"morning joe," everyone, starts right now. russia, if you're listening, i think you might want to listen. there's nothing wrong with listening. china should start an investigation into the bidens. i would say that president zelensky, if it were me, i would recommend that they start an investigation into the bidens. >> there it is, he just came out and said it. president trump trimmipling down his call for foreign countries to meddle on his behalf. good morning, i'm willie geist. joe and mika have the morning off. we have elise jordan, former treasury official steve rattner, and historian, author of the soul of america and jon meacham, and us in news and msnbc contributor. before we jump into all of this, a quick rundown of the headlines and reporting from just the past

24 hours. there has been a lot. as we just heard, the president flatly admitted on the south lawn that he wants ukraine and now china added in to look into the bidens. he just said it. msnbc reports that president trump suggested in a call with chinese president xi in june that beijing should investigate biden. he reportedly mentioned elizabeth warren too. white house record of that conversation went into the secret vault where that ukraine call lives, according to that report. a pair of trump's envoys drafted a statement for ukraine's president to commit to investigating biden, that's according to the "new york times," they just put it in writing in a statement. former ambassador kurt volker testified yesterday before multiple house committees and reportedly revealed that he told giuliani the biden story was a dud and rudy was getting bad information. and the wall street journal reports that the u.s. ambassador from ukraine was pulled from the country because she would not push the trump agenda on biden.

all that in just the last few hours. we'll get to those developments, but there's another big one. the text messages released late last night. house democrats releasing messages that seem to show how the president's top enjoys push the president of ukraine to investigate the bidens and to vft the unsubstantiated conspiracy theory that ukraine meddled in the 2016 election. that included dangling the possibility of a white house visit. the messages appear to confirm reporting from the "new york times" that then special envoy to ukraine kurt volker and the u.s. ambassador to the union sondland help draft a statement for an investigation into the bidens. in a july 19th text message, volker text this to sondland had the had breakfast with rudy this morning, tearing up call with yurmak. he then adds, most important is for zelensky to say he will help

with investigation. two days later, bill taylor the top u.s. dip crat in ukraine wrote this. president zelensky is sensitive about ukraine being taken seriously, not nearly as merely as an instrument in washington domestic, represent election politics. assuming president z convinces trump e will investigate, get to the bottom what happened in 2016, we will nail down a date for a visit to washington. then on august 9th, volker texts giuliani, quote, hi, mr. mayor, had a good chat with yermak. he was pleased with your phone call, mentioned z making a statement. can we all get on the phone to make sure i advise z correctly as to what he should be saying had whant to make sure we get this done right. the next day zelensky's aide texts volker saying he wants to get a date for the white house

visit before making a statement about the 2016 election. the aide texts back, once we have a date we'll call for a press briefing announcing upcoming visit and outlining visit for the reboot including among other things, burisma and the election. then a text about the "politico" article about trump withholding military aid saying, quote, i need to talk to you. several days later, taylor text sondland. are we now saying that security assistance and white house meeting are conditioned on investigations? sondland responds, call me. a week later, taylor texts volker. nightmare scenario is they give an interview and don't get security assistance, the russians love it and i quit. taylor also text sondland the falling day this. quote,s a said on the phone, i think it's crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign. sondland waited and responded more than four hours later

telling taylor that trump, quote, has been crystal clear, no quid pro quos of any kind and suggest they stop discussing the matter over text message. that last exchange happened september 9th, the same day the intelligence community inspector general told the house and senate intel committees that the whistleblower complaint, the military aid military aid was released two days later. let's bring in josh letterman. i read a ton of text. i know it's a lot for people to digest that the hour of the day. take us through who these players are and what you found significant about what was released last night in these committees. >> we've got these in a document dump and we've been going through them all night to analyze them. what they show is that this effort by trump to get the ukrainians to get involved in investigating the bidesens was bigger than giuliani. it involved a handful of people

and really senior diplomats at the state department. there's not a lot of insinuation about what they were talking about, it's stunning to see it laid out in cold hard print. you see kurt volker who was the special envoy for ukraine until he abruptly resigned in the wake of all of this. as well as the u.s. ambassador to the european union, trump done were no was appointed to that position talking about how they can get the ukrainians to launch this investigation and specifically tying it to whether president zelensky would get an invitation to come to the white house. as you showed in one of those text messages, we see mr. taylor pushing back in realtime basically saying this is not kosher, we can't be linking military assistance to whether or not another country ais goin to investigate something. one other part that we see in this that is profound is how you

have the ukrainian government actually speaking with these diplomats, a senior aide to president zelensky texting back and forth trying to figure out exactly what words president zelensky would be willing to say in that announcement of a potential corruption investigation. >> so elise jordan, you worked in the state department. take a step back for us. we'll dig more of the specifics of these texts. but just the tone and tenor and the conduct between these people texting back and forth, some of them political appointees, some of them career diplomats. >> i think we should point out that the u.s. ambassador to the eu, gordon sondland he was a political a appointee. he came in around may, 2017, senate confirmed. then bill taylor was a long time diplomat at the state department. he coordinated post soviet union

and eastern. he has experience in the region. then you have ambassador kurt volker who was the u.s. ambassador to nato during the bush administration. so you have this cast of characters, one political, the other two career, but kurt volker being brought in in more of an advisory, special envoy troubleshooting role. you look at the text exchange and who actually stands up and says this is wrong and that's ambassador taylor, the career diplomat who's serving in the ukraine. and kurt volker seems to be in a very ten with us position in the text. my analysis that he's trying to placate rudy giuliani and the crazy over here while helping the ukrainians manage the situation but actually get the aid and the arms that they need by placating donald trump and hitting some fine balance, negotiating some fine balance about what would be acceptable. >> we should remind our viewers that ukraine is not part of the

eu so it raises the question, as andrea mitchell has been raising, why gordon sondland was involved in this conversation as the u.s. ambassador to the eu. josh, what people will be combing through these texts to look for is some type of a quid pro quo. we heard pretty specifically as this conversation went on one person saying, wait a minute, the president did say quid pro quo, let's get off text messages if to have raised the alarm to say i see what's happening on these text messages, they will probably become public some day as they have this morning. do you see something in these texts that say -- that show if not an explicit quid pro quo but an implicit quid pro quo about the bidens and about burisma? >> what's funny is when ambassador taylor brings this up essentially doing a little bit of cover your behind by trying to put in text message, you know, we've discussed this on the phone, you know that i think this is not okay, we then see ambassador sondland pushing back and specifically saying there's

no wid proquo here. but the fact that they say that there's no quid pro quo does not change the fact that if you look at the basic text of what's in these messages, they are saying to the ukrainians, if you want your leader to be able to come and have this vaunted visit to the white house, you have to launch this investigation and commit to it publicly. >> so, jon meacham, what do you see in all of this? you can put this together with all of the stories that we saw yesterday, starting with the president of the united states on a television camera speak together world saying i think ukraine should investigate the bidens and, oh, by the way, china ought to look into them too. we learned later from cnn that the president of the united states in a june 18th phone call proposed just that to president xi on the call, said you ought to look into the bidens. the reporting is that the chinese were very confused by that request. >> the president's essentially outsourcing the integrity of american democracy. and the line that we're going to hear all day all weekend from

these texts on the right is going to be that the president's been crystal clear, no quid pro quo. they're going to cherry bpick that and run with it. the president's opponents are going to take the rest of it and run with that. and we're going to end up, i think, once again in this arena where, where you stand determines what you believe no matter what the facts show you. and what the sum of the facts show you. a hundred years ago walter litman, the great columnist wrote that one of the problems in the modern era was going to be that people would not see and then define, they would define and then see. and i think this is exhibit "a" in terms of that cultural and political reality for us. >> so, steve, there's been a lot of smoke thrown up by the white house, a lot of smoke thrown up by his supporters, a lot of

equivocating. it's hard to equivocate on what the president said yesterday on the south lawn. this is something that people have been claiming he didn't say. they've been twisting the wards despite the fact we had the summary of the phone call on july 25th and everything else. he didn't mean that, there was no quid pro quo. sometimes you just have to stop and say he just said it. he looked into the camera and said the thing that everyone's been saying he didn't say who has been defending him. >> we were joking about the show started that just because you don't say something in private doesn't mean it's manipulation, it's foreign interference, it's whatever. he did it all in plain sight. one of the things that i think that struck me about this latest round of texts and emails and all this stuff is until now at least it was mostly rudy giuliani out there freelancing on behalf of the president. now we have the president using the state department to go out and do his business. and we can argue, again, about whether it says quid pro quo. i think that last text where it

mentioned it was kind of cya text where they're coming after us, this isn't a quid pro quo. but to involve all of these senior state department officials and send them off on behalf of the president is incredible. and then with respect to china, simply engaging with what i view as our greatest strategic and economic rival in the world and dragging them into our domestic politics and asking them to interfere in one of our elections is beyond comprehensionable. >> you've got diplomats quoted saying we want nothing to do with your domestic politics, you want to talk about trade and tariffs we'll do that. but the president holding the tariffs over their head saying i've got these tariffs as leverage if you don't help me with the bidens. >> he lacks any concept of where the guardrails are? >> you think? >> yeah, i'm kinda getting that. took me a couple years. he's living in his real estate world where you're trying to get a deal done, you pull out every tool in the arsenal that you can

and he has no concept how diplomacy and international relations are managed. >> michael steele the former chairman of the rnc joins us as well. i want to play that full clip for you of the president yesterday on the south lawn. >> mr. president, what exactly did you hope zelensky would do about the bidens after your phone call exactly? >> well, i would think that if they were honest about it they'd start a major investigation into the bidens. it's a very simple answer. they should investigate the bidens. likewise, china should start an investigation into the bidens. because what happened in china is just about as bad as what happened with -- with ukraine. >> that came just moments after president trump addressed the ongoing trade war with china. >> china's coming in next week, we're going to have a meeting with them. i have a lot of options on china. but if they don't do what we

want, we have tremendous -- tremendous power. >> late last night the president defended his push to have foreign governments investigate allegations of corruption. he tweeted, as the president of the united states, i have an absolute right, perhaps even a duty, to investigate or have investigated corruption and that would include asking or suggesting other countries to help us out. he later added this isn't about a campaign, this is about corruption on a massive scale. so, again, michael steele, the president is very concerned about corruption around the world. >> he is. >> particularly when it involves someone who is running to perhaps be his opponent in the 2020 election. >> perhaps he should start with himself. that, i think, is what you're seeing now. everyone's kind of looking inward at this and saying, oh my god, i'm caught in a mess. that's what those tweets especially at the end are about. the president then goes out on the white house lawn, dude, yeah, why wouldn't i? of course, you would do the same thing. and that's kind of the

expectation and it really speaks to what steve was saying at the end there about his mindset is thissa is a transaction and any transaction i'm going to put on the table whatever i can to get the deal i want. and i'm going to bring to that table any pressure that i can to get the deal that i -- to get the con -- confirmed again in that clip where he goes, look, i got a lot of power here. i can put pressure on china. and then to tweet out i have an absolute right, which president in the history of this country has declared to have an absolute right to do anything? to think about yourself and your presidency in those terms is why we're in the mess we're in. when you see the world through that lens, you're going to say to the president of ukraine, hey, i need you do me a favor, though, you get it? you know, this is how this works. let's be clear. i think we can't gloss over this. because as you opened the show, this is going to be the big

thing. that one little sentence, the president makes it clear, no quid pro quo, that's a bs line. that is a cover my behind y'all let's get on the same page here, oops, we're exposed sentence. and the american people need to understand why after everything else that's at the end after this thing comes to the public light. not before, not in the early tweets. let's be clear about what we're doing here, people. they had gone down that road, willie. they had started to do the president's bidding. they were making the connections and then were putting the pressure on ukraine to get the language right if you want to come to washington for an invitation by the president, you got to do this first. and that sentence at the end, just be clear, sis a bs line to cys. folks need to understand that. >> that line came from gordon sondland, the u.s. ambassador to the eu talking to bill taylor. clearly he realized taylor was

on to something and said let's drop this off text message and stop talking. josh, where do we go from here? this is the letter that elijah and the committees put out with these text messages showing grave concerns. they publicize this, they put the texts out there. how does this fit into the larger picture of an impeachment inquiry? >> well, willie, we're really just at the very beginning of all of this. this was the first testimony deposition in what will be the impeachment proceedings. so house democrats have a lot more witnesses that they want to hear from, a lot more documents that they are trying to get from the trump administration. now, we know nbc's kristen welker is reporting that the white house plans to send a letter to nancy pelosi saying they're basically going to refuse to give any documents over to this impeachment inquiry unless and until the house actually has a full vote to

authorize impeachment proceedings even though nancy pelosi's made it clear that she doesn't think that's legally necessary. so we're going to see a fight over document production and we're going to see a lot more testimony including from ambassadoria v ambassador that was recalled from ukraine in the wake of many other potential witnesses. >> we'll get to that story in a minute, about the ambassador being recalled because she wasn't supportive of president trump's agenda, his political agenda. josh letterman, thank you so much. steve? >> i just want to say one more thing. if you put the last two days in context we've gone from parsing words in a transcript of a phone call to the ukrainian president to an inundation of new text, emails, phone calls with china, this thing is getting bigger and bigger and we'll see where that goes. >> we've got a lot more to talk about this morning. we've just scratched the surface. we'll talk to michael schmidt about the effort of two of president trump's top envoys to

