we talked to those who began the struggle for freedom and those who showed personal courage told them no it buckles boy no telephone call from morse code let me know you've been in the 1st room we have would go off the wall didn't surprise me i saw it coming 10 years before i was before the true end of the homebody. what does it take to change the course of history. raising the iron curtain starts september 30th on d w. 2 years of the russia investigation convictions prison sentences and a final bestselling report by robert muller none of it was able to shake the foundation of the trouble white house like one person did this week with a 9 page whistleblower complaint tonight the week that suddenly put everything into question about the presidency of done what's wrong what we are about to discover

could end up meaning relatively little or it could mean the end of a president i'm burnt off in berlin this is the day. i don't see action and entirely there's a time to prove it's not about politics it's not that time since you know i spent patriotism. in a business that was fun. to me to lose. situation . it was assumed that this occupant of the oval office poses a clear and present danger to our future to our democracy it's a deeply disturbing situation and circumstance and i think the proper role and

responsibility for starters at this point is to investigating get to the bottom of this phone call to say nothing burger in terms of a quid pro quo donald trump is going to choke on this supposed one he will go down with this suppose nothing goes into a stroke. also coming up tonight despite massive arrests and a police crackdown protests against egyptian president el-sisi are expected again this weekend but the president at least in public while he isn't worried at all. strong the country is really strong because of color and because of you so don't worry about anything don't worry about anything. but to our viewers on p.b.s. in the united states and all the around the world welcome we begin the day ending the week that may have changed everything for us president donald trump the list of scandals president trump has endured is long from the white supremacist rally in

charlottesville to a porn star named stormy daniels to migrant children separated from their parents at the border none of these not even the russian investigation became an existential threat to the trump presidency never enough to trigger impeachment proceedings. a whistleblower changed all of that this week the u.s. congress launched impeachment investigations after a whistleblower complaint a wage the president abused his power by trying to acquire political ammunition via the president of ukraine to help him win reelection next year allegations that the white house withheld aid to ukraine to coerce kiev to cooperate and allegations that the white house tried to hide evidence of the ukraine's president is not the only foreign leader mentioned in that whistleblower report germany's chancellor i'm going to marry who also has a cameo appearance if you will the target yet again of trump's criticisms peoples

of the world she is a toast to friendship at a u.n. summit dinner for world leaders u.s. president on the trump and german chancellor angela merkel. but trump has not always treated merkel like a friend the rough transcript of a phone call to ukrainian president go to him is a lansky cited trump saying when i was speaking to angle america she talks ukraine but she doesn't do anything. selenski was quick to agree saying you're absolutely right not only 100 percent but actually 1000 percent. drop then told his counterpart that the u.s. had been quote very very good to ukraine. that's all according to the official rough transcript of their conversation as released by the white house this week with the caviar that it is not

a word for word transcript but the german government has pushed back against trump's accusations on ukraine citing hard facts. isn't that it's according to e.c. de statistics we are the 3rd biggest financial patna for development after the usa and the e.u. . and of coolest e.u. contributions support investments and 8 for ukraine. because germany has also been deeply engaged in diplomacy to help ukraine as it struggles with a separatist uprising in the east germany was part of the so-called normandy format that sought to bring an end to the conflict but trump appeared to ignore this adding yet more strain to the german american relationship. oh for more on the fallout from the whistleblower report i'm joined tonight by jonathan katz of the german marshall fund jonathan spent many years developing u.s.

policy in europe including ukraine with the u.s. state department as well as on capitol hill to others good to have you on the show trump like other u.s. president says that his conversations with other foreign leaders should remain confidential if not embarrassing things are said in revealed what alarms you more about what we've heard tonight that this conversation was allocated or that both of the presidents were caught trashing american. i think there's 2 things here one obviously this was a whistleblower that witnessed and was part of witnessing the president trying to use his office. and to go after a political opponent and so there's nothing disturbing about a wistful whistle whistle blower exposing mr trump in this manner and it's quite clear that congress and particular the house representatives think so and that's

