soon. the news continues. i'll hand it over to chris for "primetime." >> thank you very much. i am chris cuomo. welcome to "prime time." new evidence of what i hope is getting to be pretty obvious by now. a clear timeline of what happened to aid to ukraine and when. we also have a primetime exclusive on a central player into the investigation into these rogue players around rudy giuliani. we have a newish name and a scary game afoot. now, this is it for me until after christmas so happy hanukkah, blessed nights for you you all, blessed christmas. show the love to everyone around, we need it now. we thank all of you for the gift of your time and attention. what do you say? let's get after it. tonight we can clearly say

that we know that the decision to withhold military aid money from ukraine was made at practically the same time that this president of working the phones to get what he wanted from ukraine. how do we know? look at this e-mail. officially ordering the money to be frozen. it was sent just 91 minutes after trump hung up with zelensky. fact and contest. trump's own people sent signals at the same time that they were doing this that the situation was dicey. how do we know? his political appointee mike duffy wrote, quote, i appreciate your keeping that information closely held. why? why be so quiet about withholding aid to ukraine? fact, just days after congress found out about the whistle-blower, the white house was informed about the whistle-blower. remember the timeline.

even before congress came asking, they knew there's reporting that even the president was aware of the whistle-blower. when do they do? when congress comes, they abrought abruptly make the decision to release the money. why such a quick turn around? folks at the dod were asking what happened? we don't know what mr. duffy's answer was. but we know he was, quote, glad to have this behind us why would you be glad to have something behind you that happens all the time, according to the white house? now, the omb spokeswoman argues to pull a line out of one e-mail and fail to address the context is misleading and inaccurate. fair enough. but help us. these people won't tell you anything about the facts. i don't think there's neg misleading about this analysis. i think it's leading right up to where they missed. they missed the opportunity to

keep this clean because it wasn't. request for testimony. request for documents. tell us about the process that went into freezing the money. they won't. the white house wants none of it out, even as our president says he's the most transparent. think about this. how likely is it that you, let alone a president, would keep people and papers hidden if they were helpful to your cause. they thought the call summary was perfect. clearly their idea about that call being perfect is a con. we're only seeing this now by the way -- don't say, well, look, they put it out finally. let argue about timing. no, journalists use the law, the freedom of information act, to get it released. this wasn't done voluntarily. they had to do it. they were compelled. there are more documents like this coming in january. again, whether it's the president or mr. giuliani or any

of the defenders, if you have evidence that makes what you did okay, this alibi that the president suggests, give it to your pals in the senate for the trial. come on the show. i'll give you all the time you want to lay it out. why? we only know what you show. so far the body of information here is neutral to negative and the facts matter. that's the new information tonight. house armed services committee member john garamendi led a bipartisan delegation to ukraine soon after the impeachment wrierry was announced. the california democrat is going to join us now to get perspective on the state of play. welcome to "prime time." >> good to be with you, chris. >> one step towards the facts first. garamendi, whether it was when

he was overseeing insurance to the stay, you say i don't like this, this and this. in fact, i have somebody that will tell you, congressman, that you don't have it right. when is it ever the chance that it not produced when it's helpful information? >> if you're being charged with something, you'll do everything you can to put out the information that will exonerate you. keep in mind this president, which you just said so very, very well a moment ago, has done exactly the opposite. he has hid every piece of information, he has put the muzzle on anybody that could provide information. fact of the matter is, he's hiding because there is no exoneration. he's as guilty by his own word, by his transcript, incomplete as it is, this man is guilty as charged. >> the situation we argue here all the tile, tme, the facts li to create a pretty clear picture

of wrong doing. a couple of points strategic and a little bit substantive on the democrats' side. one, the first stick you'll get hit with at the senate will be is you guys are in sufficient a rush. you're not even waiting for it. was that a mistake to bypass the litigation phase? >> i don't think so. if you go back and review what the president has done, the subpoenas that he's ignored at every level, the white house, the office of management and budget, the state department as well as the department of defense, they've simply ignored all the subpoenas. how do you get those enforced? you've got to go through the courts. that could take forever and a day. the information that was available in the witnesses that did testify both in the evidentiary process of the intelligence committee and then before the full judiciary

