good morning, i'm jo ling kent in new york at msnbc world headquarters. it's 7:00 in the east, 4:00 a.m. out west and here is what's happening. blaming it on rick perry, new reporting about the energy secretary's role in the ukraine phone call. adding up the evidence and looking ahead, what we've learned and what might be revealed this week when new players testify. taking control. the president's son-in-law gets a new job in the impeachment fight. and the impeachment attitude, where the momentum is in the polls and where it's headed. we want to start with some breaking news right now. tens of thousands of people are taking to the streets of hong kong in the rain, wearing masks in defiance of a new ban. it took effect on saturday and it's a second legal attempt to block it and that failed. city leaders say the ban was needed to top widespread

violence because the masks allow radical protesters to conceal their identity. we're monitoring that story that continues to develop. also we have more breaking news this morning that we told you about last hour out of kansas city, kansas. nine people were shot inside a bar and four of them are dead. police have released few details, but they are looking for at least one suspect who entered the bar and opened fire. the exact number of shooters is still unknown. no one is in custody yet. we will keep you posted on the latest as that information becomes available. and we are starting day 13 of the impeachment inquiry and, yes, we're counting those days. the new evidence is piling up by the day and if not by the hour here, and new this morning, the president is blaming energy secretary rick perry for the ukraine call. he's telling republicans on friday that perry urged him to make that july 25th call.

the president suggesting he did not want to make it. and there's potential new evidence on the way this week with crucial testimonies coming on capitol hill, including from that u.s. diplomate whose explosive text messages have been called a smoking gun. and here is how three democrats running for president are framing this impeachment fight. >> this is bigger than the 2020 election. this is about the norms of representative democracy and the separation of powers that we expect. >> we have an opportunity now to do the fact-finding, to see where that leads us and to reach a conclusion based on those facts and to do it in a way that actually restores faith in our process from the american people. >> he's trying to socialize that as normal behavior. it's not. it's treasonous. i mean, this guy is a gangster. there is no other way to say it. >> and we have the a team of reporters and analysts to go

over all of these new developments in the impeachment inquiry. we're going to start with nbc's kelly o'donnell at the white house. kelly, what does the president gain by pinning this call on his energy secretary? >> reporter: well, it would appear that one of the things the president would be trying to do, jo, is to look for an alternative reason that was not about seeking any kind of help about a political rival. so the president was on a phone call with house republicans friday, the white house said that call existed, that didn't mention anything to us about this rick perry element, but our team has reported this. it was first brought to our attention by axios and nbc news has confirmed that during that call the president sort of gave a new reason for the call, saying that energy secretary rick perry had encouraged him to make the call in order to talk about liquid natural gas. of course, ukraine is a big energy country, especially as it relates to russia, and that would be a legitimate topic, however, we have all seen the released call summary, we've

seen the reconstructed conversation between president trump and president zelensky. there isn't a mention of rick perry and they are not talking about liquid natural gas. this could be a way for the president to sort of lean on one of his more popular cabinet members. rick perry had served as the longest serving texas governor before he came to the administration and has not had scandals or controversy during his tenure at the doe. now, the department of energy tells me that secretary perry certainly encouraged and supported the idea of the president speaking with president zelensky, they released a statement to us to that effect, but they don't say that this was specifically a request from secretary perry to make the july 25th call. president trump was on that call with house republicans joined by one of his allies, kevin mccarthy who is the leader of house republicans. here is what he has to say about the state of the impeachment inquiry.

>> remember who we have right here, we have president trump is the most transparent president we have ever had. he delivered a phone call, a transcript. no one has ever asked of that before. just to make sure that it's clear, nothing in there is impeachable. he never said i will do this if you do that. what the president was talking about, let's be very clear, this is an open investigation to get the bottom of what happened with that russia collusion. this is an open investigation that the attorney general had said was already looking into the president already talked about before. this is exactly what we do with countries all around the world every single day to work on investigations, to get to the bottom of problems. >> reporter: so mccarthy trying to give a reason, an explanation, a justification for the president's conversation. that is something the president will have to continue to answer for. we saw that susan collins, republican of maine, a senator who would ultimately be one of the jurors, if there is an impeachment trial some day, she

