u.s. president donald trump claims of a white house walking down and covering up evidence of a president abusing his power with one eye on the next election tonight president has reportedly compared the whistleblower to a spine committing treason that as the u.s. is spying chief today told congress i believe the whistleblower did the right thing i'm bringing off in berlin this is the day. yesterday we were presented with the most graphic evidence yet. that the president united states has betrayed his oath of office it just seems to me though that it is our president it and i would also say i think that it's decision by the president yesterday to release the transcripts of his conversation with the president of ukraine is probably unprecedented as well. so did anybody you or anybody in your office leaked this to the washington post or embassy news. ranking member any of

the intelligence community we've got to keep the secret. also coming up tonight iran and the united states all this week at the united nations general assembly the world waited for a positive sign of a turnaround in tensions it hasn't happened one of the greatest security threats facing peace loving nations today is the repressive regime in iran. but to our viewers on p.b.s. in the united states and all around the world welcome we begin the day with the 1st report of who the whistleblower is tonight that the york times reports that the person who claims the u.s. president has sold foreign help in his 2020 reelection that person is a cia officer the paper says 3 sources have confirmed the man worked inside the trump white house exactly what the whistleblower claims well that became public

information today inside the declassified report are allegations of a u.s. president abusing his powers to get reelected next year with the help of ukraine's president and there is an allegation of a cover up that officials inside the white house have trying to lock down and keep secret evidence of that abuse today u.s. president trump again called the allegations part of a witch hunt being carried out by the democrats trump also likened the whistleblower to a spy suggesting he or she should be punished for treason and on capitol hill lawmakers heard from the head of national intelligence joseph mcguire a former navy seal who had only been the nation's top spy one day when the whistleblower report landed on his desk i believe that everything here and this matter is totally unprecedented that it was the latest bombshell in a fast unfolding story allegations of a quid pro quo that u.s.

president donald trump made military aid to ukraine depended on the country digging up dirt on trump's political opponent the acting director of national intelligence joseph mcguire said he had legal reasons for not referring the complaint to congress as directed by law he faced often hostile questions about his opinion on the matter for. their capture you would agree that should be investigated would you not. german the horses left the barn you have all of the information you have the whistleblower complaint you have the letter from the i.c. i.g. you have the office of legal counsel opinion yes but if you like yes we do it would you agree i said if there is a serious and credible investigation that you agree there should be an investigation i believe that it is a matter to be determined by the chair and this committee part of the complaint alleges that white house officials knew that the call contained evidence of potentially illegal activity and tried to quote lock down the official transcript

that did not please speaker of the house nancy pelosi there is actions that are actions that are have her up yeah when you take when you have a system of electronic stolen each for information that is specifically for national security purposes. and you have something that. it's self-serving to the president politically and decide it might not be you might not want people to know and you hide it someplace else that's a couple democrats have vowed that they're impeachment investigation will be swift and sure but there remains much to be investigated there. are the talk about today's developments i'm joined here tonight at the big table by galen's ricky as host and producer of the 538 politics podcast and again tonight with the ukrainian side of the story is my colleague nick connelly he joins us from kiev gentlemen

welcome back to the show nick in the start with you this story now has multiple components the ukraine president's olinsky at the top the whistleblower report claims that trump wanted the lenski to provide political ammunition to help win the 2020 election and that this is part of a white house cover up has there been any reaction today to all of this from president zelinsky. good evening brant no they are keeping very tight lipped here in kiev and i think probably for their purposes rightly so ukraine can only lose the situation there's nothing to gain if they seem to be too enthusiastic helping president trump in his campaign as it would seem against the biden family he will come in and ukraine will come in for criticism from the democrats the other way around as we've seen crane very dependent on us aid financially and militarily so i think the real hope here is in kiev to sit this out

to be as quiet as humanly possible and hope that somehow these passions and the ukraine can kind of keep itself out of this and you not be forced to choose between 2 sides yeah and what about this is not something sure but it has really long legs into the air of fear in kiev that u.s. foreign aid to ukraine could be reduced or cut altogether because of the scandal. well look u.s. support for ukraine has up till now being a bipartisan issue there was kind of consensus that helping ukraine is a good thing and specially at a moment of time now where western european cups in those b. fronts are thinking about warming up relations with putin's russia again maybe softening the sanctions bringing russia back into the fold the u.s. consistent u.s. support across the capitol hill is crucial to ukraine so that is definitely a fear among the elites a i think people don't really know what's hit them yet and feel like somehow this is not something they wanted they were expecting in some other being sucked into

