is being dishonest about him. so they want him to go a little bit harder, the vice president himself is a little bit more measured i'm told from folks who are familiar with the internal deliberations. >> jonathan, as always, we are not worthy of your analysis but grateful for it. [ laughter ] >> thanks, ali. >> and that wraps up the hour for me. i'm going to see you back here at 11:00 p.m. eastern for the 11th hour. but right now "deadline: white house" with nicolle wallace begins. ♪ hi, everyone. it's 4:00 in washington, d.c. where the mood in the white house is being described today as total panic as the reality of the jeopardy for president trump begins to set in. nbc new's reporting, quote, white house officials remain unsure of how to proceed not only because there is no apparent plan to deal with the situation but because the allegations are so serious of the usual methods the president has used to successfully escape past controversies may not apply.

this doesn't look like something that's going to be overtaken by the next news cycle a person said. that panic from within the white house comes as we learn new details about the impeachment inquiry on capitol hill. democrats signaling their poise to move fast. house intel today saying witnesses have already been contacted and hearings may begin as soon as next week. one member of that committee saying that witness list includes the figures at the center of the whistle-blower complaint on trump's conduct with the leader of ukraine. that's trump's personal attorney rudy giuliani and his human yield a.g. william barr. there's no doubt they will face questions under oath now about new revelations around the cover-up of trump's july 25th call with the president of ukraine. that was the call in which trump allegedly pressured his ukrainian counterpart to interfere in the 2020 election. "the washington post" is out with new details on the extraordinary efforts by this white house to conceal records of that call on a restricted

computer system. "post" writes this, to transfer calls from the normal storage system to the code network, a senior white house official, the national security adviser or the chief of staff must make a formal written request to do so. that's according to two people who worked with memos of calls with foreign leaders. today the white house is appearing to corroborate at least some of those allegations acknowledging to nbc news that lawyers for the nsc approved the transfer of those records to the computer system in question. we should point out that as of this hour, 31 hours since the whistle-blower complaint was publicly released, the white house has yet to push back on any one of the allegations described in the complaint. that's where we start today with some of our favorite reporters and friends. with us at the table, politics editor for the daily beast, sam stein. former democratic congresswoman donna edwards. heidi przybyla.

and charlie sykes, editor and chief, the bulwark. plus, "washington post" associate editor and senior national security correspondent karen. let me start with you. you and your colleagues have done some extraordinary reporting over really just -- i mean, you are always doing extraordinary reporting but on this story it's really only been about ten days. take us through the latest that you're reporting on this story, fast-moving story. >> well, as you were saying, one of the principal areas of investigation certainly by congress and what we've been looking into is this storage system, transferring things that the administration thinks for s ostensibly political reasons would be bad to come out. this started very early in the trump administration when we did stories about conversations that the very new president at that time had had with the presidents of mexico and the prime minister of australia. those conversations leaked.

they were kind of embarrassing. and, you know, the president was very angry. and i think that was the point where they severely restricted the distribution of those kinds of transcripts. and now apparently are putting them in the sort of special storage system which usually is used for operations, military operations, and covert operations that are being conducted abroad, things that they really need to make secret and limit the distribution of. the goal of this basically was to limit the distribution that people in the room when this conversation was going on very quickly said this is not good. we need to limit the number of people that can read this and have access to it. >> and, karen, the historical echo of the cover-up being perhaps as egregious in this instance as the crime is undeniable. i want to read you some of what

your colleague greg miller reports about the whistle-blower complain which we've only been sifting through and living with for about 30 hours that we said at the top. but your colleague has an incredible piece of reporting about how the whistle-blower pulled together and did his own sort of internal reporting from his own sources to put together and tell the story that is now captivated washington and much of the country. let me read from his piece. the whistle-blower woved their accounts, this is his administration sources with other painstakingly gathered material on everything from the intervention of trump's personal lawyer rudy giuliani and the u.s./ukraine relationship to alleged efforts by american diplomats sent to attorneys in the office of the white house counsel to contain or suppress the accruing damage. it seems like you and your colleagues are all over this intricate web of the cover-up. >> well, i think that a lot of

this stuff, various visits, various meetings with ukraine was out there to see. it was reported when various people went various places if not here it was reported in ukraine. and i think that it took this event to sort of tie it all together and give an explanation for why people were doing things and what these conversations and meetings consisted of. >> charlie, as i said, the echos of watergate are all over all of the extraordinary reporting about the cover-up. let me put up the four headlines that i saw this morning when i woke up outside my door. yes, i still have four newspapers delivered to my house. "new york times" "washington post" and "wall street journal" all front cover-up. >> well, there was a cover-up, but i also think that this is a sprawling scandal here. and that the phone call, as bad as it is, is only one data point. i think this is going to be the challenge for democrats that they have to move quickly obviously.

