warren, joe biden, about president trump, whether or not they are all going to be in good health and stamina trout the duration of this campaign. that does it for me. you can always catch me weekday mornings 5:00 a.m. eastern on morning joe first look. but for now "hardball" is up next. >> trump tries to run out the clock. let's play "hardball." good evening, i'm steve kornacki in for crith matthews. after weeks on the defensive the president is diving head first into a constitutional showdown. in a sweeping assertion issued yesterday the administration outright refused to comply with congress in its ongoing impeachment inquiry. the letter claims among other things the house inquiry is,

quote, unconstitutional though the constitution does give congress the power to impeach a president. late today trump again challenged congress' authority. >> the whole thing is a scam. it's a fix. and we wrote a letter yesterday and probably ends up being a big supreme court case. maybe it goes a long time. i don't know. >> if pulosely hold a vote on the floor on impeachment and commits to the rules of previous impeachment proceedings you'll participate in that investigation? >> if the rules are fair because i don't know exactly your definition. >> according to axios trump's approach suggests the strategy is to fight the democrats in court and stonewall the investigation as long as possible. the news prompted former vice president and current presidential candidate joe biden to issue a blistering rebuke of the president today. >> with his words and his actions president trump has indicted himself by obstructing

justice, refusing to comply with the congressional inquiry. he's already convicted himself in full view of the world and it american people. donald trump has violated his oath of office, betrayed this nation and committed impeachable acts. to preserve our constitution, our democracy, our basic integrity, he should be impeached. >> meanwhile new evidence continues to trickle out. today e-mails obtained by "the new york times" shows u.s. diplomats to down-play the aid to ukraine after the president inexplicably froze it for two months. it has already released material that is driving the impeachment push. that is the white house memo of trump's call with ukrainian president zelensky which shows when zelensky asked about u.s. military support the president

replied, quote, i would like you to do us a favor, though. that favor according to the memo may have been a commitment from ukraine to launch investigations into joe and hunter biden. i am joined now by congresswoman di dina titus, jonathan swan, natasha, national political correspondent for politico, also author of the book how to read the constitution and why. thanks to all of you for joining us. jonathan, let me start with you because it's your reporting from axios we're quoting in terms of the white house strategy here. take us through this idea if i'm understanding correctly, you don't provide any cooperation with congress, you force congress to go to the courts to get subpoenas to try to enforce subpoenas and it basically runs the clock to a point where impeachment just can't happen? >> yeah, and i should be clear,

there are disagreements within the white house staff about how to proceed with impeachment. there are some who see peril in this and who want to get this over and done with quickly, to have a quick impeachment process, but there are others including the white house chief of staff mick mulvaney who see great political up side in dragging out impeachment? mick mulvaney in a senior staff meeting last week said -- told the staff if impeachment dragged on, trump would win 45 states after impeachment. you've also got a political campaign that is loving impeachment because it is the biggest money generator they've found so far in terms of raising cash. but all of this washes away because in moments like this trump only really listens to his own instincts. and using words like treason and

to just flat out refuse to comply with congressional requests. >> well, speaking of congressional requests, let me ask you, if that is the white house's strategy here, if that decision yesterday to say to sondland, you know, you're not going to show up for that deposition, you're not going to provide any documents, if that is the strategy to force you in congress to try to go through the courts, force the subpoenas, get the cooperation, get the documents you're looking for and just stretch that out over the course of months, do you have a strategy to counter that? >> we'd like to get it done sooner rather than later. and the people i've been talking to here in my district go why don't you just go arrest him? we'll have to go to the courts. we can't have a shootout on the lawn of the white house. but every time he refuses to appear or won't let some of his folks appear or won't turn over any evidence, that's just one more obstruction of justice. and remember one of the charges

against nixon was obstruction of justice. so if what he did with the president of ukraine is not enough, every time he does this it just piles on. >> in terms of, though, if this is ultimately potentially going to go to articles of impeachment being drafted one of them as you say could be obstruction of justice. do you need for the court process to play out before actually introducing and voting on articles of impeachment, or are you prepared, will you be prepared to go forward, put on the floor, vote on articles of impeachment even if there's still court cases pending on these subpoenas? >> i think we'll be prepared to do that, and i think you'll see this moving pretty quickly. speaker pelosi hasn't made any bones about it. she thinks he's immoral and what he's doing is unconstitutional as well as illegal. so you'll see this investigation continue in a deliberative way, but we're not going to continue to stand for him to continue to