said she believes the president made a big mistake by talking about china investigating the bid bidens. so the president has some work to do there and maybe that's why he's leaning on rick perry and trying to make his call seem more standard operating procedure and less controversial. >> thank you so much. we're now going to head to capitol hill where another big week in impeachment looms in this inquiry. tuesday gordon sondland the u.s. ambassador to the eu is expected to appear before three house committees as part of the investigation into the president. sondland's texts were revealed this past week and they have been key in establishing a possible quid pro quo issue with ukraine. on friday then it's former u.s. ambassador to ukraine marie i can't von vich who reportedly was pushed out of that position in the spring. joining me is nbc news national

political reporter josh letterman. good morning. >> reporter: hi. >> what are the house committees likely to ask him about? what is their priority? >> reporter: they will wand to hear from ambassador sondland what he knew and understood what the president's intentions were on ukraine. if you will recall ambassador sondland comes up not only in that whistle-blower complaint but also in those text messages that ambassador kurt volker handed over to congress last week and congress then released. he is the one that is seen in those text messages basically shutting down the top u.s. diplomate in ukraine when he expresses concern and says we cannot be linking u.s. military assistance to whether ukraine is going to agree to investigate the president's political opponents. in those text messages gordon sondland, the ambassador to the european union, trump appointees, long time trump donor he basically says that's not what's going on here, let's take it off text message.

democrats eager to hear from him whether he really does think that trump was trying to advance his political interests with this investigation. >> so for those who don't know, what is sondland's relationship with trump? >> reporter: yeah, so he had been a trump donor, he had actually distanced himself during the campaign from the president after the whole incident where the president went after the gold star families, but ultimately after trump became the republican nominee gordon sondland came back as a supporter of the president and after he was elected was nominated to be his ambassador to the european union. >> what about ambassador i can't van vich. what's her story? >> reporter: she has been in the u.s. foreign service for more than three decades, she is a career diplomate and she was yanked out of his role as ambassador to ukraine, a role she started during the end of the obama administration by president trump earlier this year, a few months short of when her tour was expected to end.

democrats are going to want to hear about what she was aware of about why she was pulled out of that role because we know that rudy giuliani the president's personal lawyer had been building a case against her, basically telling the president that she had been standing in the way of what he was trying to do to advance his interests and this investigation. she's also the one that president trump in the notes from that call with president zelensky refers to as, quote, bad news. >> josh, there's a few other people who will be it efg this week on the hill. is there anyone else that you're really watching for critical information that can expand the scope of this situation? >> democrats are also really eager to hear from two senior officials at the state department, george kent who is one of the top diplomats for europe as well as a guy named ulrich brekbol a long time society and friend of secretary of state mike pompeo, had worked with him in the past, pompeo brought him into the government as a senior aide and his name

appears frequently in documents that rudy giuliani gave to the state department as part of his bid to push them to investigate the bidens and those documents were given last week by the inspector general by the state department to congress. lots of questions from congress about what he knew and what the timeline was behind the scenes for the president's push to get ukraine to investigate his political rivarivals. >> thank you so much. joining me now is msnbc national security analyst nicholas rasmussen. >> good morning. >> from a national security standpoint what are your expectations from the depositions and the testimony coming this week? what is the critical moment for you? >> what the appearances on the hill that josh just stepped you through will do this week is provide corroborating information. other people who were involved in these text message exchanges, these conversations, these communications will all have a chance to provide their perspective, not just on what they wrote and what they said,

but also what mindset was. we certainly had that opportunity with ambassador volker's appearance last week and you will have the same opportunity with these individuals in the coming days this week. now, as josh said, ambassador yovanovitch was no longer part of the scene by the time some of those messages and certainly the call took place, but, of course, the ambassador was at the very heart of u.s./ukraine policy and of course understands what the different factors at play were. now that she is no longer in that position she is perhaps freer than most to say exactly what she thinks. >> that's interesting. i will be watching that one. we also saw the intelligence community inspector general michael atkinson about seven hours briefing the house intel committee on friday. he was only expected to be in there for about half that amount of time. what do you think he said in there that extended the hearing so long? >> well, in some ways with all that has come out publicly offer the last week we've kind of moved beyond the idea of the inspector general and the