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the president asked ukraine and china to investigate his political rival on television for all the world to hear. fox news knows of no federal investigation of his rival for any violations of any american law. if it is determined that the president made that request to help his campaign for re-election, president trump may have violated federal law. it is illegal to ask a foreign national or a foreign country for any political assistance. to our knowledge, no president before president trump in american history has publicly asked an adversary to investigate a rival. for days, the president and his allies have been suggesting that the whistleblower or their sources got something wrong. that the president didn't really ask ukraine to investigate his

political rival. that the complaint is total fiction. today, the president did exactly what he's accused of doing, this time on live television and this time he asked the totalitarian government of china to investigate as well ahead of trade talks scheduled for next week. >> that was fox news host shep smith telling the truth yesterday. that's not a terribly easy thing to do. he's probably eating alone in the cafeteria over there these days. >> shep smith really represents the best of mississippi and is putting out the strong journalism, is not towing the party line in any way, shape, or form. he's telling it like it is and god bless him for doing an important public service by doing his job, which is to tell the truth. >> interesting he's got a little company in the cafeteria. i think chris has done a good job. >> and palatono. >> a new report by cnn,

president trump raised biden's political aspect as well as liz warren during a phone call with chinese president xi. the white house record of that call was later stored in the same highly secured electronic system as president trump's july 25th phone call with the president of ukraine. when asked about president trump's call with xi earlier this week, cnn said the white house did not deny that he raised joe biden. joining us now, donny deutsch and the cofounder and ceo of axios jim. gentlemen, welcome. there's so much to go through maybe ever than we've had in this conversation. we have the text messages but the president of the united states standing on the south lawn saying ukraine should look into joe biden and by the way, so too should china. >> there's a method to the madman. he's got what i call the cat strategy when he's in trouble.

first confuse. leave rudy giuliani to talk about the universe and hillary clinton and emails and everything else like that and basketball. and then wh babble. and then you point at the other guy, and admit it. so, you know, he is a madman, but there's a method to this. you have to think of the way you take it when he gets up there and says i'm going to ask china also, i think the average person is going oh, maybe it's not so bad. >> if he's saying it out loud. >> and i'd do it again. of course i would did it again. >> he tries to take away the power of the lie by putting it out there, but it's just as bad. and i hate to use this sexual assault analogy, but if a person exposes himself in front of a crowd, that's a crime. if a person exposes himself in front of one person, it's still a crime. >> i'm so glad you brought that up reference and not me. i don't know why. >> well, you know, i'm sorry

criminality and donald trump's world, i can't help but to -- >> let's plow right through that. jim, we have the president saying what he said out on the lawn, but now we have this raft of stories that came through in the last 12 hours supporting the argument, in fact, the facts that we saw in the summary of the phone call on july 25th that the president and people around him and in fact the levers of the united states government from the state department to justice and outside the government with rudy giuliani are working on behalf of president trump to investigate joe biden on behalf of the president. >> yeah. i mean, let's step away from the play by play for one second. you now know that the president has used the machinery and the manpower of the federal government to ask foreign adversaries to investigate his chief political rival. biden is leading in the polls and most people assume at this moment that he has a better than decent chance of becoming the nominee. unprecedented in history and to most democrats elected in office right now, it seems that's an

impeachable offense. it now appears inevitable, i would say virtually certain that donald trump will be impeached by the house of representatives in november or december, probably on a party line vote sending it over to the senate which will have to decide whether they remove him from office. it's very important. you talked about shep smith and what he said is real on fox news and it's true that chris wallace has done some of the same. but most of what's happening in conservative media is basically defending trump and doubling down on the trump strategy. and the trump strategy overnight is now clear. he's saying, listen, i have the absolute power as the head of this nation to tell other nations whether they're totalitarian, communist, whatever, that they can interfere in our politics, they can investigate a political rival, and he's going to send a letter to pelosi as soon as today saying impeach me, i dare you. i'm not going to help you until you start the actual inquiry.

because now he's betting he's going to be impeached anyways and he's betting on the red wall in the senate. he knows there's 51 republican senators sitting over there in states where he has a favorable rating and he knows what's happening in conservative media and he knows how successful his strategy of fogging things up can be. and as long as he has 34 senators that will protect him, that will vote for him, that will never vote to remove him from office, he can do whatever he wants. that's the way the constitution works. we can all hyper ventilate as much as we want. if he has those senators supporting him, and he does. some of the commentaries we're starting to see cracks. where? you have a few others saying this is bad, it needs to be investigated. i don't see any republicans saying i think it's time to impeach him? i think these are impeachable offenses. until you see that, he's got the

same level of support that he's had since the beginning of his presidency which seems unbreakable regardless of what the facts on the ground are. you might hate that or love that, it is what it. >> we did not hear from senate republicans after he made it comment yesterday. jon meacham, i want to appeal to your constitutional spidey sense when's hear the president saying i have an absolute right to do something, what do you hear? >> i hear an unamerican and undemocratic, unrepublican, lower case d, lower case r, impulse. i was thinking last night reading through all of this, i would urge folks who are inclined to support the president to think about this. if we had had this guy in the early days of the republic, i'm not entirely sure we would have survived. part of what's working now

insofar as it is is that we have nearly 2 1/2 centuries of examples where the checks and balances of the constitutional system have worked. they design, the framers designed the government for a moment like this. they were quite prescient in many ways. what they -- and what i think puts the -- really the weight on the rest of us is when they designed that to check and balance a president who was -- seemed uncheckable and unbalanced, they counted on an informed, educated, engaged citizenry. that sounds like a fourth of july homily or a sermon. but it smacks of being true. a republic is the u.s. its parts. our disposition of hearts and mind, yours and mine, matter enormously. because politicians are far more often mirrors of who we are

rather than molders. and trump right now is mirroring what the 40, 45, 48% of folks who, for whatever reason, support him come what may. if a certain number of those people begin to look at this and realize that the president of the united states has, in fact, put our constitution, put our electoral system on ebay, then perhaps they will begin to think, you know what? the system itself is worth more than this particular moment of absolutism. and i think that's -- i think that's absolutely essential. and this is -- we're not way beyond, i think, even what nixon was doing, i think we're in a zone where to go to jim's point, if republicans can read all of this -- and by the way you should then go back and read the

transcript because this actually provide -- or the memo to telecom, this actually provides context. you see absolutely that the president of the united states is running a political shakedown racket. and it's just -- that's not even a partisan point at this juncture. just look at the data, be driven by the data, and then make up your mind. that's what we were supposed to do in this country. we weren't supposed to just give a pass to somebody whose team we decided to be on. we were supposed to actually think for ourselves. that's why we fought the revolution, that's why we've struggled again and again and again to make real those promises. why would we then sell that out? why would we cheapen that? why would we end that experiment for some judges and tax rates? >> you know, donny, jon makes a number of great points but particularly this idea that the president's obsession has become

the obsession of the government which is to say he's deploying the statement department, the secretary of state, the attorney general is flying to italy to take meetings to look into this, he's got rudy giuliani doing an end around. you see these text messages released last night by the house, all these ambassadors, people not directly involved with the business of ukraine getting involved and protecting him and making sure that the president's agenda is pushed. the government is consumed by an obsession of the president of the united states. >> the government is another name, it's called the trump organization and he's running it exactly as he ran the trump organization, like you run a crime syndicate. he's right in the middle of it and then the supporting players but they're owl interchangeable. secretary rhona do this and don junior do this. he just has to distinguish between rudy giuliani and william barr, they're just all hinchmen working for him. two things i want to go back to what jim said, there nor cracks in the republicans. the crack i see is the crack of silence. they're not necessarily coming

out and condemning, but usually at this time when trump has tripped over himself they're coming out supporting. so there's something in that silence there. and the other thing i want to ask that's interesting with these people who continue to support him. who is donald trump good for now? other than some skin heads and people on the far, far right, if you look at what's happening economically, if you look at the trade war and basically he's not going to get any legislation through, you start to go where is that -- who's making up that 38, 39, 40%? because if you go back to the basic kitchen table issues, is he really working for anybody at this point? i think voters at some point start to wake up. so the violence silence of the republicans and the voters going to wait a second, even if i believe in this guy and i like him, what's in it for me at this point? we'll see. >> we've got charts in a minute. i want to get to jim before he goes. jim, i guess the problem there is that president trump has laid the groundwork waiting for this very moment by talking about the deep state, by talking about the

fake news. >> yeah. >> so when he arrived at this moment, whatever the moment was going to be and the moment appears to be ukraine, he can say, don't believe what you're reading in the news. remember all those times i told you it was fake news? here they go again. don't believe when you're hearing from diplomats. that's the deep state working against me. they're trying to overturn, he says, the results of your election when you put me in the white house. we've arrived at the moment he's been preparing for. >> yeah. and i don't know, i get what donny's saying. i don't know that i agree with him. i think if you look at the polls, you talk to voters, i think most trump voters say he is deliveringtor me. he did what they wanted on judges. they got the regulatory cuts, the tax cut. >> that's a was. >> it was. but they would say he said he was going to do these things, he did these things. i don't like any of you, i don't like him but i like him more than that clown on vandehei on

msnbc. i think the way he articulates it in a column is what i hear from most people that i know that voted for trump. i don't see any sign that they're any wobblier today and that they were off the stuff he said about immigrants and muslims. the one consistency is that he's always at 40%. the people who are in with him seem all in. maybe that changes, but that is a maybe that would be a total anomaly to every single thing we've seen since he started to surge as a presidential candidate. every single time we say there's no way they'll accept this. you're wrong. we've been wrong every single time. so the assumption that this is different, i was arguing with my wife about this. this is different. i don't see any sign that it's different. i see a sign that the actions are different. and i might have an opinion about whether that's an impeachable offense, but i don't see any sign in the data or even in the members of congress.

yes, there's some silence, but look at what mccarthy's saying. look at what mcconnell's saying. they're all in than ever before and those are the people that give the marching orders to the people below them. >> jim, we'll be reading axios a.m. this morning. thanks so much. jon meacham, great to see you. anchor down this weekend, my friend. the white house has three days to turn over documents related to the ukraine scandal, but the president is planning to ignore those demands. we'll talk to jackie speier who sits on the oversight committees about that standoff and the new text messages out overnight. "morning joe" is back in a moment. t overnight. "morning joe" is back in a moment.