stone wall, stone wall. >> the president today denied any white house officials expressed alarm and he denied having any knowledge of the reported effort by white house aides to hide the record of the call on a secret server. >> did any white house official express any concern to you or speak to you about that phone call? >> look, the phone call, you have it. it's the transcript. >> your administration tried to bury that transcript in an extra level -- >> again, i'm not a lawyer. i could say this, i assume it was for leaks. i have no idea. i mean, i've read that and it doesn't seem like a big deal. >> take us through what the president is talking about there. this is the conversation, the record of the conversation and potentially other conversations like it being stored in a place that was difficult to be accessed. >> yeah, so our reporting with politico shows that this started happening after the leaks in 2017 of the president's

conversations with the leaders of mexico and australia. those leaks were extremely embarrassing for him and the white house. and so in order to prevent this from happening again they started restricting access to these phone call records more and more to the point where some of them, if not all of them were placed in top secret nse code word system where only the highest compartmentalized systems are placed. and you certainly don't put them in the system unless there is some kind of major code word covert operation that these leaders are discussing which of course with regards to the president and president of ukraine, zelensky, they absolutely were not. so this is a way for them to conseal the calls from people within the white house whose job it actually was so they can do their jobs in terms of diplomacy and crafting foreign policy, and

it was all in an effort to i think shield the president from further damaging leaks. so it's not just a matter of embarrassment, i don't think. as we saw the president has a tendency to kind of rift in these calls and ask foreign leaders for personal favors. >> i want to get back to you on that question of potentially democrats in the house going to court to enforce these subpoenas as part of this impeachment investigation. the white house here according to jonathan swan seeing it as a way to run the clock. what would that mean -- take us through what the process would look like in terms of timing? if that's what the white house is trying to do how much time could they buy? >> congress is inherent power to literally jail someone. that's not going to happen with our political climate. two is go to the attorney general which bill barr is not going to do. number three would go to court and file a civil claim forcing

the white house to actually comply with these subpoenas. it is possible to ask a federal judge to expedite this, to do it on a quick motions practice so the district court would have it quickly, and then you could also & for an expedited appeal to the appellate intermediate court and to the supreme court. but that process doesn't mean that the democrats or house in general couldn't impeach or issue articles of impeachment in the interim. they could always amend those or issue a superseding set of articles of impeachment just like a prosecutor could issue sup supersedings and indictments. we saw this with mueller probe. this doesn't necessarily slow down the house process. and mr. trump doesn't even control -- even white house witnesses, they can decide for themselves to actually comply with these dprlgs subpoenas and people in the private sector can decide to comply. so we don't have a situation like with white water where i

worked where we have ken starr handing congress a whole basically tome of data and information. congress is doing this in realtime as we speak and the information is going to continue to come out, so just sort of obstructing these subpoenas i don't think is going to get the white house to put basically a lid on this process. >> let me ask you about that and the congresswoman was speaking to this, the idea of democrats moving forward with the impeachment inquiry, potentially having a vote before the legal process plays out. if democrats think they're going to have enough even without all these subpoenas without necessarily being enforced to go forward with impeachment, what about the other side of it? what are you picking up for republicans? what would the bar be for republicans to change their thinking on this? >> yeah, that's the big question we don't know the answer to. we've seen people like mit romney express abhorrence, horror, other words to describe

president trump's conduct on the phone call with zelensky and also asking china to investigate the bidens, but what we don't have from mit romney or any of these other senators is a road map or even a criteria from how they would get from disgust to i want to impeach this guy. the white house in terms of their own private views, there's probably only four or five silent persuadable republican senators. you have no idea whether that's true or not, but what i do know from talking to lot of these senators over a long period of time, the idea there's 20 of them even close to being ready to impeach on this president is just fantasy. so at this point the most likely scenario appears to be the house impeaching on a pretty partisan vote and then in the senate, republicans think the worst outcome for them would be at this point a majority vote on the side of impeachment with a

few republican defectors. that would be seen as a bad outcome at this point, but all of this is speculative. no one knows. they're closely watching public opinion and there was a fair bit of concern about "the washington post" poll yesterday, just a magnitude shift in numbers of public opinion towards supporting impeachment. that is concerning some republicans close to the white house and leadership. >> speaking of public opinion, "the washington post" poll yesterday said i think 58% of americans they said were in favor of the impeachment inquire. our own nbc news poll yesterday had that number at 53%. there's been more support than opposition in every poll i've seen for this impeachment inquiry. the president is out there and the white house is out there saying the house never took a vote. i know that doesn't seem to be an official legal requirement here, but it was done with clinton, done with nixon. is there a case for doing it

