good evening. at the start of a week filled with things we've simply never seen before, including impeachment hearings with a target simply refusing to take part, and that's not all, the house judiciary committee is out tonight with a witness list of day one of proceedings. also late today members of the house intelligence committee got a preview of that panel's majority report on the testimony they've heard and house republicans put out a 123-page rebuttal that is sharply at odds with testimony so far as well as with the president's own words. plus the republican senator john kennedy of louisiana is repeating russian talking points in defense of the president, again even after being told they are russian talking points by intelligence officials and hearing this from the president's own former expert in the field. >> some of you on this committee appear to believe that russia

and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country and that perhaps somehow, for some reason, ukraine did. this is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the russian security services themselves. >> we'll talk about that tonight. also former fbi attorney lisa page breaking her silence, talking about being accused of treason by the leader of the free world. and if that weren't enough or perhaps because it's all a little too much, the riddick yew list is back. and once again now hiding behind a stonewall, the white house counsel late yesterday in a letter to chairman jerry nadler called his committee proceedings baseless and highly partisan and saying, quote, accordingly under these current circumstances, we do not intend to participate in your wednesday hearing. the letter holds open the possibility of participation in future hearings, but to be real, we've heard that song before, whether it's about testifying in the impeachment hearings or

releasing his taxes or talking to the mueller investigation or having his top officials cooperate with the ukraine probe. the president always sings the exact same tune with the exact same lyrics before doing the exact opposite. >> i would love to speak. i would love to. nobody wants to speak more than me. i'd love to have mick go up, frankly. i think he'd do great. when the audit is complete, i'll release my turns. i have no problem with it. it doesn't matter. i would love to speak. i would love to go. nothing i want to do more. >> would you be willing to speak under oath to give your version of -- >> 100%. >> are you going to talk to mueller? >> i'm looking forward to it actually. >> he'd love to but -- he left a pot on the stove, got a term paper to write. ultimately the answer is always no which if he said so up front would be honest, at this point novel. the tweeted kind of a word salad on the impeachment inquiry ending with, quote, shouldn't be allowed. can we go to the supreme court to stop? cnn's jim acosta is traveling

with the president in london where the president is meeting with nato allies. the president clearly seems focused on what is happening at home even though he's over there. >> reporter: definitely, anderson. as the president was landing here in london for these meetings with nato leaders, he did tweet out his support to that republican prebuttal, rebuttal, whatever you want to call it to the house democrats intelligence committee report on what happened with ukraine. in addition to that, the president earlier in the day was latching onto these comments made by the ukrainian president to "time" magazine. in that interview, the ukrainian president said that he felt he was treated like a beggar almost in his dealings with the white house and trying to get that military aid. the president went on to say that, oh, the president of ukraine has said i didn't do anything wrong. that's not what he said. and then in addition to that, anderson, he was accusing democrats of trying to commit sabotage because they're holding this hearing on wednesday as he's meeting with nato leaders here in london. i would say it's on his mind and under his skin. >> talk what you've learned about the white house's

participation or lack thereof in the next phase of the impeachment proceedings, obviously not cooperating on wednesday. >> right. they're not going to be there on wednesday. the president will be here in london. i talked to a white house official earlier this evening who said essentially at this point the democrats are coming nowhere near meeting their demands when it comes to, you know, this criteria that they've laid out that would ensure white house participation. anderson, one of those criteria would be, you know, whether or not republicans would be able to call witnesses that they want to see testify, which would include the whistle-blower who started all of this. that's a non-starter for democrats. it's obviously not going to happen. so, anderson, at this point the white house has not closed the door on participating in these house impeachment proceedings, but it's open just a crack at this point. what they would rather see is this whole process move over to the senate where the republicans are in charge and can set the rules much more so than what they're doing in the house right now. clearly the president is in no

mood to cooperate, and a lot of democrats are saying, look, why would they cooperate at this point? that would undermine what the republicans and what the president -- they've said all along, which is that this impeachment proceeding is a hoax and not legitimate. by participating, they would add legitimacy to the process. >> jim acosta, thanks very much. just to set the timetable, the intelligence committee are expected to vote on its report tomorrow. the republican response or the rebuttal, that's out tonight. and proceedings in the judiciary committee, that begin on wednesday without presidential cooperation. so there's a lot to talk about tonight with our first guest, democratic congresswoman jackie speier. congresswoman speier, thanks for being with us. this report from republicans, they argue that the pressure president trump put on ukraine for investigations into his democratic rivals stem from a quote deep seated skepticism of ukraine due to its history of pervasive corruption. what do you say to that?