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hey. ♪hey. you must be steven's phone. now you can take control of your home wifi and get a notification the instant someone new joins your network... only with xfinity xfi. download the xfi app today. welcome back to "morning joe." this ukraine story, impeachment inquiry unfolding before us. we're also looking at the economy and steve rattner has some charts looking at the manufacturing sector. steve, what are you finding? >> to donny's point earlier, the economy will end up still being an issue in this election and right now the signals for donald trump are not great. so let's turn to manufacturing.

which has been in the news and reported yesterday or the day before actually that something called the ism manufacturing index had dropped for the second straight month into negative territory which signals contraction. this i think is almost entirely a phenomenon of the trade war. you can see that also in this yellow colored line down there which shows export orders also falling in the last two months. those are very sharply now in negative territory. and what's also interesting is that these all peaked back right about the time that donald trump began the trade war. this manufacturing world was improving, things were getting better, jobs were being added. he started putting the metal tariffs in place, then the other tariffs in place, and now it's been going pretty much straight down since then. >> let me ask you as we look at that the big picture question, the argument from president trump was that, you know, are leverage. these tariffs are leverage, it will bring china to the table and we'll get a trade deal.

that hasn't happened is. there any upside to the tariffs? >> hard to think of a treasuries collecting 70 or $80 billion, but that's coming mostly out of the pockets of consumers. >> right. >> the only advantage is if it actually wins. you know, you can run a bunch of football plays but if you don't get any yardage what's the point? we're going to see. >> any signs of the chinese being compelled by the tariffs to come to the table? >> no, not so far in a serious way. >> yesterday, though, they were offered, you know, quid pro quo from the white house when donald trump said we're negotiating, i need this investigation. >> yes. >> so. >> there we go. but let's turn because it's not just manufacturing anymore and we are obviously going to get jobs numbers this morning that i think people are probably nervous about. but let's look at the service sector which is the other side of the house and much bigger side of the house. and there you see while it's not below the magic 50 number which indicates contraction, the service sector has also fallen sharply in the last couple months, much more than analysts

expected. and there's also a number involving employment in the service sector which is this green line which is actually falling even faster than actual activity in the service sector. so the point is this. you have clearly a manufacturing recession going on. it may not be spilling over a bit into the service sector. >> you know what's interesting is that usually slumps are not even the president's fault, they're the fault of the prior administration's. it's very rare you have a direct line to the sinking economy and the current president. >> that's a fair point, well said. but let's lastly put it together into an interesting table that i saw the other day. so the new york fed, not exactly a partisan institution calculates the odds using treasury yields and what's happening in the bond markets. this is their probability assessment of a recession in the next 12 months. they've got it at about 35%. that may not seem like the highest number in the world, but that's essentially about as high as what they were predicting right before the great recession, about as high as what

they were predicting at the time of the dot com meltdown. i'm not predicting a recession. most economists think they're looking for slow growth. which is good for donald trump too, he's run og 2 point growth. >> why is that? what is the fed factoring in to see that spike? >> they're looking at interest rates and so-called inverted yield curve and the fact that people, when treasury yields come down it's a sign of nervousness that people think the economy is just getting soft. >> every time there's been a inverted yield curve we go into a recession. >> that is correct, yes. >> this was a good class. >> heartwarming. >> coming up next, with the impeachment fight heating up, several democratic hopefuls appear to be falling off the national radar. new york nag magazine is asking this could be the end of the road for the 2020 field. that conversation and more.

we're back in two minutes. cone we're back in two minutes.

impeachment has been the main folkous in washington for a little over a week as the next debate nears. we have gabriel with us. his spees is impeachment the end of the road for the 2020 field? i'll put the question back to you. is it the end of the road and for whom? >> well, there's a lot of people out here who basically have no more space to make any news, to raise any money. it's hard to name specific names here but as a number of people have pointed out over the last few weeks here, it's hard to raise money and run a full campaign if no one's talking about you. and we're already seeing a widowing of this field. but there's still 18 people out there and if you're not making the debate stage and forcing people like us to talk about you, how are you going to get anyone to vote for you? >> there's a big group that's going to be around for a while

because of money. pete buttigieg is going to be around, kamala harris, elizabeth warren, bernie sanders, joe biden. who do you think falls off the map b map because of this conversation? >> i think everybody else. gabriel brings it up. we're 50 minutes into the show and we haven't mentioned a presidential candidate. this is the story and it's continued to be the story, it's almost impossible from a media point of view for northwest second tier candidates to throw that touchdown pass and break through. >> former vice president joe biden his campaign announced it raised $15.2 million in the third quarter of this year. total is behind what some of his 2020 rivals have raised and is short of his fundraising halls in previous quarters. senator bernie sanders so far raised in the third quarter, $25.3 million. he raised 25.3 million in the third quarter. he's fold by mayor pete buttigieg, he raised 19.1 million. biden rounds out the top three with $15.2 million. senator kamala harris also reported raising 11.6 million

last quarter. andrew yang has raised $10 million in the third quarter and senator cory booker's campaign raised $6 million. >> yang i think is going to stick around. he's like the shiny toy that's interesting. >> the what do you see in those numbers? >> those are the people in decent shape. back up there are 15 other people in this race. and the impeachment conversation starts at a really uncomfortable time for a lot of these candidates because it was right at the end of the third quarter for fund raising when a lot of them were expecting to raise a ton of money to sort of get them in a position to compete for the rest of the year. that didn't happen for a lot of these folks. so when you look at that, these are the candidates that we just had up on the screen who will be in a position to keep going for the next few months. everything else it's a big question. >> what do you make of that number, steve, for joe biden? >> that's a scary number for joe biden to be at 15.2 million if the brings the total to 37 million so far in the cycle. sanders is over 60 million. he's kind in kamala harris's

league at 35.5 million. and the political people will tell you you need 60 to $80 million to run a campaign through the early primaries. you do the math are doesn't have a lot of time. he also pulled a lot of his digital advertising at the end of the quarter and said we got what we wanted to get out of that. but it's all worrisome on the biden front. >> those two points you bring up as far as that fundraising number to me is the most cloudy thing we've seen about biden to date if the number's there. pulling your digital advertising, you're not winning a presidential election, you're not getting a nomination, it's a digital world. that's basically what got trump elected, that's what got obama elected in the early stages of it. that was a puzzling and troubling move to me zbl. >> they have announced a new set of digital and television advertising for the early states but it's true they've been shifting focus here. one of the things to point out almost all of his fundraising is in person. a huge amount of his time is doing these personal events.

bernie sanders and elizabeth warren don't do that and therefore have more time to meet voters. >> biden's average donation is $42. bernie sanders average donation is $18. >> tells a lot. michael steele, how do you see 2020 politics as it applies to impeachment here? how does this factor in? obviously joe biden's at the center of it every time the conversation comes up he and his son hunter are raised. how does this change the dynamic of the race, if it does? >> it does. i mean, it really -- i think it rachets it up to a more serious level a lot sooner. i think that -- and what's interesting is that biden has pretty much been absent from this conversation since he's been the focus of it. and the way that he has. i would have thought by now that there would have been a very definitive, a very passionate moment by biden pushing back against the president and really kind of establishing another

dimension of relationship with the american people where they look at him as someone who's being put upon, attacked by the president and his family as well. and so it will be interesting to see how this plays out over the next few weeks for biden. not so much the other candidate, they're just caught as has been noted in the storm. and so they're just, you know, it's like that scene in the wizard of oz, you just want to grab on to something and hold on. but for biden, though, he's at the center of that storm and he's got to figure out how to manage that to his advantage once you get into the primary season at the turn of the end of the year. one thing on the money, though, i think we -- i think we play this game every time and look at the money and he raised 25 million, he raised 10. what i see in these numbers is for people like buttigieg and yang and others, voters are saying, i like you, but the polls show i'm not necessarily

going to vote for you. and i think that's biden's strength. biden raised $15 million, but he's sitting at 30 plus% in the polls. everyone else is double digits behind him except for elizabeth warren. so i think we've got to keep in mind that the money is not an indication of support and votes, it's an indication that i'm willing to give you something, but my allegiance and my vote may go to someone else. i think you've got contextualize this in the early phases of this campaign. >> gabriel, you've got a great line from a campaign strategy nist your piece. you basically have two choices in this race, say outlandish stuff about impeachment or do something so big that people have to pay attention. that's hard to do at tier two or below. >> that's exactly right and that's what's facing these candidates. and a lot of them had meetings with their senior staff, i won't use the language they used to describe it because it's a bit too much. but they said they had this meetings and they said is this the end of the road for us? >> all right. gabriel, fascinating piece. good to see you. coming up next, michael

schmidt joins us with his reporting detailing how president trump's top envoys pressured the president of ukraine to investigate joe biden and his son. plus, new reporting from the "wall street journal" just moments ago may be the strongest indicator yet that the president's pressure campaign may be working. "morning joe" is back in a moment. working. "morning joe" is back in a moment. yeah, that's half the fun of a new house. seeing what people left behind in the attic. well, saving on homeowners insurance with geico's help was pretty fun too. ahhhh, it's a tiny dancer. they left a ton of stuff up here. welp, enjoy your house. nope. no thank you. geico could help you save on homeowners and renters insurance.

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hi. maria ramirez! mom! maria! maria ramirez... mcdonald's is committing 150 million dollars in tuition assistance, education, and career advising programs... prof: maria ramirez mom and dad: maria ramirez!!! to help more employees achieve their dreams. we foik folk cussed entirely in my meeting with the president of ukraine on president trump's concern. namely the lack of support for the european partners for ukrained at real issues of corruption in ukraine. but the simple truth is that those are the same issues that the president raised with

president zelensky in their call. anyone that looks at the president's transcript will see that the president was raising issues that were appropriate, that were genuine interest to the american people. >> that is vice president pence yesterday in phoenix trying, spinning to defend the president of the united states. welcome back to "morning joe." it's friday, october 4th. donny deutsch is still with us along with former chairman of the republican national commit committee michael steele and joining our conversation mike barnicle. >> barnicle and robinson, it doesn't get any better. >> tainted only by you, don. >> i i'll bring it down. >> pulitzer prize winning columnist and msnbc political analyst eugene robinson and david french also joining us. joe and mika will be back on monday. we've got a ton to get to, as we've been saying all morning. but let's begin with the text messages released late last night. house democrats of three committees released text

messages that show the president's top envoys pushing the president of ukraine to investigate joe and hunter biden and to investigate the unsubstantiated conspiracy they're that i ukraine meddled in the 2016 election. the message appear to confirm reporting from "the new york times" that kurt volker and the u.s. ambassador to the european union gordon sondland helped draft a statement for the ukrainian president committing to investigation into the bidens. in a july nine teeth text message, he texted this. had breakfast are rudy giuliani this morning. teeing up call with yermak. andre yermak is an aide to the ukrainian president. he then adds, most important is for zelensky to say he will help investigation. two days later, bill taylor the top u.s. diplomat in ukraine texts sondland writing, quote, president does laens ski is sensitive about taking ukraine

seriously not merely as an instrument in washington domestic re-election politics. on the morning of president trump's july 25th phone call with the ukrainian president, vul volker texts zelensky's aide wrooid writing this. heard from white house, assuming president z convinces trump he will investigate get to the bopt tom of what happened in 2016, we will nail down a date for a visit to washington. then on august 9th, volker texts rudy giuliani writing mai, mr. mayor, had a good chat with yermak. he was pleased with your phone call. mentioned z, zelensky, making a statement. can we all get on the phone to make sure i advise z correctly as to what he should be staying? want saying? want to make sure we get this down right. the next day, he wants to get a date for the white house visit before committing to a statement about investigating the bidens and a conspiracy theory about the 2016 election. the aide texts back, quote, once we have a date, we'll call for a

press briefing announcing upcoming visit and outlining vision for the reboot of u.s./ukraine relationship, including among other things, burisma and the election meddling. on august 28th the aide texts volker a political article about president trump withholding military aid to ukraine writing, quote, i need to talk to you. several days later on september 1st taylor texts sondland, are we now saying that security assistance and white house meeting are conditioned on investigations? sond land respon sondland responds call me. a week later, quote, the nightmare scenario is they give an interview and don't get security assistance. the russians love it and i quit. taylor texts sondland. as i said on the phone i think it's crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign. sondland responded, more than four hours later telling taylor that trump, quote, has been crystal clear, no quid pro quo

of any kind and quickly suggest they stop discussing the matter over text message. that last exchange happened september 9th, the same date intel community inspector general told the house and senate intelligence committees about the whistleblower complaint. the military aid was released two days later. so, gene robinson, that's a lot to digest and reading by me so i'll let you talk now. >> and you read it so well. what do you see in those text messages? what's the take way there? >> this is not rocket science. it's very clear. they were conditioning an improved relationship with ukraine, a white house visit and this military aid on two things, zelensky -- well, he comes out and gives a statement about two things. they want an investigation into this conspiracy theory about the origin of the -- of meddling in the 2016 election, somehow

