will be submitted to the chief justice. during the question period of the clinton trial, senators were thoughtful and brief with their questions, and the managers and counsel were so synced in their answers -- succinct in their answers. i hope we can follow both of these examples during this time. >> follow the impeachment trial of president trump live today on c-span2, on demand on journal@c-span.org/impeachment, or listen on the free c-span radio app. ♪ >> c-span, your unfiltered view of government, created by cable-tv in 1979 and brought to you by your cable television provider. >> this morning on "washington journal," we discuss the latest on the senate impeachment trial with president trump with montana democratic senator jon tester and tennessee republican

senator marsha blackburn. join the conversation all morning with your phone calls, emails, facebook comments, and tweets. "washington journal" is next. ♪" is next. ♪ host: the attorneys have made their arguments and now senators will have their chance. up to 16 hours of written questions in the impeachment trial of president donald j trump. welcome to "washington journal." impeachment getting underway 1:00 eastern on c-span 2. what did you hear in the closing arguments of defense attorneys yesterday and what would you like senators to ask those attorneys? .emocrats, use 202-748-8000 republicans, your line is 202-748-8001.

for independents, that line, 202-748-8002. you can send us a text, 202-748-8003 is that line. make sure you include your name and where you are texting. you can also tweet us at @cspanwj for post thoughts on our facebook page. starting this morning from roll call, katherine kelly mcmanus about the question period that is the headline trump trial enters the question and answer phase. senators draft questions aimed at bolstering cases for or against conviction. to writes senators will get participate in the impeachment trial of president donald trump on wednesday after long hours and nights of just listening. to explain how all of that will get underway, we are joined by john mcardle. phase of the a new

impeachment trial, want to go over how that will work. 16 hours is in the impeachment trial rules. questions by the senators have to be submitted in writing through the chief justice john roberts. republicans and democrats will be alternating questions, that is how it worked during the bill clinton impeachment trial. questions can be directed to house managers and the president's lawyers. senators cannot direct questions to each other. signedestion has to be by the senator and questions can be from multiple senators and there is no time limit for managers or council to answer their questions though there was guidance offered on the floor yesterday on that matter. this is mitch mcconnell and john roberts talking about the timing

of questions and answers. [video clip] >> during the clinton trial, senators were thoughtful and brief with their questions and managers and counsel were so synced --their -- so were succinct in their answers. >> chief justice rehnquist advised counsel "the chair will blerate on the rebutta question -- each question can be answered in five minutes or less." the transcript indicates the statement was met with laughter. timenk the late chief's limit is a good one and would ask both sides to abide by it. p.m.2: it begins at 1:00

senators already starting to let their constituents know the onstions they will be asking the floor of the senate. hawley, the republican saying he will ask about the new york times reporting on october 2 2019 represented of schiff learned about the outlines of the cia officer's concerns that president trump abused his powers days before the officer filed a whistleblower complaint. what did manager schiff learn in advance and did he offer this individual advice on his complaint? another example of josh hawley's written questions would be under the house managers theory. did then president barack obama or then vice president biden

withhold aid in exchange for the removal of the prosecutor general? those are 2 of the nine questions released publicly .esterday senator angus king plans to .uestion the defense kevin cramer is seeking information about the personal lawyer who played a role in the in ukraine.paign one more in the form of a series of tweets from senator tina smith. her tweet saying for the next two days, senators will have an opportunity to ask questions of house managers and the president's lawyers. why are the president's lawyer supposed witnesses and documents? the key witness we have been

, john bolton. late last night mentioning john bolton. why didn't john bolton complain about this a long time ago when he was publicly terminated? not that it matters, nothing. that was the president after his rally last night. . the question phase gets underway 1:00 eastern. 202-748-8000 for democrats. republicans, 202-748-8001. independents and others, 202-748-8002. to the independent line, battle lake, minnesota. this is becky. caller: hi.

recentd because of the comment about the people voting republican in recent presidential elections. and i voteds old for whoever's values agreed with mine. to start with, i voted democrat .nd i was disappointed for 50 years i voted over and over again and even if my candidate won, he never kept his promises. i listen to donald trump's commitment and promises and thought he does not owe anyone man, but i trust him. he has done everything he promised or is trying to do

everything he promised and i will vote for him again. who else is there to vote for? everyone i voted for was a coward or a wind and did not keep promises. i have been very disappointed until now. i come from a county in minnesota that went 63% for donald trump in 2016. , maryland, isaac on the democrats line. caller: good morning. is in the government, hunter biden is being attacked just to get at joe biden. -- multi-billion-dollar deal with china while america was going through the trade deal and

jared kushner has been --resenting joe biden is this possible for this and this is the practice going on everywhere. why would the president of the united states go to a foreign aidon, withhold a foreign opponent?n his this is against the constitution . it should be investigated and

all witnesses should be heard. host: isaac and marilyn wanted out the name of jared kushner, who is an integral part of the characterization of the implementation of the peace plan last night. tapped -- thehe president says a future palestinian state depends on a rejection of terrorism. rob is next in new york, independent line. caller: good morning. i just saw john bolton walking down the street. his book came out to the new york times and that is the other thing, the new york times and the washington post, anything i read in print from those publications is most likely propaganda. i am kind of worried about what qatar.l bolton is in

host: it was the new york times that first published some excerpts from the bolton book earlier this week. team discounts bolton as republicans work to hold off witnesses. some response from our viewers, mylan tweets bombshell bolton has caused republican senators to change their mind on witnesses. who are the witnesses the gop are dying to keep from testifying? john bolton, mulvaney, robert blair, senior advisor michael republicans in a position to watch donald j. trump. linda in maryland, republican line. caller: good morning.

i wanted to comment on what becky said about how president trump -- she voted for him and done everything he said he would do and his greatest post is we have this booming economy? what i want becky and everyone to know is president obama was recoveryn the economic on the realist site -- the real estate market. we were supposed to have president clinton, she was coordinated before she was elected. she was supposed to be there -- false economic recovery based on inflated real estate values and what happens when we have an economy based on

islated real estate values that they have the stock market over performing and what happens immensely -- eventually is the economy collapses. we were about to have the same economic crisis we had in 2008 because of the 1990 economic put ine clintons process. there is no investment, artificial demand they created to increase this value. host: this is rob, welcome. caller: good morning. thank you for c-span. are a a great job, you straight shooter, you cannot tell where you fall on issues, that is cool.

i was thinking trump is blocking democracy. our system of coequal branches of government is at risk. i am no expert by any means of government. if you want to block subpoenas and block people coming forward, it seems like we have way more at risk -- democrats included are willing to understand. i think we should bring on all relevant witnesses and if biden testify, joeo biden, our likely presidential nominee, why not have trump and son testify? lastly, as far as being on the board of directors and $50,000 a month, that is the going rate. i know people who serve on

several boards at the same time and for them, it is a bother. they do it for business reasons or because they have to do it. there is nothing out of the ordinary being on a board of directors and earning that money . the salary might even be a little light, but that is with the jobs pay, it is not out of the ordinary and even though i may disagree, there is nothing to hide for someone being on a board of directors. host: the senators off the floor weighing weather they should allow witnesses. tell us more. host 2: a reminder of when the senate will decide whether to call witnesses, that will not happen until after the 16 hours of question and answers happen over the next two days. we are looking at likely friday for what the timing would be for the debate over calling

witnesses and subpoenaing additional documents. a few headlines from today looking at where the votes stand, there would have to be 51 senators to agree to call witnesses and after that vote is taken, there would be votes on which witnesses and documents to call forward. this from the fox news reporting yesterday, trump impeachment trial witness vote is teetering on a razors edge. this from the wall street journal, this is the lead story today, gop lacks the vote to block impeachment trial witnesses, just digging into that story more. a meeting of all republican senators late tuesday, senate majority leader mitch mcconnell said the vote total was not where it needed to be to block witnesses or documents. he had a card with him with yes, no, and maybe marked on it. he did not show a two senators

present. the wall street journal with their reporting today. the hill newspaper a bit more confident with republicans. gop confident of their win on witnesses, citing several different republican senators including kevin cramer of north dakota saying it will either be 53-52, or 51. some number that starts with a five would be my guess. lindsey graham saying i feel good, i feel like we are in a good spot ending the trial sooner rather than later and one tweets on this topic from he is withrett, politico confirming the wall street journal reporting mcconnell told senators they don't have 51 votes to block witnesses, but the implication is simply republican leaders have more work to do, not that they are on a trajectory to lose to have witnesses. republicans feel good about beating the witness question.

here is his story yesterday from politico looking at the final vote on whether to convict president trump and looking at the democrats who may not vote to convict president trump, a trio of democratic senators considering a vote on acquittal that would come at the very end of this process. to the moderate senators he focuses on in that story, joe mansion of west virginia, kyrsten sinema, jug -- doug jones, if you want to read more of that story in politico, that story up late yesterday. back to this question of witnesses, you may have heard reference in several of the press events yesterday about the latest polling on witnesses. this is from quinnipiac university cited quite a bit yesterday, their pole in the field within the past week noting registered voters say on

a margin of 75%-20% that witnesses should be allowed to testify in the impeachment trial . support for witness testimony includes 49% of republicans, 95% of democrats and 75% of independents. qu.edu if you want to check out that polling. a couple tweets from members of the senate for and against witnesses. chuck schumer very much against -- four witnesses. americans want fair trials, not a cover-up. all we need is 4 republican senators to ensure john bolton, mick mulvaney, and others with direct knowledge of the president's actions testify and this from kelly loeffler, the newest member of the senate from georgia after two weeks, she

said, it is clear democrats have no case for impeachment. my colleagues want to appease democrats by calling witnesses. that was kelly loeffler late yesterday, very early morning yesterday late monday night and one more from marsha blackburn from yesterday afternoon saying if the evidence is overwhelming and extensive, why do we need witnesses? host: it is always interesting, key votes in the house and senate -- bottom line, it comes down to somebody with a notepad or cards counting votes, the old-fashioned way. ipst 2: that is the classic wh count we hear about. host: we will go back to calls and hear from mark in idaho. good morning. caller: first of all, i want to thank c-span because these days, it seems c-span is the only

place we can get any balanced reporting and news. thisafraid with all of impeachment nonsense we have had to endure over the last couple of decades that we might be entering the terminal stages of our republic, this impeachment was meant not as a political tool, it was meant as a last chance ditch effort to get rid of and have a warrant -- abhorrent leader. from what i can see, clinton did very little wrong to be doneched and trump has virtually nothing impeachable, but it seems what he did wrong, two things in my mind, he in thed clinton

electoral college and the second thing he did was he chose not to advisors some of his and that made the advisors very, very upset and they were determined to take him down like a pack of wolves and the executive branch is truly just one man. he does work for him, not really work for them and if we continue down this path, we are going to be on the road to destruction because i voted for democrats over the years, i have voted for republicans. the ones that seem to fit what seemed right for the country at the time, but it has only been lately i have heard the democrats even speak about our republic. up until now, it has always been

our democracy, our democracy and the founders knew very well that democracy was one of the most vile forms of government ever created and that is why they gave us a republic because democracy is nothing but mob rule and that is what we have had for the last two impeachment. californiall go to and hear from sarah on our democrats line. you for listening to my call and thank c-span for having the information where we can go back and review the testimony and hearings of our representatives, it is helpful to do that because we cannot rely on our local news anymore depending on whether it is republicaninking or thinking, it is biased news, too

much opinion, not enough fact. unfortunately with our newspapers going away, i feel people get their information from their local news station. even with c-span, they don't go and half the time. rocklin,re is california, and what newspaper did you have that went away? caller: we have the sacramento deed and it is a biased newspaper. rocklin is about 30 minutes east off freeway 80 from my state capital. i have always been a democrat, i am 62 years old. i do vote cross party, i do vote for the person. tom mcclintock is the republican congressman. i have not voted for kamala

for many nancy pelosi years because i feel they are too far to the left. state is becoming impossible to live in. i am currently unemployed, it is difficult at my age to find a and the cost of living here is unreal. i feel like my vote does not ofnt and listening to all this nonsense going on, i did not vote for hillary clinton. i think she is crooked. money,ve the dnc and the the lobbyists that run on government and have for dictate what dictates our politics. we have politicians that do the bare minimum for civil rights,

but do nothing for foreign policy and trade agreement, these endless wars that create money for the lifer politician lobbyists until the are out of the government, i feel if a hearing is done during this impeachment, it will change our constitution and lower the standards of impeachment and we will be going through this every election with the president depending on -- host: we have covered all the --eachment on all that video including the impeachment -- clinton impeachment, all that video from the 1999 trial. in the senate closing arguments from the defense team including patrick philbin who talked about

impeaching and setting a precedent could be unconstitutional. [video clip] two decades -- the idea that we are going to find out the president had the wrong subject of motives by comparing what he did to the recommendations of interagency consensus among staffers is fundamentally anti-constitutional, it inverts constitutional structure and it is fundamentally antidemocratic because our system is rather unique in the amount of power it gives to the president. the executive has more power here than in a parliamentary system. part of the reason the president can have that power is he is directly accountable to the people.

