good evening. today began what may be the most daunting week in the history of the trump administration. facing public testimony by officials from the state department that the president orchestrated the shakedown of another country for political gain. on wednesday democrats leading the impeachment inquiry will open the doors to the public to what has until this moment been a closed door process. president trump has repeatedly demanded transparency in the house impeachment inquiry. this week he is getting his wish though he certainly doesn't see it that way. this week three witnesses who have worked intimately with ukraine policy will testify. now, behind closed doors, they've already testified to what they believe was an attempt by the trump administration to

bribe ukraine for an investigation into the biden clan. also to the machinations of the president's personal attorney, rudy giuliani, to accomplish this feat. so this much we know we can expect from open testimony. what we don't know is how the witnesses testifying publicly may influence the opinion of american voters, if it does so at all. we also don't know for sure what the white house and the president's supporters on capitol hill are going to do to combat what looks to be a growing mountain of evidence against the president and his administration. a mountain that has gotten larger with the release of more closed-door testimony in just the past few hours. we don't know because so far the reaction has been a smattering of everything from nothing to see here to the white house is too competent to hatch an extortion scheme. that last one came from lindsey graham. his latest defense came over the weekend. here he is trying to make an argument about process and the identity of the whistle-blower. >> so if they don't call the whistle-blower in the house, this thing is dead on arrival in

the senate. >> now, the house intelligence chairman leading the public inquiry is adam schiff. he says the testimony they've already received corroborates the whistle-blower's account, making it, in schiff's words, redundant. also it wasn't that long ago that republicans were saying this person was invalid as a witness. in the words of congressman jim jordan and matt gaetz, this person had, quote, no firsthand knowledge. so that was one argument. then there was the defense that acting chief of staff mick mulvaney trotted out. the message basically, we did it. so what? everyone does. >> let's be clear. what you just described is a quid pro quo. it is funding will not flow unless the investigation into the democratic server happened as well. >> we do -- we do that all the time with foreign policy. >> he later included the now infamous line, get over it just for good measure. hours later of course he walked the whole thing back, blamed the media saying he didn't say what

he was saying on camera right there, which is interesting for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that a slightly revised version of that argument is now once again being made by some of the president's supporters. the new version, president trump did it. his phone call and actions were bad, but they don't rise to the level of impeachment. >> i think it is not a good practice for us ever to ask a foreign country to investigate an american. i don't. but did the ukrainians call for an investigation? no. did the president hold up aid? he released the aid as he should. i don't see it as impeachable. >> i believe it was inappropriate. i do not believe it was impeachable. >> well, that last person you heard there was mac thornberry, a congressman from texas. president trump doesn't like that argument because he says his phone conversation with ukraine's president was perfect -- his word. a few hours after congressman thornberry said what we just showed you, president trump tweeted this. quote, republicans, don't be led into the fool's trap of saying

it was not perfect but is not impeachable. no, it is much stronger than that. nothing was done wrong. joining us now from the white house, jim acosta. jim, so we're entering this historic week. talk about the white house strategy to deal with everything that will come out of the hearings. i mean is there a strategy, or is it just whatever president trump wants to tweet on any given moment? >> reporter: it's a little bit of both, anderson. i will tell you we just obtained the trump campaign talking points heading into these public hearings. as you mentioned, it is a critical week in the impeachment inquiry. and according to these talking points, one of them says the facts are on our side. democrats would beg to disagree. it also goes on to say that the whistle-blower has no firsthand knowledge of the call. this is all sounding very familiar. and that other witnesses in the inquiry so far do not have firsthand knowledge of the call. now, anderson, we have heard much of that already before repeated by this white house. so it seems to be at this point they are just repeating the same

talking points over and over again in the hopes it will stick. now, in terms of other points that the white house will be hammering home as the week unfolds, the president will be holding a press conference with the president of turkey on wednesday, so we'll hear more of that then. but he did tease out earlier this evening what he plans to do at some point this week. he says he's going to release the transcript of his first call with the leader of ukraine. the problem with all of that, anderson, is of course the president may not have sought a quid pro quo in that first call. that's not really relevant. what's relevant is what happened on the july 25th call. >> right, which is now public. in fact, vindman, lieutenant colonel vindman, who has testified, has said it's actually not an exact transcript, which we already knew that. but vindman had knowledge that it was not an exact transcript, word for word, comma for comma as the president has said. >> that's right, anderson. we should also point out what happened on that call has been corroborated over and over again by other administration officials who have gone in to