but they also have to be thorough in their investigation. and it is not just one communication with ukraine. and we don't know did the president have communications with the chinese? did he have communications with the russians? if he's obsessed with joe biden, do you think the only country he talked to about this was ukraine? they need to do a thorough investigation. they need to build the case. they need to put this into the context, it is historic context of how rare impeachment is, what the constitution envisioned for impeachment. and then they have to act. and i think there's going to be a little bit of tension here. but again the focus on cover-up obviously puts it into that watergate level. but i also think that they need to be focused on the substance as well, substance which is the undermining of the abuse of power and the way the president has basically, you know, put his own personal political interests ahead of the country. >> and is one of the big, big -- one of the other plot points is how donald trump has ensnared in the substance of this his entire

national security cabinet. i think news is just breaking trying to hand me the story that the united states secretary of state mike pompeo has been subpoenaed by at least three committees. i'll read it as soon as i can get it. pompeo subpoenaed for ukraine documents as house committees accelerate impeachment inquiry. three committees scheduled multiple depositions with key state department officials over the next two weeks. so rudy giuliani seems to be getting his way. he's been all over fox news the last 48 hours saying i was sent by the state department, i was sent by the state department. if we're talking about intel and we're talking about cut-outs, rudy making clear that he was doing the bidding of people in high levels in the united states. >> and he thinks it's exculpatory too that he was sent out there on a mission and therefore because states signed off on it, it has to be legit and kosher. >> is he to blame for pompeo getting subpoenaed? >> yes, in part absolutely,

producing texts that show that the ambassador or the appointment on ukraine was in cahoots, if not assigning you to do it suggests that it wasn't just freelancing but that it was an administrative directive to find dirt on a domestic political opponent which further expands the scope of this scandal. so, yeah, rudy is not exactly the world's best lawyer right now. he's causing more trouble for his client than he is helping solve. i'm sure there are people in the administration who would like nothing more to see him get off of tv and stop showing his texts to the broader public. >> remarkable development though, donna edwards. mike pompeo is someone who has had a meteoric rise in the trump administration for being just trump enough that trump wasn't offended by his expertise or his boring lectures as he was about policy like other people like mcmaster which he actually shared with john bolton who managed to cover up for trump, i guess. now he has been sort of hit with

a ton of bricks. >> well, and i think pompeo has been largely successful in sort of, you know, keeping an least an arm's length distance for everything that was going on in the white house. now he's knee deep in it. >> he may be deck deep. >> and when i heard rudy say i have 40 text messages, i want to know from whom, when, you know, where in the state department these came from, and so i think there's a lot to answer there. but to charlie's point, i think it's really important for democrats to be very, very focused and to not allow the story to get away from them because thus far this story tells a narrative that for all of the mueller hearings and the investigation that that was not able to tell the story of candidate trump in the way that we've told the story of president trump. >> and that's a great pointa, donna, and it's a really easy story.

donald trump mobbed up u.s. foreign policy. that's it. and he got his mob family, it looks like pompeo is going to be questioned to see if he was one of them. rudy clearly on tv taking a victory lap for being one of them involved in trying to corrupt foreign u.s. policy at the highest levels, asking another country's leader to dirty up the bidens. >> and that's why when you talk to democrats close to this looming investigation they say, look, as much as what charlie says is true that you want to have a fulsome investigation and bring in as many of the witnesses who may have dirt on their hands as well, what we already have before us is already looks like an impeachable offense. the quid pro quo is in the conversation. >> that the white house released. we don't even have the complaint. >> where the military aid was withheld, and then days later you have this phone call in which the president says i need a favor. so the information that the white house has given them, i was getting texts from democratic aides saying you just can't make this up, they've just

