>> brennan: welcome back the "face the nation." only two presidents have been impeached in the history of our country. an crew giroux johnson in 1868 and bill clinton in 1998. richard nixon, of course, resigned in 1974 before the house could take a final vote. we're now joined by two reporters who broke the stories about nixon and clinton. bob woodward is an associate editor at the "washington post" who won waitrg aat pe coverageul. peter baker is committee white house correspondent from "the new york times" and helped break the monica lewinsky scandal. good to have both of you for. we haven't been through this as a country many times before. peter, you covered the current

white house. i have not heard of war rooms or strategy sessions. have you discovered what the trump administration is going to do? >> well, i think you have a war room of one right now, one man and an. phone or whatever smartphone he's using. there is no a coherent way, unlike the clinton white house, which did, in fact, build a war room to defend him in that impeachment. the president has yet to do that. he may get there. there is talk about that. there's a lot of struggling inside who would be in charge, without it be the white house chief of staff, a separate unit, that kind of thing. but the president feels like he's his own best defender at the moment. >> brennan: what do you think as someone who has been observing president trump's behavior? is he reacting as you would expect? >> you need to step become and look at who he is, and he's somebody who hates to lose. he's got to win. i have a scene in my book "fear" where they're talking about -- trump is talking about the north korean leader, kim jong-un, and

trump says, "this is about leader versus man, me versus kim." in other words, it's personal combat. they're gladiators in the coliseum to a certain extent some he's not somebody who is going to bend on this. what i think we need to worry about is it's a war. and you have to ask the question: how duds this war end? in the case of the clinton impeachment, as peter so well chronicled in his book, after clinton is acquitted in the senate, it's a very stunning moment. he goes in the -- you got it? >> brennan: yeah, we actually have that tape if we can play it. congress to know, is that i am

profoundly sorry for all i have. i never should have misled the country, the congress, my friends or my family. quite simply, i gave into my shame. i have been condemned by my accusers with harsh words. >> brennan: that was not a victory lap. >> he apologized. he said, i am sorry for what i said and did that triggered this, an wve got reconcile. we need to go into a period of renewal knowing what we know about trump, he's not going to apologize i suspect, whether he wins or loses. >> brennan: peter, the takeaway most people seem to hae conventisdom, is that looking at what happe ca

inegy to go through with an impeachment. is that model actually applicable here? no sitting president running for reelection has faced impeachment. >> i think that's a really important point you made. both knickson and clinton were in their second terms. they weren't going to face the voters again. we may find that the outcome in congress is similar to the clinton case new york which case you have an impeachment vote by the house along party lines, thy impeaching a president of the other party, and an acquittal or some sort of dismissal by senate that can't get to a two-thirds bipartisan vote. but in this case, you will have an appeal. you will have a greater appeals court. that will be the court of public opinion, because in november of 2020, this issue will heat up for the voters to decide, is president trump fit for office or not? the other things we learn through impeachment tell us whether he deserves a second term, and what does it tesout ce

handles it. >> brennan: it contrast so sharply with what we mentioned in the introduction. nixon didn't even want to go through the vote on impeachment. he didn't want the indignity of it. >> it's an astonishing moment. barry goldwater, the republican conservative, went with the house and senate leaders, republican leaders, to see nixon after the smoking gun tape was released, and goldwater had carl berstein and myself up to his apartment. and he got out the whiskey, and then he got out his personal diary, and he said that it was august 7th, a couple of days after this smoking gun tape was released, he and the republican leaders went to meet with nixon alone in the oval office. and they said, we're going to let barry goldwatere our smokesman, and so nixon, how many votes am i going to have in the senate. i know i'm going to be impeached. stunning moment, goldwater said