testify. and as you mentioned in that opening to your show, mick mulvaney walked into the white house briefing room and said, we do this all the time. the other thing we should point out, anderson, i just spoke with a source close to the white house a short while ago who objected to the president continuing to say that his phone call with the leader of ukraine was perfect. you know, nobody really is echoing that message on behalf of the president. it doesn't seem that anybody here in washington except for the most partisan of partisans feels that the president's phone call with the leader of ukraine was perfect. the other thing we should point out, there is some nervousness inside trump world, inside the president's camp. i talked to another source close to the campaign who said, listen, if any republicans defect in this upcoming process, it damages a key message for the white house, and they believe this is a partisan exercise and that it was just democrats voting in the house impeachment inquiry vote that nancy pelosi held the other day. if any republicans defect, that

is big news in this inquiry and very bad news for this white house. anderson? >> jim acosta, thanks very much. congressman ro khanna sits on the oversight committee, which has helped conduct the closed door hearings that have laid much of the groundwork for what we're going to see on wednesday. he joins me now. in today's transcript release, we learned that a person named laura cooper, the pentagon's deputy assistant secretary for russia, testified that ukraine was very much aware of their military aid being blocked and that a statement on opening investigations would unfreeze the aid. i'm wondering how critical is what ukraine knew and when they knew it to the overall case that you're presenting to the american public. >> well, it's absolutely critical. it goes to the pressure that they were facing, and they actually didn't want this revealed because they felt that their relationship with the united states was at risk. here, anderson, is the important part. laura cooper, the career official at the state department, at the defense department, sounded the alarm bells. they knew that this was wrong

policy. they alerted the white house. they said, you can't withhold this aid that congress has appropriated. it's illegal. and yet their warnings went totally unheard. >> it's also interesting because this was one of many arguments that supporters of the president on capitol hill early on said, well, oh, well, there can't be a quid pro quo because ukraine didn't know about the holdup of aid. they didn't know about the whole plot when, in fact, we now know they did from multiple people. >> exactly. and they were embarrassed by it. they didn't want to admit that the president had that kind of leverage on them. it made them look weak. it made them question the relationship with the united states. and they were just hoping that this situation would resolve, and you had people like laura cooper and other career officials basically telling them that the situation would resolve because they knew what a breach this was of our legal system. >> you know, there was a lot of

hype in the lead-up to the mueller hearings, and those certainly did not work out as many democrats had hoped they would with the testimony of robert mueller. what is the democrats' plan going into the hearings on wednesday? >> well, the difference here is that this story is so simple, and most people around the country know what happened. the president withheld aid from zelensky because he wanted zelensky to dig up dirt on joe biden and announce that publicly. and you've had witness after witness corroborate this. and what's going to come out in the testimony by a few key witnesses like ambassador taylor is this wasn't just one phone call. this was a concerted effort for months to try to get dirt on joe biden. so i think the case is simple, and most people are going to understand what went on. >> it's being reported that republicans as part of their strategy are going to focus on the conspiracy theory that ukraine interfered in the 2016 election, not russia, and push

unsubstantiated claims about the bidens. is this going to end up being a tale of two hearings, that essentially republicans are going to be asking on those things and democrats are just going to be focusing on the president's actions and giuliani's actions? >> well, the republicans are desperate to come up with some defense. they started by saying there's no quid pro quo. now they can't dispute that. then they said, well, there may be a quid pro quo, but it's not impeachable. that seemed laughable. so now they're saying, well, let's go and say that it was ukraine that was actually responsible for interference, and i think the problem with their story is they don't have any facts that actually exonerate the president's actions. they're going to at some point have to explain to the american people why the president kept asking zelensky to dig up dirt on biden. why did biden's name keep coming into the conversation? >> none of the witnesses scheduled to testify had direct interaction with the president.