why there's an impeachment inquiry looking at this issue but the other half is to is quite revealing of course is the conduct towards america's most important allies like germany the president has repeatedly both both publicly in the past and now we know in these private conversations has use these opportunities to trash allies to weaken relationships but he also i think underlying all this uses these moments in order to achieve his own objectives rather than that of allies or even of the united states in this case and i think this was what makes it particularly dangerous in this case is that the president was trying to use his office to achieve political ambitions empower those that want to use significance of this is for us german relations i mean do you think. do you think that she was surprised to read this. well i'm certain that she is not shocked

given the past behavior of the president including direct conversations previously so this this is really not shocking some of the things that were more shocking in it was the response back from president selenski agreeing in effect that germany france in effect i look at all european partners not pulling their weight in support of ukraine and that's just not true and of course one of the best parts of that ukraine is experience of the last several years as it moves forward in terms of democracy security economic growth has been this this transatlantic support that included the united states on one hand. germany the european union and so when you look at the bill of who's provided assistance you see that on both sides of the atlantic support for ukraine has been strong and what i think has happened in this conversation particularly for mrs alecky it's actually

weakened his relationship with european partners including mr mccraw and chancellor merkel both we mentioned in this conversation and it's quite unfortunate because i think if you look at the scale of support and including recent engagement on the normandy for format to resolve the conflict in eastern ukraine it has been chancellor merkel and mr crone have been right there with mr is a lead you know trying to resolve this issue and so i think right today they have to be doubting whether or not this is less he's somebody they can trust this was a blow report jonathan reveals to the entire world much about help the u.s. president regards the rest of the world in how he regards the rule of law and due process this is what the president said last night about the people who gave the whistleblower that information it was recorded on a smart phone at a private dinner with trump in about 50 just take a listen. this is one of

these are the reasons that it was. you know it. was interesting we. used to handle them a little differently back then what did you hear in that address john. well 1st of all it's reprehensible that the president would make such a statement it's incredibly important that the u.s. government in particular have people making certain that officials who are not above the law are held accountable for using power and a way that they should not so it's reprehensible 2nd i would say the president has used this tactic just let's recall this whole incident really is connected directly to the reelection or the reelection efforts of president trump he is using this and i think he wants to use this incident to rile up his base in the past he has used or at least thrown up the idea that his own supporters should use force in this

particular instance it's quite disconcerting that i think what he's trying to do is to send a signal to anybody within his administration that might be thinking of doing something similar not to do it so that you could read this is intimidation if appears to advocate the the death penalty or extra judicial punishment for for traders i mean what does that say to germany in europe were shared values with the united states. well i think this president has long ago abandoned the idea of shared values with his partners and berlin paris brussels and across europe the president has not been a exporter of u.s. values as being about democracy and what we're seeing today is more about corruption. something that i think is unusual coming from the white house he's

really the 1st president that has really not advanced the issue of democracy and human rights in any way and so there is this disconnect and you're seeing a disconnect that has led some european leaders to think heavily about strengthening european security without the united states and so this is having it's not just about the values issue itself it's about the overall relationship and the core of that relationship revolves around democracy human rights which i believe americans still believe strongly and in a bipartisan way in the u.s. congress and many people in this administration believe in this type of engagement and also how important it is to transatlantic unity. jonathan katz of the german marshall fund joining us tonight from washington jonathan we appreciate your time and your insights tonight thank you thank you.

in egypt if you mention the arab spring you often get the reaction that was so long ago like a different world well yes and no it has been 6 years since egypt's 1st democratically elected president mohamed morsi was overthrown by an egyptian army chief sisi in that time l.c.c. has ruled egypt with an iron fist but in the past week a new protest wave has emerged the 1st real challenge to all cc's crackdown more than 2000 people have reportedly been arrested since last weekend now the genesis of this protest or videos like the one that you're going to see that was released by and egyptian businessman living in exile muhammad ali has accused president el-sisi and the military of misusing public funds to build presidential palaces in a tomb for the president's mother it comes as economic reforms and. are