whistle-blower complaint, but of course that's still out there, very much in front of the congress, and the congress probably -- or the congressional investigators and congressional staff certainly wanted to understand from the inspector general what was the thinking behind his allegation that this was an urgent matter? what had he learned in the course of his conversation with the whistle-blower why this was so urgent and why this required immediate congressional attention. those are questions that had been asked but not particularly -- but not publicly answered. so i think the inspector general i can imagine having no problem filling up those seven hours with all of those congressional staffers. >> certainly would have loved to be a fly on the with a you will for that one. five people familiar with the plan say president trump is now ordering a substantial reduction of national security council staff. the report says that some of the people described the staff cuts as being part of a white house effort to make its foreign policy arm leaner under new national security adviser robert

o'brien. nicholas, do you think that trump has a personal agenda driving this? >> well, it's been no secret that the president has had his suspicions about the national security staff and whether they are truly loyal to him. those suspicions go back to the first months of administration when transcripts of certain phone calls were leaked or reported on in the media. of course, some of the speculation surrounding the whistle-blower has also indicated or suggested anyway that the whistle-blower might have served on the nsc staff. so not surprising at all that his new national security adviser robert o'brien would want to get a handle on things and in the president's mind that could mean downsizing, shrinking the size of the staff so they could be much more confident that it's called with loyalists and not people that they don't know or don't trust. >> how does making the nsc's staff leaner improve or hurt american national security, though? >> well, you know, on the one

hand no one can argue against, you know, making a staff leaner and more efficient. if that's really behind what the white house has in mind, well, then, that's not a bad thing, but it's also no secret that this administration has departed from past practice in the way it makes foreign policy and the idea that you will have an nsc staff with fewer subject matter experts, fewer professionals, fewer people from around the government who really understand these foreign policy challenges, that to me means we will have less expertise at the white house and that's not a good thing. >> i also want to talk about energy secretary rick perry for a second here. you heard that reporting that we have earlier that two sources familiar tell nbc news that president trump told house republicans he was urged by the energy secretary to make that july 25th phone call to the ukrainian president. and the sources added that trump suggested it was a call he didn't even want to make. nicholas, what do you make of this here? is rick perry being blamed? is he going to be the fall guy here? >> well, at face value it certainly seems like the

introduction of rick perry into this conversation is a chance for the president to deflect, but if you go back to the transcript as josh letterman pointed out there's really nothing in that conversation that suggests that liquid natural gas or energy issues were at the heart of that conversation. so if the president really did pick up the phone and make that call because of rick perry's suggestion, it's really not apparent from the actual substance of the call. it seems like a deflection to me. >> all right. nicholas rasmussen, thank you so much for getting up early with us. appreciate it. >> sure. thank you. new today secretary of state mike pompeo was about to head back to the u.s. from his european trip. he spent the last few hours during athens with his wife. pompeo finally addressed questions about the impeachment inquiry on the last leg of his trip, vigorously defending the president's right to ask world leaders for election-related investigations. nbc's claudia la strong goe is joining us live from roam. how did the secretary make the

case that this was in his words totally appropriate? >> reporter: good morning, jo length. that question was put to the secretary of state by reporters throughout his visits to europe first in italy then in month neg grow then north macedonia then greece. this is one of the best answers he could give. >> i think there's clearly politics involved in this. this administration was incredibly focused on making sure that we worked in ukraine in a way that was appropriate and this is not only appropriate, but it is our duty to investigate. if we think there was interference in the election of 2016, i think everyone recognizes that governments have an obligation indeed a duty to ensure that elections happen with integrity, without interference from any government whether that's the ukrainian government or any other. >> reporter: i said that earlier in the week while he was in italy and then later when he got to greece yesterday while he

spoke at length more about the impeachment inquiry and what he said -- every time he spoke about it raised more questions than he answered. for instance, he said yesterday that nations -- it's normal for nations to ask for x to give in exchange y and that the president was just trying to advance the nation's interest in asking for that investigation, but the question that remains open now from that answer really is what was the x that the president was trying to achieve? was it really trying to find out whether ukraine was still corrupt and trying to find out whether there were interruptions or interference from ukraine in the 2016 election, or was he trying to find damaging information on joe biden as the democrats say? jo ling. >> claudio lavanga in rome, thank you. thank you all, i really appreciate it, guys. a "new york times" editorial is called trump the self--impeaching president. next, why the president and his defenders keep taking the president the ukrainian call was just no big deal. e ukrainian cas

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have to stop it because every time in the past when we looked after nixon, clinton, or the judges, we set a process, a fair process because that's what we believe in this country the rule of law. >> that was house minority leader kevin mccarthy calling on speaker pelosi to suspend the impeachment inquiry into the president and seek the full house approval first.