both john bolton and mick mulvaney did. i know democrats are pushing ahead without securing bolton or mulvaney's testimony, but doesn't the public deserve to have that final piece of the puzzle, and frankly wouldn't that make your argument stronger? >> yes, they do. and that's why john bolton should testify. there is no reason for john bolton not to testify. it's a sheer delay tactic. we're not going to delay for months because john bolton is unwilling to testify. the reality is he's not shielded by executive privilege if there is actual illegality. so he owes the american people an explanation about his judgment of whether there was illegal conduct. that has never been protected by executive privilege. same thing with mick mulvaney. they owe the american people an explanation. >> congressman ro khanna, i appreciate your time. thank you. >> thank you. still ahead tonight, we're going to examine president trump's own defense ahead of the public hearings. his latest unfounded, untrue explanation for why practically all the witness testimony so far

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prior to wednesday's first day of public testimony, president trump clearly appears unhappy with the witness testimony he's heard about so far. today without any evidence at all, the president called the transcripts, quote, doctors. and he said, quote, republicans should put out their own transcripts. we should point out that no republicans who sat in on these hearings have questioned the validity of the transcripts which have been released, nor have any of the witnesses whose words make up those transcripts. so you can add this lie by president trump to however many thousand other lies he has already told. the weird thing is it just sort of seems normal now, doesn't it? the sky is blue, the earth is round. the president of the united states is lying. it's just kind of pathetic.

joining me now is cnn legal analyst jeffrey toobin, jen psaki, and david axelrod. so this latest round of transcripts, i mean they certainly seem to be very consistent going into this hearing. and i'm not even addressing the notion that they're doctored because it's just so absurd. >> it's ricdiculous. what's remarkable is now you've got more than a dozen people who have talked about the issue of the american relationship with ukraine, and they've all essentially said the same thing, that there was one policy on the books, one policy where the congress authorized and the president signed that said, you know, this $391 million goes in military aid. and rudy giuliani was conducting a separate foreign policy which said there would be no money and no meeting with the president

and potentially no meeting with the vice president unless he started going after joe biden's son and the 2016 conspiracy theory. i mean every witness says the same thing. >> and, david, i mentioned this at the top of the broadcast, but i just want to put it back up on the screen. president trump tweeted this weekend, republicans, don't be led into the fool's trap of saying it was not perfect but is not impeachable. no, it is much stronger than that. nothing was done wrong. it doesn't leave congressional republicans many places in search of a cohesive defense. i mean lindsey graham is still now focusing on -- he's back to focusing on the whistle-blower, who is really largely irrelevant at this point because so many other people confirmed what this person who apparently had no firsthand knowledge said. >> yeah. no, they're really between a rock and a hard place. they've got on the one hand a president who's very, very popular with their base and who is more than willing to take out people who dissent with one

tweet. so they have that on the one side, and then this very stubborn fact pattern on the other. so what they have is a defense in search of an argument, and they've been auditioning different arguments. i've said here before here, anderson, that i think ultimately where at least the senators are going to land is, yeah, he did something bad, but let's let the people decide. we're close to an election. i think that's probably -- if you're not going to vote on the facts, that's probably the best you can do. but clearly he's not going to like that. >> right. >> and someone is -- you know, i don't know if anybody can talk to him. someone has to say, hey, you've got to leave us a little wiggle room here because you're squeezing us into an impossible place. >> i mean, jen, if he decides that a senator saying that defense, you know, it wasn't great but it's not impeachable, is not good enough or is insulting to him personally, i mean will they fold and just parrot whatever he wants them to

parrot? >> well, i think some of them may. i mean you have representative lee zeldin, who will probably echo whatever he says on twitter. but there's obviously a range in the senate and in the house of republicans. in addition to what david said, they've always been suggesting that ukraine got the assistance, so what's to see here? nikki haley sort of suggested that as well. that's true. does it mean that a president of the united states should be holding back military assistance in exchange for, you know, an investigation into a political opponent? no. that's what democrats will argue, but you can see some semblance of an additional bullet point that republicans will add. but they're in an untenable place, and if donald trump keeps tweeting and keeps pushing them to argue on his behalf, they're not going to have anywhere to go. >> can i just be the master of the obvious for one second? >> yes. >> who calls their own behavior perfect? have you ever met anyone like that? and i know it's like, oh, well that's just how trump talks. that's not normal. i mean it's just -- i mean the idea -- you know, and he lies