trying to suggest that democrats meddled to their own detriment, which is really kind of -- through ukraine, which everyone says is fantasy. >> this literally that. >> and the other thing they want is an investigation of joe and hunter biden. it could not be more clear in everything. and there is -- so this is just sort of failigree around the central conversation that we have the transcript of or the rough transcript of between president trump and zan lens el that's the context that surrounds the impeachable act that we saw right there. it's very, very clear. and that's, i think, what everybody or what certainly the house ought to be saying, this is clear. >> so david french, let's put all these pieces together. if you take the white house

summary of the phone call on july 25th between president trump and president zelensky, then put that with the whistleblower complaint, there's a lot of crossover there. you put this together with text messages we see from american political appointees and diplomats talking about all of this, and then add in yesterday the president of the united states standing on the south lawn and saying, yes, i believe ukraine should investigate the bidens and, by the way, china should do the same. what does that story tell you? >> you know what this tells me is that, you know, you've got this sort of idea that trump supporters have that there's a twitter trump and then there's this difference between twitter trump and american policy. and american policy is solid even though trump can't put down the phone. this is twitter trump operationalized into american diplomacy. this is one part corruption, which is the requesting a foreign government without any real foundation to investigate a rival, and then the other part of this is one part fitness. this is asking a foreign

government to cooperate in proving a conspiracy theory. so this is an evidence that when you have a commander and chief who is consumed with conspiracy they're res, w theories, he doesn't contain it. it's not contained into his angry tweeting. it leaks into american foreign policy and american diplomain a disturbing way with an ally that is locked in a conflict with a far stronger rival that happens to be arguably our chief geopolitical foe that is desperate and dependent upon us. that is the worst possible kishs where there's maximum american leverage. it's interesting to see that in that circumstances, the ukrainians believe that trump was pushing them too far. but this is a demonstration that his persona isn't just contained on twitter, it's becoming part of foreign poll. >> i it's, a that in a scandal you have all the evidence in

front of you. we have all these text messages now from the three committees and the house. we have a whistleblower complaint. the white house provided the summary that set all this in motion of the phone call, and now the president of the united states going out publicly just flatly admitting to what he thinks should happen and what's been outlined in all these documents. >> willie, you read the evidence and it's last night's evidence. >> yeah. >> we'll have more evidence later today. >> sure. >> we had a ton more evidence yesterday before last night's evidence. everything that gene has said is accurate. everything that david has said is accurate and it is also depressing. sadly, and i want to underline sadly, listening to you read the evidence, okay it's heartbreaking to think of the impact or the lack of impact that is seemingly having on the country. as you read that, i was thinking of two parents getting their kids ready for school out there

right now. is the toast ready? have you done your homework? and they hear bits and pieces of what you're saying. but what trump has done successfully, i would submit, is he has flooded the zone with outrage after outrage after outrage and people are just saying, no mas, no mas. sally yates had a tweet last night which i think sums up so much of what we're dealing with. she said, trump has tried to hypnotize people into believing it can't be wrong if he says it outloud. >> that's right. >> and the question for this country to figure out the answer to that is has he done it to enough people to win again? >> it's interesting, i was talking in the earlier hour that's what he does. i do think the difference in this one is you can break did down to one sentence. the problem all along with the russian collusion thing was he did this and then these guys at

trump tower. this is a simple sentence. to get dirt on an opponent he was holding military aid to somebody that's going to affect our national security. a it's a simpler story. i know we've said this one before, this one might cut now. >> there's one other thing that's very different this time. there's an impeachment inquiry. and that does make a difference, actually, and it makes a difference because that means that nancy pelosi -- the switch has flipped in her head. and what she's doing. she was very resistant and didn't want to move forward. she's moving forward now and if they don't -- >> but it ends in the senate. it ends in the senate. >> probably does, but you know, you never know until you get in the middle of thooepese things. >> there were five or six stories that broke last night.

let's go to one of those. "the new york times" reports that in august two of president trump's top envoys to ukraine drafted a statement for that pu country's zelensky that would have permitted ukraine to pursuing investigations sought by mr. trump into his political rivals. they just wrote it down. the paper reports it is, quote, new evidence of how mr. trump's fixation with conspiracy theories linked to ukraine began driving senior diplomats to bend american foreign policy to the president's political agenda in the weeks after a july 25th call between the two leaders. joining us now, one of the reporters who broke that story, michael schmidt of "the new york times." michael, walk us through this. who were the envoys that were drafting a statement for zelensky and how was he going to present it? he was going to come out and say i add night investigating the bidens so he could get his military assistance? >> here was the problem.

the july call between trump and the president of ukraine was not enough for trump and giuliani. and what these two diplomats were trying to do, sondland and volker, was trying to get the ukrainians to essentially lock themselves into this publicly. the ukrainians, like they had on the call, had often committed to looking at the issue of corruption, to looking into different things like this. but if the american diplomats thought if the ukrainians were willing to say this publicly, it would essentially commit them to doing this. and the problem that these diplomats had is that giuliani and trump were getting in the way of normal american ukrainian relations. and if they could pacify them and maybe they could get them to lay off and allow the diplomats do their work to try to build this relationship with ukraine as they're dealing with russia. that is where we saw this

statement and how this statement came about. >>. the statement was never released by the ukrainian government. but did president zelensky and his aides understand it to be if i come out publicly and say, yes, i will investigate burisma, ei the bidens, ie president etrump political opponent at the moment, then i will get my military assistance? why would he be compelled to do it in the first place and why didn't he do it? >> from reading of the text messages it seems far clearer that what was at stake was not the military aid in exchange for the assistance, it may have been an oval office meeting. it may have been they would come to the united states to meet with trump. if they put that statement out, it would where have made that meeting a lot easier. the interesting thing about what the ukrainians did is they realized how sensitive of it was to get more deeply involved in american politics and ultimately decided against doing this.

they thought, look, this is wading into the 2020 election, that's not a good place for us to be in and they do not put the statement out. not making that commitment. and it's just very simple, the july call, it's raised, it's discussed. this is trying to move it forward and get the ukrainians to commit to it. >> so, michael, rudy giuliani's role in this, it's clearly pivotal to some extent. in his conversations with all of the aforementioned people, not the president, but all of the aforementioned people in ukraine, copossibluld he possib voke privile invoke privilege when he gets a subpoena to testify about this? >> i'm not sure. mr. giuliani has taken unusual views on the law as he figures out how he's going to respond to

this. i think now he's represented by john dowd. so there's, you know, mr. giuliani needing a lawyer himself as congress wants to speak with him. think the concern from the diplomats' perspective was giuliani was sort of poisoning trump's mind on this issue. had really gotten into trump's head and was really influencing how he viewed ukraine and that was affecting u.s./ukrainian relations. we see some of that in the text messages about the aid, the diplomat in kiev raising the question of this mixture of politics and aid is obviously not a good thing. there was -- the diplomats thought for us to do our work, we have to pacify giuliani and trump somehow. and maybe this statement would do that. >> so, david french, can you just speak to how unusual all

this is? we're so deep in the weeds sometimes it's worth pulling back that you have diplomats and political appointees preparing statements for the president of a foreign country so that, you know, he might come out and investigate political opponents that you have the secretary of state and the attorney general and rudy giuliani flying all over the world chasing down in some cases the crowd strike conspiracy they'ory that presidt trump had fed them. just how strange and unprecedented this is. >> let me add a twist to that. one of the ironies here is it's some of trump's biggest fans that have put in motion the events that may well result in him being impeached. because what's happened is many of those biggest fans have been feeding this counternarrative about 2016 to him. and you see this back and forth in some of the reporting from over the weekend where you have this former homeland security

adviser saying, no, mr. president, this isn't right. and then rudy and later turned out perhaps even others are feeding in this conspiracy theory. and so what we literally have reached the point of is that american foreign policy is being conducted in a vital region in the world to prove up a fiction. and that's what's so bizarre here. this is why you're also seeing -- and it's one reason, honestly, why you're seeing such vigorous circling of the wagons from some of the same people that have been feeding this conspiracy in the underbelly of twitter and the internet for months and now years. so trump has gotten to the point where he's become so convinced of this at times he's distorting american foreign policy. and i think that's one thing that hasn't sunk in to the american people yet. they get the aspect of this that is here's trump and biden and it gets kind of confusing because hunter biden's business dealings were something that a lot of americans don't approve of. i believe rightly so.

but this conspiracy theory side of it is another whole layer of disturbing because you've had the underbelly of the internet and have it in the president's mind in changing american foreign policy. and that's unacceptable. >> a lot of time, energy, and tox pair money being spent right now chasing a conspiracy theory. >> thank you very much. we'll be reading your full piece at "new york times".com. back in june president trump told abc news that a foreign country called with information on one of his opponents he would, quote, like to hear it. >> your campaign this time foreigners, russia, china, someone else offers you information on an opponent, should they accept it or call the fbi? >> i think maybe you do both. i think you might want to listen. there's nothing wrong with listening. if somebody called from a country, norway, we have information on your opponent, oh, i think i'd want to hear it. >> you want that kind of interference in our elections? >> it's not an interference. they have information.

i think i'd take it if i thought there was something that maybe -- i'd go to the fbi if i thought there was something wrong. but when somebody comes up with oppo research, they come up with oppo research, let's call the fbi, the fbi doesn't have enough agents to take care of it. but you go and talk honestly to congressman, they all do it, they always have. that's the way it is. it's called oppo research. >> no, it's not. those comments caught the attention of ellen who treated a statement on the illegality of campaigns accepting foreign assistance along with the caption, i would not have thought that i needed to say this. then yesterday the president called on a foreign country, namely china, to go along with ukraine before that to investigate his political rivals. >> mr. president, what exactly did you hope zelensky would do about the bidens after your phone call? exactly. >> well, i would think if they were honest about it they would start a major investigation into the bidens. it's a very simple answer.

they should investigate the bidens. likewise, china should start an investigation into the bidens. because what happened in china is just about as bad as what happened with -- with ukraine. >> shortly after the president made those comments, weintraub retweeted her statement from june along with an image of a microphone and the caption, is this thing on? fec chairwoman ellen weintraub joins us now. appreciate you being here today. i know you didn't want to get into the politics of all of this, so let me ask you about the law. could you restate what the fe krerks says abo c says about seeking the assistance of a foreign nation in a political campaign? >> the law is clear it is absolutely illegal for anyone to solicit, accept, or receive anything of value from a foreign national in connection with any election in the united states. >> so, ellen, then what is the thing of value?

because this is the gray area where the white house and president trump is playing. he's just saying we're looking into corruption in ukraine for example. is there a thing of value there? >> well, i don't want to comment on the specifics. i'm just here to explain the law. that's part of my job and i think that this is a moment in america where it's really important that the american people understand what the law is. the fec has looked into all sorts of things of value over the years and it is clear from our precedence that information can be a thing of value, opposition research, polling data, mailing lists. we've looked at all sorts of information in the context of the foreign national ban. sometimes information can be difficult to value, not just information, other kinds of things can be difficult to value. it could be hard to ascertain. but that doesn't mean that it doesn't have value. >> so just i want to ynd line that information and opposition

research can be a thing of value and therefore in violation of the law? >> i believe so. >> mike. >> so, ellen, even as limited as we are, we understand -- >> speak for yourself. >> we understand the law as you just explained it, what i want to know, i think what people want to know is what is the penalty for what donald trump has -- is doing? what's the penalty? >> well, penalty's vary. if the fec were to consider a complaint, and, again, i don't want to talk about the specifics of any particular fact person, but the fec has civil enforcement authority over the federal election campaign act which includes the foreign national ban, the justice department has criminal enforcement authority. when the fec looks at a complaint, it often will assess a monetary penalty at the end of an investigation. and it's very hard to say at the

beginning or in the abstract of what that penalty might be. we've assessed penalties from a few hundred dollars to millions of dollars. >> if donald trump took a million dollars from a foreign government, you'd say, okay, that's a black and white thing of value. if you give donald trump the choice, would you rather have a million dollars from ukraine or dirt that's going to bring down your number one opponent, he would certainly choose the latter which shows it has more value than money. he so i don't think anyone company question there's value attached to it. >> fec chairwoman ellen weintraub, thank you as you always for your perspective on this. good to see you. >> thank you. david french, before we let you go there in nashville, you're one of the clearest, smartest thinkers out there, just want to get your thoughts as we head into a weekend on a wild week about how people should be thinking about all we've had to digest over the last four or five days. >> you know, one of the key questions that was asked after the transcript was going to be was this all there was?

has the sort of smoking gun been already produced and is this the peak of the scandal? i think the revelations over the last 24 hours show that not only is it not -- we are not done, but the president of the united states himself will just continue to come out and say entirely unacceptable things. so we are not at the beginning of the end of this, we're at the end of the beginning. >> david french, thank you as always. good to see you. still ahead on "morning joe," we will go live to the white house for the latest reaction there to all of this breaking news. nbc's kristen welker joins us next on "morning joe." s kriste next on "morning joe." we get it. it's just the way things are. when you're under pressure to get the job done, it seems you have to accept the fact that some equipment will sit idle, or underutilized. but it doesn't have to be that way.

