opulence duo both larger than life both lightning rods for controversy tonight both men are accused of abusing their powers in the u.k. parliament there are calls for prime minister boris johnson to resign in the u.s. congress investigations have begun which could end in the impeachment and removal of president don will draw i'm bored golf in berlin this is the day. look is just a continuation of the which the worst was just a little history the president of the united states calling upon a foreign palace to intervene insurrection it was a burqa call it was no quid pro quo i don't like but the actions taken to kate i took them seriously the constitution they did it is the voters get it this is what i think they should win the election but you know what the feds are disgusted.

violation of. the law is on the phone. also coming up the u.k. parliament is back in session after 2 weeks of a suspension that we learned yesterday was never really a suspension at all lawmakers including the prime minister went back to westminster today as if nothing had happened they have try to hide from the people the truth the real truth all they know the tale prexy. i mean she's traumatized only in truth it's a guess that not any terrified that he's going to news but also even more terrified by the remote possibility that he might. once have our viewers on p.b.s. in the united states and around the world welcome we begin the day with the phone call between 2 presidents and a conversation that could bring down one. of those presidencies yesterday the u.s.

house of representatives launched an impeachment inquiry reacting to a whistleblower report that suggests u.s. president trump asked ukrainian president zelinsky to dig up dirt that trump could use against his opponent in next year's presidential election today the white house released the transcript summary of that phone call in u.s. president trump says i would like you mr selenski to do us a favor i would like my attorney general to call you and your people and i would like you to get to the bottom of it. and with that trump asked zelinsky to help deliver political dirt against joe biden the leading democratic candidate who could very well run against trump next year a u.s. president asking another country to help influence the outcome of a u.s. election an allegation that has triggered impeachment investigations and investigation that trump today once again called

a witch hunt these are the documents the white house released hoping to diffuse the controversy over president trump's telephone call with his ukrainian counterpart a lot of years olinsky instead they seem to back up claims that trump pressured selenski to investigate the business dealings of democratic rival joe biden's son trump continues to deny the allegations and says democrats are harassing him. this is a relatively minor wherever and if you take a look at the democrats they went down to see the president of ukraine and their sin for all sorts of things and don't go with the republicans and stay with us and like it's a political war they should've done that it's the single greatest witch hunt in american history probably in history but it american history it's a disgraceful thing the conversation details were made public a day after house democrat leader nancy pelosi announced an impeachment inquiry into the matter a move she's defended. the president of the united states. into

each of his constitutional responsibilities has asked a fine government to help him in his political campaign that cannot stand will be held accountable top democrats had long resisted calls for impeachment fearing a backlash from voters who still support trump but compared to the russian investigators they say the ukraine call is different after the president is directly involved here it's pretty clear what has happened and i think this as bad as the other stuff was this is even worse what trump probably saw as a routine chat now looks set to be at the center of a massive political battle with congress one that could ultimately spell an early end to the trump presidency. public opinion make or break for this impeachment inquiry an investigation with replications for both the u.s.

and ukraine to talk about that tonight i'm joined here at the big table by galen drew he is host and producer of the 538 politics podcast and with the ukrainian side of the story for us tonight my good colleague nick connelly joins us from here gentlemen to both of you well. let's start with the u.s. and the ukrainian presidents they just met in a one on one meeting in new york at the u.n. afterwards they spoke to reporters here is part of what ukrainian president said when he was asked about being pressured to help dig up political dirt for the u.s. take a listen. well you sure did we had. i think good phone call it was normal we spoke about many seeing that and i just looked so i think in the you already that nobody bullshit bush me yes and no credit. for their

own people you know what it was right here and there's no there was and by the way you know there was no pressure or you have to do is see if one of the call are that's what the u.s. president says i'd like to get both of you to react to this nic let me start with you did you get the impression though that president zelinsky maybe hasn't grasped entirely what exactly was being asked of him in that phone conversation. well the transcript we saw today is pretty remarkable because there's lots of talk of investigations before it even becomes really plain this is about biden and his father former vice president joe biden i think it's probably a little unrealistic to expect that this communication came out of nowhere there wasn't any kind of back channel discussion before the official talk on the phone between the 2 leaders so i i think in terms of an interest in what joe biden sums