>> i think it's poppycock, and i think it is once again an effort by the president and all of the members of the house and senate on the republican side to try and weave a falsehood into a truism. it was very clear what the president wanted, and certainly the hearings we had showed how much time and energy the tres amigos, sondland and perry and volker, had to tap dance around their meetings with the president of ukraine because this investigation was critical to them getting aid or getting a meeting at the white house. and it's very true that the president of the united states knew about the whistle-blower in august. and so his lifting the hold on the aid in september was more

related to the fact that there was a whistle-blower complaint and that the inspector general had identified it to the intelligence committee although he couldn't tell us what the whistle-blower complaint was about. >> the republican rebuttal also -- i mean it just completely ignores a lot of the evidence that witnesses testified to under oath. and it essentially -- i mean they could have argued, well, you know, yes, it wasn't ideal for the president to, you know, mention the bidens in that call. you know, the call wasn't great. it wasn't perfect, but it's not impeachable. but they just went lockstep with the president demanding that -- i mean they're basically doing exactly what the president demanded. >> you know, ambassador sondland sat in that hearing room and said, yes, there was a quid pro quo. that was their witness. the appointment by the president of mr. sondland to his post, and

he's saying there was a quid pro quo. sondland also said that the only thing the president is interested in is something that will benefit himself. he doesn't care about ukraine. so that's pretty damning, and yet the republicans find a way to twist that into something that is once again a falsehood, and they say -- and the president does this too. if you say something false often enough, it becomes true in their minds. >> yeah. the republican report, it's coming out just as the democrats on the house intelligence committee are finalizing their own report, which is expected to draw probably, you know, the exact opposite conclusion of the republicans. so what are americans who are watching this at home supposed to believe when you have two competing reports from congress that draw completely contradictory conclusions? >> well, much like attorney general barr put out his summary before the mueller report came out, the republicans are putting out their rebuttal before the

actual document comes out from the intelligence committee. it is intended to confuse the american public so that they throw up their hands and say, i don't even want to deal with this. and they're effective to a certain point, but for persons who feel strongly that our democracy is at risk here, they're looking at this and realizing that this is quite dangerous. and that's why you saw that there was actually an increase in support for impeachment by independents after we held the hearings by the intelligence committee and had all those 12 witnesses come before us. >> it is -- i mean it's kind of creepy that republicans in lockstep would be so willing to essentially try to muddy the waters before this, you know, committee report comes out. i mean you'd think there would be a way to have just one committee report that has, you know, some dissension in it

without trying to just basically destroy sworn testimony. >> well, it's because the republicans aren't acting independent of the president. they are basically taking his talking points and mouthing them, and much like devin nunes was trying to create some falsehood by, you know, racing over to the white house with this information and racing back when, in fact, it was at the white house the whole time, shows you that from the very beginning, this has been orchestrated by the president in the white house. and they are just following orders. you may ask, well, why are they doing it? it's because they care more about being re-elected than they do about the state of the country. and when our national security is at risk, as it is now, when the president can withhold aid like he did to ukraine, again, doing the bidding for russia,

it's -- it's quite serious. >> the inquiry now moves from the intelligence committee to the judiciary committee. judiciary is a very different place than intel. some of the president's most ferocious defenders like doug collins, matt gaetz, jim jordan, they all serve on judiciary. how concerned are you about what happens there? >> i think what will happen there is what happened really in the intelligence committee. you're going to have experts come forward. you're going to have constitutional scholars talk about whether or not this is an impeachable offense, how you would move forward with impeachment. i mean we do have the facts in front of us. we have a whistle-blower complaint that the president himself corroborated with the summary of the phone call that establishes that there was bribery. and so at this point the republicans will make all the noise that they are able to make, but i think the facts

speak for themselves. and i feel that it's incumbent on us to make sure that the law is followed here and not the law of donald trump. >> congresswoman speier, i appreciate your time. thank you. >> thank you. coming up next, speaking of constitutional scholars, perspective from one of the nation's top lawyers and recent author of a new book on impeaching a president and his case for impeaching this one. neal katyal joins us. and a woman who now says this about the president, my heart drops to my stomach when i realize he's tweeted about me again. lisa page, whose text messages belittling candidate trump sparked a lot of conspiracy theories and ongoing attacks from the president. she's speaking out. create your own ultimate feast

