weekdays, start smart every weekday from 6-9 a.m. eastern, and join me for "mornings with maria". that'll do it for us right now. thanks so much for joining me. . i'll see you again next time. ♪ ♪ gerry: hello, and welcome to "wall street journal at large." the impeachment investigation of president trump and who will challenge him in 2020 once again dominated the headlines this week. on tuesday the top u.s. diplomat in ukraine, william taylor, went before congressional investigators and said he was told that president trump had held up military aid to ukraine as well as a meeting with the country's new president until kiev announced it would investigate the business dealings of former vice president joe biden's son and the alleged ukrainian interference in the 2016 election. democrats call in the strongest

ed yet of an improper quid pro quo by the president while the republicans said there was nothing new in taylor's testimony. the president blasted the diplomat claiming he was a never trumper and saying neither he -- taylor -- nor any other witnesses provided testimony that the ukrainians were aware of any military aid being withheld. the day after taylor's appearance, a few dozen house members stormed into the planned closed door deposition by laura cooper. they said they were protesting the credittive aspect of the impeachment probe. secretive aspect. on thursday we learned that the justice department's investigation into the origins of the russia inquiry that consumed the first two years of the trump presidency has now become a criminal probe. that gives prosecutor john durham the ability to convene a grand jury. in the meantime, reports surfaced about increasing anxiety inside the democratic party establishment over the durant crop of candidates hoping to take the on donald trump next

november, and there continue to be murmurs about the possibility of someone else perhaps jumping in the race. among the names being mentioned, hillary clinton, who's been hinting she may be interested. a longtime clinton adviser told fox news she hasn't ruled out another campaign. have the democrats found the smoking gun they need to impeach the president? how much concern should they have about their chances in 2020? here to talk about that is robert wolf with. he was an economic adviser to president obama, and before that he was chairman and ceo of ubs americas. he's also a fox news contributor. robert, thank you very much, indeed, for joining us. >> thanks for having me. gerry: you're very familiar with many of the democrats. there was a sense, i think a week or so ago, that the momentum had shifted really firmly in elizabeth warren's favor. she was the candidate to stop and she was almost kind of running away with the nomination. since the debates biden maybe

has come back a little bit. you talk about pete buttigieg. how do you see the race? >> for me, it hasn't really changed since we've spoken over the many months. like the country being polarized, so is our party now. i'd say about 40% is in this populist lane between warren and sanders. and elizabeth warren had a lot of momentum. i think probably she has run a really strong campaign, but also bernie's health had an issue, so i think when he got on the debate stage, he kind of -- i think everyone realized he is healthy to go back on the campaign. 40% is in the moderate lane, and that seems to be led by joe biden, and certainly mayor pete's had good momentum. 20%'s not sure which way to go. i think this has been since the beginning, and for us as a party, my biggest nervousness is that very different than years past where 2008 we had three candidates, obama, edwards and clinton. 2016 we had clinton and bernie.

and now we're in a situation we could be talking, you and i, in july and we're still in a primary season. gerry: i detect though and have detect over the last few weeks growing concern among -- forgive me for putting it like this -- establishment democrats, some might even say yourself, wall street, centrists, if you like, about elizabeth warren in particular, warren is and sanders lane, as you talk about. but particularly warren and a real fear that, one, she's pretty left wing on issues like taxes and medicare for all and, two, that she's going to have a much harder time than perhaps joe biden against donald trump. how do you see warren's chances? >> so, listen, i think polls are showing that whoever is the democratic party has a good chance -- nominee has a good chance to win. having said that, i want to disregard the polls. we've learned our lesson. gerry: we have. >> i'm more moderate. i'm for health care as a right, but i'm not for medicare for all. i'm for a green new deal, i'm

not for this green new deal. i believe in climate change, i believe in gun reform. i think all of the candidates have progressive views. the question is i think what is executable, and this year, gerry, versus years past, the most important thing's electability. today joe biden looks the most electabling by the polls. i would agree i think it's going to be tough to win industrial america if your idea is medicare for all and taking private insurance away. but i would say that elizabeth warren, it seemed, tried to pivot a little because last week she called it a platform instead of a policy. gerry: do you think maybe, again, if warren is the front-runner, if biden is fading, is there room for a late candidate coming in? people have talked about hillary clinton, mike bloomberg's name is often mentioned. do you see a possibility of that? >> i don't. i don't think we're going to have this new entrant in and all of a sudden this is going to be

a new front-runner and people are going to ring the bell, oh, my god, we found he or she to be the nominee. i don't think it happens. i don't think it changes that, today, 40% of the grassroots excitement with the populist lane and 40% of the other excitement's with the moderate lane. my biggest concern is there's probably half a dozen candidates if we include kamala harris and others that actually can last easily through the first four primaries into super tuesday. and my biggest concern not whether there's a third party candidate or a new candidate entering, it's we're going to, you know, is there a chance of a brokered convention where no one gets to 50%. gerry: do you think biden is hurt or helped by being the focus of this ukraine impeachment stuff? >> yeah. you know, i think that the last week has been maybe joe biden's best week. he pivoted to give an economic speech. i think he really showed in many ways he was the adult in the