here, just putting it out there and every member on the record that this is what you're going to do? >> i think we'll do it when the time is right, when we have some more evidence. but you're right in. it's not in the rules of the house, not in law, not in the constitution so we don't have to wait until the investigation is finished. and the poll numbers are trending in the direction of -- in favor of impeachment. i wouldn't want mulvaney to be my political advisor and plus the president doesn't listen to anybody. today he's worried it might affect his legacy. tomorrow he wants to drag it out. i think if it goes on longer more and more information will come out and that will work to his disadvantage, not advantage. >> thank you. thanks to all of you as well. and coming up, are republicans onboard with the harsh rhetoric president trump and his allies are using about impeachment? one trump defender says democrats are committing regicide against the president. meaning killing the king.

plus more former vice president joe biden's attack on trump today. >> he believes he can and will get away with anything he does. we all laughed when he said he could stand in the middle of fifth avenue and shoot someone and get away with it. it's no joke. he's shooting holes in the constitution. >> biden for the first time calling for trump's impeachment. but is biden even the front-runner anymore? i'll have a look at some new polling, some big changes in the democratic race. we've got much more to get to. stay with us. race. we've got much more to get to. stay with us what if other kinds of plants captured it too? if these industrial plants had technology that captured carbon like trees we could help lower emissions. carbon capture is important technology - and experts agree. that's why we're working on ways to improve it. so plants... can be a little more... like plants.

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welcome back to "hardball." president trump continues to attack the whistle-blower whose complaint sparked the impeachment probe. in multiple tweets this morning he accused the whistle-blower of lying and having political motivations saying, quote, he or she should be exposed and

questioned properly. but the daily beast reports some republicans would like the president to keep quiet. quote, the fear emanating from capitol hill and other members of the gop is that trump's proclivity for going on the attack is harming his long-term political prospects. but the report adds this, there's no mass panic at this stage from members of the house gop on impeachment. that was evident as the president's staunchest allies came out in force today. >> adam schiff should be a witness at this point. he should be out of this investigation all together. the proper procedures should be followed and i'm not sure nancy pelosi should be a witness, too. >> whether they'll do the formal inquiry, i don't know. they continue to make the rules up as they go along. >> american people are beginning to see nancy pelosi and adam schiff like going behind closed doors where they can only leak out information they want to have and nobody in this country believes that's america.

>> and meanwhile senator lindsey graham says he will ask his colleagues to sign a letter that a argues it's not impeachable. >> they're about to destroy the nation for no good reason. i've read the transcript. i do not see anything wrong there, and i want nancy pelosi to know republican senators are not going to impeach this president based on this transcript so she can stop now before she destroyed this country. >> "the washington post" collected reactions from all 53 republican senators about the impeachment inquiry. so far not a single one of them supports ininquiry but the other 39 have supported the president unequivocally. for more i'm joined pie david french and christine tide whitman, former republican governor of new jersey. "the washington post" looks at least according to their survey

39 republican senators ready to echo some of those comments we were just hearing. those comments from the jim jordens of the world, how widespread do you think that sentiment is among members of congress? >> i think it's relatively widespread now based on the state of play now. but there's a lot still to lauren about this controversy. for example why was the u.s. ambassador to ukraine recalled f precisely? what was rudy doing? there is much still to learn here and republican senators who had put their name on a piece of paper based on the state of play now and we haven't even talked about what trump might do between now and then. how might he defy lawful subpoenas from the house? how might he behave in a way that could add to articles of impeachment?

i think it's extremely premature to judge anything in the state of facts at this moment. >> i think on this one more than some of the other controversies during his presidency i think there's been more silence from republicans, folks just not saying anything. who are you keeping an eye on right now who you think there is a chance as more comes out on this potentially or as the situation develops might go in a direction we haven't seen so far? >> i think you have to look at those up for re-election. those for up re-election are going to be the ones testing the polls of their constituents and watching very closely to see what more comes out and what he tweets. every day he tweets something else that flies in the face of our basic constitution. and he doesn't seem to understand it. he hasn't gotten it. but so far those people who are always going to be trump supporters don't see the there there yet. but i think there's a real possibility that they will, and this ukrainian thing, to say

