>> tonight a speal edition president trump and impeachment. is president believes he is above the law. >> a divided nation i >> is a hoax and disgrace and embarrassment to our country. >> embattled president. we go inside this moment with pu tzer prize winners maggie haberman with white house correspondent fornew york times" and historian jon meacham for conversations on the presidencynd history next. >> this is "washington week" funding provided by -- >> there's aoment a moment of realizati realization, of taundeing, a

moment where everything is clear. at fidelity wealth plannins about clarity. knowing who you are where you have been and where you want to go.at th fidelity wealth management. >> additional funding provided by hugh and practice it's ewing committed to bridging cultural differences our communities. the corporation for public broadcast and by can contributions to your pbs station from viewers lik you. thank you. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible forents caption coand accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> once again from washington moderator robert costa. i hope you enjoyed thanksgiving. for me it is time to see family in pennsylvania and talk politics and take stock of the e . at this table we will did that

take stock of president trump and impeachment days after the latest public hearings. joining me are two of the brightest minds on this jon meacham a pulitzer prize winning presidential biographer journalist and editor and contributor to time. we will talk to him later. first mazine magazine a pulse -- magazigie haberman a white he correspondence kofrpbd you president trump with vigor and a keen eye back to his days in new welcome back towashington week." maggie: thanks for having me. robert: when you think about trumpnd confer him at this juture do you see him employing many of the same tactics he used to use in new york when you reported on him then? maggie: i do. he's doing the donald trum pla playbook. what he is doing with impeachmt some compared to what heid during the pro by

special council robert pleural which was -- mueller whier is ha at the facts argue they are not true and people are out to get himnd throw up enough dust that people will be confused and insist he did nothing wrong. that did turn the dial somewhat on public opinion before that came out it just sort of it disappeared. there is not just a tk particul he used with mueller. he you'd it his entire life. his entire business life and policalife and real estate life is all about bending other people to his will and ihink you are going to see that now where he is using some combination of blunt force and typical wasngton wooing with republican lawmakers to keep them on hisside. robert: speaking to bending the republican party to h will how does he see that dynamic with hs own party? why doe believe there is so much continuing loyalty within h

g.o.p.? maggie: i think he attributes it to a couple t things but main one is the republican establishment still i think has not come to grips with being caught off guard in 2016 by his rise and his win. you have republican members of congress in the house and senate who are not sure where their voters arey but know t do have a sizeable portion in their districts and states of trump voters and they do not want to alienate them.they know that is risk and they know it is a risk if the president tweets about that the is why you are seeing dearing loyalty. i do think from republicans a number have come t agree they think the way the inquiry is in conducted by house democrats is not fair or proper or sticking to practice in previous impeachment inquiries

bearing in mind we have only will three others. but they are frustrate that they can't question witnesses or call their own witnesses the same way the democrats can. robert: when you look back in your time reporti object president trump going up to trump tower and him making calls, has this impeachment process revealed the way he operates outside the chain of command talkingo people like rudy giuliani or roy cohn or michael cohen? maggie: everything about this presidency is some version ofg reveale's never chang his m.o. from the time he was at um tower where everything was boiled down with him at the top and bunch of orbits around him that only he knew what was going you see the same with the white house. he doesn't believe it following typical white house protocol and he has outside lines and when he was first elected there were questions i had about with he functions to his company or in

aides who worked for his compeey. we haven'tny evidence of that but we know he has invoked people like rudy giuliani and deployed phlegm onissions in -- them on missions to find dirt on the biden family. there are other areas he outsourced pieces of government whether the vaol ing some members of his club in florida who had managed to get their hands in there. instances of this as the next year or five years progress. robert: he returns r turns to rudy giuliani for help on govern policy but who does he turn to inside his cabinet as he faces impehment? who is influential right now? maggie: so many of theeople who have been influential the last year are also people who e proximate to there inquiry as subjects themselves or twwitnesses. th he has trusted most the

last year are is bill barr and mike pompeo. pompeo is caughtp in it and giuliani has tried to throw attention back the state department way andreated atteion betweenpe p and the president. the president is not sure who he can trust right now. he's been relying heavily on the white house counsel. robert: is there a war roomn this white house or not in maggie: yes and no. there's a war room that is not called a war room. a couple of officials who were hired the last couple of weeks to a month on direction of jared law and wis son-i should not the president gets close to his familiar in times of stress and kushner is