room. yes, he hit back in some aspects, but he didn't, you know, i would say he didn't go into the ditches. he made a comment that, you know, i'm going to, you know, respect to oval office. i'm going to respect the constitution. and i think i like the idea that he pivoted. that being said, him and the president definitely went blow to blow on, you know, because the media likes it and journalists like it. everyone likes it. you know, my feeling is people want to see kind of joe be uncle joe again and that candidate who has some punch in them. i think this was a very, very good week for him. gerri: you started off talking about how we've become polarized in this country. are the democrats in danger of losing the center ground? you talked about the challenges blood elizabeth warren would face with a lot of traditional democratic voters. are they abandoning the center ground and really damaging their own prospects? and, indeed, the prospects for getting the kinds of things done that people like you want to get done? >> so i think the country, seems

to me, has lost a center. i actually don't think the democratic party has lost a center. yes, the excitement's with the populist left and the green new deal and aoc, but if you've looked at the recent midterms, the reason the house went to democrat is because we flipped 41 red to blue areas. and the people who won were great servicemen and women like jason crow and mikey shale and abigail spamberg and a whole group of people we didn't have run before. i would say away from the headline news if you actually look at the detail, you could argue that the democratic party has actually much more centrists than the republican party, because what the republican party used to stand for was fiscal responsibility. no one's seeing that. gerry: we're running out of time, let's move on quickly. the house is going to m peach president trump probably by christmas. >> yep. definitely the impeachment inquiry will go to a vote, and the vote will be to proceed. gerry: and is that -- let's set

aside the issue, the particular issues for the moment and the question of the supposed high crimes and misdemeanor. is that good politics for the democratic party? >> well, impreachment, unfortunately, is very political. and i think that, you know, i was not for this whole impeachment process until that group of seven military freshmen men and women wrote that op-ed to of why -- of why they're now supportive of it, and i think the inquiry is good for the country. there is definitely a lot of talk that there is a constitutional issue, and i think we should get to the bottom of it. gerry: in an election year you don't think this should be maybe something the voters should decide? you don't think they're going to resent the idea that the democrats are going to deprive -- >> i absolutely think there will be voters who resent it, i absolutely it's not good to do it in an election year. that being said, they have a constitutional duty to, the oath of office that they took is to uphold the constitution. that's why they are not part of

the executive branch. they have their own branch, and they have to do their duty. and this, unfortunately, is part of their duty. although i would like to see more transparency, because in this polarizing environment the more transparency we have, the less resentment there will be. gerry: and from what you've seen so far, you deserve the president deserve -- you think the president deserves to be impeached? >> i don't think we have enough information. i think we have to go through this testimony to see what's faction or fiction. gerry: coming up next, the head of the biggest private equity firm gives us his thoughts on whether the rich need to pay more in taxes along with other issues. stay with us. ♪ ♪ mornings were made for better things than rheumatoid arthritis or psoriatic arthritis. when considering another treatment, ask about xeljanz xr, a once-daily pill for adults with moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis or active psoriatic arthritis for whom methotrexate did not work well enough.

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♪ ♪ gerry: recently id had a chance to talk with steve schwartzman, ceo of the blackstone group, the world's largest private equity firm with more than half a trillion dollars in assets under management. he's also out with a new book,

"what it takes: lessons in the pursuit of excellence." i asked him about the current political debate over the fairness of the tax system. elizabeth warren in particular as the front-runner really thinks there's been too much, too many rewards have gone to wall street, to finance, and she wants to do something about it. are you sympathetic to that argument? >> well, it's an interesting argument in some cases, you know, based on false premises, based on ideology. but what is true is that at least 40% of americans are not in good shape financially. part is because our education system in the country is not what it was. when i was growing up, we were the number one, two or three in the world, and now we're someplace between number 25 and 30. and those people aren't necessarily prepared for the world that we're living in. the knowledge economy. and something's got to be done.

it's not income inequality per se, it's income insufficiency for the people at the bottom of our society. and so what we need to do is make sure that that's corrected, and there are a lot of different ways to do that. one way is to increase the minimum wage which is like a tax on the business community, if you will. it puts in a little inflation, but it's important that the people in america get a fair shot. and they need to be educated differently. and i think one idea that is important is we have to have teachers who can do the maximum for those students. and if we took the teaching profession and made it the only occupation in america where you don't have to pay tax as a teacher, what that would do would be increases the compensation effectively very

significantly. but in addition, it would mark teachers apart as a unique class in america, reaffirming values that we care about education and help to attract more and more people -- gerry: and what about higher taxes, can didly, on people like you? this is what liberal democrats want. they think you should be paying. do you think that's fair? do you think you should pay more tax? >> well, it's always fair when someone else is talking about something that doesn't affect them. in the united states today we have about the most progressive tax system in the world. the top 1% pay somewhere between 38-40% of federal taxes. the bottom 40% basically don't pay taxes. the top 10% pay 70% of the taxes. so we have an odd situation.