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we talked about it before the break with congresswoman jackie speier. democrats already are taking issue with the republican rebuttal or the prebuttal to the house intelligence committee's now completed ukraine report.

she called it poppycock. chairman adam schiff weighing in calleding the gop effort intended for an audience of one. republicans for their part writing, and i quote, the democrats' impeachment inquiry is not the organic outgrowth of serious misconduct. it is an orchestrated campaign to upend our political system. the democrats are trying to impeach a duly elected president based on the accusations and assumptions of unelected bureaucrats who disagreed with president trump's policy initiatives and processes. let's get some perspective now from neal katyal, who served as acting solicitor general during the obama administration. he's just out with the book "impeach, the case against donald trump." the republicans' prebuttal report says there's no evidence of bribery, extortion, or any high crime or misdemeanor. your book says the opposite, that this is a straightforward case of a core impeachable offense. >> exactly. so, anderson, you know, i wrote

the book as a simple guide for americans to understand what's going on. and it begins by asking the question, why is impeachment in the constitution? a lot of our founders like l. bridge garry said it shouldn't be in there at all because we have re-election campaigns and that should be enough to check an erring president. and others like madison and hamilton said, what if you have a president who is beholden to a foreign power? what if you have a president who tries to interwifere with an election. so i don't quite understand the republicans' report or their talking points to say there's zero evidence of this. i mean the president's own transcript, a fake transcript, whatever, a partial transcript itself says exactly that. and i think the most important thing for everyone to understand is this is not about impeaching a president with people who have

policy differences. for me, i am aghast at the president's child separation policy. i find it so immoral and evil, but i don't think that's an impeachable offense. our founders used the words "high crimes and misdemeanors." and as the book explains, this ukraine situation is exactly that. >> so what exactly is a high crime or misdemeanor? >> so our founders used the phrase "treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors." so bribery, we know, is one of them. and bribery is exactly what the president is alleged to have done here. >> that's what i was going to ask. you think this is a case of bribery? >> i do. that's one of the three articles that i think has already been proven by the hearings that we've had and the transcript that was released. the president was saying, look, i'll give you this goody, this aid that the taxpayers have aprop rated and i'm holding up, but in exchange you've got to do something for me first. the simplest way to understand, anderson, what the president was

asking for is this. he was trying to cheat in the 2020 election. he was trying to get a leg up on his political rival by having them announce that they were doing an investigation into joseph biden, the vice president. now, that is just -- i mean, you know, the republican defense that we heard today in this 120-page report is, oh, no, the president cared about corruption. that's what he was worried about. but if you -- and he was convinced that ukraine was corrupt. if you're convinced ukraine is corrupt, then why do you go ask the ukrainian government to go investigate a united states citizen? it just didn't make any sense at all. what i think everyone knows and what was apparent in these last two weeks of hearings is that this was not about corruption. it was about one simple thing. the president wanted them to announce an investigation, not even to do it the way justice department investigations are done, which is in secret, but announce an investigation. >> we should also point out that

once you saw all the testimony not only of ambassador yovanovich but others in that embassy, u.s. policy was an anti-corruption policy in ukraine. so it's not as if president trump is raising for the first time the idea of fighting corruption in ukraine. this has been u.s. policy, and it's something that the embassy was already doing to the best they could, or least making efforts. >> absolutely. nobody disputes the idea that ukraine has corruption issues, but the president's own administration had certified just weeks before that ukraine wasn't so corrupt that the aid couldn't flow. so they had already signed off on that. and of course then the president tried to cut funding for corruption efforts, anti-corruption efforts in ukraine. so basically they're left with this story that they're trying to fight corruption when they have literally no example anywhere else in the world of the president caring about corruption. this is the one thing, and it just happens to be magically