committee, it is very, very clear that the president engaged in an extortion, in a bribe trying to get ukraine to put information forward, false as it might be, to somehow help him in the campaign. that's very, very clear. those are the charges. >> but when you know that the country's divided, clarity is at a premium, that if you had the big voices who had to know what happened testify, it would be a very hard to argue one of the main arguments now, which is incompleteness of record. >> well, the record actually is quite complete in and of itself. are there more facts to be forthcoming? absolutely. and that's what the trial is. keep in mind the role of the house and congress, our house is to lay out the charges as best we can. and we did. not only in the indictment or in

the impeachment itself, but also in 600 pages of additional testimony that went along with that. >> fair point. the articles of people are just the allegations. i get you. how about this one. withholding them looks like gamesmanship at best and a little bit of a cynical overreach at worst. i guess the arguments of being unsure about the senate, but that's their duty. is it the house's duty to oversee whether the senate does its duty? >> given what we have found out, given the evidence that was in the testimony, in the hearings, it is absolutely essential that the senate conduct a fair and thorough trial. you would not want to go to any court in the united states charged with whatever it is and as a prosecutor and simply have the defense say, oh, it's over, he's not guilty, let's go home. no, you want the facts in the trial and that's what nancy

pelosi is attempting to lay out a fair process in the trial taking place in the senate. >> what do you say to the folks in the home district? they've known you a long time in that state. when they're like, geez, john, you know, was this really that big a deal that you had to impeach the president? i mean, you guys, do you just hate him? is that what it is? when you get a new fact like 90 minutes after he got off the phone with zelensky, they froze the aid. >> i will tell you one. most conservative fellas i know, a police officer, came up to me in the grocery store just yesterday and came up and saturday haven't seen you for a while, how are you doing, and then he whispered to me, "your vote was right, impeach him." this is a very conservative fellow. that's why the polls are saying

you've got to have the evidence presented at the trial. yes, the allegations have been made, the charges are there, that's the impeachment. now the trial. nobody, nobody can imagine a trial without evidence being presented, either exculpatory evidence, he's not guilty or, yeah, he's guilty as could be. that's what the trial ought to be. >> the helpful fact is that we've seen 60 to 70% of americans and a pretty decent amount of crossover relatively speaking on the republican side that we think something here was wrong and we think we should hear from other people. the american people do not like things hidden from them nor should they. what else do we see? could be the economy. may not be. trump's moving up. he's doing better and better against your top candidates running for the nominee. does it give you concern that people see this as overreach? >> well, i'm reminded of a certain vice presidential

candidate who said to me you give me the credit card and i'll show you a good time, too. we're looking at a trillion dollars pumped into the economy, an enormous fiscal boost from the federal government. it is all debt being pumped into the economy. all that, yeah, you're going to have a great economy money will it last forever? no, every economist will say it isn't. and there are things maybe not in the short terms but in the days ahead or months ahead but clearly this economy is being bo boosted by deficit sending that we haven't seen since the great cash in 2009. trump will benefit from that and so are americans. do keep in mind it an uneven economy, it's one in which the rich get richer and the working men and women continue to

struggle to keep a roof over their head and food and their kid going to college. >> but as we know, politics is often when it comes to economic, it's about your own wallet and green arrow, red arrow. congressman, i appreciate you making it on this show. the best to you and your family for christmas. thank you for being a gift to the show. >> thank you, merry christmas, happy hanukkah, have a great week. >> i celebrate them all. john garamendi, thank you very. rudy giuliani talking to the media, we'll talk about what is put out there. however, we stick on this show where the facts take us. it crazy but let's stake to the fact. we have more information about a criminal suspect who may have been messed up with rude eye, what the ties are, what it tells us. a "prime time" exclusive with vicky ward next.