this standoff in washington they don't understand didn't know it was going to happen and feel whatever happens are that's the story from president so lewinsky and i want to talk about the sort of the story from president truong and his reaction today to take a listen to what he said earlier it's at this race to our country it's another way john here we go again what these guys are doing democrats are doing that is god theory is it is great and it shouldn't be allowed they should be a way of stopping it maybe illegally through the courts they don't want to talk about lowering drug prices they don't want to talk about anything because they're fixated and said nancy pelosi has been hijacked by the radical left and everybody knows it thank you. so given he wants this to be purely partisan. is it well 1st of all there's a couple things to say in response to what trump said there the 1st thing is that

he was not necessarily hijacked by the far left within her party part of the reason that she came out in favor of an impeachment inquiry is because the moderates started coming out at the beginning of the week in favor of that inquiry the other thing is this week is something of an opening salvo in what's going to be a weeks or months long debate in the media about what happened what the nature of this impeachment inquiry is and so you heard from. trump today republicans in the house intelligence committee hearing you know it was if they couldn't get him on the russia investigation they're going to try to get him on this and then also talking about other you know corruption in their eyes trying to pivot to biden and things like that in his role in ukraine and and hunter his son so you know the question will be will this come down to a debate over whether or not the president's actions were legal or ethical and what you didn't see there is him making the argument that it is ok for the president of

the united states to pressure a foreign president into digging up dirt on a political opponent that's a very good point he doesn't think it's such a big deal we today were able to read through the entire whistleblower complaint the rejected version of it in the complaint want to show our viewers that was released today the whistleblower writes that others in the white house were alarmed by the phone conversation between trump and salutes you know the text reads the white house officials who told me this information were deeply disturbed by what had transpired in the phone call they told me there was already a discussion ongoing with white house lawyers about how to treat the call because of the likelihood in the officials retelling that they had witnessed the president abused his office for personal gain so right there. that they they know that what's going on could possibly be big time wrong and there you have the beginning of what looks like a cover up yeah so the cover up that everyone's referring to is that usually one of

president talks to a foreign leader people listen into the call there's no actual taping of the call but they take notes and they put together something of a summary not a full exact transcript after the fact it's been that way since the 1974 employees a lot of rights and so what happened in this case instead of just filing that conversation away with all of the other similar conversations they took that conversation and they put it in a system that is meant for classified information that affects national security interests and so from basically when this conversation happened you have people in the white house acknowledging that this doesn't look good we don't want a lot of people seeing this so we're going to classify it separately so fewer people see it and you know you mentioned the u.s. president seems to think that it's ok to ask foreign governments to help with national election there's a new poll out from the economist and you go and it asked people what they seek about this allegation of foreign aid in the u.s.

election and what is what is what are the numbers tellus so when i can you actually last night i talked about where the polling had been and where it had been is in the high to mid in the mid to high thirty's in favor of impeachment that was based off of the russian investigation and any other potential wrongdoing that people see trump doing what we see now and this is preliminary points or more polls are going to come out is when they ask the question if president trump pressured a foreign president to investigate a political rival and held aide a hostage as part of that pressuring would you should the president be impeached and what we saw is 55 percent approved impeachment and it was something like 36 percent said no with another about 20 percent. saying that they don't really know 1000 percent when they ask more broadly is it appropriate for a president to engage in this behavior 62 percent said it was not appropriate ha

and so you see there when this doesn't become this hasn't had time to simmer and the american partisan environment right this is a somewhat new story and opinions are still being formed in fact 30 percent of american said in in some of the you've got to polling that they don't even know what this reservoir complaint is about so you know from the get go this seems worse for president trump than the russian investigation ever did in the polls because a good point in that poll do you i was noticing a lot of americans don't even really seem to know what ukraine is or where it is so you know that's another story. that's not yeah tell me about i would imagine the numbers are a little disturbing there let's talk about some more of the content of the whistleblower report it includes u.s. attorney general bars when bars name 4 times now he is listed as a person that trump wanted to start the investigation into joe biden's son now earlier this year bar testified about the report you'll remember and he was asked