mr. president, i counted, and there are four very firm votes for you. i am not one of them. and the next day nixon announced he was going to resign. he was withdrawing from the battlefield, and if you look back on it, you know, 45 years ago, he has to get some credit for nothi program from senator blunt, he wouldn't even discuss the conduct of the president. >> yeah. >> brennan: he said, he didn't really mean what he said. >> he didn't want to defend them. none of them want to defend the conduct. the few who are speaking out on his behalf are attacking the process. the other side is partisan, the other side is unfair. the other side are whistleblowers and spy, all that, not talking about what the president did and whether that's okay. i did a survey if you will of a former white house chief of

staff going back the reagan, republican and democrat, over the last couple days. not one of them could remember a circumstance where they solicited or accepted foreign help in the context of something with political implications. it's something that hasn't been done. republicans don't want the defend it, but they do want the stick by the president for the moment because he controls the par any a way that nixon didn't. and even the way clinton didn't. >> brennan: what do you mean by that? what has changed? >> sorry, but i think this istemsy so -- the parties are so idealogically a imagine us no, there used to be middle of the road republicans, middle of the road democrats. those are gone. if you're a republican, you're much more concerned about a primary than you are about losing the middle ground. theret controls that base for the moment, and therefore the fate of these senators and congressmen. >> and the question is in a practical political sense, is this going to be considered a high crime as in the

constitution? you talked to some of the republican senators, and they're really sticking by him or at least he's got enough by him, andg so i s thitinkck tg question is, are they going to broaden this investigation, because having done this for too many decades, there's always more someplace, and whether people in the media or whether investigators are going to find it, but to just look through this one keyhole, small part of trump world, may not be enough to really understand what'shi bedden hidden. >> brennan: an you raise this point that's really important here. we're only three weeks into this, but the speed with which we're hearing more and more about what was happening behind the scenes, the text messages that were revealed this week, the testimonies that will be happening behind closed doors this coming week.

does the speed of this change something here in terms of how we digest it? >>gopeed t u a ty hehery wl,in said thit isy're all abouttrum presidencyi were to -- y this -- the trump presidency is about 400 other things. you want a comprehensive look. now, in the age of impatience and speed and the internet, everyone decide now, tell me exactly what's going on, and this process is too important. you're exactly right. are we going to get into an election that will be kind of a referendum up and down on the impeachment investigation. the democrats need to really be careful about how they let this play out. i mean, suppose something

happens, and something will happen, and it is unresolved and clinton or i'm sorry trump is still out t know, backinghe on, reu everyone and e democrats are trying -- i mean, we're in for -- i mean, let's hope it's not a bloody 2020. >> brennan: do facts matter anymore, peter? >> it is so interesting to listen to the president talk up there. he will say things that are not true age just repeat them and repeat them as though that will make them true. the whistleblower got my call all wrong. , no the whistleblower had a pretty accurate account of that call. hunter biden took $1.5 billion out of china. well, that's just not the case. not to say hunter biden didn't have business in china. he did. he had business in the ukraine. but the president just keeps getting up there saying things that are absolutely untrue.

the fact checkers are working overtime to investigate the things that he throws against the wall the see if it will stick versus the stuff that sun real. president nixon and president clinton backed off when confronted with evidence they were wrong. this president doesn't back off when pret -- presented with evidence he's wrong. >> brennan: peter,

when you humble yourself under the mighty hand of god, in due time he will exalt you. hi, i'm joel osteen. i'm excited about being with you every week. i hope you'll tune in. you'll be inspired, you'll be encouraged. i'm looking forward to seeing you right here. you are fully loaded and completely equipped for the race that's been designed for you.