there is an election every numeral for years to ensure the president stays accountable to the people. those staffers in these supposed inter-agencies who have these meetings and make recommendations to the president are not accountable to the is no democratic legitimacy or accountability to their decisions or recommendations and that is why the president's head of the executive branch who has the authority to actually set determinationske regardless of what staffers may recommend. they are there to provide recommendations, not to set policy. the idea that we will start impeaching presidents by deciding if they have illicit motives if we can show they disagree with interagency consensus and -- is contrary to the constitution and antidemocratic. host: the president's defense team wrapping up their arguments around dinner time. what was the talent?

we know the house manager used most of their time, tell us about that. host 2: house managers used nearly 22 hours of their allotted 24 hours. the president's defense team used under 12 hours total. compiled by c-span's digital can reduce or -- digital producer and you can find them on her twitter page. these are the stats she helped put together taking a look at the breakdown by day for the president's lawyers. they spoke for an hour and 19 minutes compared to seven hours and 32 minutes on their second day and two hours and 55 minutes on their first day of opening arguments. here is how it looks in comparison to the house managers. house managers speaking on their first day for seven hours and 18 minutes.

their third day for five hours and 45 minutes totaling nearly 22 hours, nearly all of their time used to break it down by who spoke for each side, we can take a look at those stats as well. spoke the most of any of the president's lawyers. spoke the fourth most for the president's team minutes, all on the second day when he made his argument in primetime around 7:00 p.m. two days ago on the second day of arguments. you can see the president cost lawyer had the least amount of speaking time. compare that to the house impeachment managers and the numbers, it was adam schiff that clearly had the most minutes for the house

impeachment managers, a total of 505 minutes total for adam schiff in speaking time. that compares to hakeem jeffries who spoke the second-most. jason crow, 134 minutes. jerry nadler, 102 minutes and val demings at 97 minutes. you can break down those stats all sorts of ways. here is one way paul did it in his column today in the washington examiner noting it was adam schiff who talked 454% more than the lead trump lawyer. host: it is the legal issues column of the washington post with the headline trump's impeachment defense, who is paying the president's lawyers? he is drawing on national party coffers flushed with donations

from supporters unlike the last president who left the white house "dead broke." that differs from the legal fund president clinton set up only to see it fail to raise enough before he left office. what did you hear in the closing arguments yesterday? what would you like to hear senator sasse of the attorneys? -- senators ask of the attorneys? democrats, 202-748-8000. republicans, 202-748-8001. independents and others, 202-748-8002. good to larry, republican line. caller: i am glad you took my call. i am joy watching -- enjoy watching you all. you are not biased in any way i could tell. i don't understand, the house

rushed through this impeachment. had to get it done before christmas, it was so urgent. they had the chance to call all the witnesses they wanted to and then they don't and then they expect the senate to do it for them and that is not how it is supposed to work. i think they have made a travesty, just a travesty out of this thing. i would be embarrassed. i really would, the way they have handled this and mr. schiff , it seems like all he is doing, he is trying to convince people of something that hasn't happened. president trump has been doing his job, that is all i can say. when i voted for him, and i did. there is no way i would have voted for hillary clinton, i did not know he could get the job done or not. all i can say is kudos.

they are not going to get him out of office anyway, it will never happen, but the democrats want to drag this out, get a big trial happen -- going and hurt him politically and get it going as close as they can to the election. i hope and pray it backfires, i really do. host: we will show you some of the video from last night's rally. trump looks to boost 2020 bid bid.peace plan and 2020 brian on the independent line, upper marlboro maryland. morning, c-span, thanks for taking my call. host: you bet.

go ahead. caller: i have been listening since the beginning and i want to echo the previous callers. it has been amazing getting the exact source of the information and i feel like i am not getting washed around one way or the other. i am excited to see if they call quickness -- questions and witnesses. what changed between the house and the senate? i think that would be interesting to find out. host: you mean in terms of why he would not testify before the house? caller: correct. i think it is interesting there was a change of heart at some point and i don't know that we have the answer in the public domain. another thing that was compelling on the white house's defense in their closing arguments was the idea that the executive is being infringed

upon by the legislative branch of government, i think that is a compelling and valid argument, but the problem i am seeing is it is being infringed upon because that awesome and unique potentiallyng used .o secure reelection i am curious to see how someone like the supreme court justice ways that and figures -- weighs that and figures that out. host: teresa is up next in kentucky. caller: thank you for taking my call. i have a couple of questions. biden -- ther reason they want to call hunter biden is because of paul manafort. paul manafort is in prison for his dealings with ukraine, the same thing with what he is doing. -- i amnd thing is

nervous, excuse me. i had something and i have been wanting to call all summer and say. al green and veronica escobar have called for trump to be impeached, but he told -- al -- that he and veronica escobar went to honduras and brought a man back to this country who had been imported. how can they impeach the president when they broke the law? it was in the summer and he was talking. a guest ande on as said we went to honduras and brought this guy back that had been deported. everybody.ed nancy pelosi and asked them about this.

not one person has said anything about it because if it was legal, he would not have gotten deported in the first place. host: you can always weigh in on text and twitter. sandy says we all know trump never wanted this trial. somehow he gets away with everything. he must be the world's most successful narcissist. what about the democrats not letting hunter or joe biden testify? is it not ok for president trump but ok for dems to do the same thing? for trump to congratulate pompeo for degrading and npr reporter and dershowitz patting pompeo on the back is disgusting. senators get 16 hours of questions beginning today. chuck schumer talked about things he would like to ask. [video clip] ande have lots of questions

i am not censuring anybody. each member will ask his or her own questions. we are organizing things. we don't want the same question 10 times and we want them in some degree of order. i am sure a good number of the questions will give the house all the time to rebut 'sles in the president' lawyers' arguments. host 2: the president's last tweet last night was about john bolton and he is tweeting about john bolton this morning. this was the president before 7:30 eastern saying for a guy who could not get approved for ambassador to the u.n. years ago, could not get approved for anything since, beg me for a non-senate approved job, takes

the job, mistaking it -- mistakenly says libyan model on tv, gets fired because if i listened to him, we would be in world war six by now and rights a nasty and untrue book all classified national security. who would do this? checking the president's schedule, he has one open press ornt we may hear more about he may get questions about, the signing ceremony for the united states-mexico-canada trade agreement. you are looking at the reuters ceremony noting officials from canada and mexico have been invited including the foreign minister of canada. not invited were democrats who helped move this deal through the house and senate. not invited were richard neal and other democrats who

negotiated for months to expand the labor, environmental, and enforcement provisions in usmca. that story updated a few hours ago. we will all here together at the president's signing ceremony at 11:00 what else he might say about john bolton. host: next, south pittsburgh, tennessee, we hear from susan on the republican line. caller: hello? host: you are on the air. very, verym concerned about the impeachment trial. way,e democrats get their i would be scared to run for president because every president can be impeached. i have been watching this throughout the trials. thehouse, the senate and only one i could see was the

president -- being the president was obama and joe biden and his son. these three people need to answer more questions than what president trump has. they have proved nothing illegal on him. all they have done is make themselves look like a joke. i really do have bad concerns. it really upsets me. why is joe biden getting away with everything we have seen he has done and his son? i would like someone to tell me why they are not being prosecuted. host: another potential witness gloated, the hill reported in an interview with jerry nadler, nadler floats john kelly as potential impeachment witness. michigan is next, we hear from brian on the independent line. caller: good morning, c-span. good morning, america.

this impeachment thing is 100% political. nancy could have stopped it, she knows she needs to get republicans to buy in. they did not. look at the beautiful rally in new jersey. thank you. have a great day. host: quakertown, pennsylvania, democrats line. caller: i listen to your show every morning and i listen to comments because it gives me a feel of the attitudes of people in different parts of the country and my comment is the impeachment is nearly a -- merely a snapshot of one incidents of this president's behavior. the comment for the woman a couple before me was commenting on one aspect of joe biden and i am not here to say i am voting or not voting for anyone, she needs to go back and look at trump's total behavior when he

was a new york as a businessman and my father dealt with him and maybe she needs to go back and look at with all his failures he had in atlantic city, he is the only one who came out with no liability and money. i think it is unfortunate we have become so polarized in this country that we pick up on one item and we follow it through and i have two other comments because i do not want to take up other people's time. i hope the people so focused on this impeachment need to go back and ask why is this president 2 tog all over the country 3 times a week on the taxpayer's dollars. it costs us $140,000 per hour when he is going to these rallies. i looked this up because i do other things besides follow this

impeachment and there is a congressional group looking at obstructionistme behavior this president has defied congress he is also doing with his persons who need to pay their fair share from his reelection committee. my last comment is i am a nursing professor for many years in public health nursing and the -- i want people to think about their overall health and how healthy it is to hear for 24/7 coverage of this. the anxiety, the acrimonious behavior between people, it affects your health. thank you on -- and thank you for your time. host: she pointed out the deficit. news on that from yesterday, u.s. deficit to eclipse $1 trillion in 2020. as the fiscal imbalance

continues to widen, the budget deficit projected to reach $1.02 2020.on in to our republican line, next, this is dave in maryland. go ahead. caller: thanks for taking the call. i have got a couple of points and the first is i am a registered democrat in maryland, but i have found the light and am voting republican. i would have to send a message out to all the democrats who pay attention, who look at the facts and, honestly, putting the shoe on the other foot, so to speak. when you look at everything going on, it is all conjecture. none of the testimony, not a single piece of evidence

specifically implicates trump doing what he said he was going to do and yet this business of bringing the bidens into it. honestly, i think it is poor timing in the grand scheme of things. i seriously doubt given what he went through to win the primaries he has any concerns about who is running within the democratic party at this point. the other thing i would like to point out with some of the other callers and their points suggesting things along the lines of the deficit, the deficit gets to where it gets because they have to approve spending bills and when you get yourself into a situation such as we are where the house is controlled by the democrats, the senate is controlled by republicans, in order to get the spending bill through, everyone has got to agree. when you look at the last spending bill, the bill that put us into a tight pitch, most of

that extra spending, honestly, was democratic special interest investments and policies that probably don't have a significant return on investment , at least one that is well documented. i just think america really does need to wake up and when you look at trump's rally last night, some of the statistics are breathtaking. the lowest unemployment in the nation's history ever recorded and that includes the socioeconomic groups in the country? if those groups are not paying attention, shame on them. host: we cover that rally last night on c-span numeral through -- c-span 3 and you can find it at c-span.org. the new york times looking at the house managers and the defense attorneys. the president's defense team, we

live in a constitutional republic where you have deep policy concerns and differences that should not be the basis of impeachment. he talked yesterday about the potential long-lasting effects of an impeachment. [video clip] >> what we are involved in here as we conclude is perhaps the most solemn of duties under our constitutional framework. the trial of the leader of the free world and the duly elected president of the united states. it is not a game of leaks and unsourced manuscripts. that is politics, unfortunately, and hamilton put impeachment in the hands of this body, the precisely and specifically to be above that .ray this is the greatest deliberative body on earth.