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okay. so by now you know the name lev parnas. you know one of his associates, igor fruman. these two men we know are linked to rudy giuliani and they have an involvement in what was happening in ukraine. but there's another name you may have heard or may not. the name is david correa. who is he? businessman. had nothing to do with giuliani, it was about money they gave to campaign on the western parts of the united states that was going on. they've all played not guilty. coria is facing one count of

illegally funneling foreign money into political circles. where did the money come from? what was it supposed to be used for? where else may it have been used? vicky ward is here, exclusive new information about this situation. david correa, why do i care? >> because he's the money guy. and he's also been invisible kind of until now because there was only one count in the indictment against lev parnas and fruman but david correa, according to texts that i have seen, was involved in using the political operation that lev parnas and igor fruman were conducting, the dirt digging in ukraine, david correa's job was to commercialize all of that. i have a text that shows him setting up business meetings in ukraine for a trip that lev parnas and fruman took last

winter can david correa to dig up dirt on joe biden at rudy giuliani's request. >> so they're looking for dirt on biden. that gives them some cache because they're telling people i'm close to lockheed martin, i -- rudy giuliani, what does that allow them to do? >> their main objective it would seem from the text, they wanted to try to find a way to sell liquified natural gas into ukraine via poland. that was the main objective. they actually would take meetings with other people, too. there was a libyan scheme as well. but it was all about using the new political contacts for business correa, if you like, shows us the hidden agenda.

who was . >> who was aware of this and why was it wrong? >> there is a connection between david correa and rudy giuliani. they would have these meetings in the trump hotel in washington in a private room in the blt restaurant there. what one of the texts shows us is that david correa had the inside track on what sol oomon s going to say. the column was headlined "joe biden's 2020 ukraine nightmare."

>> the fact of correa knowing about the effort to get dirt on the bidens, that matters why? >> well, because until now it seems that he was somehow separated from this whole geo political -- >> i'm just a businessman, i don't have anything to do with it. >> right. he was the only sort of american-born, university educated -- he was the one who kind of got these -- the meetings. you know, somebody who was in a meeting with firtash, the ukraine oligarch. >> with the connections to putin. >> the connections to putin, who is facing extradition to the united states to are bribefor b charges. his lawyers took a meeting and it gave fruman plausibility because of his appearance, his education, his formality.

interestingly dmitri firtash is the one sort of time with all the business scheming that david correa was the plan was paid off to some extent. >> correa's got counsel. what is his response to the idea he was connected more to this political part than before understood? >> his lawyers are not commenting. we've put the no commenting only. tex messages. he obviously pled not guilty along with the others. i think what's super interesting is that he sent a text in october right around the time that the whistle-blower, the reports were all coming out that he was in dubai. he told two sources he was in dubai to close a deal with firtash. in his text messages he says the phone starts to ring and ring, it becomes extremely stressful to him and two days later lev parnas and igor fruman were

indicted and he came back to jfk and turned himself in. >> what is the connection to fruman, to parnas, and did any of it go to rudy? that information continues? >> more to come. >> thank you, the best to you and the family. >> merry christmas. >> and thank you for the gift of the reporting. appreciate it. >> all right, so, what's the state of play? one of the problems with this process is you keep learning more information but the process has moved past the investigatory phase. look, the democratic congressman is right, articles of impeachment are just a set of allegations that are supposed to be tried in the senate. now that's gotten a little cloudy here because of pelosi holding back the articles and people arguing about that, but congress has opened the door, all right? let's bring in cuomo's court and have it out next. what'd we decide on the flyers again?

