horrified as we all are. >> i think the point you make is an important one to point out -- we're talking about 50 u.s. service members, and i'm not in any way indicating that 50 is not an important number and, you know, there's concern obviously about their safety, and that's one of the things the president has said. but if the idea is we can't have these endless wars, we want to bring troops home, we're not talking about thousands of troops here. we're talking about 50 who have held off this advance from turkey. but their presence alone has stopped turkey from their

ambitions in the territory that the kurds believe is theirs. >> two quick points. on the endless wars things that you hear from now the president, but rand paul for forever, it's not our choice to do an endless war. it's really been the terrorists. they're the ones that haven't changed their goals. they haven't changed what they wanted to do. and secondly, look, 50 american troops there, this is exactly what people like the president and like rand paul and some of those were advocating for when they said, we don't want 100,000 troops in syria. they were talking about putting special operators to train indigenous forces to fight for us. that's exactly what this mission is. and for no reason, no discernible reason, the president woke up one morning and tweeted a bunch of tweets, changed the whole dynamic of the middle east, and abandoned an ally, and it's disgusting. >> you're a veteran. you served in the wars in iraq and afghanistan. you, as a congress member, have met with the kurds. you've gone there. obviously there are security concerns, some legitimate ones that turkey has about, you know,

terrorist attacks by kurds in turkey. but to paint the kurds with such a broad brush -- >> right. >> -- seems just myopic. it just seems unfair. >> it is. you think about like 13 million or 15 million kurds in turkey. iraq has around 6 and syria around 2. it's a big population, and there is an issue with the pkk, this terrorist group. and, you know, turkey has every right to defend itself against terrorist attacks. but the idea that we would actually supply -- stand with the kurds, who are not pkk to defeat isis and then for no reason pull out -- and by the way, 10,000 isis members are being held themselves. where are they going to go? they're not going to go to europe. they're going to go back onto the battlefield. the president's biggest promise in the campaign was to defeat

isis. >> tdoes it make sense to say te kurds are fighting for their land, then he talks about isis saying they're going to go to europe as though that's okay? >> so first off, i love europe, and i hope there's no terrorist attack there. that's what america used to stand for. we're bigger than what we've become lately. and the normandy thing, i don't get it. i don't understand it. yeah, i mean, the kurds -- there were probably kurds ethnicity in normandy somewhere, but they didn't invade with us. i don't hold that against them. >> germany didn't help us in world war ii either. we seem to be allies with them now. congressman, thank you very much. appreciate it. vice president pence is on the road in iowa. so is our randi kay. up next, what he had to say to randi about foreign interference in america's political process. through ancestry i learned so much about

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check in with cris arer see what he's working on. s >> there's a lot going on as we all know and tonight our challenge is to make sense of it from perspective of the challenges on both sides. senator angus king. what does he think that right after the president said we're going to get out of syria, you

have the turk its making a move on the kurds? and how could this not be a blood bath? and we're go itting to talk to congressman slotcon about this. you know her background from the pentagon perspeckive. she wants us to know what the big risks are that are immediately ahead and then we're going to test the president's new arguments about why this impeachment is unfair with one of his faithful conservative friends. >> see you in about nine minutes. up next asks vice pence if he's changed his mind about what he said that foreign governments shouldn't interfere in elections. (wheels screeching) (clapping) (sound of can hitting bag and bowl) (clapping) always there in crunch time.

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for those who were born to ride, there's progressive. "360" has been in iowa trying to get answers from republican officials about the whistleblower comlant. last night she tried to pin down senator ernts and got a series

of nonanswerers. before we show you the exchange with randy, there are two pieces of sound you need to hear. the first is what vice president mike pence said about whether foritners should interfere in american elections. >> now you all need know throughout this is basic stuff. foreign donors and certainly foritten governments cannot participate in the american political process. >> wow, okay. basic stuff, he said. gall galley gee, seems simple. here's from the president less than a week ago on the south lawn of the white house talking about ukrain. >> they should investigate the bidens because how does a company that's newly tormed and all these can companies -- and by the way likewise china should start an investigation into the bidens. >> remember marco rubio said that was a joke.

you had a chance to ask the vice president about this. how did all that go? >> reporter: it was interesting to say the least. we started by asking about the 2016 comments that you just played about a foreign government weighing in on the american political process and he sort of took a turn from there. here's a look. mr. vice president, during the campaign 2016 you said that foreign governments cannot participate in the american political process. do you still stand by that today? >> i do. i think that's why president trump is so concerned about foreign interference in our election in ukrain. if you lead to transcript, you will see that the president said to president zelensky that our country had been through a lot and then he had a question about foreign interference about our 2016 election. to be honest with you when did you all lose interest in foreign

interference in the 2016 election? president trump wants to get to the truth. he wants to know what happened in 2016. and the american people have a right to know. >> reporter: but the president himself said he asked aer foen government to investigate his political rivals. so is that okay with you? >> i don't believe that's the case. >> he said it. the president said that. >> that's how adam schiff characterized it. the american people should read the transcript and they will see that the president did nothing wrong. no pressure, no quid pro quo. the president simply raised issues of importance and int interests to the american people. >> the vice president's handlers quickly ended the gavel right after those comments. but you heard him say he doesn't

believe president trump asked ukrain to investigate. joe biden his political rival. we all know that isn't true because the president had said that. we have seen it in a transcript that white house released to the public and the president doubled down on the white house lawn. we heard that in your introduction. so for some reason vice president pence will not accept that no matter how many times i tried to tell him that. >> he can read. i can't imagine he doesn't can know the facts. i mean he lukes to seem as if he believes everything he says but it seems hard to imagine. the president called on china to investigate one of the most repressive regimes around. the idea that -- yeah, it's amazing. and doesn't surprise me that they ended the -- >> reporter: but there were other reporters backing me up saying he said it on the white house lawn, he doubled down on the white house lawn and still would not acsuspect it.

>> a thankless task. our digital news shows week days 5:00 p.m. eastern on "full circle." or you watch on demand. that's it for us. chris. i'm chris cuomo and well welcome to "prime time." looks like subpoena storm is about to head down pennsylvania avenue. let's get after it. the white house is now officially stone walling the impeachment inquiry. several democratic sources tell cnn that means it is likely time to stop asking and start demanding witnesses make their way to the hill. that could include associates of rudy giuliani, state department officials including a former ukrain ambassador forced out. she's still on the state department's payroll. there could be pressure to stay home, just as ambassador sondeland was ord oered to stay

home.