all the time. well, i guess he just lies. >> it's not even behavior. it's conversation was perfect. i don't even know what that means. >> it's just -- it's so surreal that we sort of pass that by because that's just the way he talks, and he's the president of the united states. >> listen, it's surreal that he's calling the transcripts, which republicans were in on and which all these witnesses have read before they were released -- that he's calling those doctored, and nobody blinks an eye. everyone is just like, oh, yeah, no, that's totally normal. it's not normal at all. >> anderson, can i -- >> yes, please, david. >> i just want to go back to something jen said. ambassador hailey made the argument that the aid flowed. it seems like it flowed after people at the white house got the inkling they were blowing the whistle on this whole caper. secondly, she said that the

ukrainians -- that was the main part, that the money did flow. >> what's important about that, "the new york times" has done reporting in ukraine about how close the regime, the new president came to basically folding. >> yes, exactly. >> the president's advisers were saying, look, we desperately need this aid even though our whole program is to battle corruption and not have phony investigations for corrupt political purposes. we're -- you know, we may have to do that. >> they were about to move forward. it was reported that they were about to move forward when this whole thing blew up. >> yeah. >> so the haley argument really doesn't hold up here either. this goes back to the fundamental dilemma. republicans don't have a real great place to land here. >> one of the things that surfaced in the transcript of catherine croft which was released tonight was that mick mulvaney in his capacity of director of omb had put a hold on lethal aid to ukraine in the form of javelin missiles back in late 2017 or early 2018.

and the reason according to the reporting is because he was worried russia would react negatively. i mean that is stunning in and of itself. it shows what the white house thought about ukraine, how little they cared about ukraine and it undermines the idea that, you know, that some trump acolytes have been pushing and the president has been pushing that no one's been tougher on russia than donald trump, which is just patently false. >> you know, i think as you said, anderson, it is -- it raised some big red flags here. it's important to remember that the reason there's been a debate about increasing assistance to ukraine is because russia had illegally invaded ukraine, and the united states has been assisting ukraine. also in that same transcript, which is really interesting, was why they got those javelin anti-tank missiles in the first place. and in 2017, catherine croft, the same transcript, she talks about a paper process, which means there wasn't even a

senior-level negotiation, discussion about this, which would be pretty uncommon. and it's linked to some "new york times" reporting too suggesting that poroshenko, who was the former president of ukraine, may have put a hold on manafort's -- some of the investigations involving manafort in order to get this assistance. >> right. >> so that's pretty complicated, but there's more to dig in here. and to the earlier point that we've been discussing, it means that this discussion with ukraine about quid pro quos has been ongoing for months and months and months if not years. they've certainly known. >> and in fact allowed at least one potential witness for mueller to be able to leave the country and go to russia. jen psaki, david axelrod, thanks. jeff and going to stick around. coming up, cnn has obtained exclusive excerpts from that forthcoming book by an anonymous senior white house official. the book is called "a warning." we'll share some of what's inside next. - [spokeswoman] meet the ninja foodi grill.

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breaking news tonight. cnn has obtained some exclusive certs from the soon to be published book by an anonymous senior white house official. the book is called "a warning" and it follows by a year a "new york times" op-ed written by the same official. writing about the ukraine affair, the author says about the president, quote, those of us who have seen these sort of reckless actions again and again wanted to slam our heads against the wall. the explanation that he wanted to help combat corruption in ukraine was barely believable to anyone around him. and about acting white house chief of staff mick mulvaney, the author writes, quote, despite telling colleagues he was not interested in the job, he angled for months to get it.