joining me now to discuss this julia manchester reporter for the hill and daniel strauss national political reporter for "politico." good morning. >> good morning. >> good morning. >> okay. julia, so why are republicans so adamant about holding a full vote in the house here? >> i think republicans are so adamant about this is because they want to show, i think, the partisanship in all of this, they want to show that this is a democratic job. once it goes forward they know this will essentially die in the senate. this is about trying to expose how partisan this is and trying to show that that the democratically driven and show that republicans according to them at least want to focus on the issues instead of everything having to do with whistle-blower and impeachment. >> daniel, there is also a "new york times" editorial that writes in part the more governments that mr. trump urges to do the same thing, the more normal such presidential behavior will seem. we have seen this play out in

other issues for the white house, is that what's happening here? what can the democrats do about that? >> i mean, look, we haven't seen what's come out about in relation to the ukraine news has been an ongoing pattern of behavior from president trump. i don't think democrats can really do more than continue to investigate these dealings, but it does seem like ukraine is not the only country where president trump sort of went out and asked for help in investigating his political adversaries. >> right. we know that, he put the call out to china as well. but does this set a dangerous precedent for a future president that this is allowed or is this just trump-specific type of move, do you think? >> i mean -- look, the thing about this is that there is -- there are going to be presidents in the future who will look back on the trump administration and say, well, president trump did this, so this is the new normal. and that's been the fear among

many critics of trump administration, that the fact that there aren't daily briefings anymore, that there is open criticism of the press is something that's going to spill over and become an ongoing tradition for anyone sitting in the white house. >> julia, the president's son-in-law, jared kushner, is reportedly leading the president's impeachment defense strategy now. what do you know about this and what do you make of kushner, of all people, potentially taking this lead? >> jo, we have seen this strategy or this operation that kushner is reportedly running comparing to an impeachment war room in the white house, if you will. i think kushner was very much chosen to run this position because i think the president has a lot of trust in his son-in-law. we see that jared kushner has been tasked with a number of other huge initiatives by the white house, whether it's peace talks between israeli and palestinians in the middle east or, you know, the ongoing opioid crisis.

we have seen that jared kushner has very much taken on a greater role, i think president trump has put quite a bit of trust into him and i think he is someone who the president looks at as maybe sort of very level-headed. he is very quiet, doesn't give a ton of interviews. i think this is someone who the president very much trusts. i think jared kushner also he has a lot of ties to democrats and the democratic party in his time before the trump administration. so maybe that could potentially be in the mix. but i think this all boils down to the president's habit of really putting a lot of trust into jared kushner, despite the fact that jared kushner has a lot of i would say, you know, some people would call suspicious ties to foreign governments or has been very much -- very much a target of many on the left for his past ventures. >> daniel, i want to talk about this mitt romney fascination, some would say obsession that the president has had over the past 24 hours. the slamming senator mitt romney

after romney himself called the president's behavior inappropriate for a president. the president really went after him in a series of tweets as you see on the screen. what was the point of that? >> i mean, the president right now is trying to make an example of senator romney. romney from the beginning of his time in the senate wanted to be known as someone who would not be afraid to go out and criticize the president. in this specific situation president trump wants to show that any critics, anyone who is breaking ranks on the republican side, will immediately get a strong and stern response from the president's twitter account. >> and that's interesting, too, because were there any republicans that actually defended romney after this happened? >> no, and curiously i think what we're -- i think right now what we're seeing is that a lot of republicans want to see how this plays out. what are the consequences for someone like senator romney to at least ding the president a

little bit and is it safe to do that? we know in the past that never trumpers or people who have broken ranks with president trump or have criticized him have faced a strong rebuke from republicans at the ballot box. i think that's the fear from a lot of republicans right now. >> this week president trump made the argument also that his desire to get foreign governments like ukraine and china to open investigations into the biden family is all about his corruption concerns, not about politics. then you have pompeo in greece saying, well, it's politically motivated by the democrats. listen to what he told cnbc reporter ayman javers. >> do you have foreign leaders for any corruption investigation that don't involve your political opponents? >> you know, we would have to look but i tell you what i asked for and what i always will ask for is anything having to do with corruption. >> so, julia, he didn't really have an answer to that.

