as 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 . 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 if you saw the president i would also say i think that it's decision by the president yesterday to release the transcripts of his conversation with the prince of the ukraine probably going to crush it as well. so did anybody you or anybody in your office leaked this to the washington post a.b.c.

news. ranking member of the intelligence community we have to keep a 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 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 trying 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 in this matter is totally unprecedented 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. jury you have the office of legal counsel opinion yes but yes we do it would you agree i said if there is a serious incredible 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 still an issue 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 a vow that there impeachment investigation will be swift and sure but there remains much to be investigated. are you 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 you 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 a 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 craned 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 pass and that 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 short but it has really long legs into there a 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 been a bipartisan issue there was kind of consensus that helping ukraine is a good thing and especially 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 that 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 the. story from president so lansky again 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 to this country isn't this race and it shouldn't be allowed they should be a way of stopping it maybe legally 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 on this and that's the follow see has been hijacked by the radical left and everybody knows it thank you. again and he wants this to be purely partisan. is it the. 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 and republicans in the house intelligence committee hearing you know it was if they couldn't get him on the russian 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 of 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 redacted version of it in the complaint you 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 the phone call they told me there was already a discussion ongoing with white house lawyers about how to treat the cole 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 when

a 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 then 974 while there's 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 you don't you mention 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 up and it asked people what they think 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 and 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 you know what we see now and this is preliminary polling so 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 8 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 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 polling that they don't even know what this well of water 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 i didn't like and so that's the yeah don't 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 suggested i don't know i wouldn't say suggest hinted i don't know and further. all right she never got an answer from him so i'm going to nail it again well 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 trump administration 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 all of us lee 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 like you say they have to think about it for a while but the early polls not good early polls are they don't tell us 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 the lenski 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 routine 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 manifolds end up in some kind of political cost 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 the president is just

lay low and hope it passes well i mean you know that's obviously up to him but what i will say about how americans view for analyse 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 here 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 as you've already seen from a lot of work 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 you know we're going to say who knows all right galen drew 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 to arm but those who accuse of us those are the parties who 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 those who make the allegations must provide the proof to back up such allegations. 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 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 in 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 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 a regarding the decision to trying to ministrations decision to leave the iran nuclear agreement and finally as they have now done agreeing 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 they'll actually solve the problem that the iran nuclear agreement was

supposed to solve in the 1st place did they really and president rouhani said the same sions 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 europe. what's wrong with that is 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 when 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 beating 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 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 with statements and posture and so forth the bottom line is i think we need to keep the objective insight 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 willing 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 patriot battery is being sent force at the 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 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 credible restraint here you know they shot down our drone in international airspace

a while back in their essential an act of war against the 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 international consensus and an appropriate condemnation of what the iranians did and now there are 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 bradley bowman but 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 done the conversation continues all long to 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 to see that every one.

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