in our presentation so far, you have heard from legal scholars from a variety of tools of ofught, from a variety political backgrounds. theme withe a common , dire warning, danger, danger danger. impeachment bar of based on these articles of impact the would functioning of our constitutional republic and the framework of that constitution for generations. host: part of the argument yesterday, the wrap up argument of the defense team for president trump on the senate floor. they begin the question phase.

john mcardle joins us. have been talking quite a bit about john bolton, the president tweeting about john bolton before 7:30 eastern and a new interview with rudy giuliani appearing on cbs this morning. that full interview expected to air this morning, but they released part of the interview yesterday. this is rudy giuliani talking about john bolton. [video clip] >> he never said to me i have a problem with what you are doing in ukraine, never once, never winked, never sent me a little note. he is a personal friend, i thought. here is the only conclusion i can come to an it is a harsh one and i feel bad about it, he is a backstabber. >> that is a serious statement. >> it is not serious, he is true. if your friend was complaining about you behind your back and did not have the guts to tell

you i think you are screwing up, that is a classic backstabber. i find his testimony about the president pretty close to incredible. giuliani.at was rudy that interview expected to air this morning on cbs this morning and expect to hear more about rudy giuliani today on capitol hill. parnasogram noting lev is expected to be on capitol hill today. no formal role in the trial proceedings, but be sure reporters will be looking to chat with him. members of senate talking about john bolton and the idea of additional witnesses and they have been doing it throughout the senate trial in the form of video, some more produced than others, senators standing in front of their desks or walking through hallways. wanted to show you two from

yesterday, ben cardin, democrat from maryland, his take on the proceedings so far in the senate impeachment trial. [video clip] >> on monday, the president's council underscored the need for us to have additional witnesses and documents produced in the united states senate trial. we haven't heard from any witnesses in the u.s. senate trial. the white house counsel pointed out in due process, you hear from witnesses that are duly sworn in and the right to cross-examine. for us to get to the truth as the white house counsel's say, we need to get key witnesses who have direct knowledge of the president's involvement other -- under oath and subject to investigation. that would include ambassador bolton, who is willing to come before the senate. mick mulvaney and others who have direct knowledge and we need to see their documents.

that is what is necessary to have a fair trial. we will have a vote coming up shortly where i hope the senators will authorize us to take that testimony so we can conduct a fair trial. host 2: senator ben cardin straight to camera. on the more produced side, one more from yesterday. this from ted cruz putting out his latest video. [video clip] to care ifa ought there is actual corruption. >> the general prosecutor was investigating an energy firm in which hunter biden was heavily invested. >> joe biden publicly admitted he threatened ukraine. >> we would take action against the state as a gator and they did. -- state prosecutor and they did . if the prosecutor is not fired, you are not getting the money.

significantvery evidence of corruption. biden was being paid $83,000 a month, this is someone with no background in oil and gas, no experience. >> if your last name was not biden, do you think you would have been asked to be on the board of burisma? >> probably not. >> if you had a sitting vice president making public policy decisions to benefit his family to the tune of $1 million a year, that raises a serious and the of corruption president has a responsibility .o see that is investigated host: thank you so much for

that. we get back to your phone calls and comments and remind you you text, 202-748-8003 . this one from laura. i don't see clarity out of bolton's testimony. to the president has already refuted way quid pro quo. let's wrap this up and let the voters decide. brian on the independent line, good morning. caller: good morning. how are you? host: fine, thanks. caller: good. first of all, i wanted to say thanks for taking my call. i am a pilot in the military and i just came back from afghanistan a few months ago. host: thanks and welcome back. caller: i appreciate it. this impeachment process is such a huge distraction overseas. it is ruining our relationships with people we are trying to form alliances with, it is affecting how successful we are. i have worked with several

people of other nationalities and other military who laugh in our face about the fact we are trying to give them advice and train them on how to handle terrorist threats and do certain things and run their countries and they laugh at us because we cannot even do this at home and it is an embarrassment. the people calling in have made up their minds based on whatever their favorite politician is saying. if i were the president of the united states and had avenues to defend myself, i would use every approach possible or afforded to me to do that. because he did that, people are saying he is blocking the house and subpoenas. he is using tools given to him by the government to do so as the president of the united states and all of these people calling in and saying we need to call these different witnesses,

last time i check to the word witness was someone who had first-hand direct knowledge of what happened, it was not somebody who had an opinion or circumstantial evidence. if i go and chop down a tree, i don't intend to get rid of the there forest and destroy planet, yet that is what they are making it out to be. the problem i have had from the beginning is the original accusations were morphed into all this other circumstantial stuff. if you are going to accuse somebody of something, present actual evidence that person did what you are accusing them of doing, do not try to change it down the road because of the circumstantial stuff coming up as you are trying to find something. i will end this with the fact our politicians should be ashamed of themselves for how they are acting.

i am not going to pick a side because everybody hears it, but they should be ashamed of themselves because we are fighting in afghanistan and iraq and syria and we cannot do what we are supposed to do when our own country and the people we are supposed to defend are embarrassing us. host: thanks for your service, welcome back. thanks for calling in. tom in maryland, democrats line. caller: morning. donald trump is an honest man. if you give me a couple minutes, i would like to explain. he opened trump university and several thousand of his loyal supporters signed up and believed in him and they got nothing for the money and donald trump ended up writing a check $25,000. donald trump had a charity in new york.

he was found using the money for his own and he had to close down a $2 millionpaying suit for that. he is supposedly helping people, but time and time again, he is taking money and they are not getting anything and he is penalized for it. he paid several hundred thousand dollars for a playboy bunny and to cover itith them up. he is going bankrupt -- he took a lot of money and a lot of people lost a lot of money. . donald trump says, i am an honest guy and time and time he hasyou can find out

not been honest to anybody. host: let's go to staten island new york and hear from charles. welcome. caller: listen, the senate votes.cans have the if they want to call hunter biden, they can call him. they are playing games with american people. witnesses. we want to hear what john bolton has to say. i think if we do, we really don't want to steer what just -- hear what john bolton has to say. host: why is that? theer: basically, i think trump administration went over to ukraine and tried to shake these people down for land, for money, not just doing an investigation on hunter biden. i think they actually went over there to shake these people down for land deals or whatever. trump is just incredible. this man is just too much. thank you for taking my call. host: as we enter our second

hour, a reminder, the question phase gets underway today. 1:00 p.m. eastern. all of that starting at 1:00 over on c-span2. to our republican line n ext, doug. sorry about that, doug, st. george, utah. how about that? caller: hello? host: you are on the air. caller: the democrats keep saying they want to have a fair trial. i believe it was probably supposed to have a lot of that going over at the house. the house is over there getting presumption assumption witnesses together that all of those people are over their pay grade on whether

their president was doing wrong or not, which he wasn't. the always want to say bidens. [indiscernible] obama and him were running .hings i think that will take care of itself, but we don't need any witnesses over at the senate because the senate doesn't really need to be good. trialas the senate continues and moves into the next phase, we are joined by josh gerstein, senior legal affairs contributor for politico. to the ahead beyond

potential debate over witnesses, you are writing about the decisions that could be faced in terms of issues like executive privilege, if claimed by the president. how might this play out in the coming days? guest: this is one of the big things that has been put out there by the president's defenders, that if the senate decided to go the route of calling witnesses, they are looking at some kind of legal morass over executive privilege as the president tries to assert his right to confidential advice and to exclude testimony from people like john bolton, the former national security advisor. obviously, there has been an imbroglio over this already in the courts involving former white house counsel, don mcgahn, and various other potential witnesses, including at one point, when the house was trying to get john bolton's deputy to testify. it appears that there are two routes a fight like this

overprivileged could go. one is a question of whether it would be litigated right there on the floor of the senate, possibly involving the chief justice himself in the first instance. the other possibility is that the trump administration, or even trump himself, personally through his lawyers, might go directly to court if the senate attempted to subpoena any of the four witnesses the democrats are seeking at the moment. host: four john bolton, in particular -- for john bolton, in particular. did the house managers at one point asking to testify, and why didn't he? guest: they did, indeed ask him to testify a couple of months ago. they never formally issued a subpoena,- issue a but they didn't send -- they did send a letter asking his testimony.

if he did get a subpoena, he was also threatening that he would go to court to try to get some kind of legal resolution. he said he was inclined without a subpoena to abide by president trump's letter that was sent through the white house counsel to say that he should not testify for this reason of what they call absolute immunity for presidential advisers. that was bolton's position then. the move that you hear people and republicans and trump allies discussing is that the house never actually issue that subpoena because they were, at that point, looking to not have that particular fight in court. they thought it would take too much time. another factor here was that they were already having the battle over don mcgahn's testimony, which would not have been directly about ukraine, but rather more about the mueller investigation and alleged

obstruction by the president. the house seemed to have the upper hand in that battle. i think they were fairly happy with the judge that that case ended up in front of them. that. is now pending at the d.c. circuit. trial, it seems like john bolton, mick mulvaney, whoever the democrats would want to call would be subject to a claim of executive privilege, correct? guest: yes. they would probably attempt to take the same position that they did regarding these other witnesses, that there is a form of absolute immunity for close presidential advisers. the other individuals that have been talked about by the

democrats as witnesses in addition to mulvaney and bolton are, and aided to mulvaney by the name of robert blair, basically a deputy and staff for duffey, annd michael official at the office of management and budget, who was involved in actually halting the distribution of aid to ukraine. they want those witnesses. not clear to me whether blair and duffey would qualify as close presidential advisers were not. obviously, mulvaney and bolton did. thiser reason for courtside playing out the way it might is the question of whether john bolton might be more entitled to, or the president more entitled to executive privilege because of bolton's role as a national security advisor as opposed to just a general white house lawyer or a routine policy official.