he seemed comfortable with not having an answer to that. what does that tell us? >> that tells us this is very much a part of the president's messaging strategy and we have also seen his 2020 reelection campaign very much employ this. we have seen this $8 million ad buy that the president and his reelection campaign have put out there and it's a common theme among these ads that have been released a painting democrats as corrupt, painting joe biden as corrupt. we know that it's very similar to his messaging strategy in 2016. president trump is very much still trying to make himself seem like a political outsider, that he is not tied into this corruption scheme, that he says is going on in washington and happened in the obama administration. we are kind of seeing a continuation of that messaging, now, to critics of the president or people who aren't exactly part of his base, they could raise their eyebrows at that due to a lot of the talk that's surrounded this administration, a lot of the leaks that have come out of this administration, however, i think a lot of conservatives, maebs of his base

very much buy this. >> julia manchester, daniel strauss, thank you so much. >> thank you. too slow? the dire warning for democrats about what could happen if they don't speed up the impeachment inquiry process. that's coming up. the impeachmet inquiry process. that's coming up >> woman: what's my safelite story? >> vo: my car is more than four wheels. it's my after-work decompression zone. so when my windshield broke... >> woman: what?! >> vo: ...i searched for someone who really knew my car. i found the experts at safelite autoglass. >> woman: hi! >> vo: with their exclusive technology, they fixed my windshield... then recalibrated the camera attached to my glass so my safety systems still work. who knew that was a thing?! >> woman: safelite has service i can trust. >> singers: ♪ safelite repair, safelite replace. ♪

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we have more details on that breaking news we told you about in the last hour out of kansas city, kansas. nine people were shot inside a bar and four of them are dead. police say it is an isolated incident in the heart of the hispanic part of kansas city. they are looking for at least one suspect who entered the bar and opened fire. so far no one is in custody and we're going to have a live report on the ground there in just a few minutes. also today a main witness from amber guyger's murder trial has died after being shot multiple times in dallas. joshua brown had been a name of botham jean the victim in the case and gave an emotional testify during guyger's trial last week. brown's death came two days after a jury sentenced guyger to ten years in prison. now to the ongoing impeachment inquiry. it is ultimately a battle over public opinion and the overall trend from recent polling signals that on average there's

a possible uptick in favor of impeachment. as you can see there on the right side there is an upward trend, mostly among democrats, and it came after news broke of a phone call in which the president sought foreign interference from ukraine we have been talking about over the past two hours. let's discuss with democratic pollster fred yang with the gearhart yang research group. >> good morning. >> what are the polls showing us about public opinion on this matter? >> i think there are two aspects of this. number one, more americans are becoming supportive of an investigation. obviously more democrats and independents than republicans, that's step number one, should there be an investigation. then i think the tougher and more sort of slow moving opinion will be should he be impeached and then removed from office? i think a lot of those polls and a lot of those opinions will

track very closely to how you feel about donald trump. if you like donald trump, you are not going to want him removed from office. if you dislike donald trump you are. but, again, i think there are two different issues here, investigation and then removal from office. >> what are you going to be looking for in the next set of polls on this? do you think you're going to ask the same questions? are you going to be looking at a slightly different direction? what would be telling here? >> i think part of the challenge actually for pollsters and the public is this is such a fast-moving story with different elements and actually when you craft polling questions, you know, you want to be able to have questions you can repeat over time. i think the challenge for pollsters is we could be talking about something totally different related to this next week, much less tomorrow. so i think the simplest is usually the best. you know, we have had impeachment questions going back to richard nixon. i think the simplest questions with very little moving parts.

if there is an impeachment trial should be the president be convicted and removed from office? i think that's probably the best question, that covers all scenarios. >> house democrats are also insisting they're moving slowly with urgency, fairly, judiciously, but listen to this dire warning that came from richard painter, a former white house ethics lawyer under president george w. bush. >> there needs to be an acceleration of this investigation. we could investigate the crimes of donald trump for the next four or five years and if we do we're going to be going into his second term. if they do not impeach donald trump we will probably see the democrats lose the house of representatives and the presidency. >> do you agree with that? >> the only thing i agree with is that the investigation -- and, look, i'm not, he is not, we are not members of congress, we are not on these committees that see these sensitive documents so i really don't know what they have to investigate. i do agree in the big picture