up in ukraine i think he understands in terms of the ramifications of this kind of conflict of interest in the u.s. but schools setting i think that's pretty hard to fathom here in ukraine because this is a country where most people would just your own confidence like that where politics and big business where government policy and person puts can trust of very tightly interwoven so there's no real big shock here in ukraine the suggestion that trump would want to do something like this no that's very good point brooke corruption have a home but these things are not surprising healing for the u.s. president this is really cut and dry isn't it a normal phone conversation he says and he says it's been turned into a witch hunt yet again yes so there are basically 2 questions here one is did the president of the united states ask the president of ukraine to dig up dirt on a possible political opponent it seems pretty clear that he asked the president of ukraine to investigate biden and his son hunter now what the president saying there

was no pretty quick pro quo he didn't say that this funding for our defense is specifically tied to digging up that dirt if you read the transcript no he didn't literally say if you do this i will give you military aid but we know from past the moeller investigation for example that's not the way that trump does business right in fact his personal lawyer michael cohen said that. he basically says you know it would be really nice we really need you to do this at sutter at satirizing cinco you know i mean come on the person is a you know he's been alive on this earth long enough not to know that you don't say to the president of ukraine at least for an american president to do that to say hey if you investigate my political opponent i will give you the military if you want right i mean exactly quid pro quo can't take place without it actually being explicitly said as you said what about public opinion in all of this. it's important for this inquiry would you agree to that and do we know if most

americans they even want to see the country go through these impeachment proceedings so the answer to that question last week are based on the latest polling that we have is no. basically 60 something percent of americans say they're not interested in having an impeachment inquiry against the president it varies a little bit high fifty's mid fifty's and then say about 38 percent on average say they do want an impeachment inquiry into the president of the united states but there are a lot of coffee outs there for example the house speaker nancy pelosi has not been pushing for an impeachment inquiry up until now so there's a good chance that once you have high profile people in washington pushing for this public opinion it could change what it comes down to the final question of what this is total inquiry means public opinion is fundamental because the chance that the senate actually removes president try from office meaning 2 thirds of the senators vote to remove the president from office is controlled by the republican

which is controlled by the republicans is very low so you have to basically look at this from the starting point of this is political warfare and right democrats are going to use this inquiry to try to tarnish the president and you know they will say we have the legal backing we have we're in the morally right position republicans will say this is a witch hunt how dare you and then when it gets the senate a question presumably unless something comes out that here to for we can imagine yeah i mean so nick you hear i mean how explosive this can or cannot be in the united states and let's look take it then to ukraine i mean to put it in any way become a liability for president zelinsky despite the fact that there is so much corruption in the country. the authority is a liability ukraine could only lose in the situation this is a lose lose if you would come up with the goods or 'd the ukraine judiciary as present selenski today reemphasized in new york that this is all independent he

can't influence anyone if they would come up with something against the biden family father who visited ukraine when he was vice president of the sun that would you know put ukraine in democrats bad books if he doesn't do trump the favor he's asked then equally he's going to have secured goodbye to those $400000000.00 in military aid and the sales of weaponry so you really saw presidents get today desperate to focus on the positives on the on the smalltalk inviting retreat his invitation to present trump come to kiev and you know the same kind of flattery we saw in the transcript saying how much he enjoyed staying in the trump tower when his visit to new york and just trying to say as little as possible because there is really nothing for ukraine to win in all of this and ukraine desperately needs american support after all lots of fears here in kiev that the europeans especially the french are going to go soft on russia going to bring back draw down those sanctions in place since crimea was annexed so that real support and the bipartisan

support ukraine has enjoyed for the past few years in washington absolutely crucial so ukraine security so are those of a why abilities and what about this entire scandal does this impeachment inquiry becoming an asset for donald trump i mean the president will certainly spin it as a potential asset for him you heard him say today that this impeachment could be good for the election and basically what this goes back to is probably clinton's impeachment because after republicans impeached clinton in the ninety's they saw democrats do very well in the midterm election following that essentially the americans felt as if the president had been victimized by republicans in the house they came out in droves to support him and ultimately democrats did well so donald trump wants that kind of story. be repeated in that he's seen as being victimized by these democrats who are partisan hacks etc and then he wins reelection in 2020 as a result but we only have very few examples of impeachment from history to have only