a question that suddenly may have renewed importance take a listen has the president or anyone at the white house ever asked or suggested that you open an investigation of anyone yes or no please sir. the president or anybody else. seems you to remember something like that and be able to tell us yeah but i'm trying to grapple with the word suggest i mean there have been discussions of of matters out there that. they have not asked me to open an investigation but perhaps they've suggested i don't know i wouldn't say suggest hinted i don't know and for. all right she never got an answer from him so i'm going to ask you again when i asked you last night in the after seeing this does the attorney general does he have to recuse himself from the whistleblower case completely well that is probably going to go to the ethics department of the department of justice and they'll have to answer that question

you know it is clear at this point that a lot of high level people within the trumpet ministration may be dirty by this scandal if it kind of blows up in the way that it has been if it snowballs in the way that it has been in recent days i mean so will he have to recuse himself we're going to find out. because he was included in these conversations with the president of ukraine about investigating you know what has at this point been a debunked conspiracy theory about the bidens you know it would be also weird if he were the person making decisions about how to move forward with any investigation that comes out of this whistleblower complaint you say that this has to percolate for a while and partisan politics but what about on main street in the u.s. do the poll numbers tell us do people want to see an impeachment trial at all. you know in america we choose our leaders through elections and so generally when you

look at impeachment polling throughout history americans are not super hot on impeaching president and they want to be the ones who decide whether the president is elected or reelected and so here too for the polling has not been really in favor of impeachment you know americans are going to tell us they're telling us this week and they're going to continue to tell us over the coming weeks as we get more and more polling we're also going to see in trump's approval rating right does it move up or down and there we're going to get a sense of whether or not americans think what the president did is wrong and whether or not they think he should be impeached as a result ok so what you say they have to think about it for a while but the early polls not early polls or they don't tell the true story nic this new poll though tells us something about foreign policy and americans it puts foreign policy at the bottom of voters' concerns in the united states. that must be a blessing or is it

a curse for the ukrainian president. i think it's a blessing it means he has to communicate to fewer people to make his case to a political class in washington rather than the u.s. public. but this is definitely a challenge for zelinsky so early on in his presidency these are all issues things that happened way before he got to office and his narrative this all in a pretty rude and sudden way and he now just has to do his best to make sure that supporting ukraine does not become a policy issue and be some kind of toxicity and kind of fear of engaging with ukraine that any kind of dealings with ukrainians with a visibly as we even saw before with the man of fought and in some kind of political costs and sort of grime so this is a dangerous time for the ukraine and i think there is a lot a lot of fear here of putting one foot wrong and overwhelming to just to keep quiet and hope they can really ride this out do you agree with that galen the president dillon ski is just lay low and hope it passes or well i mean you know that's

obviously up to him but what i will say about how americans view foreign policy is yes there's of course has to do with foreign policy the way that it will be framed in american politics is this is about corruption and that's how the democrats will frame and when you ask democrats about or of the public broadly in a watch and polling what they think about corruption and how big of a priority it is for them and how they view trump visit the corruption and whether or not he uses the presidency you know to further his own personal interests that is a priority especially for democrats and so you will see kind of a pitch from democrats to their base about this is a corruption issue and therefore you should turn out in november etc in order to make your voice heard on this issue you've already seen it from a lot of war that's right that's right we'll see if that message gets through and we'll see if elizabeth warren in the end is the one to benefit from this scandal now we're going to see who knows all right galen droog host and producer of the 538 politics podcast and in my colleague nick connelly gentlemen to both of you thank

you thank you. iranian president hassan rouhani has challenged the u.s. and its allies to provide evidence that tehran carried out this month's attack on saudi oil facilities the saudis and the americans both blame iran for the strikes which in one hit knocked out half of saudi oil production france germany and britain have also blamed tehran for the attacks iran has denied any involvement and today called the accusations ridiculous. it. those who accuse of us those of the poxy see should be held responsible to show proof to show evidence to back up those allegations accusations that if this attack didn't come from the south. he came from the know all the west.

the east. the allegations must provide the proof to back up such allegations that it. for more on the situation with iran i'm joined tonight by bradley bowman he is senior director of the center for military and political power at the foundation for defense of democracies he's also a former national security advisor in the u.s. senate bradley it's good to have you back on the show let me ask you about the hope that it's that was stirred up this week at the u.n. general assembly there were people who were hoping that tensions between iran and the u.s. could begin to be dialed down a bit it didn't happen did it. no it did and i and others were watching the remarks of the iranian leader closely and they continued denials which is patently clear and that is that iran conducted the attack against society. energy facility which by most people's definitions would

constitute an act of war they continued to deny it they said that they would try to prevent others from exporting oil they have sabotage ships they have launched they and their proxies have. put. explosives in the direction of u.s. embassies and other things and this is the latest a significant escalation and the u.s. in my view has shown significant restraint in prudence and in responding so. it's encouraging that the germany u.k. and france have acknowledged what is patently clear that iran is responsible for this and the more that the u.s. and our european allies can be unified in these matters the more that this can be resolved diplomatically the better the chances commuters all diplomatically well how unified are the allies of the u.s. really when it comes to iran and we've got france germany and the u.k.