that this is something that should be done as quickly and hourly as possible. again, who knows if you can accomplish both. i'm not really sure that the political impact of this is knowable now. there hasn't even been a formal investigation, there hasn't been hearings in front of the public. i remember almost 20 years ago with the clinton impeachment, dire warnings from republicans about what would happen to democrats and democrats had a great midterm in 1998. >> all right. fred yang, thank you for your insight. we appreciate it. >> thank you. we are going to get back to that breaking news from kansas city, kansas, where an overnight shooting at a bar has left four people dead and five others wounded. reporter jordan betts from nbc affiliate khsb-tv joining us from kansas city. jordan, what happened? >> reporter: yeah, so around 1:30 police got a call of a shooting at a bar right behind

mere, it's a private membership club. 40 to 50 people can fit inside. police are still here and four people -- a total of nine people were shot, five of those were sent to area hospitals here in kansas city, kansas, but four of them were shot dead and left here at this bar. now, all of those were hispanic males. as of right now we don't have any suspects in custody, we don't know if it's more than one shooter. we do know that a handgun was used after police found some shells here at this bar. police are still trying to get a description of what exactly happened around 1:30 this morning as well as was there more than one shooter. like i said, the five people that were taken to area hospitals, four of them were taken to university of kansas health system, but right now we believe that they are in stable condition, but we are working to get more information as the scene is very active. just on the other side i believe family members are starting to arrive, that's where our nick

starling is at trying to figure out exactly who was shot and trying to get you more information. >> jordan, thank you. i wonder what is this neighborhood like? can you give us a sense of where you are? >> reporter: yeah, so this is downtown kansas city, kansas, a very hispanic community, we have seen many people who are hispanic here in this community, the bar i believe is an all hispanic bar. that gives you a sense of what it's like down here. >> jordan betts in kansas city, kansas. thank you so much. it's time to see what's happening at the top of the hour on "up." joining us now is host david gura. what do you have for us? >> we will continue following what's going on in kansas city over the course of the morning. senator bob casey will inn joe us on the show, he is backing joe biden, who is of course the focus of a big piece in the "new york times" today, the paper detailing how there is growing concern about how the former vice president's campaign has responded to attacks from the president of the united states. and the actress and activist laverne cox will be with us this

week. this week the supreme court will hear cases that have to do with workplace discrimination, how the court decides those cases to have a profound impact on lgbtq americans and all workers in this country. >> i'm a big fan. i will look forward to that. thank you, david. in pearl, the men surrounding the president and potential legal trouble they may face as this investigation unwinds. that's coming up next. s this inn unwinds. that's coming up next. it's what gives audible there'smembers an edge.ening; it opens our minds, changes our perspective,

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house democrats to speed up their impeachment inquiry. listen to this. >> there needs to be an acceleration of this investigation. we can investigate the crimes of donald trump for the next four or five years and if they do we are going to be going into his second term. this evidence is overwhelming against president trump. this is not a close case. it's overwhelming evidence and if they let it go on too long and get close to the election it's going to be easy for trump to just say, well, i was only impeached because of the election. >> back with us now msnbc legal contributor and trial lawyer katie phang and msnbc legal analyst glenn kirschner. good morning again. katie, is it a good idea for an investigation like this to be accelerated? >> you obviously want to move with expediency but the bottom line is you want to make sure that you do such a thorough investigation that it's unimpeachable, no pun intended. when you actually do the

depositions, for example, october 11th, jo, we have the former ambassador to ukraine marie yovanovitch. we're going to want to know what she has to say because kurt volker was deposed for eight hours. we want to know what she has to say about the involvement of giuliani, barr, pompeo, trump, whether or not there was pressure vis-a-vis providing aid to the ukraine in exchange for doing an investigation into joe biden as a political opponent for donald trump. you don't want to rush the promise but you also do not want to be kissing the november 2020 elections because you also do not want to taint that potential well of saying we did not do this for political reasons. i think it is a good idea to speed it along. >> glen, can you be thorough and fast? >> you really can't be thorough and fast with respect to all of the crimes and abuses president trump is committing. but i do think that it's becoming part of trump's strategy to inundate us with so much wrongdoing that we can't

catch our investigative breath. so i agree with richard painter, i think congress needs to move out on the abuse and frankly the crime that we've already seen in the summary of the phone call that president trump had with president zelensky. it's all right there. it's an abuse of power. holding money hostage that was designed to go to ukraine to help them defend themselves against russian aggression in exchange for dirt on his political opponent. that's an impeachable offense. self-contained, done. i do think congress needs to move out on that because if we now move to what he said about china and what he said about now he's throwing rick perry under the bus, which i find amusing because it goes from perfect phone call with zelensky, beautiful phone call, but if anything is wrong with it it's rick perry's fault.