there's nothing bad about it, i was in ukraine for these last elections in june for the parliamentary elections and i'd been there in 2018 on an observation mission. really believing that president zelensky is going to move them that way and battle the corruption, but he's a neophyte, he's brand new to this. he needs our support. this is not the time to embroil him in domestic u.s. politics, and it's making his life very difficult. he's got russia sitting in part of his country around in crimea supplying arms to those dissidents that are fighting in two of his other provinces. this is the real world for him, and it's just been unfair. and ukraine is an important buffer for us with russia as are the rest of the baltic states. our allies don't know that they can trust us at all anymore, and

that's dangerous. >> well, last night former u.s. attorney joe digenova, he compared the impeachment inquiry to the murder of a king. >> what you're seeing is regicide. this is regicide, by another name, fake impeachment. the democrats in the house want to destroy the president. the democrats who used to just love process and procedure and the rule of law, they are literally subverting the rule of law in what really amounts to a seditious attack on the government. it really is sedition. >> sedition, by the way, defined under u.s. law as an conspiracy to oefb throw or destroy by force the government of the united states. david, here's the thing, i've noticed a few tentative comments from some -- i'm thinking of rob portman here for instance who expressed his displeasure.

he did not think the president should have made the phone call, but trying to find that middle ground. and i suspect there's a lot of republicans who'd like to get there but i wonder if the president is going to characterize his call as perfect and beyond reproach and if his public and his public defenders posture on this as regicide as you're hearing that, how tough does it make it for the portmans of the world to carve out that middle ground? >> what you're seeing there is really crazy talk. it's a lawful process outlined in the united states constitution, so this is not sedition, this is not regicide. but what that does is it stokes the base to a rage. and a lot of people see, for example, in what president trump did in this series of tweets trying to hammer mitt romney who was out in front and they look at that and say i don't want that to be me especially when

that kind of language has such a hold over the trump base, which has disproportionate power in republican primaries. i look at that kind of thing as a very shortsighted deterrence operation against republican discept. and the reason why it's shorts sighted is because it doesn't play with anybody outside of trump's base. that looks like crazy talk to everybody outside of trump's base. and so in that way you're engaging in a short-term strategy that i think is calculated to keep republican senators or republican congressmen in line, but as a long-term strategy it just continues to alienate anyone who might be persuadable to trump's side because the language is so unhinged. >> all right, david french, and christine tide whitman, thank you poegt fboth for joining us. and the epresident is facing widespread criticism. what message is trump sending to

the world and will there be political repercussions here at home? you're watching "hardball." rcus home you're watching "hardball.

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after an aerial and arterial assault. the rapid escalation comes only four days after president trump privately green lighted a small turkish incursion in the area. trump defended his decision today and made a reference to normandy. >> we've been talking to turkey for three years. they've been wanting to do this for many years as you know. they've been fighting each other for centuries. they've been fighting each other for hundreds of years. this has been going on. we were put into this battle. kurds are fighting for hair land, just so you understand. they didn't help us in the second world war, normandy is an example. >> according to various reports the kurdish militia is said to be holding more than 12,000 suspected islamic state members in seven prisons. u.s. defense officials told reporters those kurdish forces have suspended all operations against the islamic state. president trump was asked if he

was at all worried about the release of isis fighters. here's what he said. >> if isis fighters escape and pose a threat elsewhere? >> well, they're going to be escaping to europe. that's where they want to go. >> republican senator lindsey graham made an appearance on trump's favorite morning show fox and friends. >> we can't abandon the kurds now, we can't turn it over to turkey. it's a lie that isis has been defeated. it caliphate has been destroyed, but it it will reemerge. you know, the kurds can't fight turkey and control isis at the same time. >> florida republican marco rubio also had a damning assessment of the decision. >> to just abandon them like that so the turks can come in and slaughter them is not just immoral, it taints our reputation all over the world. they're going to leave to fight the turks and we're going to have a jailbreak and thousand of isis fighters out there.

i think it's a terrible mistake. i hope they rethink it. >> what would you do? >> people have to understand the president's the commander in chief. he can order these things, but it's a terrible thing and i'm sure the senate will potentially take some vote that would disagree with that decision. but my hope is that the president will reconsider because i think this would have implications that go far beyond just syria. >> for more i'm joined by the vice president for national security and international policy at the center for american progress. thank you for joining us. senator rubio says he hopes that the president will change his mind on this. no indication that's going to happen -- if that doesn't happen, these dire predictions, the dire possibilities here of a slaughter of the kurds, of a mass escape of thousands, maybe 10,000 isis prisoners, how likely is that to come to pass? >> well, i think we've already started seeing it. president trump's impetuous

decision has set into motion a series of events. i think you're likely to see a potential resurgence of isis. i think president trump has essentially sewed the seeds of isis 2.0. and it's clear to me he had no sense of what the long-term consequences would be and to deal with the dramatic humanitarian consequences and interests in the long-term. >> again, hearing rubio, hearing graham, hearing voices that don't typically criticize the president, criticize this policy in such explicit terms the possibility that has been floated certainly is that you could have super majorities emerge in congress, democratic and republican super majorities that would be big enough to override any presidential veto for instance on imposing sanctions on turkey.