hitting egypt's middle class sees a return to egypt on friday after his address to the united nations general assembly earlier in the week and here's what he had to say about at those allegations against. this is an image being painted as was done before all comprised of lies and defamation and some media working to present an image that isn't true we are really strong the country is really strong because of color and because of you so don't worry about anything don't worry about anything. well for more on this i want to bring in stephen meca nerdy he's the executive director of the project on the middle east democracy in the joins us tonight from our washington bureau stephen welcome to the day we got the united nations human rights chief saying that she is concerned about the lack of process following this latest wave of arrests in egypt what really do we know about these arrests and these detentions. what we don't know

a lot of details there's very little transparency and we hear lots of anecdotal reports as you reported that at least 2000 gyptian have been arrested and many believe that the numbers are actually quite higher and i would also prior to today and today was supposed to be the sort of 2nd and the 2nd kind of day of large protests at following last friday so we have a lot to report i talked to people in egypt myself on the written lots of random checks on the street police stopping random egyptians especially young egyptians the protesters been largely young egyptians aged lady 15 to 25 lots of young if they're being stopped in the streets having their cell phones searched for anything incriminating and then many being taken away and the process as to where they're being taken where they're being held for most of them is quite unknown and so there's a lot of confusion ambiguity about all of the rest that are going on going on right now in egypt human rights watch says that this crackdown suggests that sisi is

terrified of criticism from egyptians or perhaps maybe even that he's paranoid but is he really under threat at the moment. well it's hard to say i think it is clear that he's very. very wary despite his public comments i mean the aggressiveness and the sort of very widespread nature of this crackdown suggests that he and his regime are in fact very afraid of the sun and of course they can remember the protests that erupted in 2011 those that are out in 2013 so they know that things can get out of control quite quickly they've also seen protests erupt again this year in a couple of other arab countries in sudan and in algeria so i think it is regime is very worried as to how serious a threat this is to be frank it's very difficult to gauge ahead of time but i think there are several troubling signs one is that. these protests include

a lot of egyptians who had previously supported sisi so this is this is not just the usual suspects of democracy or human rights activists this is sort of a new generation of frustrated egyptians including many who had supported him previously including many many from the middle class which you rightly noted is being sort of squeezed by some of the economic measures and they've been particularly outraged by some of the allegations and evidence of corruption there are presented in recent recent days so i think there are reasons to see this current eruption as something a little bit different from once he's faced since he took power. with us president double trouble earlier this week which is take a listen to what the u.s. president said when he was asked if he is concerned about the egyptian response to last weekend's protests. you know i'm i'm not concerned with. egypt has a great leader is highly respected he's brought order before he was here there was very little order there was chaos so i'm going to we're going to. stephen

what did you hear there is trumpet giving a green light to c.c.'s crackdown. unfortunately i think that's how it is these comments were widely perceived including in egypt i can't speak to whether that was president trump deliberate intention president trump has been very fond of c.c. . since since even before trump came president here in the u.s. to be honest i doubt very much that president trump is following events in the in egypt very closely at all as you know present trump is currently sort of embroiled in his own difficulties here in washington so i think his instinctive reaction is to speak positively of those leaders that he they he likes and the he has a good relationship with regardless of what the facts might be on the ground but it is very troubling this remarks have been interpreted by many as as a green light for a mental potentially violent crackdown you need

a statement from the working group on egypt rights here in the studio with the the. religion or place or the yeah at the carnegie endowment earlier this week you point out that the trip administration has called for governments in russia hong kong iran and sudan to respect the rights of protesters why do you think they're taking a different line with egypt. well unfortunately this this is ministration and to be honest it's not entirely new to this administration this is new administration is a bit more blatant and it's kind of cool as flip roaches to foreign policy the criticism that it offers a government that it uses less friendly. very unlikely to offer the same criticism speak the same way about governments that it that it's found in the it thinks it has a good relationship with including a good personal relationship so unfortunately we've seen this kind of. hypocrisy in

inconsistency from the us government in the past and especially by by the trouble ministration i would view that as very unwise and i the statement that we put out and emphasizes you know it's a very troubling signal to be sent and these protests should be taken very seriously and the violent repression of them is something that not only is terrible for egyptian citizens but could have negative consequences for us standing in the region and for us relationships and even the u.s. national security and one of the different there was this means that the history of u.s. relations with egypt is fraught with this contradiction just as it is with solti arabia some regimes apparently are just too strategically important to allow them to fail you know whether the person in the white house is named or obama or whether the president is named sisi or mubarak. yeah that's fair i mean the u.s. has a long history of this kind of ocracy particularly in the middle east and north africa