there are some previous rulings from the court suggesting those kinds of officials that work on foreign-policy and national security matters might be entitled to some more deference. exactly how that would play out as curious. there is also this question of whether john roberts, as i said earlier, the chief justice, would rule immediately on a motion like that or whether he would wait for the legal dispute to make its way through the court system and then rule on it once it reached his colleagues at the supreme court. that is sort of what seems to be a wildcard at the moment. host: does the chief justice have any precedent as far as those sorts of decisions are concerned? guest: i think there are precedents from some previous impeachment sites, but nothing squarely like this. there are previous investigations, obviously, both

involving president bill clinton and president richard nixon where there were court fights over executive privilege. the nixon one is probably the most famous one where he was told to hand over tapes, secret by thefice recordings supreme court. that is one, where he mentioned earlier, there is language saying that if it was a military or diplomatic issue where the president is generally viewed as being entitled to more latitude and confidentiality, that the court might not have come out the way it came out. lean are other cases that in favor of the democrats, particularly saying that the senate should have the right to make these decisions, that it is the decider, if you will, on any matter like this of privilege. it is not entirely clear where the courts would come out,

although i would say most scholars i have spoken to believe that the courts would not be eager to get in the middle of this kind of battle and would instead, try to leave it to the discretion of the senate, which doesn't mean the president would get no protection at all. it just means the senate would have to decide when his claims were valid and when they weren't. politico, gerstein of we will keep an eye on your reporting as these potential legal issues unfold in the impeachment trial. thanks so much. . back to your calls and comments at the legal arguments wrap up. the questioning begins today in the senate. we go to david on our independent line in grand rapids, michigan. good morning. there you are. caller: morning. the gentleman actually came up with some points that i was going to bring up. number one was the nixon fiasco. they told the people involved

there that they had to testify, gordon liddy and john dean, that he had to turn the tapes over. to me, that is a precedent. to prove his wants in essence, come up with some facts. facts, and these are the they did do what they say he did. the other part i would like to -- so, i have sons that started out working, and i got them jobs because of my last name. they didn't really necessarily know how to work in construction, but they were willing to learn. their dad got them jobs. guess what? they still have them jobs. biden helped his son get a job. the other part i would like to say, if there was so much corruption going on with biden,

the republicans had every chance to start its investigation and they didn't. you know why? because they get their sons jobs , too. that is how the world works. we help our children get ahead. this idea that he was totally us,ng to get one over on that is just republican smokescreens. thatss i would like to end -- got fired because everyone in the world wanted him fired. that government in ukraine at the time was corrupt. we, as an american government did the right thing. all of the republicans out there need to look at facts. stop getting your news off the internet and stop watching fox. host: constance on our democrat line. america.ood morning, thank you for taking my call. morning, c-span every

and i have been listening to all of the trials and whatevers. process, how this was done and how that was done. i think we need the witnesses, all of them, mulvaney, pompeo, especially pompeo, and barr. i would like to recite a little power when, if everybody is .istening pity the nation whose people are sheep, and whose shepherds mislead them. pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silent and whose bigots haunt the airways. pity the nation that raises not his voice, except in praise of conquerors who are claiming the bully as heroes. of whether favor

they are democrats, the bidens, all of them should testify so that we can get to the truth about this matter. host: constance, appreciate that. mice reading of that poem, too. thank you. in's go to john and check with the latest on the senate questioning set to begin today at 1:00 eastern. also keeping track this morning of the president's tweets. this was the president just before you had that interview just before 8:00 a.m. this morning. the president saying, remember, republicans, the democrats already had 17 witnesses. we were given none. witnesses are up to the house, not the senate. don't let the democrats play you. the president, his advice to republican senators ahead of what will be this key vote that we are expecting on friday of whether to allow more witnesses in more documents. as we keep track of the wit

count on where those votes will fall on witnesses, i want to remind viewers of this story that we talked about last week as the trial was starting. trial may center on lamar alexander noting that wherever the tennessee republican comes down, it is likely going to be the majority position, is what they wrote in that story. a lot of eyes on lamar alexander because he continues to be a question on whether he will vote for witnesses. this is the latest tweet from ,ric waffen from late yesterday eric watson a bloomberg saying, senator alexander still says he is undecided about witnesses in the senate trial. lamar alexander certainly hearing from many folks about that. this is christopher hale, a democratic politician in

tennessee, also worked on the obama campaign. this is what he writes in the knoxville news op-ed saying, tennesseans of all political stripes are thing for four lamar alexander's good and praiseworthy service to the people of tennessee, and they are asking him one final time to stand up for decency, truth and for the common good. that is how the christopher hale op-ed ends today in the knoxville news, if you want to read more on that. speaking of lamar alexander and his relationship to mitch mcconnell, because it is mitch mcconnell doing the count on the vote. mitchalexander and mcconnell sat down together in 2016 on c-span's program afterwards to talk about mitch mcconnell's memoir entitled "the long game." it was about an hour long interview. we re-aired it earlier this week. a lot of back and forth between the two discussing mitch mcconnell's life and his political rise. this is how the interview ended.

lamar alexander had asked mitch mcconnell about what he hopes teachers and professors who come to visit the united states will take away and what they will talk to their students about. [video clip] >> i think the senate has been the indispensable legislative body because that is the place where things are sorted out, the place where only rarely does the majority get things exactly their own way. the place were stability can occur. most people, obviously don't think that. in an era in which everybody gratification, if you are looking for instant gratification or perfection, the senate would not be a good place for you. at a time when many

americans are not optimistic about our country's future, what would you want those teachers to tell their students about their future in this country? >> i think because of our woeful incurrence of -- ignorance of american history, we always think the current period is this than previous ones, is nothing like the civil war. we have nothing like where a senator from south carolina almost beat to death a senator from massachusetts. america has had plenty of challenges. this is a great country. we are going to deal with whatever our current problems are and move on to another level. i'm just as optimistic as i ever was that this generation is going to leave behind a better america than our parents left behind for us. >> all of that interview available online. you will find it at booktv.org. your calls and comments on

impeachment. we will get to them in just a moment. secretary of state mike pompeo heads overseas. huawei decision jolts the u.s.-china relationship. significance, the pressure exerted by washington that two british prime minister's have been haunted by the huawei question. mr. pompeo is expected to have a frank exchange of views with boris johnson, who will finally -- who finally gave the go-ahead yesterday for the chinese telecom equipment maker to supply the kits for britain's 5g mobile network. isk.'s decision a warning that it could give

beijing a backdoor to spy on british communications. back to our calls. sharon in lancaster, california, republican line. caller: what happens when our president and vice president are impeached? say that was to happen, who is going to run our country? do people think about this? we elected the man, but it is a it -- isn't a really about the fact that hillary lost, and because russia didn't want her to be president? a lot of people didn't want that or she would have been voted in? is that what this is really about? it seems to be pointing that way. host: to georgia, john on the independent line. caller: i've got a main concern -- everybody needs to reach down in their pocket and see what it says on the going. it says "in god we trust." every american president, every senator and every congressman

that has ever taken the oath of office has put their hand on the bible and swore to their oath of office. the thing about that is, if they are going to use the bible to swear the oath of office, everybody in congress and the house of legislation is illegally carrying out their job because they passed a law that married,ple can get which splits the morals of this country, which they swore on a bible, in the dang trashcan. we have to get our morals in this country straight before we get to this bickering back and forth. host: to des moines iowa, democrats line. caller: good morning and thanks for taking my call. first of all, i wanted to say something to people in iowa. front of ernst got in the camera the other day, she said that she wondered if this trial was going to hurt joe

biden and how we were going to caucus in iowa. thank you, journey, i want you to know, i was really confused on who i was going to caucus for, but thanks to you, i now know i'm going to caucus for joe biden. i want her to know that this trial has nothing to do with joe biden. this trial is about president trump, the president of the united states and him asking a foreign country to interfere in our 2020 election. i hope the republicans can do the right thing and ask for these witnesses because this is a trial, and we are the united states of america, and everyone is equal to the law, including the president. that is all i have to say. thanks for taking my call, love you c-span. host: we hear from frank in bayside, new york, next. caller: after this farce of a trial that is going on right now is over, i think we should learn

from this and make the rules nonpartisannd more where, if you are going to remove a president, there has got to be concrete rules. i think it should be taken out of the hands of the politicians. i think the judges should be the supreme court. nerve,ould have the really to change the rules. in theart of that is constitution, part of the process -- caller: please, don't get me wrong. i know it is enshrined in the constitution, but 250 years ago, there was no twitter, no internet. things have to be changed. we can't live by rules that were 250 years ago. they couldn't imagine nuclear bombs and this and that, to have a guy on the white house that

has no political experience whatsoever, and put all of that power in his hands. i mean, it has to be updated. i'm not saying throwing the constitution away. i'm not seeing the people that wrote it -- saying the people that wrote it are wrong, they just couldn't imagine what would come. host: i think the senate has actually done that from time to time. they did it in 1986. they may have done an adjustment to the senate rules, nothing to do with the constitution stipulation, the rules of the senate, how they function during impeachments. impeachment also include any other federal officials. most of the time, it is a federal judge. caller: he is sitting there, but he basically is like a referee. he really has no say in the matter. if he did, he should stand up witnesses,ok, i need

if he was a true judge, but he is not the judge. we all know the senators are the judges. host: thanks for that. our guest pointed out a while -- that if the chief justice that the chief justice could be facing that decision over witnesses in the coming days. who'dtter, this is jodi tweets this, donald's mindset, it didn't happen. if it is, i didn't mean to do it and if i did, that was our fault. , it is important to have witnesses. the only way truth can be told is to get witnesses. house -- the republicans control the senate and could have already subpoenaed the bidens if they really wanted to. i guess they don't really want to. rachel is in new york city

calling us on the independent line. caller: good morning. as a former journalist, i am requesting that people, especially republicans, watch more than perhaps fox news. also, in regards to the biden questioningre we joe biden and making that issue prominent when the trump children are making money for his corporation every day in china, in ukraine, russia? light is not that an issue? if we are -- why is not that an issue? if we are going to compare, let's put that in the mix as well. host: this is loretta in florida. caller: good morning. thank you for c-span. host: you bet. caller: i believe that my two senators from florida will vote with the president and his ideology, whatever it is. afraid if he is not

convicted and allowed to go on until election, that the damage he can do to this country in that length of time will be irreparable. we all know how vengeful he is. anyone that votes against him or says anything against him. and, i think he would line up the democrats against a wall and have them gunned down as he has the power to do that -- if he had the power to do that. host: loretta, you think president trump would do that? caller: yes, i do. host: ok. we go to rebecca in spencer, louisiana -- i am sorry about that. i see iowa. spencer, iowa. caller: yes, we have to remember that trump and his henchmen were trying to get into burisma two or three years ago.

that is why they were trying to get rid of jovanovich a long time ago. he is actually mad that hunter got in instead of his own kids. number two, if it was such a perfect call, why doesn't he release the whole phone call instead of just excerpts from what his lawyers say? host: as the attorneys wrap their argument yesterday, the president's attorneys in "the new york times" today with a two-page spread of photos and capsules of closing arguments. " they are asking you to tear up all of the ballots across the country on your own initiative. take that decision away from the american people." here is part of his closing argument yesterday. [video clip] >> the american people are entitled to choose their president. electionng the last and massively interfering with would cause one serious and lasting damage to

the people of the united states into our great country. the senate cannot allow this to happen. it is time for this to end, here and now. senate to reject these articles of impeachment for all of the reasons we have given you. you know them all. i don't need to repeat them. they have repeatedly said over and over again, a quote from benjamin franklin "it's a republic, if you can keep it." every time i heard it, i said to myself, it is a republic, if they let us keep it. confidence, every youidence in your wisdom will do the only thing you can do, what themust

constitution compels you to do, reject these articles of impeachment for our country and for the american people. show that you put the constitution above partisanship. it will show that we can come together on both sides of the nd the era of impeachment for good. you know it should end. it should end. it will allow you all to spend all of your energy and aligarh numbers talent and all of your yourrces -- and all of enormous talent and aligarh resources to work with the president -- all of your resources to her with the president to solve all of our problems. is resumingial

today at 1:00 eastern. about the senate race in georgia. >> he is in the race now, doug collins officially announcing for that race. we got indications of it yesterday. the decision by the four term congressman sets up a battle with u.s. senator kenne kelly loeffler, tapped by brian kent back in december to fill the seat of johnny isakson after he retired. warnock is set to join the race as well. this is a special election that will take race in november to fill the term of johnny isakson, two more years on his term after the election. because it is a special

election, there is no primary to filter out the candidates. democrats are hopeful, republicans are concerned, that collins, the congressman whose profile has risen so much during the impeachment trial because of his defense of president trump as the ranking member of the judiciary committee, that might cause a split among republican voters who may also be introduced to kelly loeffler, fairly new in the senate, and she is trying to keep that seat. here is how it is playing out on twitter. this is the tweet this morning from doug collins officially announcing that he is in the race, also sending out a link to his campaign asking for republicans to get behind him. also, notably, noting the president in his tweet saying, "i should serve and would best benefit georgia, the country and president trump." a lot of his campaign will likely focus on his support of

president trump. aaron blake noting that the nrsc has come out firing on doug collins. that is the national republican senatorial committee, that is the campaign arm of senate republicans charged with keeping and picking up seats in the senate. here is the official statement this morning from the nrsc, which is clearly and strongly backing senator loeffler in this case. shortsightedness in this decision is stunning. it will her david perdue,, kelly president, not to mention the people of georgia. all he has done is put two senate seats and georgia's 16 electoral votes into play." that is the nrsc. kelly loeffler is one of those senators that have been putting out videos after their days during the impeachment trial. here is her video from

yesterday, a walk and talk down one of the senate hallways. her take on the trial, but also on georgia politics as well. [video clip] >> hi, everyone. it is tuesday night, about 7:30. just wrapped up some great meetings with my team. we had the conclusion of the president's opening arguments today in the impeachment trial, which is great because that means we are moving forward into questions. we will have a couple days of questions. from there, we go into deciding next steps. my view is that we do not need to call witnesses. there were 17 called in the house. the house has presented their case and it is time to move on from this partisan impeachment circus and really get back to work working for georgians. i've been having great conversations with farmers around our state. i just met with our legislative team to talk about ideas about potential legislation that could help with problems i am hearing about. we kicked it off with a really nice meeting.