that this involves his chief political rival, joe biden. >> what do you make of the white house strategy, a, its effectiveness, and, b, its legality in terms of not cooperating at all, no documents from the state department, from the white house other than that rough transcript which they released early on? >> well, you know, i dedicated my life to the study of the constitution, and i didn't know that the president's strategy here was a thing. i didn't think it was possible. i mean the idea that a president on his own can unilaterally say, oh, i'm not going to bother cooperating with an impeachment investigation, that is the essence of constitutional arrogance and the destruction of our separation of powers. i think it is an impeachable offense just the way the president has acted towards this impeachment investigation, and we know this because yesterday the president's lawyer, the white house counsel, sent a

letter to congress saying this is a ridiculous investigation, saying that presidents in the past have claimed executive privilege to not cooperate, including he names clinton. clinton never did that. i mean clinton never asserted executive privilege over the impeachment investigation. and indeed, you know, past presidents like polk in 1846 said executive privilege has nothing to do with this. impeachment is all about getting the truth out to the american people and all the information. this president is afraid of the truth coming out in congress. so he's tried to gag every executive branch employee, every document, every phone call, everything from being given to the congress. i can't think of something that is more destructive to our constitution. >> neal katyal, it's fascinating. thank you very much. the book is "impeach, the case against donald trump." appreciate it. former fbi lawyer lisa page routinely castigated by president trump after her text messages criticizing him became public, breaks her silence.

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as we mentioned at the top of the program, former fbi lawyer lisa page is breaking her silence roughly two years after the public disclosure of those highly critical text messages expressing mutual dislike of president trump between her and then senior fbi agent peter strzok. page spoke to "the daily beast" and tweeted, quote, i'm done being quiet. president trump late today tweeting, when lisa page, the lover of peter strzok, talks about being crushed and how innocent she is, ask her to read peter's insurance policy text to her just in case hillary loses. the president tweeted, he also

added, also why were the lovers text messages scrubbed after he left mueller. where are they, lisa? more now on all of it from 360's randi kaye. >> reporter: this was the moment former fbi lawyer lisa page realized she'd had enough. >> i love you, peter. i love you too, lisa. lisa, i love you. lisa, lisa, oh, god, i love you, lisa. >> reporter: the president of the united states mimicking a sexually aroused lisa page texting her then-lover fbi special agent peter strzok. the two were having an affair while strzok was leading the investigation into the trump campaign and russian interference in the 2016 election. page spoke with "the daily beast" in her first public interview since thousands of the couple's private text messages were made public, saying the president's demeaning fake orgasm was the straw that broke the camel's back, calling it a reprehensible, degrading stunt. for two years, trump has been on

a tear against page and strzok, given the anti-trump comments revealed in their text messages. in august 2016, page wrote, trump's not ever going to become president, right? right? strzok answers, no, no he won't. we'll stop it. and after trump won the white house, strzok texted page. omg, i am so depressed. page responded, i don't know if i can eat. i am very nauseous. still despite the tone, there is no evidence as trump and his allies have suggested that page and strzok were part of a conspiracy to bring down trump's presidency. page told "the daily beast" she doesn't really use social media, that her friends alert her to the president's digs. in august last year, the president tweeted, will the fbi ever recover its once stellar reputation so badly damaged by comey, mccabe, peter s., and his lover, the lovely lisa page, adding the great men and women of the fbi have been hurt by

these clowns and losers. in this tweet a month earlier, he refers to lisa page not as an fbi lawyer but as an fbi lover. page told "the daily beast" it had been so hard not to defend myself, to let people who hate me control the narrative. page said, it's like being punched in the gut. my heart drops to my stomach when i realize he has tweeted about me again. she added trump is demeaning her and her career, calling it sickening. trump also accused page of treason, which is punishable by death. page told "the daily beast" it's intimidating, insisting she didn't commit any crime let alone treason. page explained the president is still somebody in a position to actually do something about that, to try to further destroy my life. lisa page, who left the fbi last year, says all she wants is her life back, but that's unlikely to happen anytime soon. next week, the justice department inspector general report will be released,