given us what we need. and that was why the speaker who had held out and, you know, with so much pressure on her over these months during the mueller investigation to even use the word impeachment, it now feels so confident. you have these democrats who are in these frontline districts, you know, trump districts like alyssa slotkin, he won by 7 percentage points feeling comfortable in going forward. so what i'm told is she wants this to be expeditious. she's not cutting off the other committees. she's saying go ahead, do your work, but you know what, when we're ready to go on these articles related to ukraine, those get sent to the judiciary. i'm going to ring the bell. all the other committees, you guys send whatever you got at that time. and we're going to go. >> karen, some of the muscle memory around scandals is always the age-old question, what do they know and when did they know it. what does your paper's reporting inflect in terms of what mike pompeo knew and when he knew it

about donald trump's call with the leader of ukraine? >> well, i think that it's probably first important to say, as you say that news just broke, i don't know if he was invited to testify in front of the committees and refused to do so. which could then lead to a subpoena. we also don't know if pompeo was actively supporting what the president was doing or if he was kind of not stopping it and cleaning up behind it. we know that according to the whistle-blower, a senior state department official was sitting in the room during the call. we know that the day after the call, the special envoy for ukraine who works for pompeo and the u.s. ambassador to the e.u. were dispatched to ukraine ostensibly to talk to zelensky about how to manage trump's

request. now, are they going to say, look, here's what you got to do, do it, or were they going to say, you know, maybe you can slide a little bit to this way or that way. and so i think there's a lot we don't know. and i can certainly understand why they want to talk to secretary pompeo and a lot of questions were shouted at him yesterday at the united nations when he appeared at a news conference. he basically hasn't answered any of them. >> so let me read a little bit more from this subpoena as you said. this broke just as we came on the air. our representative elliot engel, congressman schiff, chairman of the house permanent select committee on intel, and congressman cummings, sent a letter to mike pompeo for documents including many that he has refused to produce for weeks. the committees are investigating the extent to which president trump jeopardized national security by pressing ukraine to interfere with our 2020 election and by withholding security

assistance provided to congress to help ukraine counter russian aggression. heidi, this is getting to your point that we know and as karen has said, there are a lot of these data points that exist in the public record. the holding of a military aid is hardly a secret they could lock in a computer file system holding up military aid with something that was already under investigation. pompeo has refused according to this letter refused to produce these documents which were first requested more than two weeks ago. the chairman sent a follow-up letter warning pompeo that they would consider compulsory measures. >> so there is a pattern here, right? there are going to be many documents that could be easily produceable that he is not producing, given that now that nbc and other news organizations are putting together this timeline that shows that a lot of these discussions and this pressure campaign because it was a campaign by giuliani going all the way back to january. it actually started with some

crazy notion that the ukrainians might have hillary's server and emails, and then it evolved over time. but it's important for the american public to understand why this is such a national security issue because ukraine is our buffer country to soviet aggression. they were invaded, and part of their country annexed by the russians, crimea, and they depend on u.s. aid in order to protect -- they have people on the front lines still fighting and dying in that part of the country trying to protect their sovereignty. here you have the president of the united states holding up kong regulationly appropriated money designed to protect democracy in that country in order to get a political favor for his own purposes. >> you know, as heidi goes through that, it's galling that lindsay graham is the most sort of shameless brazen defender of donald trump. i remember when he used to go to ukraine with john mccain and

sort of reassure the ukrainian military we are with you. i remember when joe liebermann and john mccain and lindsay graham used to call themselves the three amigos and they wore the faces of america's promise for this military aid to always be there. now lindsay graham debases himself as the most public and the most foolish defender of trump's clear and obvious and in transcripts he's released brazen corruption. >> yeah, debased is a good word. he's really shamed himself. but to heidi's point, this is the task that democrats i think have to do is they have to tell this story, they have to bring the public along. one of the dangers, and i'm not saying that they shouldn't move quickly. but the danger is that they will rush to judgment. that's going to be one of the republican talking points. they rush to judgment. but also they need to bring the public along. this is still an uphill fight even though the polls suggest that they are moving. will they have the discipline to use this time between now and

maybe thanksgiving to hold public hearings to again and again pound on these data points, and the more evidence that comes out, the more evidence of misconduct, the more evidence that they attempted to cover it up, it will have a cumulative effect. and keep in mind that the end game here is, you know, is to change public sentiment about impeachment and about donald trump. so this is why they need to be careful, they need to be sober, and move quickly but make sure that also you remember that not every american spends all their time watching msnbc or cnn. >> how dare they. [ laughter ] >> they don't follow this the way they do. and a lot of this will become new. and i think this is why this is so much more powerful than the mueller report. >> so you're arguing for speed and slowness at the same time. >> this is an argument for a continuement of drama. >> keep in mind that donald trump is the executive producer of the ultimate reality tv show.