i was so humbled and honored to be able to meet with ivanka trump, advisor to the president. we talked about key economic issues facing women in my support with her initiatives. in addition, i am also looking the signing tomorrow, assuming my schedule permits. i look forward to wrapping up today and getting on with the good work we are doing tomorrow. have a great night. host: john, it makes some sense to me now. the collins is a member of house manager defense team for president trump. we have not seen him on camera with the usual group of jim jordan and mark meadows. doug collins is prepping for his run against senator loeffler. the other member of that team we haven't seen much on camera is debbie lesko from arizona. finally, the story is out. senator collins announcing this

morning he is going to run. >> some indications yesterday, but that out today. it looks like president trump and the trump family is going to be a key part of that race. you heard senator loeffler specifically bring up the president, but also in ivanka trump, noting her meeting with the president's daughter. host: appreciate that, john. we will hear from carl now. do people understand that trump is on trial for trying to undermine our voting system? bringing outside, foreign countries into our system? right there -- that, right there. do you understand that, republicans? the republicans need help and they try to use russia, they did use russia in 2016. and now, they are going to use russia, china, north korea, you name it. anybody to come in and interfere with our elections.

wake up, republicans. you people are asleep. host: also in michigan, we hear from fern, democrats line. caller: good morning. i have been very interested in all of these proceedings. i've been watching them from the get-go. last night, i watched the president at his rally in new jersey for a while. heard was him telling us and it was all about him. and then all he did was tear down the democrats. i am one of those dratted democrats. abortion.lieve in i also don't believe that you should take food out of little kids' mouths like he is going to do when he takes away the

snacks. i don't know. i don't understand at all. host: all of that rally available at our website, c-span.org. if you didn't see it, here is some of it from last night. [video clip] > >> this november, we are going to take back the house, keep the -- andand take back the keep the white house. [applause] [chanting] >> four more years! >> the american people are disgusted by the washington democrat -- you say it. which is worse? the impeachment hoax or the witchhunts from russia?

to be signing up millions and millions of registered independent, democrat voters. and today, i had the best polls i have ever had ends being elected. [applause] >> the best we have ever had. remember, i used to go over polls. but i only used to talk about them when i was doing well. we had our best polls. americans of all political beliefs are sick and tired of the radical, rage filled, left socialists. i never saw anything what is going on in this country. what is going on in this country? relay theat, the democrat party is the socialist party, it may be worse. voters are making a mass exodus from that party, and we are welcoming them to the republican party with wide open arms.

host: president trump, last night, commented about the campaign. some concerns from the republican leader in the house. lawmakers getting our kicked." members, we are getting -- "we are getting our ass kicked." at a meeting, mccarthy, house minority whip steve scalise and chairmannal republican tom, asked members to step up their contributions to the nrcc. we go next to greenleaf, wisconsin and andy on the republican line. caller: good morning.

i think the president should be proud of his accomplishments. you look at all of the division and hate directed towards him since he has been in office. it is amazing he has accomplished what he has done. the china deal, the trade deal with the u.s., canada and mexico, dealing with iran, trying to deal with korea, both messes that the former president had left behind. just the spewing hatred from the democrats. investigations into the things that hillary and joe forbid, we go after joe biden's son. he is on tape. wake up, democrats. muellerted for this probe to finish, and there was nothing. now, we are supposed to rally

behind this next farce that they have created to try and destroy this man that doesn't need this. he doesn't need it. if you think about his life, what is he going through? he has constant criticism. that we givehanks someone who is working so hard. thank you very much. vanessa, north carolina. caller: good morning to my fellow americans. does it matter that your vote doesn't count because we can't be sure that russia won't cheat again. it has already been proven that they did cheat. do you care about your vote as un-american -- an american? stop this fighting. we know the truth. there are 60% who are tired of the lying. we are all americans and we all have to find a way to come to an

agreement. the agreement is that we should not allow anybody, anybody to come into our government and --e it away in ways that forgive all biden, sure, he was probably not qualified -- forgive hunter biden, sure he was probably not qualified. let's go down and look at the facts. quit watching your normal tv channels. start to find your own answers on let us join together in love and in god we trust as people and tell the truth. thank you. from new york, we hear mike on our democrats line. caller: how you doing? i think donald trump should be impeached because everything he says, everything he does is just wrong. hello, how you doing?

are you there? host: you are on the air. yep, we are here. caller: i think republicans have it all wrong. if they really do their facts check and they see the gross domestic product is democratic state, they lead the way. education is the worst all republican states. mitch mcconnell's state ranks the highest that the federal government gives a federal funds to. host: what is your point on that, mike? caller: they keep saying that the republicans are leading the way. if they take the money from all the democratic states and they give handouts to kentucky. they rank the third worst state offhe country for taking the dough off the hard-working

american people. that is a fact. people need to fact check all of these. education, texas is the worst. graduation rate, the highest in the country that they can't even graduate high school. host: we talked about the announcement yesterday at the white house of the peace plan proposed by the administration, the israeli-palestinian peace plan. this is the "wall street journal" s opinion. u.s. normhe deal, the has been to arm twist the israelis -- palestinians and bribe the israelis with cash, including moving the u.s. embassy to jerusalem and wants the rest of the world to persuade the palestinians. sometimes, diplomatic methods are worth a try.

last month, the trump administration contributed to a diplomatic breakthrough in the balkans as serbia and kosovo agreed to resume transit between the two countries that has been frozen since the 1990's wars. these are the hobby horses of the international's establishment more than mr. trump's popular supporters. yet critics shouldn't overlook the penetration's efforts toward solving them." we hear from don next in mount victory, ohio. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. i listen to a lot of the calls and i do believe they are trying to drag issues into the impeachment that aren't part of the impeachment. the impeachment trial is over two articles that the house of representatives sent to the senate. the democratic part of the house of representatives dropped the

ball on preparing their case. impeachmentat the itself is unconstitutional because they didn't under the proper method of arriving to the articles of impeachment. and now that the impeachment has been put through the trial, obviously, the obstruction part of the impeachment article is pastly wrong because of presidents. the abuse of the power, i don't believe is there. as far as respect to a lot of the other callers, as they drag every other issue at this impeachment trial, it is about the two articles and the two articles alone. with all the respect to the lady and she of callers ago, is very correct that people need to study the facts. if people studied all of the a facts of foreign money, there probably wouldn't hardly

be anybody left in washington. get into thets to hypocrisy angle. the very nature of politics is hypocrisy. let's stick to what it is, the two articles that they sent to the senate that they want to impeach the president on our, in my opinion -- are, in my opinion , unconstitutional. based on the merits of argument, the president cannot be impeached on this. thank you for your time, and i really do appreciate this. host: sure. thanks for calling in. don mcardle, what other news you have about the secretary? to awant to come back text that you read on air involving the secretary of state. that was his encounter with npr kellyter, mary louise after an interview they had

friday. the secretary of state calling her lighter and shouting at her following an interview after she asked a question about former ukraine ambassador marie yovanovitch. that story got a whole lot of attention, and now mary louise kelly is out with a new op-ed in "the new york times" about her encounter with secretary of state. liar, thatled me a is not what bothers me." journalist -- if you want to read it, it is that nytimes. com/marylouisekelly. president trump made reference to it yesterday when he was recognizing the secretary of state for his work on the middle east peace plan. here is a little bit from that ceremony. --deo clip] >> >> that's impressive. that reporter couldn't have been

too good of a job by you yesterday. i think you did a good job on her, actually. thank you, mike. are you running for senate? i guess the answer is no after that. they all want him to. kansas, great state. they want him to, but you are doing a great job. don't move. that event at the white house yesterday available on c-span.org. the senate trail resuming today at 1:00 eastern. your thoughts on what you heard with the defense wrapping up yesterday and what you would like senators to ask of both sides. democrats, republicans and independents. searchlight, nevada, this is brett. good morning. caller: good morning. i agree with the gentleman from ohio.

it was up to the house to come up with the evidence. they are solely responsible for impeachment. it is the senate's job to try it. what they need to try is what the house has presented as evidence against our president. not up to them to dig up anymore evidence. it is to try what evidence has been presented to them. maryland.ville, democrats line. caller: how you doing? the gentleman was correct about hypocrisy. i just wanted to bring up one hypocritical thing. it was a little message i learned when i was in church. the message went like this, how soon we forget. the reason why i say that is, when barack obama was elected president in 2008, the first thing that the republicans,

mitch mcconnell said he is going to be a one term president and he was not going to work with him. all of the republicans fell in line. they tried everything in their power to disrupt his legislation, his way of trying to help people, they tried everything, everything they could. the republicans forget that. they talk about how mean people are treating trump. how soon we forget. that is the message that i want them to remember. that same president that they the talking about on telephone, barack obama this, barack obama that. remember, republicans never wanted to work with him. they wanted to make him a one term president and tried everything in their power to do so. trump brought all of this on himself. let him go through the process.

if he was governing like he was supposed to and stop talking and rambling about nonsense, he probably could pull some democrats in. host: to our republican next. decatur, alabama. caller: good morning bill and john. this is a prime example of one party is scared and the other one is proud of it. the elephant in the room is conspiracy to commit bribery. yes, i googled it and looked it up. john, if you want to look it up, it doesn't mean that president zelenskiy of the ukraine had to know about the money being held up. in my opinion, this was decided between both parties before it started of how it was going to end up. other words, they should just move impeachment from the constitution because they have

charged him with the wrong thing. i like president trump and all, but you know, if you are guilty, you are guilty, but you have got to get something that is a crime. that is exactly what they got those hollywood people with those universities. they didn't have to carry through with it. college, then the recent college scandal? caller: right. that is exactly what they were charged with. mean, it is on the internet and you have all of these philadelphia lawyers up there, the experts, so to speak. i do just believe it was started because -- this morning, there is a v.a. in the senate. john, i wanted to ask you, are you going to air that or air that later?