mulvaney is a survivor. he saw opportunity as john kelly's star dimmed. the acing chief confided in friends not long after taking the position that he didn't understand why kelly loathed it so much. and this. quote, mulvaney brought a new approach to managing the west wing. he didn't manage it. his guiding maxim was let trump be trump. quote, the only problem with the approach is trump has not changed since mulvaney blasted him as a terrible human being. so in effect mull vein's's raison d'etre is to help a terrible human being being a little less terrible if he can swing it. finally anonymous writes, quote, we've learned that given enough time and space, donald j. trump will seek to use any power he's been given. no external force can ameliorate his attraction to wrongdoing. his presidency is continued to jeopardized by it. joining me now, david gergen,

kirsten powers. david, i mean first of all, the quotes from this person are pretty incredible to hear one also has to consider that this person, though they think this, as far as we know either still works for the administration or did work for the administration and for whatever reason, even though others have now come forward and put their careers on the line, this person is not doing that. >> well, that's true. i think the person is totally disaffected but for whatever reason that's odd, is hanging in there. obviously does not want to be identified. what's missing from the book right now, at least the excerpts we have, are any incidents or stories or precise things that happened as opposed to sort of this vast overview of what we know. you know, we've known all along that the white house has become a snake pit. we just didn't know until this

book came out just how many snakes are in there. and that's one thing, but the president always abusing power once given, that's been pretty apparent for a while. but then again, there's no concrete examples. so i think given where we are, the book is going to have less impact unless there's something big and blockbuster-y that we haven't been told yet. this book is sort of a rehash from very disaffected person that confirms that this white house is full of third raters, full of apologists. people are either sycophants or silently abetting the person's abuse of power. it's a very unhappy picture. >> kirsten, what's interesting is how far our knowledge of what's happening inside the white house has come since this anonymous person wrote an op-ed, you know, a year ago. to david's point, a lot of this isn't surprising and because they're insisting on remaining anonymous, they're clearly not

putting in, if they know, any specifics because they don't want to be identified. and, again, that all has to be taken into account. it certainly weakens their -- you know, the moral clarity that they claim to be exuding. >> yeah. i think -- i mean i certainly would have hoped and i've only read the excerpts, that there would have been more specifics and there would be more new information. i think if you're somebody who hasn't followed the news closely and you wanted to get a pretty, you know, accurate synopsis of what's been going on in the white house, this is probably a good book to do that. but if you're somebody who follows the news closely, you're going to be nodding your head and saying, yeah, yeah, i see that. i did think one thing was interesting. i think it's something that we have probably known, but he says so explicitly -- he or she says so explicitly that the president really goes out of his way to harm states that didn't vote for him. now, he only -- he provides only

an example of something that we already knew where he, you know, wanted to deny funding for fighting fires in california. but the way he writes it is as if this is a regular occurrence in the white house, that he sort of horrifies staff coming up with different ways to make life difficult for people in states that didn't vote for him. so, like, that was one little tidbit that i thought was interesting because i think that that -- you know, but i wanted more. you know, iples. >> david, we're getting this excerpt at the same time, and i don't think it's a coincidence that former u.n. secretary nikki haley is out promoting her book about her time in the administration. what she says adds another layer to how people worked in this white house because she recounts that former secretary of state rex tillerson and former chief of staff john kelly asked her to, quote, save the country by undermining the president. she said she wouldn't do it, and i guess she went to trump and told him about it. but what she doesn't really address is the fact that the secretary of state and the chief of staff felt things were so bad

that they needed to try to reach out to her to do something about it. >> i totally agree. that was a really eye-opening set of comments by haley, and i just don't -- i don't understand why she was doing that. people have thought, well, she might wind up on a ticket with trump if he wants to, you know, put a woman on there and dump pence, that she might be a candidate. you know, i don't know why she'd go out there and do that under those circumstances. i do think, anderson, you're right about, you know, the publication date for anonymous was moved from december back into november, clearly wanted to tie it to the impeachment. nikki haley's book comes out at the same time. this is all coming together at one time as sort of a firestorm, but whether it consumes the president is still very, very uncertain if not unlikely. >> thanks very much. we should note that the white house has just given a statement in response to these excerpts that says in part, if this person has, in fact, been inside

white house meetings or has any access to the president, he is acting like a spy. this person is a gutless coward who doesn't have the spine to put his or her name to their shameful lies. there is more breaking news tonight. a late change of plans from acting white house chief of staff mick mulvaney when it comes to challenging a house subpoena. details on that coming up. (burke) at farmers insurance,