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one of the main defenses in the ukraine scandal is that it happens all the time. not true. one of the witnesses says that george soros is employing all the fbi agents. and rudy giuliani says that

soros is hardly a jew and he's more of a jew than soros is. we need to why why they're spreading this toxic propaganda. jimmy, i love you and i tefeel d i'm about to beat you about the head and neck about this allegation. you've been clear on this show, you don't understand why rudy giuliani has been involved, you don't understand why he said what he has said. to have the president's lawyer saying this is part of the soros conspiracy and that's what's going on in ukraine and that's why they had to be involved, do you buy any of that? >> look, the only thing that he said in that interview that i can confirm is that george soros did put in a number of district attorneys across the country in places like philadelphia, the

district attorney here and it been a complete disaster. >> when you say put him in, you mean supported his election? it called donations. it not like he's got a velvet glove -- >> when you have enough money, it going to happen. the district attorney here in philadelphia is tearing the city apart. that being said, i don't think that has any bearing on what's going on as it relates to the ukraine scandal. and i just don't get the argument there. i don't get why he did the interview why he did, why he's having drinks during the interview. none of that makes sense to me. there's not much to say there. >> well, there's not much to say to justify it, i'll give you that. just to be clear, i have invited mr. giuliani on repeatedly to show him any proof of his

allegations, i'll give him more time that anybody. jennifer, here's the genius of it, soros isn't a jew, he's more of a jew than him. 90 minutes after you get off the phone with zelensky, you had a chains of communication stopping the aid to ukraine. materiality? >> oh, of course. this is exactly what is happening. every piece of actual evidence and information that's coming out is more and more damaging to the president. and there's a lot more yet to come because of course we haven't heard from some of the critical witnesses. giuliani is out trying to spin these false, alternative narratives. i've got evidence, i won't show you. if it existed, we would have seen it before impeachment. >> and just to be clear, rudy giuliani, i've known him most of

my adult life, we come from the same place. you don't talk like that about people of any faith, of any persuasion and he knows it and it ugly. i'm not saying it doesn't matter, i'm saying it doesn't matter in this investigation because it's a distraction. both you and i know and jennifer, too, god forbid anyone ever has a malicious question put out about us and you have proof it not true and you have someone who can come in and say it didn't happen that way, and i know for a fact everybody provides this information. where's bolton, where's mulvaney, where's the chain of communications, where's the proof of the september 9th call? >> chris, all we have is the fact that -- fine, let's take at face value that that happened. so it happened. there's been no discrepancy the

aid with withheld here. >> they have said that they didn't withhold the aid. they've argued that. >> certainly there was aid that was withheld here, but tying that directly to this, they haven't done. and, chris, you're a lawyer. eget it. the burden is on the prosecution to prove his case. the burden isn't on the president to prove his innocence. >> this is not a court of law. >> the democrat want to call it a court of law. >> i don't care what they want to call it. they can call it a tomato. >> that's the argument usual making here. >> no, we want the truth, jimmy. >> no matter how you look at it, it's incumbent upon the house at this point to get enough votes in the senate to convict. and they didn't put on a case -- >> they haven't put on a case. jennifer, jimmy knows this and i

give him point for rhetorical -- >> they haven't put on a case yet. >> they're not supposed to put on a case. jennifer rodgers, what is the duty of house in this situation, common speak for people? >> they need to present the evidence they collected during their phase of the proceedings. 17 witnesses, a bunch of documents and text messages turned over voluntarily. the problem is evidence continues to come in. even through the trial you're investigating, adding evidence as you get it. a lot of evidence is missing. normally you don't have the defendant in a position to withhold meaningful evidence from the prosecutors. you're usually able to get that information pursuant to lawful subpoenas. here those lawful subpoenas were blocked in a complete stonewall by the administration for the first time ever. the house is going to present what they're collected but they're also entitled to push for more evidence that the

president is withholding and they should do that. >> putting on the case is supposed to happen by design in the senate. >> i heard a congressman just call it an indictment a couple of minutes on your show. i also ahead him mention bribery a couple of minutes ago on your show. that's what congress is saying. there was no charge of bribery here. not even close. >> it doesn't have to be. they say he abused his power. >> a congressman who voted for impeachment is now voting for bribery but that was never charged. >> jimmy, you're better than this. if you read article i of the -- i'll answer. i'll answer. i'll answer. i'm answer. >> that didn't appear. they have abuse of power -- >> jimmy, you're like me, i can't believe we're not brothers. i love when you ask me a question and you don't let me apes it.