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now you can take control of your home wifi and get a notification the instant someone new joins your network... only with xfinity xfi. download the xfi app today. welcome back to "morning joe." ukraine's general prosecutor's office announced just this morning it is reviewing past

investigation into the gas company which joe biden's son hunter was a board member. the review is part of a long planned restructure that predates president trump's call with ukrainian president zelensky in july. according to the washington post, the prosecutor general said no foreign ukrainian official has been in touch with him to request the audit. the criminal probe which focused on tax irregularities and not on hunter biden was closed in 2016. president trump claims that was because of pressure from former vice president joe biden. there's no evidence of that. "the wall street journal" also reports president trump ordered the removal of america's ambassador to ukraine, career diplomat merarie yovanovitch. giuliani claimed that she was undermining trump and was obstructing efforts to per sway

ukraine to investigate joe biden. giuliani confirmed that reporting in an interview with the paper. sources and officials also telling the journal the state department was told in the spring that removing ambassadorambassador yovanovitch was a priority for the president and that secretary of state mike pompeo supported that move. yesterday president trump does did not deny those reports. >> why did you recall the u.s. fwe ambassador to ukraine? >> i heard very bad things about her. and i don't know if i recalled her or somebody recalled her but i heard very -- >> willie, to mike's earlier point about the flood of stuff. >> yeah. >> as i'm listening to you read after -- you start to gaze a little. that's the problem. the story is so -- the more we dig into it, as posed to keeping it that single sentence, that's when you start to lose it. we're sitting around the table

and you're reading -- >> that's not a flood of information on the president, that's news reports. >> as this thing twists and turns, we've got to keep the headline out there. >> joining us now, professor of international politics at tuft's university, daniel dresner. elise lau elise labott, and kristen welker. >> kristen, let me start would with you. president tweeting yesterday he has the absolute right to investigate corruption in other countries. how are they feeling right now with this flood of reports that came through last night? >> well, first, what we expect today, willie, is defiance from the white house. remember, they had gotten document requests from house committees on capitol hill. and the big question swirling around this administration was how would they answer? well, now we are getting our answer. according to a source familiar with the matter telling me overnight that as soon as today

the white house is preparing to send a letter to house speaker nancy pelosi saying they're not going to turn over any documents until they hold a vote to officially open an impeachment inquiry. sources here have been saying, look, the bottom line is she held a press conference so we don't have to comply with these document requests. so defiance on the one hand. on the other hand, willie, how are they feeling today? i think there's a divide within trump world about how to deal with this growing controversy that is engulfing the trump presidency. on the one hand you have aides and allies some of them saying we need a strategy here. we need clear messaging. we need to be able to respond to these mountains of headlines that are coming in by the hour, really, in realtime. and then you have the other side of trump world which is basically trying to make the case nothing to see here, business as usual. and i think that's what you saw from president trump this week. he clearly wants to be his own best messenger. we saw that during the press conference. but the result of that, and his

allies are concerned about this, are those outbursts that we saw, thatting anner that that anger that we saw. there's a lot of skepticism it will work this time, willie. >> his own best messaging came out and said out in the open that he wants ukraine toest have the bidens and then said he thinks china should do the same. how does the white house defend that comment to you? >> they have not. that was the big question here at the white house throughout the day yesterday, will you defend what the president did on the south lawn in the response that we got over and over again, willie, was no comment. and so essentially they're not saying anything. but what we witnessed yesterday, that remarkable moment shifted the debate from what the president did to whether calling for a foreign governor's help is acceptable, will. >> i elise, one of the people defending the president of the united states in all of this is

the secretary of state mike pompeo who actually was listening in on that phone call and he finally remembered the fact that he was listening in after four or five days. but the status of the state department's role in this whole ukrainian mess, the personnel at the state department, i understand there's a real morale issue at the state department, has been for some time back up it's growing. what do you hear? >> that's right, mike. i mean, i have seen from my sources talking to them that there's a concern about president -- about secretary pompeo and on one hand trying to balance the policy of the state department. at the other hand trying to answer his audience of one, president trump. and let's be clear, secretary pompeo, we know, has future political ambitions, whether it's senator, governor of kansas from his home state or the presidency. in this particular instance, my sources say that he never told kurt volker the envoy to ukraine that he was on that call with

president trump and the president of ukraine. he knew about this insinuation, president trump asking for information on joe biden. and i think it's very important to note what the president did here. he's putting this all under the guise of fighting corruption. until that call with the president of ukraine, he never mentioned joe biden. but giuliani, the ambassador to the eu gordon sondland, all of them are putting this under the guise of fighting corruption. and then you have this weak ukraine government that needs the aid, wants a good relationship with the new president and you have the envoy from the state department. these people trying to, you know, placate president trump, advise the ukrainians and also at the same time try to get the aid through, get that visit through while at the same time trying to advise the ukrainians not to get involved in u.s. politics. so you have this bunch of

diplomats trying to fight the system that president trump and giuliani created. and secretary pompeo knows better. he knows the state department shouldn't have been pumping this. >> dan, secretary pompeo knew that the state department shouldn't have been touching this, but he seemingly has been involved at several key inflection points. we saw how the diplomats involved in this particular episode tried to protest, stall, what does this -- what does the future hold for secretary pompeo among the rank and file of the state department who are loyal to the institution and not necessarily to president trump? >> i mean, think it's safe to say that he's lost the support of most of the diplomatic core and foreign service officers. we saw this actually come out most clearly when he made that defiant statement that he wouldn't allow his diplomats to testify in front of the house claiming that what he cared

about was protecting foreign service officers. and most of the diplomatic corps knew that was a complete crock because, among other things, he supported the recall of ambassador yovanovitch. he has not removed an assistant secretary of state who was abusive towards career officers based on political motivations. and now we realize that essentially by supporting what giuliani and trump wanted, he essentially allowed people like kurt volker to implicate themselves in the text messages that we read. kurt volker by all accounts was an honorable diplomat when he entered into this administration. he probably tried to navigate this as best cohe could. but when his secretary of state and president make it clear that this illegal thing is a priority, they wind up engaging in text messages that make it very clear there was an an illegal quid pro quo.

it's rather appalling frankly that it turns out it's the ukrainians that behaved for ethically in all of this than the americans. >> for people who read the summary we'll call. july 25th call and somehow weren't convinced that the president was engaged in implicit quid pro quo or for people who doubt the whistleblower and how that report came to be, i encourage them to read these text messages. because the people representing the united states and ukraine knew very clearly what their job was, the direction from the white house. >> exactly. you have rudy giuliani through the, you have the u.s. ambassador to the european union basically the two of them out there trying to ginn up this investigation. that was the central focus of the u.s. policy toward ukraine, getting this information on that would vindicate trump's conspiracy theory and dirty up joe biden. i just a question for dan. have you seen any prior evidence

of the trump administration's deep and abiding concern about corruption in the world? it seems that they're comfortable, to me at least, they're comfortable dealing way lot of corruption regimes, including russia and saudi arabia and egypt and the philippines and others, yet in ukraine this seems to be a sticking point. >> i would say that the trump white house and the trump family have a deep and abiding concern with corruption so long as they get their cut of it. >> yes. >> one of the more appalling things about this, frankly, is that in claiming that this is all about anticorruption, donald trump is really sort of taking a page from the playbook of vladimir putin or xi jinping or mohammed bin salman. these are three leaders that had they came to power claimed they

wanted to launch an anticorruption drive. but even though there was corruption in these countries, was an effort to knock out political opponents. what's appalling about this is donald trump isn't acting like the president of the united states, he's acting like a tin pot dictator who keeps claiming he has the absolute right to do stuff that he does not have the absolutely right to do. >> michael steele. >> kristen, michael steele here for you. mike barnicle raised a point earlier in the hour that i think is very important and should not be lost in any of this conversation. that is, how the president is coming at this and how it's being perceived and received not just by republicans on the hill, but by the american people at large. in your reporting and in your conversations, do you get the sense that there is a certain level of confidence or even cockiness with respect to the president's approach to this that he thinks that he's reinforced by the public perception that he's the

fighter, he's the soldier who's carrying forward on behalf of the american people, and all of this other stuff is the kind of thing that he was sent to washington to push back against and therefore he has no problem saying, yeah, i'm going to do this because this is what the american people want me to do, to fight for them and this is how i do that? >> i think there are two things happening inside the white house and with the president's allies. on the one hand, you do have that type of bravado. the president himself has pointed to the fact that his campaign has been fundraising off of this. they've raised a lot of money over the past week. and so they want to make the case that that's what's happening. at the same time, michael, i can tell you in my conversations the president is looking at the polls quite closely. and support for this impeachment inquiry has been increasing pretty significantly. and i'm told he's concerned that if support for impeachment at

large tops 50%, that he's going to be in real trouble and that that's when republicans are going to really start to feel pressure about all of this. i want to go back to what you all are discussing, though, in terms of the broader context. everything that we witnessed, president trump yesterday out on the south lawn calling for china to investigate joe biden, that didn't happen in a vacuum. next week they are going to be holding talks with chinese officials about the trade dispute that is going on and that is escalating. and as elise pointed out, the discussion that president trump had with the president of ukraine didn't happen in a vacuum, it happened with ukraine desperately needing aid. so it's been about that, how can you disentangle what we heard from president trump from what these countries need from the u.s.? and it's a really tough case to make, but that's going to be their challenge moving forward.

>> nbc's kristen welker on another busy day at the white house. thanks so much. elise labott, as we talk about the statement that the president made yesterday out on the south lawn of ukraine but then moving to china as well, that was backs up by a cnn report last night that found that june 18th he had a call with president xi that he suggested that they should look into. the bidens and corruption with his political opponent. it's unclear where the end of this is. if we've got ukraine and china so far, both of those calls went into that secret vault where they've been keeping transcripts of calls they didn't want people to know about, we don't know what else is out there. >> we don't. and there is no end to your question, willie, because not only is the president making these relationships and making them transactional, i have this for you, but i need a favor, or though, do this for me, but he's opening the flood gates to the

system where anything goes. he's telling china to look into biden. who knows what's going to be next. and it's not just inviting these countries, whether it's china, whether it's find russia, find the hillary clinton emails, to look into the u.s. system and help him. he's also giving these authoritarians around the world a green light to continue with corruption or to continue with political persecution in their own countries. this is an area where the u.s. used to fight around the world and now it's opening the flood gates to really the system where authoritarians -- president trump didn't create but it's on the rise and he's basically encouraging it. >> elise, thank you very much. dan, thank you as well. there have been several new developments since ari signed off the beast just last night. he joins us next to weigh in on all of it. plus, congresswoman jackie

speier says president trump created another article of impeachment yesterday when he called out in public for china to investigate the bidens. congresswoman joins us next on "morning joe." idens. congresswoman joins us next on "morning joe." ♪ (engines rev) the only thing better than horsepower... ...is more horsepower. (engines rev) if we were for everyone, we'd be for no one. with dodge power dollars, more power means more cash allowance. purchase now and get $10 per horsepower. that's $7,970 on the srt challenger hellcat redeye. this fall, book two, separate qualifying stays at choicehotels.com... ...and earn a free night. because when your business is rewarding yourself, our business is you. book direct at choicehotels.com ...depend® silhouette™ briefs feature maximum absorbency, with trusted protection for all out confidence... beautiful colors and an improved fit for a sleek design and personal style.