>> brennan: it's now time for some analysis from our political panel. susan page is the washington bureau chief of "usa today." julie hirschfeld davis is with "the new york times."ti review,e new rk tim" an a cbs newsis political analyst. good to have all of you here. ramesh, i want no start with you. you heard senator blunt do what marco rubio did the other day, which is to say the defense of the president will rest on don't believe your eyes an don't believe your ears. he didn't actually say what he said. >> right. or he didn't mean it. don't take him seriously. don't take him literally. i think it reflects the

difficulty republicans are having in defending president trump's cond souct we'vere. had first an ato say the president didn't set foreign policy in a way that was calculated to serve his domestic political interests. and now we're beginning to hear an argument that it's okay that if he did this that, it was totally within his prerogative, and it's sort of a cacophony of defenses, because no one of them is really quite strong enough. >> brennan: and yet no one is challenging the conduct. there is not a -- i have a problem with what was done. it was just i'm going to stay with the party. >> nobody is challenging it, with a few exceptions. >> brennan: you don't even need one hand. >> not many people are defending it either. mostly what they want to do is dethat's correct. they want the change the ec st.howbjp on tv at all. no this is true. jamelle, is this strategy of going down the impeachment

inquiry path potentially going back-to-backfire for democrats. >> thus far there is no evidence that it is. thus far voters seem to be supportive of the investigation by a slim majority, by a very large plurality. far as supporting outreach kevin thomas preach and -- impeachment and removal, there seems to be some indication voters are open to it if the investigation reveals or shows or moves serious misconduct. so my take is tha democrats are probablyt in the safe zone as long as this appears not to be some sort of partisan attack, right, as long as it looks like two voters that democrats are investigating, something quite serious, which is trying the tamper with the election, trying to corrupt the election, basically trying to cheat into a second term, as long as that's how it appears to voters, i think they're probably fine, and i think the republicans' defense does hinge on trying to make

this look very partisan. i think in a sense, thas -- it shows that republicans recognize that that's the case, as well. >> brennan: susan, what does this mean for the 2020 race. you have joe biden out there with the "washington post" op-ed. he hasn't sat and really answered questions to clear the air on this. is it going to hurt him? >> yes, it's going to hurt him. it's hurting him already, fairly or not. you start any discussion by saying there is no evidence that joe biden did anything illeg or anything improper. that said, on this show, we saw a commercial paid for by the trump campaign making the case against biden. we had a "usa today" poll this week that showed by 2-1, by 42-21%, americans say it would be legitimate, there are valid reasons to investigate biden's we heat waver when it came to ukraine. the behavior was not illegal. it's not unusual for family members the try to cash in on famous or powerful relatives. it iset americans do not

like. it is unseemly that. is a question that joe biden is going to have to answer moving forward. >> brennan: julie, you have seen the competitors to joe biden. you had kamala harris, elizabeth warren express some discomfort with this, that we wouldn't let our v.p. have their child on the board of a company. >> right. they have not directly criticized joe biden, and as susan said, no one in his party certainly is suggesting that he's done anything wrong, but they are suggesting that this is an error in judgment on his part. if it had been them, they wouldn't have allowed for that to happen, and i think they recognize, as the biden campaign recognize, that they were facing headwinds before any of this came out. we saw his fund-raising lag a bit behind some of his leading competitors, and he was already facing headwinds in iowa and new hampshire, and so they see a need to sort of distance themselveses from this kind of behavior. voters really don't like this. that's a lot of the reason that trump won in 2016 to begin with. he talked about the swamp and

not ling t way thehingngto and this looks bad. it doesn't look great for him. >> what's striking, though, is that the president's own children are engaged in this kind of behavior. what i find soashi fcinating abt it's very easily -- it doesn't take very much skill on anything to reverse it and say, well, your children are doing precisely the same thing, and yet this doesn't seem to have made mark on the discussion about trump's ak tt quiatll. brk here and come back, because there's more to talk about as no what happened on the trail. i want the talk about your new become and much more. so we'll be back in a moment.