that's my technique. what i'm saying is in article i of the peeflimpeachment, if you it, they describe the solicitation of a bribe. they don't charge it. don't play games. we're not in court. this is a political trial -- >> they just call it that on tv because they can say whatever they want on tv. when the rubber hit the road, they didn't have it. >> we have all of them say the same thing on the show, jimmy. if we said bribery, guys like you who are clever and educated would have picked apart the case and the element of bribebribery. >> and rightfully so because they don't have it. this is what we should agree on, we should agree on this, the people deserve to know who and what explains what what happened here. if you have the people at the top that supposedly exonerate the president, let them come

out, so people can see he's clear and we move on but he's stopping that from happening. >> and the president has a right to object to subpoenas and that's what he's done here. and you know what? there's a process that goes through the courts if they want to. it was big, hurry up, this is urgent. >> there's also a concept in the law called frivolous lawsuits, frivolous lawsuits. >> this is not a frivolous lawsuit. >> has a colorful claim and an argument to be made before the cour courts. >> he has no claim. >> the judge laughed at it. with mcgahn they're saying don't go through the courts. >> now it's impeachment they want to pull mcgahn into it now? >> no, no, no, no hold on. now they want mcgahn. you can finish it but i'm striking it from the record. this is going to be the last

word on this. the republicans and defenders of the president are arguing right now that courts shouldn't make a decision about mcgahn and by extension other cases because they would be in fact weighing in on an impeachment argument. they're having it both ways. it not fair. but you are fair to be on the show and make your case, i love you for it. thank you, jennifer rodgers, always a pleasure to have you here. the best to your families for the holidays. >> tricky jimmy. >> you, too, chris. >> could impeachment help the president politically? we're seeing the suggestion of that in numbers. it worth looking at. what are the risks, what is the exposure? how do these three fine mind see it? we'll get the breakdown next. s. now with 25% more concentrated power. nothing works faster for powerful cold relief. oh, what a relief it is! so fast!

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all right, we have a new poll, cnn. this is what it finds, biden leading trump 49-44, head to head, national null. b -- number. couple things, that's a national number. when you look state by state, especially the important states, very tight to trump looking better. and biden's national number narrowing. also true, in other head-to-head polls with other top tier democrats. even as this president is about to go on trial, i guess, as a u.s. senate, he may be getting stronger. why? good to have each and all the best and blessings to your families for the holing days.

thank you for all you do for the audience on this show. appreciate it. brother louis, what's your read on the poll contraction? >> well, listen, i'm sure joe biden and his team would love to be up ten points, up point to where they were during the summer. the reality is you take a pounding in some of these debates it's a, wh debates, when the unified message is investigate joe biden, which was to knock him down a little. what really matters is will the democrats unite around a candidate? if that candidate is biden, i suspect those numbers will look a little different. >> i agree with errol in part and the central question. but, finney, it n's not just biden, karen finney.

it's happening across the board, especially in the states you need to win. what is your take? >> there's a lot of volatility. every poll we've done here at cnn, we've seen with the voters between the various candidate, i think once we have the nominee, it will start to look different. i do think the democratic party is going to unify behind whoever the nominee is because i think people recognize the mistake of 2016 thinking, oh, hillary is going to win so i can go ahead and vote for somebody else is a dangerous thing to think. i think it also the case that we're in december and we don't net know what kind of impack the president will have once we start this proceeding in january. and once he is back out there tweeting day after day and, frankly, stepping on his own positive message, although i don't agree him about the economy, that the economy is doing better.