by the way he cannot like the fact that rudy giuliani is going to be one of the stars of that show. >> he's a season 4 star. >> and this is why it's going to be so difficult is to move quickly but to then also move deliberately enough that you don't look like you're rushing and bringing public -- >> the whistle-blower complaint actually is a road map in that it provides potential witnesses but also potential documentation that democrats can request. and each of those requests and demands and hearings and interviews will in themselves be drama points that the american public will pay attention to. so i don't think we'll lack for drama in the next couple weeks. back to lindsay graham. when i was with the huff post a couple years ago, 2016 we followed around presidential candidates on the road. and one of the first videos we did was lindsay graham. lindsay graham cried in the back of his car when he was recounting his friendship with joe biden. just cried. he was so moved by how close his friendship with joe biden. it was around the time of beau biden's sickness.

he's a dear friend. yesterday his office put out a press release pushing the smears on hunter biden and the allegations. and it just goes to show you the degree to which trump has captured members of the republican party, that lindsay graham made that complete transformation over the course of two years. >> one of the other people who's made a complete transformation from public reporting would be bill barr. i understand people used to respect him, regard him as a skilled conservative mind. he now it's quite possible he will be the next recipient of one of these subpoena letters from congress. and "the times" is reporting this about him. soon after trump's call with ukrainian leader. attorney general william barr learned of the allegations in the weeks after the july 25th call according to a person familiar with the matter. although mr. barr was briefed he did not oversee discussions of how to proceed. but put him right in the center of the story.

speaking of data points and stitching them together, the barr data points look worse by the day. it was william barr's justice department that was referred this matter. decided not to investigate, nothing to see here. >> well, not a surprise. i mean, william barr is in the first couple of paragraphs. he is in the opening paragraphs of the whistle-blower's complaint. >> he's in donald trump's transcript that donald trump released because donald trump told the leader of ukraine to call his buddy bill barr and work on the smear campaign against hunter biden. >> right. >> donald trump put william barr -- >> was going to be exculpatory. it has put its fingers on every single one of the president's protectors including william barr. so, yes, he is going to be a recipient of one of those letters. what i am looking for is which one of these people are going to say, you know what, i'm not going to show up and i'm not going to produce. because now you're going into the obstruction of congress in addition to the obstruction of

justice. and so the charges then compound on this presidency. i think that, you know, this is going to be done expeditiously as the speaker has said. it's going to be thorough. i think it's important that they have really placed it within the intelligence committee under the capable hands of adam schiff, the kind of no nonsense leadership committee. and i think that that speaks to the speakers' background because she was the ranking member of intelligence and she understands that. and she trusts adam schiff to get this done. >> it'll be interesting to see if there are more whistle-blowers that come forward as well because especially as you've seen the way this played out, if there are more whistle-blowers, it could be a little bit like the me too story where people really emboldened to see that other people have stood up courageously and have gotten a response, that they are not just shouting. >> or people who are lawyers who don't want to be. >> -- tampering of the irs tax

returns issue. >> we have to go, but that's a really interesting point and i don't want to gloss over it. i think the story that i read from that greg miller writes in today's "washington post" starts to pull the curtain back on how this whistle-blower did what he did that what he did was he wove together this seven pages, nine pages if you include the classified materials from other streams of information. we know already that the intelligence committee's inspector general corroborated enough of that to deem the complaint credible and urgent. >> so you remember the anonymous op ed. we thought there was at least one person who is claiming to be looking out for the american people's interest within this white house. well, it turns out there's a whole daisy chain of them. and it's all been compiled into one neat document. so when you say are there going to be more whistle-blowers, this guy is just the messenger, whoever submitted this report. the people who gave this information are inside the white house today. and they've decided that enough