g theally runn impeachment battle plan for the president. he struggled the whour white house to hire two who are favorites of the president thfending him. have been running not a convential war room. th are not pushing lot of things out publicly. there's not a ton taking place on television. the president is still his own best public facing message. but they are doing a lot of coordinati coordinating communication with the hill aaily meetings and making sure they are on the same page and that is new. robert: does he ever grapple capitol hill withrns aboutim on his own conduct or is this a president who remainsen changed and really unwilling to examine his own behavior? maggie:-r selection is not one of his familiar suits, not a strong suit. orave seen no indication

heard any that he thinks he did anything wrong in how he handled this ukraine matter, whether it was the military aide put a freeze or the call with president zelensky july 25. he's been frustrated for several weeks that republicans have been fighting hill on process grounds arguing that the impeachment process was unfair but not i delvino the question of his conduct on the call. he wants people saying h nothing wrong and that is part of why the notion of a senatepe trial s to him on some level. he likes the idea of being able to bring outitnesses to say he didn't doing in wrong which would be contrary primarily to what we saw in the house inquiry. robert: so much of what happened with the phone call with president zensky was driven by the 2020 presidentialace and vice president biden. when he sees the ent of playe bloomberg from new york and biden still doing ok in the polls, mayor buttigieg rising,

what is his own understanding of that contest? maggie: it is interesting, bob. his understanding of that contest tend to relate as most things back to himself. he's been surprised that he has not permanently destroyed joe biden. he is very surprised he didn't warren.ntly destroy elizabe he said both of those things to people. he still thinks biden is somebody who would be an easier erponent. bloo is an x factor. he has i would not say a friendship but theynow each other from bloomberg days. bloomberg took a lot of whacks at him at th 2016 convention and bloomberg has a mucharr bank account and that gets in there president's head. knows bloomberg can spend ways this president never cou and never would. he tends to resort to using other people' money in that situation. but bloomberg is running as

something totally differe and bloomberg will talk about jobs. the only other person in the campaign you hear really talking the board is donald trump.ross word jobs aggressively and the president knows this. his aides hope he will not be baited into a back and not with blagojevich. robert: you studied him and you re on him. is it constant war, political toward between now and november0 what is the end game? maggie: i -- the ends game is winning. the strategy is an open question because as you know he tends to treat the world in terms of dealing withhe 10 minute increments of time he has to get through. right now that increment of time is the impeachment inquiry and that is where his focus is. i thinklhat you wee if what we expect happens happens, if there is no further

information that comes out, if there are no additional witnesses and there could be but if they stay as they are the ancipation is he is going to house voted in the and acquitted in the senate trial and you will see a veryre angrydent trump campaigning over what he feels like he went through this year. i always go back,y framewo is that weekend that "access hollywood" tape october 7 to october 9, 2016, where he was suffering his worst ever wounds of any kind when that tape came out and his response was to go to the debate in st. louis against hillary clinton and savage her by forcing her to walk across a parade of women will accused her husband of sexual improprietiesr one case rape. you can eck -- expect next year to be ugly. robert:ie ma thank you for joining us. maggie: thank you. robert: nown a t to history.

jon meacham recently wrote for "time" magazine a grasp of the past can be orienting as americans navigate the turbulence of impeachment proceedings and re of populism here and abroad. it is t hardo predict the way the current impeachment debate will ends noting andrew jnson survived and richard nixon held unl the lastoment of watergate. whatever happens the start of 9 lakers mark theegning dark -- hearings mark the start of a test for the country. joining me is jon meacham. what s onds to you about how this president and this nation are handlin that test? jon: well, i think we are having a basic argument in t country -- what the factors are and what we should make of them. and that is aha moment has been bubbling along, forming,

really, for 50 years or so. but these are perennial forces. walter lippman wrote a book called public opinion and he defined the besetting problem of the modern age might be we would define and would see instead of seng and defining and it has only gotten worse. so i think we have to find two things. common set of facts and if we can agree on them the there is health to that.c lower case d then we have an argument of what to make of thets fnt my own sense is that we live in these, on these two condition planets and the fate of the countryay well hang, the fate of the republican system, may well hang on the people who are willing t

admit that their minds have been changed. and part of theeason we were able to undertake thisme expe was the insight that the enlightenment had created an era where we cou t reacto changing circumstances and change our opinions based on differing discernible realities as we were able to see em and that insight that reason will to take a stand against passion in the arena was very much in some ways the formative insight into the constition that is being tested now. robert: take us back to the constitutional convention when the founders came up with the idea of impeachme and included it. why was it important then and why does it matter now? maggie: it fits into the checks james madison put the clearest