i would never underestimate his own ability to do that. >> waj, i've sat with you on set many times and seen you shake your head with numbers of the democratic party. what does it mean to you? >> i don't agree that trump is strong. there was a blue wave in the midterm elections. republicans lost. he's only the third president in this nation's history to be impeached. nearly half of america wants him impeached and removed, which is stunning. 61% of women want him out and i will say this again on your show, i will eat crow if i'm wrong. i think women will be the force that take him out in 2020. impeachment drives him nuts. just from today, he's attacking wind mills, he's attacking women, he's attacking congressman dingell. this is going to linger on. >> listen, i hear you, you've

always argued this to me and it just hard for me to accept that errol louis, that his mouth causes trouble. the two best metrics i've had presented, one by waj and one by professor brownbrownstein. you don't find a president who has as low a number of voters who believe the economy is good than trump. this president has around 50% of those voters. but i don't believe that the mouth matters. it doesn't seem to hurt him. where am i wrong? >> i think you're right actually. we look at it and say he attacked the memory of john dingell, he attacked debbie dingell. what a terrible thing. he's rallying in michigan. it a state he needs to have, it happened win him the victory

four years ago. he's holding rallies in pennsylvania, in florida, in michigan. he has the luxury to do that as the ibncumbent. he's trying to shore up his base. i wouldn't be all that confident that the impeachment, the inexplicable gap you how the economy is actually doing and how people think it's going to be doing, i don't think that's going to be fatal to him and they clearly have a strategy to go to the swing state now, not later, lock in their base and maybe see what can happen later on in 2020. >> 48 hours after a trump piech impeachment vote, a trump administrator said they raised $40 million. to see how fox jumped on that,

naming me as people who hate christians, that my my mom really happy, by the way. that one periodical came out. evangelicals lined up strong in the wake of that and said he's our guy. the base effect real. >> i agree with waj in that the majority of our population and majority of voters as a woman and black woman, we are buying what trump is selling. i can tell you from work that i'm do, white college educated suburban women are sick of this guy and they are sick of the drama. now to "christianity today" i thought that was incredibly powerful. this is something we have to remember as we think about 2020.

america now understands what life under trump is like. in 2016 he was able to paint this picture and you really didn't know and remember we were waiting for the pivot? we all know there's no pivot coming, there's no rational human being coming. this is what it is like. i think you can't underestimate that people are mulling it oaf and certainly having "christianity today" say to people, i am a christian and i am a democrat because i'm a christian. i believe in being a good steward of the earth and all of those tenets of christianity. so people who live as christians say maybe i don't agree with everything, but the immoral behavior bothers me. >> we'll see soon enough. each of you have been so good to me, i thank you very. waj, nothing we're talking about matters to me even close as much

to the good news about your daughter. thank god for the family, blessings to your girl and the rest of the kid. finney, louis, thank you very much for being who you are every day, no the just today. god bless. why did the highest ranking republican in the house look in the camera and say things he knowing aren't right? why are we letting lies become the norm? why when you're told something is a fact do you only think about whether you'll agree because you like the way it feels? the argument of what they're saying and what the reality is side by side next. ♪ work so hard ♪ give it everything you got ♪ strength of a lioness ♪ tough as a knot ♪ rocking the stage ♪ and we never gonna stop ♪ all strength, no sweat. ♪ just in case you forgot ♪ all strength. ♪ no sweat secret. all strength. no sweat.

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can you tell me the story again? every family has their own unique story. give your family the chance to discover theirs this holiday season, with ancestry. all right. how about this? a little holy day helping of facts versus fugazy starring a member of gop leadership. we're going to go blow for blow with the balder dash. roll the sound. >> if you pause for one moment and read this i.g. report by

horowitz -- >> now, before we even get to the meat of the matter, read the transcript. read the report. be clear. they're betting you won't read it. why can i say that? because both that call summary and this report say the opposite of what mccarthy and trump's defenders suggest. more sound. >> here's the fbi. they broke into president trump at the time candidate trump's campaign, spied on him. >> okay. no one from the fbi broke into president trump's campaign or tapped the wires in trump tower. full stop. the horowitz report actually says this. ready? quote, all of the witnesses we interviewed told the oig -- that's the inspector general, horowitz -- that the fbi did not try to recruit members of the trump campaign as confidential human sources. they didn't send those sources to collect information in trump