is enough. and so we will see how the process plays out on the hill whether these hearings will be public or they will be private and they want to protect these people. but they exist. >> well, and just to button up that point, we came on the air reporting that the only people that could move this call at the center of not just the whistle-blower complaint but of the president's seemingly imminent impeachment are the white house chief of staff and the national security adviser. now the national security adviser left the night that military aid for ukraine was restored. i'm not sure when or if he'll talk about any of this. but those are the only two people. they certainly could make their way to a microphone or a newspaper if they disagreed with anything. >> bolton was said to have been concerned and tried to reassure the ukrainians as well. so that's a big question, will those people come forward as well. >> it's getting hot in here. karen deyoung, congratulations to you and all of your colleagues on your reporting.

when we come back, congress is moving forward with an impeachment inquiry at lightning speed as we've just seen in the last few minutes. a new poll shows public opinion has swung in their favor. also ahead, if rudy's going down, he's taking the u.s. state department down with him. we'll go inside rudy's mayhem as he finds himself smack dab in the middle of the president's impeachment crisis. and the meek response from republicans to trump's in-your-face corruption of u.s. foreign policy as fox news starts to go wobbly on trump just when he needs them most. all those stories coming up. st all those stories coming up. thousands of women with metastatic breast cancer are living in the moment and taking ibrance. ibrance with an aromatase inhibitor is for postmenopausal women or for men with hr+/her2- breast cancer that has spread to other parts of the body - meaning it's metastatic - as the first hormonal based therapy. ibrance plus letrozole significantly delayed disease progression versus letrozole.

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we've already begun reaching out to witnesses. we are going to be noticing depositions or interviews as soon as next week. we are going to hold hearings as soon as we can. we expect subpoenas to go out, more subpoenas to go out first thing next week as well. so we're moving with all speed. i know that we're going to do everything we can to proceed methodically but swiftly. we expect that the administration is going to do everything they can to shut us down. when they do that as they try to do that, every effort by the administration to slow us down will only add to the case against them for obstruction of congress. >> adam schiff wasn't kidding as we just mentioned. the last few minutes mike pompeo united states secretary of state has been subpoenaed by three house committees. but taking a step back, it is amazing when you think about it. less than two weeks ago the ukraine scandal was practically a white house secret, one the president and his advisers

believed that they had successfully looked down on a super secret classified computer system. but since then it's exploded into one of the biggest political scandals in a generation. and now it seems the resulting impeachment inquiry will also move at lightning speed. "new york times" reports this. quote, some lawmakers saying they could move within a month or six weeks possibly drafting articles of impeachment by the end of october. everybody is back. nbc news politics editor has a great tweet about, because we live in these dog days where it feels like seven months ago this all started but it wasn't. wednesday memo notes of the july 25th call released. thursday, whistle-blower complaint released. friday, subpoenas sent/depositions set. here we go. >> here we go. and, you know, everybody complained and i did too that speaker pelosi was moving so slowly and that she was never going to get there at all. what we've seen is that this

really was a tipping point, a tipping point for a lot of democrats. now it's just like let's just get it done. and i think they're going to do it, i wouldn't say lightning speed, but it's going to be very careful. and it is going to be thorough. and the american people are going to have confidence i think in the process in the way that they do it. and that will be important because the speaker likes to say all the time public sentiment is everything. she always quotes abraham lincoln. what she means by that is her coming out helped to move the conversation. and now the evidence and the process has to move the conversation even more. so the american people collectively embrace the idea that we have to get rid of this unlawful president. >> well, and here's how public opinion has swung. let me put up the latest polling data we have. should congress begin impeachment proceedings to remove president trump? september 20th. i think that was a week ago.