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welcome back. before we move on to the next story, i want to correct something i said. i called nikki haley u.n. secretary in a question when she of course is u.n. ambassador. on to more breaking news from a washington courtroom tonight. acting white house chief of staff mick mulvaney now says he will not join a lawsuit by impeachment witness charles kupperman testing the subpoena power of the house of representatives. through his attorney, mulvaney had initially wanted to join the kupperman lawsuit, which asked a federal judge to intervene on whether to comply with the impeachment-related subpoena or defy it at the request of the white house. tonight mulvaney says he plans to file a separate lawsuit over that subpoena. i want to get perspective prosecute chris whipple. back with me is cnn chief legal analyst jeffrey toobin. jeff, first of all, this is complicated. it's confusing a little bit.

can you explain why would he have wanted to join the kupperman lawsuit? >> i have to say this is a baffling situation because just step back. the democrats have said they are not going to court to force anybody to testify. if you don't come in to testify in response to a subpoena, they're going to let you go. their view is we have enough. we're not going to delay by going to the courts. so bolton, kupperman, and mulvaney are just not going to testify. so why mulvaney, instead of just not showing up, gets involved in this litigation is kind of mysterious to me because either way, he's not going to testify. >> is this -- i mean it's safe to say is this the first for a chief of staff? >> absolutely. i mean it's unprecedented. none of this makes any sense to me but i have to say not much of what mick mulvaney makes sense to me. you know, this is a guy who first made this ridiculous assertion of absolute immunity, and jeff's the expert, but i thought that went out the window back in '73 with u.s. v. nixon.

he's got another problem, which is that he walked into the white house press briefing room and blurted out the truth, which was that this was a mafia-style shakedown of a country in return for political dirt. i was reminded of michael consistency's definition of a gaffe, which is when a politician accidentally blurts out the truth. so, you know, i can't make sense of this either. my best guess is at the end of the day, i think he just wants to avoid testifying. this is a game delay. this is buying time and just trying to see if he can avoid. >> jeff, the kupperman lawsuit, if the judge has given a date of, i think, december -- >> december 10th just for the beginning of the case. >> so there's no chance that that would be resolved in time to -- that if he's forced to testify, that that would be resolved in time. >> impossible. i mean i was speaking to people in the intelligence committee today, and they said, look, we are doing two weeks of public

hearings. they are doing this week and next week. then the case moves along to the judiciary committee, which is going to have a whole different set of witnesses or no witnesses at all. so the idea that these lawsuits will continue, i expect they will be dismissed as moot very quickly. >> it's also odd, chris, that he wanted to join kupperman and bolton in a lawsuit. from all the reporting, bolton and he were not -- you know, barely on speaking terms when bolton left the white house. as a chief of staff, i mean the entire structure of the white house is unlike any other past structure and any other chief of staff. >> yeah, these were bizarre bedfellows to say the least. mulvaney has been in my opinion, as white house chief of staff, a guy who has really become a lapdog for donald trump. he's become a fixer, really the new michael cohen. there's no command that he won't execute no matter how sketchy or

impeachable. and of course bolton is coming from a very different place. this is a guy who presumably wants to testify, who has called this thing a drug deal, mulvaney's scheme along with rudy giuliani. so it never made any sense. these were bizarre bedfellows, and i think that, you know, for mulvaney, this is -- he's in a very dangerous place. i mean if he were to go and testify under oath and try to do what he did with chris wallace, you know, essentially walk back the truth that he accidentally blurted out on national television, i think -- you know, haldeman wound up in prison for perjury, obstruction, and conspiracy. and i think, you know, mulvaney could be headed in the same direction. >> and just on bolton, i mean is he just trying to cover himself for a future career in, you know, conservative politics or conservative television by getting -- trying to get coverage of a judge insisting he has to testify? >> i can't, you know, do his

mental state. i mean he does have a difficult legal situation. i mean if executive privilege applies to anything, it probably does apply to some of the conversations between bolton and the president. however, the way to do that is to negotiate and answer, you know, about what you'll talk about and what you won't. the idea of going to court in advance is something that, i'm not aware it's ever been done before. but in any case, by going to court, he has effectively made the decision not to testify. >> thank you so much. really appreciate it. coming up, donald trump jr. gets heckled on his book tour, leaves the stage. it ourn it's going to surprise you to learn who forced don junior to leave.