campaign headquarters or trump campaign spaces. they did not ask sources to join the campaign or otherwise attend events as part of the investigation. all of the witnesses said no one was sent into the belly of the campaign. all of them. so what did happen? the fbi opened individual cases into four people associated with the campaign. that is true. paul manafort, convicted. michael flynn, pleaded guilty. george papadopoulos, pleaded guilty. carter page, not accused of a crime. not really part of the campaign either according to the campaign and to the president himself. so those are the facts. now, let's go a step further. did the fbi use people to work page, papadopoulos, and another high-level trump official? according to the report and the reporting, yes. yes, they did. is that spying? fbi director chris wray says no.

remember, he is trump's guy, and he says it was all legit. so why is the minority leader, a member of the gang of eight by the way, which means he has a special process, a special amount of intel coming to him. why say it this way? listen. >> and then they covered it up. it is a modern-day watergate. >> watergate? five burglars connected to nixon's re-election campaign broke into the dnc to bug the phones and steal documents. they got caught. the president infamously covered it up. none of that happened here. no cover-up. mccarthy is trying to say that the fbi legally surveilling four people, three of whom turned out to be criminals, is somehow akin to what happened at watergate? you know, when i say some of this, i'll smile, and you guys mention it. i don't know why i do that. i guess it's a perverse sense of satisfaction that this play must

be so obvious to you that this is b.s. he goes heavy on this, but he says nothing about our president believing putin over our own intelligence, asking russia, ukraine, and china to help with dirt on biden? look, listen to this last piece of sound. >> it's a modern-day coup, the closest this country has ever came to. but the only way you can compare this to is watergate. >> a coup is a violent overthrow. look, it's hyperbolic at best, all right? it's toxic at worst. be very clear, mr. mccarthy, the president, any defender is open invitation on this show at all time. mcconnell has been on cnn in two years. van drew just changed parties. he'll go on fox. they'll all go on fox. they won't come here. you need to make your case to people with open minds, and that is the opportunity we welcome you here not to be nice. that's the job. the job is fairness and the facts need to be argued because

they seem very clear. that's the argument. now, the bolo. the president igniting a new war with an old foe. what is it? and here's a hint. who plays sancho ponza? next.

president trump drawing comparisons to don quixote

tilting at windmills at a young conservatives conference in florida this weekend. here's a taste. >> we'll have an economy based on wind. i never understood wind. you know, i know windmills very much. i've studied it better than anybody. i know it's very expensive. you want to see a bird graveyard. you just go. take a look. a bird graveyard? go under a windmill someday. you'll see more birds than you've ever seen ever in your life. >> he understands -- forget it. this is all wrong literally. windmills made into a monster just as happened with the deranged man of la mancha, don kehoe tay. a bird graveyard. supposedly cats kill more birds, okay? not to mention the fact that windmills are arguably among the cleanest energy sources. trump is making windmills into monsters. the question is why. i actually have two questions. thanks for watching tonight.

"cnn tonight" with the upgrade, laura coates, starts right now. i'll ask you the questions because you are the better mind. one, how do we know how many birds cats kill? i've seen that quoted all over the place from all these official sources. who counts that? and, two, if trump is don quixote, who is sancho panza, the sidekick? >> if a tree falls in a forest, chris, and no one's there to hear it -- i can't answer these questions. >> i got like six answers. >> you probably do. watching that i almost thought to myself is this the continuation of eddie murphy on "snl"? is there going to be a cameo of him about the windmill conversation because i cannot imagine the fact that somebody has made the enemy with the wind? does that just sound shocking to you, chris? >> he was missing the beautiful, contagious reaction shot of murphy as mr. robinson. trump needs to use this when he says it. i've studied the wind.