i think the change is 43 -- there you go, there it is, now 43% say yes, 43% say no. that's up 7 points. huffing ton "post" should president trump be impeached or removed from office? 50% of respondents saying yes. 49% say yes. sam stein? >> you know, those are fairly remarkable numbers figuring we are theoretically at the start of the process. >> three days in. >> on the flip side i was talking to someone who's been a pro impeachment advocate for a while now. and this person noted we have the data points. it's not like watergate where you were waiting to find the tapes. >> trump put them out. [ laughter ] >> and so we, you know, a large section of the population has been primed for this. now i think no one knows this

answer, and certainly not me. where does it go from here in terms of public opinion because we are in such a tribalized society in our media ecosystems are so tribalized too that if you believe the president is being unfairly targeted you are not going to get your news from the nightly news. you are going to get it from people that echo your viewpoint. and it's just going to confirm it and harden it. i don't know if they're a floor or the ceiling, but if you're the white house and you were banking on this being such a political winner, i guess i just don't see it at this point. >> mitt romney doesn't see it either. i think when you look at public opinion, i always thought the most devastating thing for hillary clinton was that bernie sanders from the far far left said the same things about her that donald trump said from the far far right. and i've spent my career studying public opinion and the most credible messages are the ones echoed from both sides of the political spectrum. so if independent voters, swing voters, the ones that gave democrats their big wins in the

2018 midterms, if they see mitt romney saying the same thing as nancy pelosi they're a whole lot more likely to believe it. >> well, you mentioned the echos of watergate earlier. remember the watergate impeachment proceedings. it was bipartisan. and the chairman of the house judiciary. >> it wasn't for a very long time. >> but he made it very, very clear that he was going to reach out to those blue dog democrats and ultimately at the end of that story was republicans, was republicans who really engineered the resignation of richard nixon. so far it's only is a lonely vo. >> can i push back on that thought? i watched the hearing with maguire yesterday. there was one devin nunes and there were a lot more congressman herds. >> this is what i think to watch for. we have two republican governors who have come out in favor of impeachment. the governor of vermont and the governor of massachusetts. they are not members of the senate. but you are having members of congress who are willing to say this is not acceptable behavior. and if you start to see other

senators come forward in saying without necessarily prejudging impeachment but saying this is not normal behavior, this is not acceptable behavior, you might begin to shift this dial and have people understand in this is not simply a partisan witchhunt. and that may actually happen. >> one thing that i think struck us all in that hearing was the fact that none of the republicans who spoke out were actually defending the substance, defending what happened on substance. they were going after leakers and everything else. they were not disputing the facts of the case. but the one thing that they did say afterwards was, well, this is a second-hand account, correct? a second-hand account. you heard that said a lot. even though the account eerily mimics the transcript. i think it will be harder and harder for republicans if these are public hearings and you

bring forward these first-person accounts. >> they all said to a person when the memorandum of the call came out, there was no quid pro quo there. and that's fine. you can make that point. i don't agree with it. but it does set up a very big problem for them. there will be more documentation that's going to come forward. there are going to be requests for documentation about why the military aid was not released when it was supposed to be. if a kafkaesque is cleanly established in the forthcoming documentation, they are on the hook. their own words are there saying that's the standard that has to be met. at that point it becomes very untenable for them to say i was joking about the quid pro quo. >> i heard the whistle-blower's account is second hand, a first hand account was verified by two of donald trump's appointees, the inspector general. >> right. >> at dni. and the acting dni. so two trump appointees went in -- >> they have confirmed that they used a separate record keeping system so they are confirming

parts of this complaint in realtime. and just keep an eye on trump's twitter feed. >> let's not forget that his transcript was a first hand account that validated the whistle-blower's complaint. >> he pivots immediately from military aid to i have a favor. and by the way i've talked to democrats who are close to this investigation. and they say they also want the full transcript that may be in that password protected vault because there are a ton of ellipses after trump's name meaning that there were additional passages that somebody didn't want out. >> and can we put a pen on vice president pence? >> please, go ahead. >> what i want to know is when he knew that he was not going to go to the inauguration, did he ask why? >> yeah. >> was he in the room when that was decided and how was it decided? these are really important questions and so there's a lot that we need to know about the

vice president. >> and i'll say this about the vice president. he does put on different faces to different actors. he was largely believed by some sources to have been on john bolton's side when he was fighting against having the taliban at camp david two days before 9/11. and he said, no, i was never against the president's grand plan to have the taliban at camp david. he does speak out of both sides of his mouth which may catch up with him. >> to sam's point about the tribalization, to keep in mind the note of caution that this is ultimately not going to be decided by the facts and the testimony. it will be decided by the tribal loyalty and the narratives that the two sides tell. and keep in mind that if the house moves with lightning speed, the moment that they vote, they turn this over to mitch mcconnell. mitch mcconnell will then be the quarterback of what happens after this. >> for any of you playing a drinking game, that was charlie

sending you to the bar. [ laughter ] thank you for spending some time with us. when we come back, the mad king's jester, ruth bader ginsburg is more exposed than ever before as carrying out u.s. foreign policy. but he seems hell bent on taking the u.s. state department with him. we'll go inside on rudy's diplomatic war on norms, next. at fidelity, we believe your money should always be working harder. that's why your cash automatically goes into a money market fund when you open a new account. and fidelity's rate is higher than e*trade's,