i have a constituent inquiry in the house and the senate, and the senate is supposed to have a hearing, but it may get canceled because of this now. don't have the schedule in front of me. it is possible we will recover that. i can tell you about some things coming up. our capitol hill producer is tweeting this saying that the democratic leader, the house speaker, nancy pelosi, and house democratic leaders will be announcing a new infrastructure framework at 10:00 a.m. eastern on capitol hill. also saying president trump will be signing the usmca, 11:00 a.m. at the white house. the senate passed that deal 89-10. karen on twitter reacts to that . some ofbeen showing you the closing arguments from yesterday, some of the reaction. today withrk times"

photos of some of the house managers and defense team. adam schiff, no constitution can protect us if right doesn't matter anymore. you know you can't trust this president to do what is right anymore. he will trust that he will do what is right for adam trump -- donald trump. he was asked yesterday about witnesses. here is what he said. [video clip] >> are you confident enough that the summit will get separation for that? you aree conversations prepared for? >> first, are we preparing? we have prepared for john bolton. we have a lot more work to do to prepare now that we know more of what he is likely to say. we will be prepared when the time comes. think at the most crucial is not the skill of his examination or cross-examination, but rather

letting the senators evaluate his credibility and letting him tell a story, and not tell it in a book. are we really going to require the country to wait until his book comes out to find out information that senators could have used to make the right decision on conviction or acquittal? the sort of red herrings, if the house managers want to call relevant witnesses, we want to call irrelevant ones. we want to make them pay a price for getting witnesses who are at the heart of this scheme. that is not a game we are interested in playing. [indiscernible] >> i can tell you what my testimony is. he is guilty and he should be impeached. is an absurddea is one, but this is what you have to fall back on when you know just how damaging john bolton's

testimony is going to be. i would say the same of hunter biden. if they want witness for witness, let them call mick mulvaney. mick mulvaney has said that he disputes what john bolton has to say. let them call mick mulvaney, let them call secretary pompeo. let them call people that are percipient witnesses to this scandal and corrupt scheme. that is not really what they want. they want a distraction. i don't think the senators will allow the proceeding to be turned into a circus. host: our colleague, john mcardle keeping track of what senators are saying about witnesses. >> you heard adam schiff just then talking about shooting down the idea of a witness exchange, as it has been called, involving the bidens. bidens. democratic leaders generally dismissive of that topic. joe biden also shooting down that idea last week. according to nbc this morning, at least one democratic senator thinks that hunter biden would be a relevant witness in the impeachment trial. that would be senator joe

mansion, the democrat from west virginia. he went on msnbc's "morning joe." here is the clip. [video clip] >> someone has to ask the question, is this a constitutional trial or a -- i don't have a problem there because this is why we are where we are. i think that he could clear himself, from what i know and what i have heard. being afraid to put anybody that have pertinent information is wrong, no matter if you are democrat or republican. and not go home and say i protected 1 -- no, if it is relevant, it should be there. senator manchin, the rotunda area on the capitol hill. we will have a couple senators join us this hour. marsha blackburn will be ahead

on "washington journal." we go to christine, independent line, in allentown, new hampshire. caller: how are you? thank you for taking my call. being an independent gives me a bit of play on both sides. i know you discussed it, the fact that people think they are just as well-off or knowledgeable as the president. here isiff just says one, he doesn't want biden in there at all because that blows his whole case but this whole thing is ridiculous. it seems we have no more respect for the president than we do a person on the street. the way people talk about him is horrific. i cannot believe our world has gotten to this. you think you deserve to know all the secrets of what is going on between -- behind closed doors, when this is part of our security. i really wish people would realize that they do not have the right to know everything going on with security because that is where all these leaks come from.

it is amazing that the only leaks that seem to come out come from the democrats. and at appropriate times. i think people should wise up about what is really going on. trump has been doing a good job. i am proud of what he is doing. he is not perfect or nobody is. certainly schiff and the democrats just hate his guts and don't care how they get him out. it cannot be like this. this is our president. have some respect. for god's sake, have respect. host: democrats line is next, merrifield, virginia this is andre. caller: a couple things that have been bothering me -- the first is that the president has the right to investigate for the corruption before he gave the money. people could have made the argument, then shame on the senators and the folks that gave them the money in the first place. i have always -- last but not least, to me it should be a win-win for the republicans. i don't understand -- i guess i

understand why. if ultimately you call witnesses and they are able to argue for president trump, then you know who gets what. the president got off, the country saw he did nothing wrong, and they should be happy. conversely, the witnesses came and said the president did do something wrong and he should be impeached, then congratulations again, republicans, you saved the country from a to radical president or that is why it really rubs me the wrong way. i cannot figure out why on gods green earth they would not call witnesses. president have done nothing wrong, or he did something wrong and you saved to the body -- ultimately when i weigh those two options, for them, there is nothing -- if the president did do some thing wrong, ultimately they are working at their own personal seats in their respective state spirit to me that is just not good. host: what about the other side,

house managers. why do you think they are willing to gamble with john bolton if he were to testify? caller: i believe in their heart of hearts, john bolton is going to say something that will ultimately get them to their end game, that the president will be impeached. you have to be careful what you ask for. but this whole drug deals thing, at the end of the day, the democrats need that smoking gun. i personally think there is a lot of information there. i sighed -- i buy what the democrats are selling, but for the country to buy what they are selling, they need a smoking gun. i think they believe john bolton will be the smoking gun. host: piers anthony, republican line, next, green town, pennsylvania. i'm watching this whole thing from the beginning, the house inquiry, the judiciary, and obviously the democrats are

get rid of him because they know they cannot beat him in the next election. they cannot beat him with all the things that are going on, that are happening in this country. mideast peace plan from yesterday, with all that president trump has gotten through, democrats cannot match that. we know that. we know that. that is really not the point of my call. the point of my call was, if your listeners have not heard alan dershowitz the other day, alan dershowitz is a democrat. he is a civil libertarian. in his 67 minutes on the floor of the senate, it overwhelms me. i felt like i was in harvard law school with a magnificent professor. this man knows his stuff. he went through the detail of the constitution and said that none of the things that the democrats have come up with are anywhere near bribery, treason,

or high crime or misdemeanor. it is ridiculous to think that they are. because if they are, then from now on, impeachment is going to be something that is going to be used on every president. do we really want to go there? think about that. do we really want to go there, where every year, every three or four years we are dealing with an impeachment? it is sickening. that lower ourselves to point, this is what the democrats have to think about. it will ruin our country forever if they let this stand. think about that. you love your country, do the right thing. stop being political about this. it is all political. it has nothing to do with anything illegal. thank you very much. host: rock hill, south carolina. mike, independent line. caller: how are you doing? i have a couple of quick comments from the caller right before me, talking about the

problem with impeaching the president. one of the things about trials and crime penalties is to discourage other people from doing the same thing. once someone is allowed to do something, which is what is allegedly happening with trump, there is nothing stopping the next oneident, or the after that, from doing the same thing. there is no fear of impeachment so there is nothing to be done except vote them out of office at the end of their term. that is the problem with not impeaching someone, looking the other way when they have committed something that the politicians in washington view as being not correct. one thing i have noticed, when the republicans call in to support trump, one thing they mention a lot is congress should have heard all this evidence and brought in all their witnesses during their trial.

of course, they could not do that. they were blocked by trump and his administration from any firsthand witnesses or evidence, written evidence, from being allowed to be introduced, so they had no firsthand that they could deal with. but the people that are listening to trump and his administration are repeating what they are hearing, especially from his lawyers. there is no firsthand evidence that has been presented -- yes, of course, it was blocked. about theomment is comments that mitch mcconnell and lindsey graham were making before this hearing began, that they are not going to pretend to be impartial. that they are going into this knowing what they are going to do. i don't understand how chief justice roberts would allow them to continue and take the oath of thatenate if they felt

host: way. -- if they felt that way. host: mike, you're calling from south carolina. what has been the sense of the senator's role in south carolina? what is the sense of his role? what are people saying about lindsey graham in south carolina? well, the republican support, the republicans in this state believe whatever he says, and i have never spoken with any of my neighbors or acquaintances that believe that anything he is doing or saying is not what should be happening. they are fully supportive of him. on the other hand, democrats or independents like myself are questioning him because they think -- you know, he is a friend of trump's. he plays golf with a guy on the weekends in florida. how unbiased can you be if you are that tight with someone?

host: we appreciate your calls this money. we will check in with john mcardle, keeping track of so is happening on the senate floor. john: i know you are getting ready to talk about united states senators and a couple minutes. i want to run through for viewers what the senators' days on the senate floor will look like over the next two days as the senate impeachment trial moves into this new phase, the question and answer phase. ands 16 hours of questions answers split over two days. we expect eight-hour days today and tomorrow, beginning at 1:00 p.m., from rules agreed to on both sides. the questions will be submitted in writing through the chief justice, by the senators, chief justice john roberts will read them out. the two sides will alternate, a republican question, a democratic western, and so on down the line. questions can be directed to

house managers or to the president's counsel, but senators are not allowed to ask each other questions during this process. --h question has to be asked has to be signed by the senator asking it. there is no official time for the managers and the council to respond to those questions, but chief justice john roberts did set the expectation yesterday that he thought it could be done in five minutes or less, noting that was the expectation set during the bill clinton impeachment trial. so those are some of the rules that the senators will be operating under. talking aboutrday two reporters the questions that they are going to be asking, here is senator josh hawley, the republican. examples of the nine questions he is asking. "do you agree with hunter biden's statement, in a news would not beat he

named to the board if his last name was not biden?" he said he would ask, what if any critical statutes do you think the house managers allege president had violated? and then from "the new york times" about other senators and their questions. toator angus king of maine, alan dershowitz. one senator is seeking more information about the president's personal lawyer, playing a central role in ukraine, saying i am a little bit curious about the giuliani. we of course we'll hear more about what senators are going to ask about at 1:00 p.m. today. host: thanks, john. joining us from capitol hill is three-term emma craddick senator -- three term democratic senator from montana, jon tester. what did you learn from

yesterday? guest: it is interesting. it has been a very interesting six, seven days, however long we have been at this now. was,nk that what i learned and i knew this before, an impeachment is a very serious situation, very solemn, and you should take it that way. laying down a case that we should not impeach because it impacts future presidents. they tried to take that back to the framers' point of view. and that was probably the most i got out of the defense. i thought they did a nice job. they put together arguments. the problem that i have with the defense -- and i alluded this a little bit before they took the stage -- was that they really needed to go after the articles themselves and what the president did. they did talk about executive privilege and said the president does have a right to do that. although there is other evidence

that shows heavily redacted emails when this was put forth by the prosecution, when we found out what was in them, there really wasn't anything classified in those redacted emails. so here is the deal. here's where i am going. i think the questions will be informative and i have not made my mind up yet. i will also say that i think the president wants to be acquitted of the abuse and obstruction of justice charges -- obstruction of congress charges. we need witnesses firsthand, theyfirsthand knowledge talked about clinton, the bidens, all sorts of things that had nothing to do with the impeachment. as what was in the president's hepa mind, that's --h the president's mind, the senate wants to make sure there is a fair trial. we need to do what happens in

most every other trial, get as much information as we can, get those people with firsthand information to be there, and get the documents unredacted that we need so we can make an honest decision. host: senator tester, as the trial enters the question phase, if you can give us an idea of what kinds of questions you might ask and tell us about the process. do those go through the majority leader and then to the chief justice? guest: my understanding is that we will stand up on the floor and be recognized and then pass the question forward for the chief justice to read. i am not absolutely positive about that. the gentleman who was on before was pretty accurate, absolutely accurate from what i heard was going to be going on. i think it is going to be instructive. i think we are going to have the opportunity to ask questions. even more importantly than that,

we will have the opportunity to hear a fast array of questions from folks on both side of the aisle. hopefully these are not going to be questions that we already know the answer to peer at hopefully they will be questions that we don't. we put in about a dozen questions. i anticipate that some of them may be singularly my questions, but i have a notion that some other senators may have asked the same question. in that case, hopefully there is a clearinghouse so they can get up and say that so-and-so senator and so-and-so senator are offering these questions. be 16think it is going to hours over two days. it will also help us with our decision-making. i think that the part that is frustrating to me as a juror or a judge, however you want to define us, is that there is information. there has been information come out since the beginning of this trial, and we are only about 10 days into it, that could be helpful. people could come forward and we