been 3 previous impeachment proceedings and so it's not necessarily fair to use that one example as the kind of template for how this will turn out this could turn out very differently which explains why nancy pelosi has been so reluctant to take that step that she knows is going to trigger something that as you say is completely predictable let me ask about the text of the take summary of this phone conversation if you read it it clearly reveals that you've got the president asking a foreign president to help him influence the outcome of the u.s. election it's clear and yet today we heard from people like lindsey graham the u.s. congress saying this is just normal conversations that presidents have with other heads of state other leaders but it's not is it. correct i mean i can't imagine an example in which a democratic president would have done such a thing and republicans would have been as blind as a about it as there being about this situation how do the republicans sell this the

as something that is normal because that's what it felt like today when lindsey graham was talking about well throughout trump's presidency we've seen things that would have been an abomination under obama kind of framed in a particular way so we set the stakes that this wasn't a quid pro quo he was just saying he was talking about a lot of things they included a conversation about security and it also included the conversation about corruption those 2 things may not necessarily be linked the president is concerned about corruption so you see that kind of it's all about framing the conversation in a way that this is normal for trump this is the way he speaks now it's up to americans whether or not they believe this was something that's going to happen now that has not happened before is democrats are going to be in the news on a regular basis in front of t.v. cameras making their argument as part of this impeachment inquiry for why the president should be impeached why they believe that he is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors up until now palosi has been very interested in trying to quell the talk of impeachment and put emphasis on other things like the democrats policy

priorities that is going to change and once democrats start arguing loudly on television for americans on a regular basis that the president has broken the law or whatever the allegations may be you may see public opinion change i would not be surprised if support for impeachment started to take off as democrats become more vocal on this issue yeah it's completely unpredictable which of course makes it all them were interesting a fascinating absolutely drew coast producer of the 538 politics podcast joining us tonight here in berlin and. my colleague you're right there nick conley to both of you gentlemen thank you very much was great thank rate discussion. now we go to the a where it was another eventful day in another eventful week british prime minister boris johnson today addressed parliament in london and challenge the opposition

labor party to table a motion of confidence in his government the british parliament resumed its session today after the supreme court yesterday declared that suspension by prime minister johnson to be unlawful here's boris johnson and the leader of the opposition jeremy corbyn going at it today through westminster. they have been to one house right as you stripped down to table the motion of no confidence was was we can have 5 points to her they weren't anything other cultures this little party's thanks to you girl wasn't trying to make sure we were going to trial you. will end up with courage to write a will they refuse to take responsibility and do nothing but the other under they why wouldn't they after yesterday's ruling mr speaker the prime minister should

have done the own noble thing and resign was was it was he had seized the spray can he is forced back to this house to rightfully syce a screw should he try to avoid. we've no schrage over it most or humid it's a lot of i and of course no substance whatsoever. all rights to talk about what we just saw there i'm joined here the big table by quentin feel he's a senior analyst with the think tank chatham house in london he is here in berlin tonight it's good to see you quentin when i see that and listen to that i get the impression that boris johnson is acting like yesterday the supreme court parochial that just didn't happen is business as usual can he can he get away with it i don't

know he's gone straight on the attack is just ignoring anything not there were coals right through this debate that he should resign and he should realise what a complete he was accused of being a lie a cheat it was a very angry angry and rumbustious debate. and he just ignored it totally and just said i carry on what i think is clearly was his strategy before is even more his direction are is i'm the man of the people who's going to take on this dreadful parliament and earlier in the day we heard his attorney general describe the parliament is a disgrace is a dead parliament this is the parliament there was only elected 2 years ago and it's a parliament that has actually been pretty strong in standing up to the government and that's exactly what the supreme court said yesterday they said parliament is sovereign and boris johnson was unlawful in trying to close it done

for 5 weeks yet and so he had his power checked yesterday by the supreme court and now he wants to go next month and meet with e.u. leaders and see if you can get this last minute deal but after what happened yesterday the supreme court his position his leverage with them is even weaker than it was just 48 hours ago isn't it i think so i think that's that's it his chances of getting a deal really very slim and partly because they don't believe he can get it through parliament he could come up with a clear plan to get a deal through parliament maybe they could move to do that he's going to have to get crossed it's a poll he's going to have to reach out to the opposition to get agreement and what's he doing is attacking them head on and basically say you're a complete shallow you don't even have a motion of no confidence in me and precipitate an election and what's parliament