>> i think congress first of all needs to hold members of the administration responsible and accountable to the president's decision. including secretary of state mike pompeo, et cetera. and certainly the congress should be taking steps to find ways to mitigate the very negative consequences of this decision. now, the problem is as senator rubio pointed out, the president is his commander in chief. he has a large amount of executive power on foreign policy, and unfortunately this is what happens. he's made a decision and now he's going to face the consequence of that decision. >> i guess that's the question. if congress did act, how much do you think could be mitigated or altered in the policy? >> listen, i think the turks have made a calculation. they clearly blew past the president's warnings or false warnings i guess. i think congress can certainly impose serious sanctions on the turks. whether or not that will change how the turks behave or roll back any of the actions we're

seeing right now i think is probably unlikely at most. but certainly the congress needs to take steps to try and hold and lead where the president has not been able to. >> the polling has certainly suggested there isn't much of an appetite in this country for u.s. troops to be involved in the middle east in syria. what is the way to get american troops out of syria without running the risk of what's being described tonight? >> well, what's ironic is that the president's own strategy was actually to work between the u.s. military and turks to create some sort of buffer zone and do it over time and build confidence. and the president in this one decision has essentially upended his whole administration's strategy. the u.s. military was successful, doing joint patrols for example with the turks. there had not been attacks on kurdish territory. so things were in place to

potentially get to a stage where maybe the united states could hand-off the mission to the european forces, but the president in an impetuous decision on the phone call with prime minister erdogan made this decision, and now we are where we are. >> all right, thank you for joining us. appreciate that. and up next, i'm going to head over to the big board and get some brand new polling on the 2020 race. joe biden was the front-runner in the national polling average every day since he got in the race until yesterday. you're watching "hardball." e race until yesterday you're watching "hdbarall. i have moderate to severe plaque psoriasis. now, there's skyrizi. 3 out of 4 people achieved 90% clearer skin at 4 months after just 2 doses. skyrizi may increase your risk of infections and lower your ability to fight them. before treatment your doctor should check you for infections and tuberculosis. tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms such as fevers, sweats, chills, muscle aches or coughs, or if you plan to or recently received a vaccine. ♪ nothing is everything ask your dermatologist about skyrizi.

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all right, welcome back to "hardball." so let's show you what the democratic presidential race looked like about six months ago. this was back when joe biden first got in the race. remember that announcement speech, all the attention he got? and he was immediately the clear front-runner in this race. remember this is the national polling average just a couple of

days after biden got in the race. he was over 40%. more than tripling up his -- or about tripling up his nearest rival there. bernie sanders, no one else even in double digits. this is how the race looked when joe biden got in the race. and remember he was one of the last ones in. just about everyone else had been out there and running for a while. that was when biden got in. fast forward we had all the debates, different developments, controversies on the campaign trail. here is what the national polling average looks like now. notice that. joe pieden is no longer in first place. elizabeth warren has taken -- this is very minor in terms of the difference here but two tenths of a point she still is higher right now in the national polling average than biden. a huge jump over the last few months, and joe biden meanwhile falling from 41 to about 26. then 14.6 right now.

so that's been the big story over the last few months or so in this democratic race. elizabeth warren has steadily risen. she's now taken the lead. the question is she going to be able to keep rising, keep building the ligz she put together or is she going to hit a ceiling? biden, by the way, has fallen from about 41 to about 26. late he seems to have stabilized out there. a big sort of potential turning point here in the democratic race, but with parn taking the lead ever so slightly you can see the other advantage she has besides that, not a national primary here, you start in iowa. elizabeth warren leads in the latest iowa poll. you go to the next eight days later her next door neighbor stayed in new hampshire. elizabeth warren leads in the latest poll in nuchl. democratic candidate who put together that one, two punch of iowa and new hampshire have a pretty good record of turning around and winning the democratic nomination.