detailing whether trump was unfairly targeted by the intelligence community in the russia probe. randi kaye, cnn, palm beach, florida. >> perspective now from kirsten powers as well as susan hennessey, a former lawyer for the national security agency and a cnn national security and legal analyst. she's also a friend of lisa page's. susan, i know you don't speak for lisa page, but in your opinion, how important is it for her to finally be speaking out? >> i think it's incredibly important for her to be speaking out for a couple reasons. one, i do think it's important that people understand the huge personal toll that the president's really degrading, demeaning, disgusting attacks, you know, take on people. these are real people, people who have served their country over a period of decades. and to have him act like this in public, it has a real cost, and the public needs to understand that. i also think it's significant that page is telling her story now about what doj did, about their involvement in essentially

selectively leaking text messages under circumstances that certainly raise the appearance that they were not doing so because it was in the public interest but instead that this was doj senior officials, doj spokespeople attempting to essentially give the president fodder to pick up this false and malicious narrative and really attempt to destroy these people's lives. >> kirsten, i wonder what do you make of this? she has remained silent for years as randi pointed out in her piece. in her interview she talks about how the final straw was president trump at that october rally, you know, seemingly, you know, sort of -- well, reading the texts as he did. what do you make of it? >> well, i mean i think that what she did, the texts, i think, were inappropriate, but nothing that she did merits what's happened to her. especially because the inspector general found that there wasn't any, you know, bias. i mean she didn't -- there was nothing in her work that would

suggest that she was doing anything, you know, and in fact even on the hillary clinton investigation, she was more aggressive than some of the other people in terms of pursuing clinton. so it doesn't seem to have impacted her work, and so people are just sort of selectively choosing the texts, which are just her expressing her personal opinions. i think they're inappropriate, but i don't think it gives the president the right to bully her, which is really what he's doing. i mean he is destroying this woman's life, and she's still with her husband, i gather. she has children. she has every right to get on with her life. you know, she had an affair. that's a private issue, and certainly president trump is in no position to be sitting in judgment of that. >> susan, do you think that page has been particularly targeted by the president because she's a woman? >> i do. i think it's sort of indisputable that there is this clear misogynistic undertone, not just that the president speaks about her in sort of

overtly sexualized terms or terms that discuss her physical appearance, he doesn't discover other individuals in this stuff the same way. and so i do think that it's quite clear that the president is expressly targeting her for a particular type of really debasing, degrading comments in part because she is a woman. let's keep in mind this is a serious, seasoned national security professional. this is somebody who has a lot of substance, is a really, really serious person. and yet the only way the president refers to her as the lovely lisa page, the lover, he really does sort of degrade her and demean her, and that's a trend we've seen him -- that's a pattern we've seen from the president with regards to any woman who really would dare to speak out against him or challenge him in any way. >> kirsten, do you agree with that? do you see kind of a way he speaks about women that is different? because obviously he degrades many people. >> yeah. >> male and female, but does he speak about women in a different way that you notice? >> yeah, absolutely. people can say, oh, he's an

equal opportunity offender because he also attacks men, but susan is exactly right. there's a way that he attacks women that is different, that tends to be gendered in the way that he does it. and this is so disproportionate to what happened also. there's so many tweets about this woman who, you know, has a family and a life and a career. and the glee that he has -- and not just with her, with other people, and really in like trying to destroy people is so troubling. there was a time when we would say this is unpresidential, but i guess people don't even seem to care anymore. his supporters don't care, you know, how unpresidential this is and how indecent it is. this is just not how we should treat people. >> people in the white house has said it's presidential because the president does it. so therefore this is now presidential. >> yeah, well, i would say we had a lot of other presidents, and so we don't change our entire standard based on one person's behavior.

i would look at the history of how people have typically behaved and this is absolutely unthinkable of any other president doing something like this. >> thanks so much. appreciate it. just ahead, popular defense of president trump has just gone up in smoke according to a new report. i'm talk with a former republican congressman -- excuse me -- republican senator and congressman who also served as defense secretary about how his party has come to embrace conspiracy theories under this president. with advil, you have power over pain, so the whole world looks different.