could cross-examine them and ask questions, and it would be helpful to make decisions. host: senator, you told us that you have not made your mind up yet. is there one or two of the articles that you have the most concern about, that your most troubled by? am troubled by both the articles as united states citizen. you guys watch to the trial. but the fact that taxpayer dollars were being used to do investigations on a u.s. citizen, a political opponent, is troubling to me. i think there are cases where the president can withhold information, but blanket subpoenas on the entire executive branch is over the top , from my point of view. host: lastly, and we appreciate you being with us this morning -- what other work of yours in

done,ular is getting preparing for participating in the impeachment trial? guest: caller i think the most f what is not getting done is people from my district to are visiting, i cannot spend time with them. we are going to pass out eight or 10 bills potentially, so that work is being done. can walk andwe chew gum at the same time. i get it, working from 1:00 in the afternoon until 10:00 at night is a long day, but the mornings are open. as ae utilizing that committee, which i am on, and jerry moran being the chairman of that committee. we are ready to go on the floor. truthfully, i think it is more of an excuse as far as not being able to get work done because we

are in an impeachment trial we can walk and chew gunmen at the same time -- and chew gum at the same time. the worst is that i cannot meet with people from my district personally. host: thanks for being with us this money. in a bit we will be joined by marsha blackburn of tennessee. back to your calls, we go to doug in painesville, iowa -- exceeds me, painesville, iowa. democrats line. doug? caller: hello. i don't want to take too much of your time, but i just wanted to make a couple of statements and then go back to you. i would suggest that any politician addressing the public should not be -- should be .onnected to a polygraph honesty -- since we

have a lot of people out there --iming religious right jesus said, "ask them who heard me. they know what i said. that is honesty. if we had honesty, it would not be dragged out so far. host: republican line, pennsylvania. caller: i would like to talk about john bolton being a witness at first of all, no one asked the senators -- another caller reference to people that were allowed to testify from the administration, but at the same time it said that because it was not a national security or a foreign policy issue, the reason they were allowed to testify -- everybody that is asking for this witness knows that is exactly the case here. this is an untested supreme court decision that would allow

john bolton to testify. they all know he is not going to testify that is why chuck schumer jumps up and down and says we have to get him to testify, because they know what is going to happen. four or five republicans will say yes, and that it will go to the supreme court. unless the supreme court justices go against their own decision they made almost unanimously, they are going to say no because this has a direct impact on national security and also foreign policy. i would like to hear from but john bolton is a very conflicted witness. he has a book deal, which no national security advisor has ever done in the history of this country while a sitting president is in office. within months of leaving the office, a disgruntled employee with able deal. he did not want to testify. why did he suddenly change? nobody is asking that question. he knows that he is not going to testify. if he puts it out there and leads to some innuendo that he

could say something about the president, his book sales will go through the roof. release,ll be delayed and he will be a multimillionaire overnight. this is why he is doing this. he has been up there for 40 years with different presidents. he knows what presidential privilege is. they are all exploiting it, either embarrass the republicans or make themselves money. i think that is just horrible for this country. thank you very much. columbus, indiana. independent line. what are your thoughts? caller: thanks for taking my call. i want to make a comment on alan dershowitz's argument the other day. the final line of retreat would be, you know what, ok, he did it, but really it is not a big deal, it is not illegal. if that were true, then they would have made that argument a long time ago.

i made the analogy that if you were scraping the ice off your car and the police came up and give you a ticket for it, you would not argue in front of a bute, there is no evidence, you would just say it is not a crime from the beginning. ok, adam. let's go to john mcardle. i have the -- i understand you have more information about how the questioning process will proceed. john: senators will ask their questions. they have to submit them in writing to the chief justice. i want to show viewers -- this is courtesy of c-span's craig caplan, capitol hill producer. what that question card looks 1999 during the bill clinton impeachment trial per the senator would have to write their name, right up the question, a few lines of what the question would be, and that they would have to check whether

the question is for the president, for house managers. there was a box directed -- for questions directed to a witness. we are not at that point in the impeachment trial, whether there would be witnesses that senators can ask questions too. you have been chatting with callers -- we noted earlier, reports that giuliani associate lev parnas, who has been thrust into the center of the impeachment controversy will be on capitol hill today for the trial but has no formal role. a little bit more on specifics on that from "the hill" newspaper. that tweet, "the hill" reporting that lev parnas will not be actually in the chamber today, although he did receive tickets. joseph bondi said his client had received tickets to attend byceedings on wednesday charles schumer. schumer's office confirmed they offered the tickets. since beingever

,ndicted, has an ankle bracelet and electronic devices are not allowed in the senate chamber, so that is keeping lev parnas from actually being in the senate chamber today. this was the statement from his weyer, tweeting out, "although we could not have arranged lev parnas to watch the trial with us because of the ankle monitor will not be d.c. withe will be in their trial and witnesses." one note for you, we mentioned that the president's solely open press event today is the signing of the usmca trade agreement happening on the south lawn of the white house today. i want to show a picture from the scene of the south lawn, the set up there. this is from one of our colleagues here at c-span. noting that it is expected to be

about 44 degrees here in washington, d.c., around 11:00 a.m., that taking place today at the white house. host: it is a cloudy day in the nation's capital, and it will be chilly, but they should be thankful again that it is not raining. we will go to san diego and hear from tony on our democrats line. caller: yes, my name is tony. hello? host: you are on the air, go ahead. youer: i don't hear any of talking about getting to the truth. have you ever been in a fair trial before? i don't see anything like this going on with this trial at all. let the trial say be the way it is supposed to be. you are not saying it. just say you want the truth. i want the truth, too. i don't like trump, but i want to get to the truth. if he did it, he did it.

if he didn't, i will back off and go on. but no, everybody has to complain about this, complain about that. let's get to the truth. line,on our independent in dixon, missouri. grover, hi there. caller: thanks for allowing me to speak. i have to say up front, i am coming from this off-track. i am just going to try and what then my mind people who back trump are. by the way, i am pretty much a liberal. but on the other hand, i am looking at the nation as it is going. whether we are going to do away constitution,asic the flyover states, the reason the people are out there, is they lost their

manufacturing, they have lost their cold, they have lost their tobacco, they have lost all of these things, and i think the only thing out here in the middle of the country that is thriving is the oil industry. out that i i found haven't -- i'm sorry. host: that's all right, we appreciate your calling in and watching "washington journal" this morning. go back up to capitol hill, joined by tennessee senator marsha blackburn. extra being here, senator. guest: good to be with you. thanks, bill. host: let me ask you about yesterday's meeting amongst senators about the road ahead, calling witnesses what is your sense in terms of that? guest: i think that we will have the vote so that we do not call

witnesses. we do not need additional witnesses eerie that is. i think it is important to note that the house had 17 witnesses, testimony from 16 of those. we have heard from 12 of those witnesses. a call forbe additional witnesses. as professor dershowitz said, this is something that would change the way impeachment has historically worked in our nation. it is the house's job to call witnesses, to do the impeaching, and then they send the articles to the senate for review. we have heard that testimony by video. host: senator, you're confident that you have the votes, but your leader, mitch mcconnell, by news reports, or indicating he is not sure that he does. guest: there are also news reports that say he does believe he has them. so you will have all sorts of different things.

leader mcconnell is a very effective leader. i believe that republican senators and the american people are saying they have heard enough, and they are ready to get this over with. they are ready to see us move on to the nation's business. i am on my way right now to a veterans affairs committee hearing, where we are voting on some bills, three pieces that i have worked on. the improve act, to put money into communities to deal with veterans' mental health, isolated veterans. the network of support act that another center and i have done. technology act, that senator tester and i have done. these are all things people are wanting to see done because, in effect, it is their life. they want to see a transportation bill. they want to see more done on trade. and we are signing the usmca this morning at the white house

at 11:00. host: there was a lead editorial this morning, an op-ed in "usa today," a headline that says, "don't fall for the democrats' power grab." what do you mean by power grab? guest: using impeachment as a partisan political tool, which is what this is. , who chuck schumer desperately wants to be the majority leader of the senate. what he is trying to do is to get four senators to agree with him that we need witnesses because that is going to make this impeachment process run for months. they would have to be subpoenaed. depositions would have to be taken. but before any of that happens, you would find this thrown into court. there would be a battle over executive privilege. why did the house not call some of these witnesses? because they did not want to end going into court and a fight on executive privilege.

so, while they have on one hand ironclad, and are they have an overwhelming case, then they come to us and say, well, but maybe we need more evidence and maybe we need more witnesses. you know what, let's vote down these two articles of impeachment. let's get back to work. if the house wants to go start another investigation and call witnesses, they are within their rights to do so. but it is not the responsibility of the u.s. senate to provide house democrats and adam schiff and jerry nadler a do over. it is our job to address the articles of impeachment that are before us. host: before you get to the vote on the articles of impeachment, you enter a phase now, 16 hours of questioning. give us a hint at the types of questions you would like answered.

questionsave about 12 i want submitted. i want to hear about adam schiff's association with the whistleblower and the association of his staff with the whistleblower. and then the first date of contact between the whistleblower and adam schiff's staff. when did they start working on this? why did the cia change their in a for what is allowed whistleblower complaint? they change them from direct knowledge to hearsay. third-party information. why did they do that? was this a coordinated effort? did they work together on this? did they work together on wrecking that whistleblower complaint? these are things that tennesseans want to hear. host: you received a lot of pushback last week on your comments, several comments about the witness, lieutenant colonel

alexander vindman, including from mr. vindman's lawyer, saying that your comments were a testament to cowardice and criticism from your fellow senators, including fellow senator tammy duckworth. what is your response? postedthe items i've regarding mr. vindman for things byt had been said about him his direct supervisors, and by his commanders. he had a commander who said that he was an activist, political activist in uniform. he had, mr. morrison, one of his supervisors, said he had trouble with the chain of command. and a problem with judgment. those were items that were known. mr. vindman himself said that he talked to two people outside the white house, that he is the one that called and gave them the information about the phone call. and it is all based on mr. vindman had a beef with the president.

the president was not adhering to his talking points that he had prepared, so they had a policy disagreement, a policy disagreement. we have policy disagreements here in washington every single day. become bureaucracy has so insular to themselves. what they refer to as the interagency. they think bureaucrats, not the white house, not the president, should be setting policy. the reason we have elections is because the american people weigh in on policy. and they elected donald trump because, why? they support the policies that he put forward, and donald trump is making good on his promises. on the federal bench, securing the border, making certain that we reduce

regulation, reducing taxes, getting the economy going again. these are all things the american people voted for for him to do. by the way, he said he would drain the swamp, and i'm telling you what, when you start draining that swamp, those swamp creatures bite back. host: senator blackburn, i know you're going to run off to your committee here. we had a caller from tennessee earlier this week who said email lamar alexander's office in terms of calling for witnesses. what kind of conversations have you had with senator lamar alexander, your tennessee colleague? guest: i do not discuss any private conversations are private meetings, and i never speak for another member. host: senator blackburn, we appreciate your time this morning. thanks so much. we have about 20 minutes or so, 25 minutes left of "washington

journal." we welcome your calls and comments. free democrats. 202-748-8001 for republicans. independents.or we will check in first with john mcardle. john: a report out today the democratic senator joe mansion told msnbc that he thought hunter biden would be a relevant witness in the impeachment trial , raising speculation about the idea of some sort of witness .xchange in this process certainly republicans had mentioned hunter biden quite a bit when it comes to witnesses. john bolton is the main witness that democratic leaders have been talking about, but also mick mulvaney and others. but "the washington post" robert costa following up on that

reporting from msnbc and joe mansion's comments, robert costa saying he spoke with joe mansion manchin.joe he asked him if he would want to call former vice president biden. he said that is a bridge too far. a little more from robert costa in a follow-up tweet, saying, chin, if pressed on his remarks on hunter biden, joe mannchin said no. york,we will hear from maine, janice come on the independent line. caller: thank you for taking my call. i would just like to say that it cracks me up, the republicans. they are so high and mighty. you know, they could have -- bill barr could have put a

prosecutor in and looked into all of this. the republicans at the house, the senate, they have the whole schlemiel, and they could have looked at joe biden if they wanted to. this president broke the law. the gao says that he broke the law by holding it. it is not about policy. people differ on policy, but the law is the law era he broke it. the articles of impeachment, abuse of, they are relevant. and, you know, the republicans just have to get over it. that senator that you just spoke vindman, saying he did not go through the chain of command. well, the guy said he did not go through the chain of command. he did not go through his chain of command either. i don't know.