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welcome back to "morning joe." beautiful morning in washington, 7:48 here on the east keeft. joining us now, member of the house intelligence and oversight committees congresswoman jackie speier of california. and host of the beat on msnbc, ari melber. this sunday night ari hosts a special live hour here on msnbc called trump and ukraine, impeachment crisis. good morning to you both. congresswoman spire, i' congresswoman, i'll begin with you. the president suggested both ukraine and china should look into the bide enss. pot just just created another article of impeachment by doing in public what he did in private this time enlisting china to interfere in the 2020 election on behalf of his campaign. his disregard for the law is stunning, so much for his oath of office. so you believe definitively you've seen enough to vote for impeachment, not just an inquiry but based on what you've seen he

ought to be impeached? >> so, willie, i'm going to be resolute in my commitment to look at all the facts. i do believe that as he continues to speak out he is th continues to speak out he is creating more evidence for both the intelligence committee and the house to take action for articles of impeachment. but what we do know now is that this is -- this is what he does on a regular basis, and i guess we should have been tipped off some months ago when he said, yeah, maybe i would accept dirt from foreign countries on my opponents. so he has so terribly created an environment, both in the white house now and in the state department where we have to think what kind of a country are we running. as corrupt as some of the other countries that he is ostensibly attempting to clean up. >> congresswoman, your committee

and a couple of others released last night in a letter some text messages that show american diplomats, american political appointees working on ukraine, talking very openly over text message about a deal with ukraine and working on the president's behalf to get that deal and what ukraine needed to do to get its military assistance or at least to get a white house meeting. what did you see in those text messages? >> well, it is important to point out these are on whatsapp so they were encrypted. it was ambassador volker who made them available. i think that the state department, particularly mike pompeo, had no intentions of having them made public but i believe it is very important for the american people to see how much effort went into trying to get the money released and to get a meeting with the president, but it was all based on whether or not they were going to do an investigation into vice president biden and his son hunter. this is a character assassination campaign that the president has under way, not just with biden but it appears

he is going to do it with many of his other opponents and use his position, which should be one of trying to bring peace and harmony around the world, but use it instead as a weapon. >> congresswoman, ari melber here. good to see you again. >> hi. >> hello. a lot of the question has been about the existential question about how the house may move forward on impeaching this president. we've discussed that. i am curious what you think should be done on an ongoing basis to deal with what is now a multi-prong, multi-front political effort to impact the 2020 election by donald trump. meaning whatever happens with impeachment, are there ways that congress can put extra pressure on people inside the government, inside the administration to make sure they don't help carry out any more of these plots? >> well, we have to be very clear that we will protect whistle-blowers, and that's a real challenge we have right now because the president wants to out this whistle-blower and i'm

very committed to making sure this whistle-blower is protected. i co-chair the whistle-blower caucus in the house, and i often feel we don't give the kind of protection to whistle-blowers and the concerns that they have for retaliation, we don't protect them the way we should. i think it is also important to point out that this is a two-for for the president. not only is he getting his so-called dirt on the bidens, but i think he is still a puppet for vladimir putin, and this is his way of paying back putin for the 2016 election cycle and in so doing creating this pressure to have peace talks with russia is going to going to put ukraine in a very bad position. >> congresswoman, that leads to the question. ukraine is at war still today. rudy guilliani's role in meddling with diplomacy,

distorting diplomacy as far as ukraine is concerned, what is the plan for one of your committees -- intelligence, oversight, armed services, i don't care which committee -- to summon former mayor guilliani to sit before the committee and explain just what he has been doing in the middle of this highly volatile situation? >> i think at first we're going to probably want to see foreign affairs look into his role. i mean he's running a shadow state department without being vetted, without having security clearances, without being confirmed by the senate. it is outrageous that he has the ability and portfolio to do all that he has done, and i think many of those in the state department, our diplomatic corps, are disgusted by what they've been required to do on his behalf. >> congresswoman, i want to ask you a question, because out of that eight hours of testimony from kurt volker before your committee yesterday we had two

different points of view to the surprise of no one, from democrats and republicans of what they heard in that room. we had republicans coming out and saying effectively nothing to see here. mark meadows said, quote, he's on oversight, what he said, quote, what we do know is there was definitely not quid pro quo. he said he sat and listened to the testimony of kurt volker and said, now we can say definitively there was no quid pro quo. was that your impression from the testimony of kurt volker? >> not at all. i think that the text messages do a very good job of showing that there was quid pro quo, and more importantly, you know, you don't have to say "this is quid pro quo" for it to be quid pro quo. i mean the dance that went on for months and months to just get a meeting scheduled, and not having the meeting even scheduled until this date until there's an investigation announced, and as i understand it this morning now ukraine is going to do an investigation

into the gas company and ostensibly into hunter biden as well. >> all right. congresswoman jackie spear of california. thanks as always for your time, congresswoman. appreciate it. >> thank you. >> ari, you have the special coming up on sunday. this gets to what donnie has been talking about all morning. there's so much going on. you have to focus it down and look at it and it sound like that is what you are going to do sunday. >> yes, i'm excited about this. sometimes we reach for complex analogies and lyrics. this is a story where i'm reminded more of tag teams. >> back again. >> back again. whoomp, there it is, there it is. the president of the united states has admitted and confessed publicly to asking a foreign government to help him take out a rival to win reelection. on its face it is abuse of power. i don't prejudge whether or not it is impeachable or convictable, it is up to the congress. we don't have a vote in that. we are reporting that we have a president that spent two years

going no collusion in the mueller probe and now is going pro collusion. we are going beyond the daily details, although we will update what is happening, and we have powerhouse legal voices on both sides of the debate on the two questions. number one, is it impeachable? number two, is it convictable? if you just want trump bashing, that's not what we are doing sunday night. but if you want to hear the legal back and forth on the tough issues, when and how do you remove a president, what does the congress do, we will have all sides sunday night. i'm excited. thanks for letting me tell everyone about it. >> where is the trump bashing show? is it on afterwards? >> it is a great question you asked. >> you know what is after that? exclusive interview with tag team. you have the interview. ari melber. we will be watching tonight at 6:00 p.m., "the beat" and, again, your special live hour on trump, ukraine and impeachment, this sunday at 9:00 p.m. eastern time. tag team. thanks, ari. still ahead, we will have more on the impeachment push that continues to pick up steam. plus, we will be watching for the september jobs report due out within the next hour.

as we go to break, attorney general william barr is joking about his overseas travel where he sought foreign help to discredit the mueller investigation. >> like records, this must be a record of attorney general being proposed for contempt within 100 days of taking office. was out touring a state yesterday and all day people were yelling these questions at me. i only answered one. they yesterday out, what country are you going to next, mr. barr? and i said, greenland. ♪ ♪ mom! maria! maria ramirez... mcdonald's is committing 150 million dollars in tuition assistance, education, and career advising programs... prof: maria ramirez mom and dad: maria ramirez!!! to help more employees achieve their dreams.

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to meddle in american politics in his behalf. good morning. welcome to "morning joe". it is friday, october 4th. i'm willie geist. joe and mika have the morning off. we have former aide to the george w. bush white house and state departments, elise jordan. former treasury official and economic analyst steve ratner. historian, author of "soul of america" and rogers professor of presidency at vanderbilt university, john beechem, an msnbc contributor. before we jump into all of this a quick run down of the headlines and reporting from the past 24 hours, and there's been a lot of the as we just hea. as the president admitted on the south lawn, he wants ukraine and now china added in to look into the bidens. cnn reports that the president suggested in a call with president xi in june that beijing should investigate bietden. biden. the record of that call went

into the secret vault. a pair of trump envoys drafted a statement for ukraine's president to commit to investigating biden, that's according to "the new york times". they just put it in writing in a statement. former ambassador kurt volker testified yesterday before multiple house committees and reportedly revealed he told guilliani the biden story was a dud, and rudy was getting bad information. the "wall street journal" reports that the u.s. ambassador to ukraine was pulled from the country because she would not push the trump agenda on biden. all of that in just the last few hours. we will get to those developments, but there's another big one. the text messages released late last night, house democrats releasing messages that seemed to show how the president's top envoys pushed the president of ukraine to investigate the bidens and to investigate the unsubstantiated conspiracy theory that ukraine meddled in the 2016 election. that pressure included dangling the possibility of a white house visit.

the messages appear to confirm reporting from "the new york times" that then special envoy to ukraine, kurt volker, and the u.s. ambassador to the european union, gordon sun laland, drafta statement committing ukraine to investigation of the bidens. volker texted this to him, had breakfast with rudy this morning, teeing up call with yermak, an aide to the ukrainian president. he adds, most important is for zelensky to say that he will help investigation. two days lay, bill taylor texts sondland writing this, president zelensky is sensitive about ukraine being taken seriously, not merely as an instrument in washington domestic reelection politics. on the morning of president trump's july 25th phone call with the ukrainian president, volker texted this. heard from white house. assuming president z convinces trump he will investigate, get

to the bottom of what happened in 2016, we will nail down a date for a visit to washington. then on august 9th, volker texted rudy guilliani, quote, hi, mr. mayor. had a good chat with yermak, again zelensky's aide. he was pleased with your phone call, mentioned z making a statement. can we all get on the phone to make sure i advise z correctly as to what he should be saying? want to make sure we get this done right. the next day zelensky's aide texted volker saying he wants to get a date for the white house visit before committing to a statement about investigating the bidens in the 2016 election. the aide texts back, once we have a date we will call for a press briefing, announcing upcoming visit and outlining vision for the reboot of u.s./ukraine relationship, including among other things, burisma and the election meddling. on august 28 zelensky's aide texted a political article about trump withholding military aid to ukraine saying, quote, i need to talk to you.

several days later on september 1st taylor texted sondland, are we saying that security assistance and white house meeting are conditioned on investigations? sondland respond, call me. a week later, taylor texted volker. the nightmare scenario is they give an interview and don't get security assistance. the russians love it and i quit. taylor also texted sondland the following day this. quote, as i said on the phone i think it is crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign. son sondland waited and responded more than four hours later telling taylor, trump, quote, has been crystal clear, no quid pro quos of any time and suggests they stop discussing the matter off text message. the last exchange happened september 9th, the same day the intelligence community inspector general told the house and intel communities that the whistle-blower complaint, the military aid was released two days later. let's bring in national political reporter for nbc news

josh letterman. i just read a ton of text. i know it is a lot to digest at this hour of the day. take us through who the players are and what you found significant in what was released by the house committees. >> yes, so we got these in a document dump late last night, willie. we have been going through them all night to analyze them. what they show is this effort by trump to get the ukrainians to launch an investigation into his political opponents was bigger than rudy guilliani. it involved a handful of people at least, including really senior diplomats at the state department. there's really not a lot of insinuation about what these text messages are talking about. it is pretty stunning to see it laid out in cold, hard print. you see senior u.s. ambassadors including kurt volker, who was the special envoy for ukraine until he abruptly resigned in the wake of all of this as well as the u.s. ambassador to the european union, trump donor who was appointed to that position, talking about how they can get

the ukrainians to launch this investigation, and specifically tying it to whether president zelensky would get an invitation to come to the white house. we also see, as you showed in one of the text messages, another senior diplomat, mr. taylor, pushing back in real-time, basically saying, guys, this is not kosher. we can't be linking military assistance to whether or not another country is going to investigate something. one other part that we see in this that's really pretty profound is how you have the ukrainian government actually speaking with these diplomats, a senior aide to president zelensky texting back and forth, trying to figure out exactly what words president zelensky would be willing to say in this announcement of a potential corruption investigation. >> so elise jordan, you worked in the state department. just take a step back for us. we will dig into more of the specifics of these texts, but just the tone and the tenor and the conduct between these people

who are texting back and forth, some of them political appointees, some career diplomats? >> i think we should point out that the u.s. ambassador to the eu, gordon sondland, he was a political appointee. >> right. >> he donated around a million to donald trump's election campaign. came in, i think, around may 2018 senate confirmed. then you have ambassador bill taylor, who is a long-time diplomat at the state department. he coordinated u.s. aid to post-soviet union and eastern europe, so he has deep experience in the region. was in baghdad, was in kabul. then you have ambassador kurt volker, the u.s. ambassador to nato during the bush administration. you have this cast of characters, one political, the other two career, but kurt volker being brought in in more of an advisory special envoy, troubleshooting role. you look at the text exchange and who actually stands up and