how trans parcht is this shifting narrative? congress does need to move out on the central abuse that's impeachable and there's plenty of time to investigate everything else. >> katie, i only have 30 seconds left. what do you think, is that the right strategy? >> well, i do think that glenn has the right strategy in wanting to focus what's going on with this impeachment inquiry but i do want to bring up something that there was so much news going on in the last few days that on thursday judge jackson who we know from the manafort and gates trials, who has the roger stone case, she ordered the executive office of the president and donald trump himself to not destroy evidence. she sent a preservation of evidence order to them stating you cannot get rid of any records dealing with lockdown, claw backs or any communications that you have had with foreign leaders. even judges and federal courts are getting worried about what happens in the trump administration and this white house and that's why our evidence will give us the evidence we know. >> thank you both so much. appreciate it.

silence may be golden, but not when it's between president trump and his chinese counterpart and it's drawing an outcry. that's coming up next. drawing outcry that's coming up next. ♪ create up to 12 combinations with applebee's new pasta and grill combos starting at $9.99. and get more bites for your buck with our late night half-priced apps. now that's eatin' good in the neighborhood. jill jill has entresto, and a na heart failure pill that helped keep people alive and out of the hospital. don't take entresto if pregnant; it can cause harm or death to an unborn baby. don't take entresto with an ace inhibitor or aliskiren or if you've had angioedema with an ace or arb. the most serious side effects are angioedema, low blood pressure, kidney problems,

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we have been showing you pictures of the riot police in hong kong. rioters turned to the streets to defy a measure restricting face masks during their protests. this comes amid reports that president trump promised the chinese ping he would not speak up for protesters while trade talks are ongoing. gordon chang, what does this do when the president is promising something like this. >> this is morally wrong and counterproductive. the united states is a beacon of freedom for everyone around the world. you don't realize that until you walk around the world and hear people talk about the u.s. these hong kong protesters have been flying the american flag and singing our anthem because they need our help. we need their help because we

have a similar foe. it is attacking our democracy. we need to work together with the hong kong protesters, not sell them done the river. >> i covered china for five years on the ground in mainland china. and covering this and looking at the chinese response over the past several months to these hong kong protests, how much does this damage our ability to be the beacon of democracy as you talk about here? what is the long-term impact of something like this. >> reporte >> i think what's going to happen, and we have seen this the last several weeks. president trump has been pivoting. he talked about hong kong in good terms before the u.n. general assembly. we need to be mourre regan-esqu. we have a lot of interest there. we have had a lot of business

interest in the city. what is happening is almost open warfare between the police and maybe three-quarters of the population which is against what the government there is doing. so this is really important for us. >> the president said on thursday, he was talking about china while defending his request to investigate the bidens. listen to this. >> china should start an investigation into the bidens. because what happened to china is just about as bad as what happened with ukraine. >> the chinese have a reputation of strong cyber communications. >> clearly there was an attempt by the chinese system to influence a sitting vice president of the united states. obviously the united states needs to investigate that. incident was a question of being inappropriate for president trump to raise this with xi jinping. what should have happened is the

justice department should have gone together with the ministry of justice in beijing. it was a question of timing. but this is important because you know that what china has been trying to do is to corrupt the american political system. and it's been pretty effective in doing that. we've got to prevent this from occurring. >> gordon chang, thank you so much for your time this morning. thank you >> reporting inside the white house about foreign leaders that left some aides genuinely horrified. that's coming up on "up". hippin. you get everything you need for your home at a great price, the way it works best for you, i'll take that. wait honey, no. when you want it. you get a delivery experience you can always count on. you get your perfect find at a price to match, on your own schedule. you get fast and free shipping on the things that make your home feel like you. that's what you get

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that wraps up this hour of msnbc live. i'm jo ling kent. stay with us next for "up" with david gura. this is "up". i'm david gura. this morning there isn't one administration official who is going on television to defend the president and no one from the gop leadership team is on any of the sunday shows. at the white house, there was no war room, and the president is on a warpath. attacking his political rivals, democrats, and republicans on capitol hill lawmakers are ready to question the diplomats at the center of their investigation. and mitch mcconnell, who said the senate would have a trial, is now raising money off impeachment. there is no reporting on joe