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>> brennan: we're back now with more from our political panel. beyond impeachment, i want to touch on a few key things that happened this week. susan, the -- one of the frun centers this race, bernie sanders, 78 years old, has a heart attack and his campaign says nothing for three days. what does this mean for his

candidacy? >> i think it underscores questions about his age, which he'll have to address by getting back on the campaign trail, participating in the next debate. it raises questions about his transparency. we have an expectation that we would have gotten this news earlier and that we would have been able, news reporters to interview his doctors. i remember something similar with the hillary clinton campaign. a lot of criticism over lack of disclosure. >> we saw the damage. president trump raised questions about her health, raised unfounded questions about how healthy she was. so i think bernie sanders faces some similar challenges here now. he had a great fund-raising quarter, more than $25 million, but he's not doing so well in the polls, and elizabeth warren is coming in like a steamroller with some of those progressive vote there's are the base of bernie sanders' support. >> brennan: so with sanders coming off of this, you look at biden facing the challenges he's facing, what does this mean to the field? >> i mean, a lot of things.

one thing is that i think it duz -- if biden ends up this and sanders still can't expand beyond his supporters, it leaves a wide open field for elizabeth warren to attract other voters and position herself as the front-runner in the race. i think it may open up that space in that second tier of candidates, cory booker, kamala harris, pete buttigieg, candidates who have a lot to sell on paper, who haven't quite caught fire, who have been kind of crowded out by these top three, but if either of them decline in a serious way, they can maybe capture some of those voters and become a compelling alternative. >> brennan: and for those members of congress, senators looking at reelection issues in 2020, is that part of the calculus of not criticizing or taking on the president directly? >> absolutely. one of the interesting things we saw a few months ago during the vote over the border wall

emergency was that pretty much all of the republicans in tight races in 2020 decided to stick with the president, calculating even if he's unpopular in their state, he's popular enough with republicans that they can't take the risk of losing their support. >> brennan: so why susan collins, ben sasse, and mitt romney. those are the only three senators who have come out with any strong objection to what this president has done. ñ i think for a couple reasons. senator romney was recently elected. he doesn't face the voters for a while. the president has been less popular in utah than romney is himself, so he's strong there. senator collins in maine, she's got a similar issue. she earned some credit with republican base voters for her defense of justice kavanaugh and she understands the state is not particularly pro tough. -- pro trump. but this is just less than handful of people, and trump is trying to make an example of romney but attacking him on

twitter. i'm not sure that's really going to do any damage to romney, but it's not intended to so much as intended to scare other people away. >> brennan: julie, i want to talk about your book. it has extraordinary anecdotes and reporting that the president came out and tried the shoot down. "moats and alligators." shooting pry grants in the leg. what is real. what happened behind closed doors that the president says he was not considering? >> i think what's real is his real obsession with this issue. he has been working since before he took office to really target immigrants and immigration as an issue politically and substantively. he does tend to sort of fly into a range about these things and mention ideas that sound outlandish no our ears and to the ears actually of some of his advisers, and that managed to talk him down from some of them. we talked about the piece about his desire to shut down the border completely.

we're going to do it at noon tomorrow. of course, that didn't happen, and neither did the trench. there are no alligators or snakes and nobody is being shot in the legs at the border. but a lot of what you will see in the book is these oshid-the-scenes conv ftiigoner ab ways touot get at this problem that he feels like he cannot have an influence over, e nughaen tatevugh htht's he w thinksha most about and wht his base cares most about. >> brennan: you write about jared kushner, saying we've wasted two years on immigration. >> middle of the government shutdown, the i shutdownn over thehe border t w, at some point he gets sort of deputized to find president trump a way out of this. and he has kind of an immigration 101 download from immigration advisers inside the government, and he's questioning them about what can work and what can't work, and it donees on him in one of these meetings, and he says out loud, we have wasted the last two years that they have focused so much on the wall, focused so much on this

physical structure they haven't ended up getting their hands around the problem. >> brennan: thanks to all of you for trying to make sense of

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a second whistleblower sounds the alarm on president trump. his dealings with ukraine come under new scrutiny as republicans shrug. while more democrats charge the president should be impeached. >> you have a president that's acting like a global gangster. also tonight a gunman shoots nine people in a kansas city bar killing four. the wife of a u.s. diplomat involved in a fatal accident flees britain claiming immunity. >> we want acknowledgment she's remorseful. up in smoke, fire is being used by land grabbers to torch the amazon rain forest.