ar took lislation that divided sovereignty was essential because if you a made one branch or element in the compact too powerful the interests of that sect wouldr take o and run away with the system. they were aiming for a balance. they were aiming for the insight that we were all sinful and driven by appetite and ambition and therefore we had to divide authority, divide power in a way that would prent any one element from knocking the whole system out o fwhack. impeachment was one of the checks and balances on the executive and judicial branches. it came out of the english common law and 14th century idea. in the constitution, it is a med brief article, treason, bribery or other high crimes and rs misdemea

as gerald ford said in the 20th century high crime and misdemeanor is whatever a majority of the house of representatives decides it is at a given moment. but the essential element, the reason for having impeachment as rge mason said of virginia shall any man be above justice and can that and should that man who h the most extensive power it commit the most extensive injustice be above justice ands there this clear understanding there had to be a fail safe to mix metaphors. a final check on an executive or uphi judge who was violating the mpact of divided sovereignry respectinghe rights of the other contracto to the american compact. robert: you wrote a biography o andrewjackson.

are we in another populistmo nt and the institutions and new orlea norms being tkhrald? jon: we are in a populist and nationalist moment. the forces flowing are pernial american forces. xenophobia, racism. nativism. isolationism. they ebb and flow. we have always been vided. we were divided patriot versus torey and north versusnd south jim crow versus integration. now we are divided in red versus blue. the key element and way, what history tells us about how we have gotten out of these momts we have managed to understand that our best moments come when we more generously apply the implications of what was the ta most imp sentence ever rendered in english by thomas jefferson that all men wereea

d equal. it is not a home myly or prayer. true. when we think of the eras that one would admit they want to go back to they are era where we have more widely opened our arms, not where wese c doors. populism doesn't have to be asr tive force to the constitutional orders. in thisan case in ways it is. president trump is i think not jacksonian in the sense that jackson for all his fault believed in the union. he believed in that system however flawed it was at the time. for himas it an end. for jackson populism and america feels the consuming drama. t for presidemp the nsuming drama is president trump and that is assntial difference. what about the republican party? you have oftenke s of the

mccarthy years and mor greta -- margaret case smith spoke up against him and senat gold water went to the white house on confront confronted president nixon. where is t againtoday? jon: they are nowhere near the barry goldwater of fine 74 and not in the same zip code as margaret chase smith. she gave speec shortly of a the lincolns birthday addressn i wheeling where he launched his crusader and called it the declaration of conscience. she only got six republicans to supporter. he dismissed a thems snow white and the six dwarfs yet four ars later that is where 22 republicans voted to censor hi we are here and this is what i would say as to republicans who

haven suspended i many cases their critical faculties in exchange for raw power, you know there very well. the reason republicans are acting the way they are acting they are seeing numbe showing republicans in their state or district not only support the president but strongly support. that is the category that is so disorie disorienting to them. the republicans we talk about, the democrats we talk about in a warm and venerable way are the leaders whoook a risk and actually told their base of support sng that they didn't want to hear. think of america presidents. what is the one thing we think when we think of nixon and on the positive side. going to china the old cold warrior opens up this vast communist nation. lyndon johnson from ate segre state in texas does civil rights. ronald reagan the coldsri w ends the cold war.

we honor people, presidents and lawmakers who tl us what we don't want to hear. what i would urge republicans to do is think what you want us to think when we look at your portrait on the wall and has a small chance o working because no politicn can imagine a world where we are not staring adoringly at their picture. it is what will get you viewed in history the way that you would want your famwy it v you and the way you would want history to talk about you. seconds.we just have a few you have written abo america's soul and better angels. thishanksgiving week or not? jon: i am if only because as well ton said a gettingrica this far was damn closeest thing and winst churchill is said it

you can always count on the ericans to tdory eing right once they did everything else but i think the 242 year me expe and 55 year since the voting rights act that willbewi. : we will have to leave it there. i will bring you back for ahow on churchill. this special edition of for "washington week." i'robert costa. good night.ra >> corpo funding for "washington week" is provided by -- >> additional funding is provided by koo and patricia ewing committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities. the corporation for public

broadcasting. and by contributions it your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

[birds chirping] narrator: after weeks spent conquering cakes, tackling tuile, and dueling over doughs... come on. narrator: the heat was turned up as the remaining bakers foalht for a place in the f oh... hmm... last one. narrator: each week, they faced 3 chaenges looks right. narrator: some surpassed their own expectations... i don't know wh was thinking. they're delicis. yay. yay. yay. narrator: while others collapsed under the pressure and left the tent for good. it just gets to you. narrator: having taught us how to temper chocolate, master muffins, and impress with perfect pies and puddings, legendary judging duo mary berry and paul hollywood are taking over the tent for the final time... with 5 of thei favorite challenges