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they didn't like that there would be no time for a q and a session that's when it changed to cries of u & a. >> name a time. it doesn't happen that way.

that's the problem. the reason it doesn't make sense is not because we're not willing to talk about the questions because we do. no. people hijack it with nonsense looking to go for some sort of sound bite. you have people spreading nonsense. to try to take over that room. >> it's because you're not making your parents proud by being rude and disruptive. we're happy to answer a question. respect the people around you. you don't play by the same rules. let me tell you something. i bet you engage and go on online dating because you're impressing no one here to get a date in person. >> that didn't work he's. eventually they left the stage. so it wasn't why are trump

supporters hecking. >> right. there will be liberals on a college attempts. these are far right activists who are speaking out against donald trump jr. there's something really interesting going on. i think infighting within the conservative movement about what it stands for in the trump age. you have these young people who organized online who call themselves america first. i view it as a slogan, as a way to say we are white nationalists. we want to see a white state, to preserve our white christian identity. these are racists, anti-semites and they've been trying to hijack the conversation of the. >> they feel that the, what they want from the movement -- >> is not enough. they want more restrictive immigration. >> it's kind of a sign of what president trump has brought. >> exactly. >> you start to play with these sorts of fires. you cannot contain it.

>> right. they keep spreading and spreading. this is white identity politics at the end of the daflt you think about the impeachment debate. the president needs every supporter he can get. typically the president and his allies are unwilling to back away or resist these really fringe, really extreme supporters. the kinds that tried to hijack it. i asked for comment. they don't want to give these fringe elements any attention. the president allowed his permission schedule for hate and division in the country and i think when you do that, you get these extreme elements showing up, trying answer questions, trying on ask questions, trying to interrupt. >> interesting that he was think twaug all liberal. >> thanks. there is new polling from the state that holds the first 2020 primary. new hampshire. we'll have that next. when i rent a car, i never compromise. too shabby! too much!

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for me, this comes down to whether you trust the politicians or the people. and if you say you trust the people, are you willing to stand up to the insiders and the big corporations, and give the people the tools they need to fix our democracy. a national referendum. term limits. eliminating corporate money in politics. making it easy to vote. i trust the people. and as president, i will give you tools we need to fix our democracy. i'm tom steyer, and i approve this message.

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new postgame shows that joe

biden holds the lead in new hampshire. warren at 16%. buttigieg and sanders. no others reaching double digit in the poll. so first major poll to show biden in the lead i think since july. they're clearly i guess glad about that. how big a deal is it? >> it's one poll so you don't want to overread it. i would note that bernie sanders and elizabeth warren are the senators from next door of new hampshire. so the fact that vice president biden can have this narrow lead in this poll right now with as you mentioned, less than 100 days until we get to that new hampshire primary is not insignificant. the next door state senators have not taken and dominated this race in some way that keeps him out of the mix. he's been resilient there. >> the rhetoric has certainly

heated up. they're much more willing to point out their differences. >> no doubt about that. we are in a new phase. especially that relationship in this race between vice president biden and senator warren. they have sharpened their attacks against each other. i wouldn't say it has gotten nasty but we're in that beginning of the end phase of the season. >> and obviously mayor pete buttigieg doing well. he sees himself in that same lane as vice president biden. >> he does. he also likes to sharpen his differences from sanders and warren as the more moderate centrist approach here to the primary. and he seems to be hoping and banking on that, perhaps biden falters a bit and he's there to be the one to unify some of the liberal ring and the moderate conservative side of the party. but biden is not falling too fast right now.

so it's a battle of those top four at the moment. >> thanks very much. the news continues. i'll hand it over to don element on that. cnn tonight starts now. this is cnn tonight. i'm don lemon. you just watched the presidential town hall with the former vice president joe biden answering question after question. arguing if the evidence is convincing, the senate should vote to remove the president from office warning that the future of our democracy is at stake. talking very personally about the family tragedies he's faced and how he found meaningful explaining why he doesn't support medicare for all. did he make the case to voters? good evening to both of you. it was a big night for the former vice president. give me your main takeaways, please. >> i think this is one of the

stronger performances we've seen