says, this is wrong, and that's ambassador taylor, the career diplomat serving in the ukraine. kurt volker seems to be in a very tenuous position in the text, my analysis, that he is trying to placate rudy guilliani and the crazy over here while helping the ukrainians manage the situation but actually get the aid and the arms that they need by placating donald trump and hitting some fine balance, negotiating some fine balance about what would be acceptable. >> we should remind our viewers ukraine is not part of the eu, so it raises the question as andrea mitchell has been raising, why gordon sundland was involved in the conversation as the u.s. ambassador to the eu. josh, what people will be combing through the text to look for is some type of a quid pro quo. we heard specifically as the conversation went on one person saying, wait a minute, the president didn't say quid pro quo. let's get off text messages, as if to raise the alarm and say i see what is happening on the text messages, they probably

will become public some day, as they have this morning. do you see something in these texts that say -- that show if not an explicit quid pro quo, but an implicit quid pro quo about the bidens and about the company? >> what is funny is when ambassador taylor brings it up, essentially doing a cover your behind by putting in text message, we have discussed this on the phone, you know i think this is not okay. we then see ambassador sondland pushing back and specifically saying there's no quid pro could here. but the fact that they say there's no quid pro could does not change the fact that if you look at the basic text of what's in these messages they are saying to the ukrainians, if you want your leader to be able to come and have this vaunted visit to the white house you have to launch this investigation and commit to it publicly. >> so, john meachem, what do you see in all of this? you can put it together with all of the stories that we saw

yesterday, starting with the president of the united states on a television camera speaking to the world, saying, "i think ukraine should investigate the bidens and, oh by the way, china ought to look into them too." we learned later from cnn the president of the united states in a june 18th phone call proposed just that to president xi on the call, said, you ought to look into the bidens. the reporting on all of that is the chinese were very confused by that request. >> yes, the president is essentially outsourcing the integrity of american democracy, and the line that we're going to hear all day, all weekend from these texts on the right is going to be that the president's been crystal clear, no quid pro quo. they're going to cherry pick that and run with it. the president's opponents are going to take the sum of the rest of it and run with that, and we are going to end up i think once again in this arena

where where you stand determines what you believe no matter what the sum of the facts show you. 100 years add walter lipman, the great columnist, wrote one of the besetting problems of the modern era would be that people would not see and then define. they would define and then see. i think this is exhibit a in terms of that cultural and political reality for us. >> so, steve, there's been a lot of smoke thrown up by the white house, a lot of smoke thrown up by his supporters, a lot of ee kwie -- equivocating. it is hard to do that with what he said on the south lawn. they've been twisting the words despite the fact we had the summary of the phone call on july 25th and all of that. he didn't mean that, there's no quid pro quo. sometimes you have to stop and say, he just said it. he looked into a camera and said

the thing everyone has been saying he didn't say who have been defending him. >> we were joking before the show started that just because you don't say something private doesn't mean it is not manipulation, foreign interference, whatever. he did it in plain sight. one of the things that struck me about the latest round of texts and e-mails and all of this stuff is until now at least it was mostly rudy guilliani out there freelancing on behalf of the president. now we have the president using the state department to go out and do his business, and we can argue again about whether it says quid pro quo. i think the last text where it mentioned it was kind of cya text, you know, where they're coming after us, we better say it isn't a quid pro quo. but to involve all of the senior state department officials and send them off on a mission on behalf of the president is really quite incredible. then obviously with respect to china, simply engaging with what i view anyway as our greatest strategic and economic rival in the world and basically dragging them into our domestic politics

and asking them to interfere in one of our elections is beyond almost comprehension almost. still ahead on "morning joe", we will replay the moment we showed you at the top of the show, president trump openly calling for ukraine and china to investigate joe biden. this after his supporters spent days denying he ever would have done that. you're watching "morning joe". we will be right back. ♪ ♪ (dramatic orchestra) performance comes in lots of flavors. there's the amped-up, over-tuned, feeding-frenzy-of sheet-metal-kind. and then there's performance that just leaves you feeling better as a result. that's the kind lincoln's about. ♪

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mr. president, what exactly did you hope zelensky would do about the bidens after your phone call, exactly? >> well, i would think that if they were honest about it they would start a major investigation into the bidens. it is a very simple answer. they should investigate the bidens. likewise, china should start an investigation into the bidens, because what happened in china

is just about as bad as what happened with -- with ukraine. >> that request for china to investigate the bidens came just moments after president trump addressed the ongoing trade war with china. >> china's coming in next week. we're going to have a meeting with them. i have a lot of options on china, but if they don't do what we want we have tremendous -- tremendous power. >> late last night the president defended his push to have foreign governments investigate allegations of corruption. he tweeted, as the president of the united states, i have an absolute right, perhaps even a duty, to investigate, or have investigated, corruption, and that would include asking, or suggesting, other countries to help us out. he later added, this isn't about a campaign. this is about corruption on a massive scale. so, again, michael steele, the president is very concerned about corruption around the world. >> he is. >> particularly when it involves someone who is running to perhaps be his opponent in the 2020 presidential election. >> well, perhaps he should start

with himself. that, i think, is what you are seeing now and everyone is kind of looking inward at this and saying, oh, my god, i'm caught in a mess. that's what those tweets, especially at the end, are about. the president then goes out on the white house lawn and goes, dude, yeah, why wouldn't i? of course, you would do the same thing. that's kind of the expectation, and it really speaks to what steve was saying at the end there about his mindset is this is a transaction, and any transaction i'm going to put on the table whatever i can to get the deal i want. i'm going to bring to that table any pressure that i can to get the deal that -- to get -- confirmed again in that clip where he goes, look, i have a lot of power here, you know, i can put pressure on china. and then to tweet out, i have an absolute right, which president in the history of this country declared they have an absolute right to do anything? to think about yourself and your presidency in those terms is why

we are in the mess we are in. when you see the world through that lens, you are going to say to the president of ukraine, hey, i need you to do me a favor though. you get it? you know, this is how this works. let's be clear, and i think we can't gloss over this because as you opened the show, this is going to be the big thing. one little sentence, the president wants us -- makes it clear, no quid pro quo, that is a bs line. that is a cover-my-behind, y'all, let's get on the same page here. whoops, we're exposed, type of sentence. the american people need to understand why it is at the end after this thing comes to the public light. not before. not in the early tweets. let's be clear about what we're doing here, people. they had gone down that road, willie. they had started to do the president's bidding. they were making the connections and they were putting the pressure on ukraine to get the

language right if you want to come to washington for an invitation by the president, you got to do this first. that sentence at the end, just be clear, is a bs line to cya. folks need to understand that. >> and that line came from gordon sondland, the u.s. ambassador to the eu talking to bill taylor. clearly he realized taylor was on to something and said let's drop this off text message, stop talking. where do we go from here? this is the letter that elijah schiff, elijah cummings and elliott ingalls put out. they publicized this and put the text out there. how does it fit into the larger picture of an impeachment inquiry? >> well, we're really at the very beginning of all of this. this was the first testimony deposition in what will be the impeachment proceedings. so house democrats have a lot more witnesses that they want to hear from, a lot more documents that they are trying to get from

the trump administration. now, we know nbc's kristen welker is reporting that the white house plans to send a letter to nancy pelosi saying they're basically going to refuse to give any documents over to this impeachment inquiry unless and until the house actually has a full vote to authorize impeachment proceedings, even though nancy pelosi has made it clear she doesn't think that's legally necessary. we are going to see a fight over document production, and we're going to see a lot more testimony, including from the ambassador to ukraine that was recalled by trump in the wake of all of this as well as many other potential witnesses. >> nbc's josh letterman, thank you so much. coming up on "morning joe" -- >> reporter: mr. president -- >> what about the ukrainian -- >> don't meddle -- >> back in june president trump playfully warned russian president vladimir putin, don't meddle in the election.

well, putin just cracked his own joke about 2020. nbc's keir simmons was interviewing putin and he joins us next on "morning joe". e"

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robert mueller says that russia did try to intervene in the american elections and that russia is attempting to do the same in the general election for 2020. >> highly likely -- >> is russia as robert mueller alleged attempting to influence the 2020 elections in the united states? >> translator: i'll tell you in a secret. yes, we will definitely intervene. it's a secret, so that everybody can laugh and so we'll go big, but don't tell anyone, please. please, don't tell anyone. >> that was russian president vladimir putin just this week along with a translator making light of russia's interference in america's political system at a conference in moscow. joining us now, the man that asked the question, nbc news senior international correspondent keir simmons.

good morning. good to see you. welcome home. >> thank you. i'm not in the gulag right now. i made it out of the country. >> just glad you are sitting here with us in new york right now. what was it like to be that close to russian president vladimir putin, to have him sort of flip off your question? >> yes, it is fascinating, isn't it? first thing to say is that he enjoys the questions, even though they're tough questions. his people were absolutely clear about that. i think he enjoys anything that gets him publicity and in a sense all publicity is good publicity, to be seen making those kind of comments around the world puts him in the middle of the world stage, exactly where he wants to be. i also think it is a piece of classic putin trolling. you know, are they intervening? aren't they intervening? we are left asking the question, infuriated by him joking about it but at the same time nervous about it. again, it comes back to the same thing. russia is not as powerful as he manages to project russia as being. once again, he kind of pulls that off, despite the tough questions. again, he actually -- i could

ask any question i like and he welcomes tough questions because he's been doing this for 20 years. he answers anything frankly. >> it is interesting how russia and putin fold into what we're watching right now with the president and ukraine. all of this goes back to military assistance that the ukraine so desperately needed to defend itself from vladimir putin. >> yes, exactly. and that's where the question of how powerful russia is, you know, you twist it a little bit because you have to remember that europe relies on russian gas. they just are about to open a major pipeline to china, so their connection to china is huge. diplomatcally speaking, there are some issues for the u.s. being so estranged with russia because -- and the lines between china and russia is not a diplomatically great place for the united states to find itself. i did ask him about the transcripts, and i asked him whether he would welcome rough transcripts from conversations he had had with president trump being published, and i expected him to say no. he said, yeah, it would be fine. in fact, a senior official told

me afterwards that he -- if transcripts of the conversations between president trump or president putin were published, president putin would look good. >> none of it seems to bother him. >> so one of the things the envoy, president trump's envoy to ukraine, kurt volker, is supposed to be doing as i understand it is working out some sort of deal or arrangement between ukraine and russia over the -- i was going to call it the border dispute, but basically the occupation by russia of ukrainian territory and the war that's still going on. >> right. >> is there any progress on that? is it moving at all or is it just what it is, it is what it is? russia has the territory and they're keeping it? >> russia has the territory and it is keeping it, that's the outcome in the end. ukraine is in a very weak position. that leads back to the gas position because a lot goes back to energy, oil and gas. there's a pine line through ukraine of russian gas. another pipeline is about to

open direct to germany. so, you know, that's when -- when washington worries that russia can use its energy power to influence europe, that's exactly what you are seeing with -- with ukraine. so it is a very, very difficult, complex situation because in the end ukrainians and russians are brothers. it is a fight between brothers, which america and the western europe has kind of got itself in the middle of. we don't have time here to go through the he said/she said, you know, about that fight, but i don't think there's any sign right now of russia saying -- putin saying, okay, ukraine, you can have your sovereign territory back. >> keir, as you trot the globe sitting with the president of russia, have you been in china doing some incredible reporting from inside. i don't know what the term is even. concentration camp, detention camp, but you got inside. tell us more about it. >> yes, confronting chinese communist party officials, they

call the camps education and vocation centers. we have been trying for a year to get into these centers. look, this is a region of china you may not have heard of, people, those you may not know, but what you are about to hear will break your heart because it is about families being separated and the kind of attempt to brain wash some people in this region into allegiance with the chinese communist party. >> 3-year-old hansa knew his mother only ten days. hir parents, fearing oppression, fled their home in china to give birth to him in turkey. he calls out mom when his dad shows him pictures. holding back tears, his father says he is all his son has left. he just told me that his mom went back to get her other four boys and was arrested. >> reporter: they say they were never given a reason why. like their mom, his brothers are also missing. the white house says more than a million of this mostly muslim

chinese population have been subject to religious persecution and sent to what it deems political indoctrination camps. >> i call them concentration camps. they want to, you know, wipe out everything belong to wayward culture. >> reporter: the chinese say allegations like these are all lies. in search of the truth, we have flown to a remote region of the world, xinjiang, more than twice the size of texas, where horrific stories have been emerging from a vast network of secretive facilities. the chinese who agreed to let us film with government chaperones, call them education and vocation centers. here dozens of adults sit studying, many of them sleeping in spartan dormitories. the chinese say these centers have helped stabilize the region. they insist we visit this exhibit, documenting decades of violent terrorist attacks, allegedly planned and carried out by members of the muslim minority. our measures are effective, says

senior communist party official, pointing to growing tourism and increasing investment in the region. but at what cost? prayers are only allowed at state-sanctioned mosques and mass interments are routine for often minor infringements according to human rights watch? >> reporter: why are you here? >> for attending an illegal preaching he tells me. at another center, more youth. the aim sounds like a kind of mind control. the director in a rare on-camera description tells us they prevent terrorist thoughts from developing. we focus on changing their minds, he says. this woman in a class teaching her to care for infants is already a mother. she was accused of religious extremism just when her husband had died. her daughter, only 4. >> reporter: tell me that it isn't brutal to take a mother away from her 4-year-old daughter when her father has just died.