and i think, you know, there are a lot of different ways to look at tax burdens. could you pay incremental hi a tiny bit more? i guess you could. where does that stop? and how to you make a system work right? gerry: we've got to take another break there, but i'll be back with steve schwartz match, and we'll be talking about his philanthropy and what he hopes to achieve through it. stay with us. ♪ ♪ ♪ everything your trip needs, for everyone you love. expedia.

♪ ♪ gerry: i'm back with steve schwartzman. you have been a very, very generous philanthropist. you've given away hundreds of millions of dollars just in the last couple of years. look, some of the most interesting recent ones have been educational.

you have schwartz. amanda: scholars, china, you've 2007 a significant amount -- given a significant amount to mi e t, to my alma mater, oxford university. thank you very much. can you with talk about the focus on artificial intelligence and what your trying -- you're trying to achieve with those gifts? >> artificial intelligence is a new technology that's going to help revolutionize different parts of society not just in america, but globally. it's going to really make huge differences in a positive sense in education, in medicine globally. in diagnosing things and cutting the cost of drugs and very profound technology. on the negative side, however, the technology can be used to basically reduce people doing jobses, the number of people doing jobs today for the future.

and you could end up with very substantial potential unemployment, and it would happen relatively quickly. people adjusted to the industrial age over decades, the same way to electronic age. this is going to happen much faster, and the potential dislocations will be much more. and so what i'm interested in isn't just having america be competitive on a global basis, which was one of the reasons, but the other reason which is really important is what a they call a.i. ethics. how to you figure out -- how do you figure out how to introduce this technology and get the benefits without exposing society to the downsides of unemployment and other potential bad outcomes -- gerri: and how your gifts to these great universities can help bring that about. >> well, what happens is you need convening authorities. this involves governments which are typically quite far behind in terms of regulation. it involves educating the media.

so the media doesn't catch one particular situation and amplify that in a way that's disproportionate. you have to have companies involved with a buy-in, and you actually need research universities to expand the knowledge base. so my getting involved with this situation just as it's starting to develop that, to the i extent -- to the extent that you can help facilitate the kind of communication so between countries there's going to be a need to have certain regulations or protocols. some will be voluntary among company around the world. you have to bring everybody, all four of these constituencies into the tent to figure out what to do. i think that's a essential function because we didn't do it with the internet. and we ended up with social media which in many cases is

sort of highly disruptive of freedom of speech and a variety of other things where it's hard for governments today to actually do their jobs because they get opposition organized on social media to almost anything they want to do. gerry: i'm afraid that's all we've got time for. the book is called "what it takes," a very famous title for a book. stephen schwartzman, thank you very much for joining us. >> thank you. gerry: just ahead, a testy congressional hearing showed why mark zuckerberg and facebook are actually now on the forefront of defending free speech. that's next. ♪

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♪ ♪ gerry: mark zuckerberg was with back on capitol hill this week getting another lashing from congress. the facebook founder is, as usual, under fire from multiple fronts. the company's use of data, users' privacy and the sheer scale of its domination of social media. but it's liberal democrats who are facebook's main an a tag nists which is ironic. they're especially upset with mr. zuckerberg's refusal to ban what they regard as false advertising from the platform. in the hearing alexandria ocasio-cortez especially after the facebook chief over this. but mr. zuckerberg is taking a really important cultural stand

here. the problem is that we know what the definition of truth is for facebook's critic. it's the same increasingly narrow version of the truth that prevails on university campuses, in much of the media and, iron ironically as it happens, among other silicon valley companies. everything from immigration to gender, sexuality, abortion, race, the canon of modern political varieties. you can guarantee what the company's critics want is to insure that nothing strays from these so-called truths is ever allowed to appear on facebook or anywhere else, for that matter. that's the direct opposite of free speech. well, that's it for this week. be sure to follow me on twitter, facebook and instagram. i'll be back next week talking with the mooch, former white house communications director anthony scaramucci. that's right here on "the wall street journal at large." thank you for joining us. ♪ ♪

>> barron's round table sponsored bill. this week ceos stepping down, why prominent executives are on the hot seat. tech titans talk regulation, disruns and uniforeign -- disruption and unicorn ip os. the 2020 election and more. barron's round table starts now. ♪ ♪ >> well welcome to barron's round table where we get behind the headlines and prepare you for the week ahead. i'm jack otter. what we think are the three most important things investors should be thinking about right now. tech earnings, facebook, apple