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the whistle-blower falsely alleges that i was operating on my own. well, i wasn't operating on my own. i went to meet mr. zelensky's aid at the request of the state department. they basically knew everything i was doing. he is saying i will tell and he'll visit with you there, thanks. mr. mayor, how was your meeting with andre? do you have time for a call? best, kurt. they were all over me asking me to do it. i was happy to do it. i helped my country.

>> i don't laugh that hard very hard watching rudy. and right about now i'm sure mike pompeo wishes you were working all by yourself. over and over again trump's personal lawyer laying all the blame for his diplomatic misadventures at the feet of the u.s. state department. as we discussed at the top of the hour, mike pompeo now has a subpoena to show for it. if that wasn't enough, the former new york city mayor went so far as to call himself the real whistle-blower. joining our conversation, chief national correspondent mark leibovich. i called him the mad king's gesture and he is that, but he may also be incriminating the secretary of state in what may turn out to be a criminal corruption or at a minimum a campaign finance violation. >> yeah. i think -- look, i'm guessing that the house had a road map to who they wanted to subpoena and who they wanted to talk to

anyway. i don't think they were waiting for rudy to read his text from kurt. but it was fun. there is a bit of a like you can't look away from this aspect to it. there's a distraction element, almost a comic relief if this were funny. but it gets to a very real question of whether they are speaking for -- are they speaking for donald trump, are they protecting their own backsides, are they fighting with each other, i assume mike pompeo will be asked like within the first hour of his testimony about this. >> hour? >> sooner. rudy will probably be next up there. i mean, it's a bizarre, again, side show but also very central -- >> i worked at the white house. if i was the white house and i was watching this, here are the questions i would have somebody -- and there's no more don mcgahn. someone replaced him. >> acting. >> someone acting probably. i would want to run around and find out who paid for his flights. was he staffed by the state department? did the cia know he was there? we don't listen to or collect

any information or intelligence on americans. but did anyone know what rudy was doing? was donald trump directing rudy? i guess trump could pardon him. but he doesn't have of the protections. just because he was playing a presidential envoy doesn't make him one. >> and that's why it's extremely important that the democrats who ask these questions do it very quickly and very pointedly. i think it's very smart that adam schiff will be at the forefront. presumely to some kind of outside counsel who gets to this. but the democrats haven't exactly been great about getting answers in these settings either. >> i've talked to former senior national security officials who say that the extraordinary turn of fortune for mike pompeo may end up being the most stunning sort of carnage. trump gave his inaugural address about human carnage. this might sweep up mike pompeo. >> rudy showing these texts whether they're legitimate or

not, the fact of the matter is that he was getting access in ukraine that you wouldn't get if you were just some yahoo pretending to be speaking on behalf of the president. we had our own interview with richard engel earlier today with the former prosecutor, high-up prosecutor who was admitting that he had had these conversations and quantifying the number of times that he had spoken with rudy. you don't get that unless you have some kind of official blessing to be at least communicating on behalf of the united states government. so the question is how far up the chain does it go. and even if it doesn't go 100% with mike pompeo signing off on every single exchange here, the buck stops with the boss, right? and if there was any knowledge, you're right. there's going to be a whole chain of people who will be implicated in this. >> there's either two answers. either mike pompeo had rogue actors under him and the foggy bottom is totally under control

and he's an incompetent bureaucrat who probably destroys his political future or mike pompeo's been corrupted by donald trump and is carrying out u.s. foreign policy with the express purpose of muddying up joe biden. >> well, our friend rick wilson everything trump touches dies. but think about the crazy of this that -- [ laughter ] the crazy where we've got numb to this. but rudy giuliani out there with his phone and his texts has become the ultimate loose cannon. the term loose cannon comes from the navy where you'd have a two-ton cannon on the deck of a ship that breaks loose in the middle of a storm. there's a storm and this thing is going around creating all kinds of carnage. you would think at some point they would try to throw rudy giuliani under the bus. >> he's driving the bus that drives over all the people under it. >> he's the envoy. he is the personal attorney for the president. the president is on that call