but i would say that this administration is a little bit more blatant and less ashamed of that hypocrisy where the obama administration continued to provide military aid military support to president sisi into the government but somewhat reluctantly so and they consistently made their displeasure known to president sisi both publicly and privately and refused to embrace them in the same kind of kind of over the top way that you see from president trump but but it is sure that they they more or less carried on this sort of concrete aspects of the relationship and support mostly interrupted although there were a couple suspensions following to coup in which he took power the president trying to seems. you know that he doesn't sort of acknowledge this sort of discomfort in this kind of hypocrisy and is happy to embrace sisi not only privately not only through military aide but through sort of over the top praise which it can come

across as unseemly. it's what we've seen became president a strong arm leader automatically gets the stamp of approval from the u.s. president do you foresee that any time or is it just older pilots from your old elms. well i think it would it would take probably changes in events on the ground to bring about changes i can't see change in president trump's approach being driven by him rethinking things if events on on the ground were to change if these protests were some out of c.c. were to find himself in a significantly embattled as as we've seen here and you know his 2 predecessors encounter pretty quickly due to large scale public protests that it's possible that the u.s. administration and president trump himself might recalculate but i don't think you're likely to see that kind of change initiated by the white house you see

change on the ground there what about if this weekend if the become. bloody if we're talking about something worse than just mass arrests. i think that's possible i mean i think it's it's there's not a lot of precedent for during this administration of seeing kind of close partners that president strongly supports kind of need to ask a late kind of bloody crackdown in that way certainly if that happens there will be pressure on this administration to respond to change their response i think you would probably expect to see kind of some criticism at least from other parts of this administration as far as president trump himself honestly it's a little bit difficult to knowledge of difficult to predict the the larger the the level and the scale of violence the more pressure there would be on him to change course that to some degree. this if there were to be bloodshed i mean. we see what happens for example in saudi arabia with the murder of the journalist who showed

and there has been a lot of blowback against the united states because the united states didn't put the pressure that a lot of its allies think it should have put on. prince there following the murder of shogi so do you see a similar a similar dynamic with. sisi in egypt even if things do become lethal that trump is not going to change course and even if the rest of let's say europe for example wants to force him to do so. well i think he's not going to be inclined to change course that he's his hand would have to be forced and perhaps by as you say but by europe by and by other countries by the international community also here in washington potentially by congress. and i would say that congress has a bit more leverage in the case of egypt than they do in the case of saudi arabia because egypt is

a large it's actually the 2nd largest recipient in the world of u.s. foreign aid congress has authority over over that foreign aid and that military aid package. to a stronger degree than it does the weapons that are sold to saudi arabia because the weapons are sold to saudi arabia or paid for by the saudi government the weapons given to different are paid for by u.s. taxpayers and to the congress has some leverage there and certainly congress is not as in close climb to be. as strongly supportive of president sisi as president trump is so you could see his fan hand forced by capitol hill all right steve mcnerney the executive director of the project on middle east democracy joining us tonight from washington stephen we appreciate your insights tonight thank you. well the day is almost done but the conversation continues online you'll find us on twitter either in the news or you can follow me of bret goff t.v. don't forget to use the hash tag of the day when you get in touch every member whatever happens between now and then tomorrow is another day and it's the weekend

so we will see you back here on monday have a good weekend everybody. d.w.

some talk show strong opinions. clear positions from an international perspective such as saudi oil fields are loaded powder keg the us is a rand came close to wiping the snoops coming up on to the point as well discuss the gulf crisis no threat it poses the present problems relax and enjoy.

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family starts october on. this is g.w. news live from berlin on the eve of presidential elections in afghanistan a picture of polling stations and suicide bombings across the country they're setting up the ballot boxes for saturday's presidential election but taliban extremists are threatening to bomb voters and polling place also coming up u.s. secretary of state my campaign in the crosshairs

a democrat controlled committee demanding that he produced documents about that president trump phone call when trump is alleged to have abused.