there is so much division, but i just hope that if they call biden's son, i hope they call rick perry, who got some good deals. john mcardle, could you look that up, about rick perry getting deals fo from the guy donating money to his campaign? host: from the democrats line, anna in south windsor, connecticut. you,r: good morning, thank c-span. weas going to say that follow-up -- some of the senators who had a one-on-one conversation with the president turned out to vote against policies. they don't vote against the president at all. nchin for one. now he is saying he changed his mind. i will have to see what he does. we don't know what went on in

those one-on-one conversations. mitt romney was another one? he talks, but in the end, they are voting with the president. the last time i saw mitt romney, he was at a roundtable, meeting with the president, others. the president made him head of the opioids -- the opioid conflict disease there. we will follow that up and see what happens. those with a one-on-one meeting with the president, they tend to vote with him. theknows what went on in one-on-one meetings thank you, c-span. host: republican line next, maryland, jd. go ahead. caller: there is so much here. these democrats, liberals, independents are calling in hyper veil relating -- hyperventilating because they know there is going to be an end , and they know it, just like in the past with the mueller investigation and the supreme

court fix. all of it ended with pie in their face, and they know this is how this one is going to end. i have called in and told you this before on each one of those, and it is a shame. but you know, president trump is a genius because you know what they are talking about? all they are talking about is him. he doesn't have to pay for advertising. he had a good night in new jersey last night. when you start seeing thousands of people congregate in new jersey to see president trump, a republican, the democrats have problems. you can see that, right? i hope the democrats see it, because they are done. it is over. this senate thing is over, brother, i can tell you. host: the polls from the campaign trail -- the morning consult, the latest poll that they did, nearly 42,000 survey between january 30 and -- bloomberg pulls closer to warren

nationwide, pull support from black voters. for senators warren and klobuchar, and the poll also indicates bernie sanders' popularity is eroding among older voters who is leading in the democratic primary race? joe biden with terry 9%, bernie sanders with 23%. withth 29%, bernie sanders 23%. in libya thorn with 15%. michael bloomberg with 12%. amy klobuchar, 3%. michael bennet with 1%. one person who is not in that poll -- somebody called about this yesterday and asked if elsie gabbert is still in the race. she is still in the race. is stilll see gabbard in the race. cnn plans to host numerous town halls with the democratic candidates before the november -- before the new hampshire primary on february 11.

deval patrick, tom steyer, andrew yang have all received invitations. tell see gabbard was passed up. still to this day she has no idea why she was excluded from the lineup. down and received no explanation. read more, townhall.com. line here independent in washington. go ahead, don. good morning, america, and c-span. what i would like to say is, this whole impeachment thing, it sounds like a joke. it is like batman and the joker. going at it. i am going to tell you like this. foundation, they are going after innovations. it ain't so much about the money. i think it is all about innovations, all these new innovations.

it ism just sorry to say not a good thing what they are doing. god is watching. idaho falls, democrats line. go ahead. c-span?re you doing, host: fine, thanks. caller: i have been watching clinton, nowxon, president trump. i would say to the people, america, it is good to get educated all these things -- on all these things because politicians will try to put things over on those who do not know anything, and sometimes words sound really good to certain people who hear it. but i say to them people, if you wheren a situation someone blamed you for something that you had done, you would ont firsthand information

all the witnesses that people got. in this case here, i would say why did he do it, and i would say, did he really have to do that if he is doing some good? if he really thought he was doing such good, why did he have to ask someone, if he wanted to hold the money up. he could have told him i will hold the money up. i got the first indication that you guys passed the test, saying that is ok. but i want a second opinion on that first opinion. and he could have did that. he didn't have to hold the money send allit, and then these people down there on a different kind of -- i don't know -- hunting for their junk, trying to find things. i would say if ukraine was corrupt, who isn't?

i would say the united states is corrupt, too. you have a love corrupt politicians, corrupt people. i just think everybody is corrupt. that's my think thanks, c-span. kansas. go to tell us your town. caller: kansas city. host: go ahead. caller: i am just wondering how senators running for president can vote against a president they are running against. how does that work? that makes the whole thing seem a farce right there. host: their first responsibility is being a senator, so it is part of their job to vote in the senate. caller: it just doesn't seem right to me that they are going to vote to impeach them and they are running against. host: next, republican line, sandra. hello there. caller: can you hear me? host: yes we can, go ahead.

caller: voting on the two articles of impeachment that the have, and then send witness request back to the house than they can go through the process again. that is all i have to say. impeach again. or try to, anyway. because it will be a different thing. these witnesses have nothing to do with the two articles that they sent p that is just my opinion. host: a couple of callers mentioned -- this is reuters, reporting on the atmosphere there. the chump tailgate. the 2020 rally. new jersey supporters of u.s. president donald tuesday welcomed his first campaign rally in the state, the same way they celebrate heroes from the new york jets football team. to native son bruce springsteen, with a tailgate party. weather on lawn chairs. they waved trump 2020 flax,

decorated their dogs in bandanas. westminster, massachusetts, to our democrats line next. go ahead. caller: good morning. good morning. ok, let's see. what do i need to do here? , alice.u are on the air go ahead with your comment. caller: ok. i want to offer a perspective on hunter biden's compensation. on a pbs program in had two 2019 that he guests on there, and one of them compensation -- and this is interesting -- that

he lumped these positions together. ceo's, boarderican members, and directors -- he lumped them together and said that in this day, their compensation was 10 times more than it was in the 1980's. 1000 -- no's, it was -- $1,400,000. that, $14 million per year. members, andard directors of large corporations. biden,ought, ok, hunter they say in the news that he made from $50,000 to $80,000 a month. to $960,000 per

year. when you do the math, when you divide the $14 million by both of those sums that we got from hunter biden per year, we find out that hunter biden received -- 15 to 24 times less than those ceo's, board member directors. host: alice, we appreciate you doing the math. checking on issues with john mcardle. john: about 10 minute before the house comes in for the morning hour. they are in at noon for legislative business. one of the bills they are going to be debating today after they come in for legislative business 32 01, reauthorization and

study of the emergency scheduling of fentanyl. it has to do with a ban on fentanyl-like substances expiring on february 6. the reason i bring it up is that republican lawmakers say the 11thn have gotten to the hour on the extension of this ban has to do with the impeachment efforts going on in the united states senate. this is a story on your screen from "the hill" news me here -- newspaper. focused onmore impeachment than getting fentanyl off the streets." democrats in the house hitting that topic again yesterday, this from house minority leader kevin mccarthy. the senate has already acted unanimously. why have house democrats dragged their feet? they are more focused on removing president trump from office than on removing fentanyl from our communities."

this is from congresswoman debbie lesko from yesterday, her tweet, "people's lives hanging in the balance. let's get back to work on behalf of the american people." heading into the debate happening on the floor today, this is covers and chris pappas of new hampshire. the democrat saying, "fentanyl and other substances are dangerous that pose a serious threat to public health and safety, that is why i support permanently classifying fentanyl and related substances as a schedule one narcotic." also urging house leadership this week to bring up a critical bipartisan legislation to extend the temporary scheduling for fentanyl related substances. that is some of what is going to be happening on the floor of the house today. the house schedule is that they are coming in at 10:00 a.m. eastern.

a tweet about the announcements coming up today at 10:00. how speaker pelosi and three chairman will hold a press conference, and that is a framework for investment infrastructure. c-span cameras will be there. at 1:00 today, the senate resuming the impeachment trial. elaine is in washington, d.c., on our independent line. good morning. toler: the only thing i want say is, the press and everybody keeps talking about this being a partisan impeachment. notrepublicans simply are willing to call out donald trump or to say anything about what he is doing, so it is the democrats doing it. it is not necessarily partisan p they just happened to be the democrats and the republicans refused to acknowledge the problem. host: kalamazoo, michigan, tom on the republican line. go ahead. i'm sorry about that. now you're on, go ahead. caller: thank you so much for

taking my call. i appreciate very much everything that has gone into the impeachment and so forth, from both the democrats and the republicans. is that no oneng is listening to one another. i think they give all the information they can. they try to support their own parties, either the allegations or defense, and unfortunately that is not going to get us anywhere as far as resolving our real issue, which i think really goes back to the election, and everything that was designed to do, the interference was supposed to pick people, one group against the other, in our country and cause difficulty in our election campaigns. and they have been very effective. it,ver happens to be doing whether russia or ukraine.

it is disappointing that all the people as a and the whole, are not buying into these either take one side or the other, and there is no compromise. it is very disappointing. i hope at some point we are able to get back together as a our leaderssupport both in politics and in the country in general. work it out that way. host: we have not talked about the spread of the coronavirus worldwide. in the news you could use category, an opinion piece from "the new york times." elizabeth rosenthal, "common sense beats mass." china, as --us in students are handing out masks. masks have run out in a county

in texas. hang on, i worked as an emergency room physician and is a new york times correspondent in china. i covered the sars outbreak in 2003, 2002 and 2003, during which a novel coronavirus was more detected, sickened than 8000 people and killed 800. my main takeaways from that experience for ordinary people on the ground -- one, wash your hands frequently. two, don't go to the office when you're sick, and don't send your kids to school or daycare when they are ill either. her entire piece is that nytimes.com. richmond, kentucky, democrats line. good morning. caller: thanks for taking my call. i would agree very much with the last caller. tohave to find some way bridge these divides and get together. sure this ism

highly partisan, but i find it comical that republican senators are blindsided by these bolton allegations. is that not a confirmation on bolton's statements, not a confirmation on what we have been hearing for five months? i don't understand how they are blindsided by things that these managers like adam schiff are saying now, that i guess the whistleblower broke in september. it seems that all bolton has done is confirm what we have been hearing from democrats now for five months. thank you. host: to staten island. we hear from jeanette, caller: independently. yes -- we hear from jeanette, independently. caller: yes, i have a question. to impeach --g well, he has been impeached. to remove him. whatmy understand, -- from i understand, the constitution

says the laws must be faithfully executed, existing laws must be faithfully executed. so i assume that is why justice roberts is there, to make sure that the laws are faithfully -- that existing laws are faithfully executed. but now, i have never seen a trial like this before, where the senate is making the rules, and the rules exclude using the laws that are faithfully executed. now, the laws pertain to all of us. we are all citizens, and we also are under the same laws. so why are the laws different in the senate than they are for just us? i don't understand that. there,ome good questions jeanette, that may have to wait for another day. the senate and what the constitution says, by what their internal rules are in the process of impeachment. appreciate all your calls and comments this money. the u.s. house coming in next

for mourning our speeches. they will gavel back in at noon senate impeachment trial and 1:00 p.m. eastern that will be on c-span 2. hope you will be back with us tomorrow at 7:00 a.m. eastern on "washington journal." the speaker pro tempore: the house will be in order much the chair lays before the house a communication from the speaker. the clerk: the speaker's rooms, washington, d.c. january 29, 2020. i hereby appoint the honorable henry cuellar to act as speaker pro tempore on this day. signed, nancy pelosi, speaker of the house of representatives. the speaker pro tempore: pursuant to the order of the house of january 7, 2020, the chair will now recognize members from lists submitted by the majority and minority leaders for morning hour debate. the chair will alternate recognition between the parties. with time equally allocated between parties and