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politico tonight is reporting the republican-led senate intelligence committee has found no evidence to support a key claim by the president's top defenders on impeachment. the claim, which has always been unfounded, is that it wasn't just individual ukrainians opposed to then-candidate trump or his policies. it was a top-down effort just like with russia. here's republican senator john kennedy, who already had to walk back a separate ukraine conspiracy theory, making this other claim over the weekend. >> i think both russia and ukraine meddled in the 2016 election. the fact that russia was so aggressive does not exclude the fact that president

poroshenko -- >> yeah. >> -- actively worked for secretary clinton. >> again, politico reports the senate intelligence committee investigated but found no evidence ukraine's then leaders directed any kind of effort against candidate trump, none. interesting senator kennedy was asked if that same interview if he had attended a recent intelligence briefing for u.s. senators that explained that russia was using conspiracy theories to frame ukraine. no, he said, he did not attend. joining us now is former republican senator william cohen who served as defense secretary under president clinton. as a freshman member of the house during watergate, you broke with republicans and played a crucial role. when you see what is happening today, when republicans bind to conspiracy theories to back the president, i'm wondering what goes through your mind about where the republican party is, at least in the house. >> well, it's disappointing. i go back 40 years and look at the members of the committee.

there were great differences between the republicans and the democrats, but there were republicans on the committee who were willing to listen to the facts and to follow where the facts would lead. and they lead to the impeachment of richard nixon on abuse of power and obstruction of justice. there was another obstruction of congress as well. i saw the same kind of republican spirit of following the law during iran-contra. once again, the facts really mattered. and now it seems that facts don't really matter, that they have the, quote, alternative fact mantra that is recited repeatedly. there is only one set of facts. you can have different opinions about what those facts mean, but only one set. now what i see is the equivalent of sort of pepper spray being used to blind the eyes of the people from seeing what the facts are. i saw no evidence presented during any of these committee hearings, and i believe that's the case with the senate investigation as well, that indicated that ukraine had any

organized attempt to interfere. what i do remember is president clinton, when he was candidate trump, rather, when he said, russia, are you listening? russia, are you listening? well, they were listening. four hours after he made that speech, the gru got involved in trying to attack the democratic headquarters and their campaign. now it's a question of ukraine, you better be listen. and that is exactly what took place here. quid pro quo, people are tired of hearing it. but basically it's saying the president in essence was saying, i have something that you need. you have something that i want. let's make a deal. you go first. that is the essence of what has taken place. >> yeah. >> with ukraine. so those are the facts, and i don't care what others say that the ukrainians were somehow involved or biden's son was somehow involved. the facts are very clear that the president invited another country to participate in our

electoral system. that, to me, is an impeachable offense. >> you're also obviously the former secretary of defense. what does it say about the state of the republican party and frankly national security when republicans claim ukraine interfered in the 2016 election, which is a russian conspiracy theory? i mean you talk about the senators and congresspeople in watergate. i imagine those republicans who you said but then were listening to the facts. they must have been facing pressure in their home districts by people who supported nixon, didn't want to, you know, see nixon go down. how were they able to muster the courage to listen to facts when these folks don't seem to be? >> well, it was a different world then. we didn't have social media. we didn't have one network devoted to defending the president. so it was a different world, but nonetheless, they felt compelled to rise above their own party interests and put the country first, and that really is what's at stake here. yes, this is about trump and the

impeachment of trump. but really what's at stake is the rule of law because the president has said the rules don't apply to him, that he can't be charged with anything, that he can't even be investigated. so what we're talking about is one-man rule. that's not democracy. that is something closer to autocracy or certainly to a dictatorship. i don't believe the american people, once they listen to all of the facts, will say, that's the standard we want. no rules applied to any president going forward. i don't believe the american people support that. i think it's incumbent upon the democrats, because the republicans are not going to join in, incumbent on the democrats to make the case that we don't want to throw away all that we have accumulated over the years. the rule of law is what separates us from the law of rule, the law of the jungle, of might makes right. if we succumb to this notion that the president is above the law, then i think we are sacrificing the democratic system, and america will not be the country we thought it is or

should be. >> i appreciate your time. thank you. >> my pleasure. still ahead, something different. the ridiculist, a look at how devoted president trump is to images of -- guess who? president trump. be right back. i'm a verizon engineer, and i'm part of the team building the most powerful 5g experience for america. it's 5g ultra wideband-- --for massive capacity-- --and ultra-fast speeds. almost 2 gigs here in minneapolis. that's 25 times faster than today's network in new york city. so people from midtown manhattan-- --to downtown denver-- --can experience what our 5g can deliver. (woman) and if verizon 5g can deliver performance like this in these places... it's pretty crazy. ...just imagine what it can do for you. ♪

he borrowed billions donald trump failed as a businessman. and left a trail of bankruptcy and broken promises. he hasn't changed. i started a tiny investment business, and over 27 years, grew it successfully to 36 billion dollars. i'm tom steyer and i approve this message. i'm running for president because unlike other candidates, i can go head to head with donald trump on the economy, and expose him fo what he is: a fraud and a failure.