telling the president of the ukraine you've got to talk to my guy rudy. this is going to be a tremendous problem, and you're right. can you imagine what that show is going to be like when they get rudy giuliani under oath in front of that committee? i mean not even the democrats can screw this one up, right? >> i don't know. i think if you look at the testimony of corey lewandowski, one of the things that democrats really can't do is that they can not have a corey lewandowski moment with rudy giuliani. and there's every opportunity for that given -- >> bring back the attorney. >> but i think they need to bring back the professional attorney and just kind of walk through the evidence, walk through the timeline because with rudy, there is a timeline. and he's not going to have the kind of protections that other witnesses might. >> trump might pre-pardon him. there's always that. until now, donald trump's firewall was made up of his unshakeable base, and the pro-trump messaging ran out of

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that's what you get when you've got wayfair. so shop now! ing since this damaging whistleblower complaint came out, the spinning is not surprise, but it is astonishing and i think deeply misleading. what is clear from reading the complaint is that it is a serious allegation that lot of it has approach to be born out already to dismiss this as a political hack, to -- it seems to me to be an effort by the president e's defenders to try make something -- to make nothing out of something. and there is something here. >> might have been one of the most important things that happened on tv today. that was chris wallace saying there is something here. he is fox news host of fox news

sunday speaking truth to power. the events described in the whistleblower complaint have led to an impeachment inquiry being launched and might lead to a breakup between the president and his favorite network. fox ceo lock land murdoch is already thinking about how to position the network for a post trump future. everyone is back. chris wallace just deserves a minute of praise. he has always been the same, tells the truth, and covers the story. >> and there is a civil war going on at fox. it is not just chris wallace, also shepard smith who has been in a war of words with tucker carlson. and you have some of their contributors going back and forth as well. judge napolitano. and what is interesting -- >> oh, god, what an image. >> what is interesting about that "vanity fair" story, it

tells us something that we ought to understand, fox is run by people who have mixed viewers of donald trump. no family, no board of director shoes have as much power over american politics as they do. but something is going on there. the problem for fox though, if they turn too hard against trump, they will run the risk of alienating their audience. and the conservative audience wants to be a safe space. >> and how important is fox news to trump? >> extremely important. you could argue it is probably the single most important entity he has to keep his base, the most durable thing he's had going the last three or four years. chris wallace didn't start by being an honest broker this morning. >> that's what i said, he's always been chris wallace. >> there are a number of news side people that can do this. unfortunately, and this is not -- again, not that kochlly indicated, but the most watched showsoff there certainly by the president but by millions of people are fox and friends and

sean hannity and tucker carlson and laura ingraham. that is the appointment television that most of donald trump's base that watch fox will watch. >> but it is significant because a lot of viewers turn on the morning and have it all on all day. >> but the primetime is very trumpy. >> it sure is. something personal. the news flashed across my computer that ambassador joe wilson died. in a tale too long and too weird for tv, we were the unlikelys of friends. and i'm going to miss him. i don't think that he would mind if he shared something that he wrote. quote, ied that the privilege and great pleasure to work closely with and to serve as ambassador for two presidents. 41 and bill clinton. the fact that they became great friends is one of the highlights of the grand adventure that has been my life. i think there is one part of

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i want to thank my guests. we're out of time. and thanks to you for watching all week. what a weird week it was. "mtp daily" with chuck todd

starts now. ♪ if it is friday, democrats are shifting into a new higher gear already on the impeachment inquiry. just moments ago, issuing a subpoena for the secretary of state and announcing that they will be deposing a lot of those officials already named by the whistleblower. one name not on the house subpoena list yet, rudy giuliani. but he does seem to be at the center of this growing scandal. how long until the president's personal attorney is in the hot seat too? and joe biden sits back accusing the president of trying to hijack the election. and we're about to hear from him for the first time in public since the whistleblower revelations. welcome to friday and the end of quite a week. and welcome to "meet the press daily." i'm chuck todd here in washington. democrats are fast tracking their investigation into the