going to do now that they have resumes the session. can they do anything now to influence the brights it outcome that we may or may not experience on october 31st i mean is there work to be done yes undoubtedly there is i think. the 1st thing is they want to put absolute handcuffs on the law they've passed which says we will not crash out without a deal on the 31st of our. jumps and says i will abate the law and he says i will say leave on the 31st of october and it's not clear how he can do that however there's something more dramatic they could do and this is what the scottish national party leader said in parliament today which is yes to have that vote of no confidence but then the all the anti boris johnson forces have got to come together and agree on a transitional government which would ask for a delay and organize

a an election or indeed organize a referendum one of the what do you think is more likely well it's very difficult a referendum take 6 months to organize where an election can can be done in a month the thing getting for a referendum is that actually both labor jeremy corbin the leader and conservative boris johnson the leader of every split and a referendum gets them off the hook and it means that perhaps they can get the old bricks. of the way whether the referendum says we still want it all the referendum says no we're giving up on the more chance that he would prefer to have an election because he believes i mean right now he has a minority government in parliament he believes that if you had the election today he would receives strong showing strong support and he would be stronger in parliament so that's the better option for him than a 2nd referendum isn't it i think at the moment it is but. he's worry is that this

is how he's trying to be maneuvered into a scheme for an extension from the e.u. because he's made that such a big deal that he will die in a ditch rather than tension nephew actually is forced to us for an extent. he could then look weak and then he wouldn't pick up all the pro bricks it is because what he wants to do is smash the bricks it to his right in what he is in danger of doing of course is losing voters to the left of the liberal democrats and so on so there is an argument that says if he can't deal and did a deal with labor that they both agreed to put it to a referendum for going to an election in a way it would just get the issue off the top you have it's hard to imagine the labor coming any green or making any deal right now with with boris johnson i think

that the mood is yeah the language is very strong and the fact that johnson flatly and repeatedly refuses to say sorry refuses to apologize to parliament its rightful fundamentally he's been accused by the supreme court of misleading and lying to the queen and that's pretty serious stuff that's right and i agree bill is always we appreciate your insights thank you. we're here in germany the artistic an architectural movement known as bell house is marking its 1st century bauhaus into sizes minimalism functionality and clean lines on ellen you see i'm in the german city of camden it's highlighting bell housings unique use of glass. the water glass redefined. here the water is trapped inside the glass making it a permanent part of a sculpture. the chemist's glass exhibition is a bit like

a laboratory with artists exploring different aspects of the material. the show is dedicated to as a material is on the it was very important as the material in the beginning of the bow house movement creates wonderful possibilities of displaying objects and spaces . smartphone screens magnified many times are also part of the show traces from fingers wiping the screen are frozen for eternity. the title of the exhibit i'm made entirely of glass comes from a quote by about a house artist mariana bond that includes herself portraits seen in round glass balls. in a fund as an employee in a brand is a famous daughter of cam that says and she's one of the best known figures from the bow house one of the women who developed iconic objects. cabinets

residents were also invited to contribute by donating glass objects that had special value to them this lamp for instance was the sole surviving object from a house that was destroyed in a world war 2 bombing raid. of the day is almost the conversation that continues online before us on twitter or you can follow me at t.v. to get to use the hash tag today when you want to reserve remember whatever happens between now and then tomorrow is another day.

after. a borderless iraq. here in britain northern ireland. for in texas pro and con. battling with rescuers on ice. conflicts in border regions to help people deal with them. our special purpose for the. next on d. w. .

where is home. with your family scattered across the globe. listening to. the journey back to the roots get a minimum of the. shots family from somalia live around the world to them one of them needed urgent assistance of. the family starts october and on d w. a world unto itself. the finest musical compositions. the i. don't believe that he was into them don't tell me that there are few.

hello and welcome to a special edition of focus on europe this week we're looking at examples of how borders and barriers are defining the european project to get things started we come here to northern ireland as you know northern ireland belongs to the united kingdom border with. the separate member states that border is wide open right now

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