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welcome back. time to check in with chris to see what he's working on for "cuomo prime time." >> we are going to try to get inside the facts that show the obvious, that this president is peddling conspiracy theories to the american people just as a cya. this stuff about ukraine isn't new, it's never been real and new reporting of who came to

exactly that conclusion? senate republicans, that the gop was telling the truth right before this process. why? >> we'll watch chris eight minutes from now. coming up, something to make us all smile at the end of the day, the ridiculist is next. (alarm beeping) welcome to our busy world. where we all want more energy. but with less carbon footprint. can we have both? at bp, we're working every day to make energy that's cleaner and better. and we see possibilities everywhere. to make energy that's cleaner and better. the holidays are here and so is t-mobile's newest, most powerful signal. and we want to keep you connected to those you love, with the new iphone 11. so t-mobile is giving you an iphone 11 on us for each new line of unlimited. for yourself, or up to a family of four. keep your family connected, and hurry into t-mobile today, to get up to four iphone 11's on us.

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at bp, we see possibilities everywhere. by turning garbage into jet fuel. [fa♪mers bell] (burke) a "rock and wreck." seen it. covered it. at farmers insurance, we know a thing or two because we've seen a thing or two. ♪ we are farmers. bum-pa-dum, bum-bum-bum-bum ♪ tonight not since narcissus has a guy been so in love with his own image than president trump. today the president tweeted -- actually, it was more like a yell. is there a yell tweet? i'll go with twell.

president trump found time today to retweet a portrait of himself. the portrait is very good, an artist who spent 70 hours drawing only with ball point pen. he's from nigeria, where president trump said people there only live in huts. this artist might be able to soon get a visa to america. maybe soon everyone who wants a visa to america will have to draw a picture of our president or of stephen miller. much have been made of dictators and authoritarian figures. like most of them he does love a picture of himself. just last week, days after attacking maria yovanovitch for not hanging up his portrait in the u.s. embassy, which is not at all what happened, the president tweeted this

photoshopped image of him as rocky, which is totally what his chest looks like. he is jacked and he's ripped i've seep the photos of him playing tennis. by the way, do not google trump playing tennis. just don't. it like "the ring," like that movie, you can't unsee it. anyway, it was just last month -- yeah, i put on my glasses mid ridiculist. it was just last month that a judge ordered mr. trump's defunct so-called found ace to pay $2 million to charities as part of a settlement with new york attorney general's office because they had do shady things, including using funds to buy two giant portraits of donald trump. that's one of him. i believe that's the artist on the other side. the alleged charity supposedly paid $10,000 for that portrait and hung it at the president's doral, florida golf course. not exactly mother teresa's orphanage.

and there's this phony "time" magazine cover. with trump's face and a headline about how great "the apprentice" was. it's hard to believe the idea didn't come to the president himself. it's the kind of thing a con man would do or feels unimportant. i know trump does have a fake master piece by the french artist renoir hanging in his new york apartment. it's a bad copy of the painting "two sisters." the real one, which is worth probably in the range of $100 million is in the art institute of chicago. mr. trump has in the past insisted his phony renoir is the real deal, which may tell you something about how he views the entire deal making process. and not in a good way. maybe the president's interest of seeing his own face on tv and in magazines will lessen in the coming years but how many billionaires turned presidents egos have shrunk over time? me neither.

so take out your pens and pencils. so make a picture of the president and it might get you a cameo on the ridiculist. that's it for us. i turn it over to chris for primetime. >> thank you, anderson. i am chris cuomo and this is "prime time." we have two new pieces of reporting that reveal that republicans were well aware of this ukraine nonsense and they looked into it in their senate intel committee. what were the results? we have them. and we're going to dig into a troubling question tonight. did this call that the president claims vindicates him with eu ambassador sondland, did it ever happen? why that's a real question. and a democratic senator with a state of play in the senate.