tell me that is not a brutal thing to do. >> translator: she can go home once a week. >> reporter: her father dies and her mother was taken away and can only see her once a week, and you say that's fine? as a parent every one of us misses our children, says mr. xu. >> reporter: but you have a choice to be away from your children. >> reporter: later he claims she could pass her thoughts on to her children and her children could become terrorists. this disturbing video which the state department believes to be authentic has recently emerged, detainees shackled and blindfolded, written on their vest. we visited a center where we are getting a sanitized picture. analysts at the australian strategic policy institute told nbc news these images show another part of the camp across the road from where we are standing, one that is far more punishing with fenced exercise

pens and barbed wires? we can go across the road to the other side? >> that is a normal school. it has nothing to do with us, he says. >> reporter: back in washington, senator marco rubio has campaigned against china's policy. >> so do you believe that what the chinese have shown us here reflects what these centers are really like? >> of course not. of course not. they control is0100% this regio. they control what you get to see. >> reporter: it is just, he says. we protect weaker culture he says. thousands of miles away in istanbul, turkey, those who fled tell a different story. hansa growing up without his mom while his family fear his brothers have been sent to orphanages. china's communist party pushing for a more united country, tearing families apart. keir that is just stunning reporting. good for you for confronting him in a place where it probably

wasn't comfortable to do that. what is the basis -- we heard one example. what is the basis in the first place for putting these people in the camp? >> well, there's a long history there. this is a region very important to china. it is a huge part of china, and the people -- many, many have called for separating away from china. you look back for the cause. it goes back and back. they would say they've been persecuted a long time. the chinese would say we can't have some of our country break away. we have to try to stop that. you know, i think it is really important that there are bills at the senate and the house which could land on the president's desk in the next weeks or months. it is crucial because for -- for american because to judge a country by the way it treats its own people, and this is a hugely powerful country. they do care what we think, by the way. i have a letter from the chinese party official you saw in the report who wrote to me

afterwards to say, you know, china has always attached great importance to the protection of children's right. they wrote the letter because they care what we think. they really care what we think and we have to keep asking questions. >> congratulations for getting in for amazing reporting. in the camps are they allowed to practice islam and their religion? >> no. >> they're not? >> no. look, you saw that picture at the mosque. >> yes. >> you may notice no one had a beard. >> right. >> reports are you are not allowed to have a beard. we spoke to people in those classrooms, women who said that they've been sent there because they had worn a burka. they had been there for a year. so what china is trying to do, and they have a history obviously of cracking down on religion in china. what they're trying to do is if you get ahead of the problem and just change the nature of the entire region. >> there have also been horrific reports that this ethnic minority in china has been facing forced organ donations. not donations, they've been

literally killing and harvesting organs. >> yes. >> did you hear anything about that or were you able to look into that? >> we heard the reports. china keeps a lot of things secret so it is very, very difficult. it is dangerous if you are a one of these to communicate with those outside of china, you can end up in one of these camps. knowing what is going on is incredibly difficult. you can see they're trying to open up and in its own way give us a particular report. i can't tell you whether the reports are true, they might not be. again, we have to keep paying attention and asking china what it is doing and holding its feet to the fire. >> i know you fought for about a year to get into that camp. >> that's right. >> i'm glad you did. that's a great piece of reporting. nbc's keir simmons. good to see you. >> you bet. with the monthly jobs numbers just crossing, we will get to those numbers and what they tell us about the strength of the united states economy. that's next on "morning joe". ♪ ♪ [upbeat action music]

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♪ we've got breaking nick news with release of the monthly jobs report. let's go straight to cnbc's d dominic chiu. how does it look? >> non-foreign payrolls in america grew by 136,000 jobs. economists were looking for 145,000, but a big bright sign here, the unemployment rate actually goes pretty decently lower to 3.5%. analysts were expecting 3.7%. that's unchanged. this is, by the way, the lowest unemployment level we have seen since 1969. average hourly earnings, relatively flat, but it does indicate a 2.9% gain over the same wages that we saw last year. the sectors we saw the most strength in terms of hiring,

health care, professional and business services. meanwhile, manufacturing and retail-related industries saw some of the biggest job losses. i'll also point out that the labor force participation rate, the number of people who are actually counted as being in the workforce, unchanged at 63.2%. the broadest measure of unemployment, that u6 number, 6.9%. it is actually lower than the previous read. what it indicates, willie, is that the labor force rate has stayed steady and more people are actually finding jobs. that's the reason unemployment has gone down, something the president will probably seize on likely is that black unemployment and hispanic unemployment both at survey record lows. we will continue to monitor this, but markets reacting fairly positively. we will see if the gains hold into what is happening with the opening bell. willie, i will also point this out. this is somewhat of a relief given the rash of more, i guess, negative economic data, i guess

is the best way to put it, over the course of the past week with regard to manufacturing services. so it is a big deal. >> it is. elise, if you look at the number, it is not a terribly impressive number, below expectations. what dom has suggested is that the president will point to 3.9%, incredibly record low, low for african-americans as well. the politics of this. how will president trump use it? >> donald trump needs to make this front and center of his message, and he should if he is not distracted by attacking and deflecting from his recent calls to use his political power to investigate his political opposition from the ukraine and china. so i think that if donald trump could stay on message, this could be a win for him, but it is highly unlikely he will stay on message. >> the president wants to hang his hat for 2020 on a strong economy. are there a lot of signs, as dom says, it is going in a different

direction? >> exactly. >> or he will look at these numbers. >> no, and he will point to these numbers, and these numbers are probably the best thing he has on the economic front. as you said, there are indications we may be sliding toward recession, and we've been at basically full employment for a while now. thank you, president obama. but that's a different story. we've been at basically full employment, yet there's this increasing concern about a slowdown. so those are -- that's the pull and push he is going to face going into reelection. >> dom, you mentioned the manufacturing number. steve ratner was here earlier with charts showing the effect that the tariffs have had on manufacturing. how big a concern is that for people down on wall street? >> well, it is definitely a concern, and the reason why is because that key gauge of manufacturing that was reported earlier this week showed we had some of the weakest reads in the decade, in a decade. that's how bad the manufacturing read has gotten. now, there are some questions with regard to whether or not

that survey data actually fairly represents the manufacturing economy, but what you pointed out is true. the export side of things, manufacturers selling things to other countries, that data was actually a little weaker than many had thought. what was a little bit more curious was the service aside still shows that we are expanding as an economy, just at slower levels, the lowest levels for the services, guys, since 2016. >> all right. again, the headline this morning, the u.s. economy added 136,000 jobs in september. the unemployment rate down to 3.5%. cnbc's dom chiu. dom, thanks as always. >> sure. >> we will be back in two minutes with more "morning joe". ♪ without my medication, my small tremors would be extreme.

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nikolai. their latest album, "thrashing through the passion" out now. with us, "morning joe" music correspondent wfpk's kyle meredith. thank you for being with us. craig, i just -- you know, as know pitch fork at times can be difficult with reviews. i want to read this review. it says thrashing through the passion is so live and elated, that if not for the well documented track record it could be mistaken for a band just hitting it's peak. it is unforced, unceasingly up lifting, and makes no effort to shake up the usual triumph rock if is a best case scenario for what a seventh hold steady record should sound like. it reminds me of when john lennon called him the godfather

of english rock. and they said how does that make you feel and he said it is better than being called a [ bleep ]. pretty universal acclaim. >> we're 16 years in, we are fill having a lot of fun, maybe more than ever. i think the reviews picked up on that. >> you were keeping up a torrid pace, a pace that for as much as you put into your music and your solo projects, it was hard to continue at that torrid pace. do you think taking a little more time between the last album and this one made a difference. >> i think in rock and roll no one minds if you go away for a little bit. sometimes i think it is even appreciated. we rested up and came back, i think, better than ever. >> my son is a huge fan.

it is a maizing that he, his friends, and so many other people have this incredibly intense relationship with a band, your music and your words bhap do you thi . >> we wanted to create a mu community that people could feel part of. it really feels like we're all part of something and we go out and do the big celebrations and people feel more apart of it than your average band and that is an honor for us and something we talk about a lot. >> one of the things that our fans are happy about is you being back on the fold.

it is like you're finally turning into the e street band at this point. a it is a different band than when you left eight or nine years ago. >> yeah, it has been fantastic. playing with steve has expanded the musicality of the band. everyone is a little older, a little more experienced, and it has been a joyful process. >> so let's talk about the difference between your work for hold steady and your solo work. it seems there is a separation that your solo work is sometimes darker and more self reflective, but as the pitch fork review suggested, this work like so much of hold steady's work is up lifting and positive. why that division of labor lyrically for you? >> i don't create much of the

music. i'm usually writing the riffs, and they're big in sound, so i'm always trying to create big things. my solo work it is smaller in scale. the music begins in a different way. the hold steady characters are making bad decisions and following them to logical conclusions but in my solo work people are trying to do the right thing but struggling to stay above water. thrashing through the passion. hold steady, thank you so much for being here, we grately apprecia -- greatly appreciate it. >> while we're talking about music, joe's band, the independent counsel of funk, they have krapging out the hits since '64. today they're out with "blue

dawn" and it is a song with a "morning joe" back story. ♪ well i tried so hard to find my way ♪ ♪ a sinner too proud to say ♪ i need some help from above ♪ jesus show me your word that will get me through this day ♪ ♪ jesus get me through this

day ♪ [ alarm ] ♪ it's a blue dawn, dragging these old bones from my bed ♪ ♪ from my bed, baby ♪ such a blue dawn, feels like a freegt train blowing through my head ♪ ♪ through my head, baby ♪ well i wish i knew what the hell i could do to stay in bed with you baby ♪

♪ another blue dawn ♪ in a town that is not what is seems ♪ ♪ the sky with broken hearts and shining dreams, yeah ♪ ♪ well i wish i knew what the hell i could do, just stay in bed with you baby ♪

♪ z ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ what the hell i could do to get you back with me, i need you

baby ♪ >> yep, that's how we start every morning here on "morning joe." joe and mika will be back on monday, i'll have the latest on sunday morning about the president, the ukraine, and the impeachment inquiry. stefanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. >> this morning, first i have to walk you through some of the extraordinary texts that nbc has been digging through delivered by the form er u.s. envoy to kut volker. whether or not president trump

was using the prestige and the final power of the united states as rev lanl to force the president of the ukraine to help him investigate a political rival. i'm talking joe biden. i want to walk you through this step by step. the text is from the envoy, kurt volker, to zelensky's aid laying out the expectations for that call. volker says heard from the white house, assuming president z. will convince him that he will investigation what happened we will nail down a date in washington. the call went went and the president offered dates for a white house meeting. and two