blaming iran for the attacks in saudi arabia and at the same time they remain committed to saving the iran nuclear deal do those 2 things cancel each other around. they're not unified at all not nearly as much as i would like and i'm saying that that's a problem the longer that iran believes that it can continue to divide the u.s. and our european allies the more likely i think we're going to get additional aggression from them and the more likely they are going to be intransigent in their position if we can. agree to disagree with our european allies and partners are regarding the decision to try to ministrations decision to leave the iran nuclear agreement and finally as they have now done agree that this attack was. from iran it is unacceptable and that the right answer is not additional acts of war from iran but to come back to the negotiating table to try to negotiate a deal that will actually solve the problem that the iran nuclear agreement is

supposed to solve in the 1st place did they really and president rouhani said the same things have to be removed he called on the us to cease this policy of maximum pressure and pursue a policy of dialogue watch it in a reason and to look for that which benefits the world and america and then he said if we reach a time when the preconditions are taken off the table of course the possibility exists that we will talk with america what's wrong with that in your opinion what's wrong with that is that the if these sanctions pressure is what is creating the incentive for iran to come back to the negotiating table if you remove those sanctions they have will have 0 incentive to do that so i think we should remind ourselves that the main purpose of the trump the ministrations max pressure campaign is that convince the iranians to come back to the negotiating table to

negotiate an iran nuclear agreement that is absent the major flaws that the original version had it is interesting would you agree by the what was it 2 weeks ago 3 weeks ago we had the u.s. president saying no preconditions. would be open maybe to meeting with rouhani and now today we hear rouhani say the same thing no preconditions the possibility exists so that there is space somewhere for these 2 to to come together right now they just have to find it because there you see it as well. one would hope so i mean these are kind of than the norm in the normal diplomatic dance when nothing is normal these days but you know this is the kind of diplo diplomatic dance that we often see was statements and posture and so forth the bottom line is i think we need to keep the objective inside in the objective is you know we do not want the world's worst state sponsor of terrorism to have the world's most dangerous weapons period and the iran nuclear agreement was just

a slow motion disaster toward that object toward that long term iranian objective of having a nuclear weapons capability and so if they truly don't want nuclear weapons as they say then they should be rolling to come back to the table and negotiate an agreement that for example doesn't have sunset clauses where the requirements related to that expire in a few years we learned today that the u.s. is sending about 200 support personnel to saudi arabia i think a patriot battery is being sent for said no radars is that going to make a difference in deterrence in your opinion. i think those are positive steps i mean it's important for your viewers to understand those are purely defensive these are not offensive weapons these are means by which to shoot down the next round of iranian aggression so again i said earlier the united states i in my view is showing incredible restraint here you know they shot down our drone international airspace

a while back and they're essential an act of war against international oil markets and there would have been a justification i think for a response a robust kinetic military response instead we've seen restraint from the united states trying to build the international consensus and an appropriate condemnation of what the iranians did and now they're we're deploying air defense measures air missile defense measures that's appropriate and that's prudent and iran is increasingly isolated and soft on the international stage broadly boman with the foundation for defense of democracies joining us tonight from washington bradley we appreciate your time and your insights tonight thank you. thanks the day is almost gone the conversation continues on line you'll find us on twitter either due to the news follow me a break off t.v. and remember whatever happens between now and then tomorrow is another day we'll see you then everybody.

enters the conflict zone confronting the powerful. donald so may not be as a champion of human rights for those one in particular close quarters it says to the rights of us it's free like this this week is so on the ground by ambassador wilson international religious freedom is donald shawn trying to hijack a legion so political purposes conflict so for. the full details free.

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the secrets of symphonic magic. promise code starts oct 11th w. . you know. we're not a perfect country and we don't claim to be going to see the last terrorism if you have more religious freedom give me another country that pushes religious freedom or the united states gets to who has ever held a minister ariel on the edge of freedom before this one has anybody done a trump made up being known as a champion of human rights for those one in particular those qualities that sense of a right to worship free my guest this week here in washington is.