and by the way if you got through that to nevada, the third state to go warren is not leading there but she's close to the lead. and if she were to win iowa and new hampshire you've got to wonder if those numbers would change. you've got to go to south carolina to find a clear biden advantage in early states. extreme support from african-american voters south carolina and elsewhere. but the question for biden is if he takes a hit in those first two or three states is that firewall in south carolina going to hold? and by the way, though, what biden has been running on he still can sell this in a head to head match up with donald trump. over 50% for biden, double digit, and by the way in this same poll warren not far behind him. we haven't seen that in every poll that's come out, but the closer biden can get to warren's performance more like she might

ha have. biden at least for now not in first place in the national polling average. biden made one of his most forceful speeches of his campaign today. he called for the president's impeachment. you're watching "hardball." r th impeachment. you're watching "hardball. app updates, and support calls... you can never seem to get anywhere. that's why dell technologies created unified workspace, powered by vmware. ♪ a revolutionary solution that lets you deploy, manage, support and secure all your devices from the cloud. so you can stop going in circles, and start moving forward. green things and brown just eat the food. i'm allergic to all things green. (mom sighs) ♪ ♪ kraft. for the win win.

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impeachment isn't only --

isn't only about what the president's done. it's about the threat the president poses to the nation if allowed to remain in office. he believes he can and will get away with anything he does. we all laughed when he said he can stand in the middle of fifth avenue and shoot someone and get away with it. it's no joke. he's shooting holes in the constitution, and we cannot let him get away with it. the united states cannot afford to have a president who will abuse whatever power is available to him to get re-elected. that's what it's all about. >> welcome back to "hardball." that was former vice president and 2020 presidential candidate joe biden today calling for president trump's impeachment. biden also warned the president that his efforts to go after his son hunter aren't working. >> he's targeted me and my family with lies and distortions and smears. that's all they are.

because he thinks he will undermine my candidacy for the nomination as well as the presidency if i'm the nominee. we're not goingick the democrat nominee for president, period. i'm not going to let him get away with it. he's picked -- he's picked a fight with the wrong guy. >> politico report notes that quote joe biden has been under sustained assault from president trump for more than two weeks but there's little evidence he's been significantly bloodied. as the politico piece points out biden's standing in the primary hasn't significantly changed in the past few weeks. the quenpic poll has him at 26% of the vote. and the morning consult poll out this week has biden at 33%, also a point higher from their previous poll. i'm joined national political reporter from bloomberg news.

let me start with you just on the news that biden made today because in some ways there are a lot of democrats out there who have already been calling for the president's impeachment, been calling for it for a long time. biden sort of the last ones to come to it, but this is sort of a major decision on his part. >> yeah, steve, it's part of the new newer feisty joe biden. this came after some struggling to craft a message. i think he was stunned the way the president came after him and his son, but biden's pitch is so centered that he and his team saw this is an opportunity to paint a one an one picture between he and president trump.

now, he has also followed speaker pelosi every step of the way on impeachment. and that's why he was one of the last democratic presidential candidates to come out for impeachment. >> it's interesting. we quote from that politico piece there, if you look at the polling no obvious sign this has hurt biden, cost him any support. but when you sort of end up as a democratic candidate in the cross hairs of donald trump in the way he has, is there an opportunity for pibiden to use to rally democrats around him? does that make democrats not just say i'm not going to walk away from biden but i want to go to biden because of this? >> right, i don't think the bullying language necessarily works. i think when he laid out the argument that trump is putting holes in the constitution i think that works. i think a lot of democrats are fearful this president will not leave office if he's not re-elected. i think they're fearful to what he's doing not just to his party

but the sycophantic behavior of republicans and how he's destroying our image abroad. and when you have him tweeting profanities and parents have to explain to their children this is the executive of the united states i think democrats realize he's doing so much damage to the fabric of our nation that's what's helping them. >> elizabeth warren now if you look at the national polling he is very slightly ahead of joe biden. how does biden's campaign look at where they stand right now, the national numbers extremely tight, down slightly in iowa, down slightly in new hampshire, not exactly sitting pretty in nevada. what's the mood inside his campaign looking at this? >> it's a remarkable thing. it's pretty much dead between joe biden and elizabeth warren. i think 0.2 percentage points separates them. and what's interesting is biden has held steady between around

26% and 32% of the vote. there was a spike earlier on that went up to 42%, but warren's gain has not necessarily come at his expense. she has done the work and branded herself and put out a lot of policies and impressed a lot of democrats and she's taken a bite out of many of the other candidates not just joe biden. so the biden campaign sees her as a formidable rival and with bernie sanders hanging in third place and a few wild cards mostly pete buttigieg who has a lot of money and campaigning trying to win over the lot of the moderate democrats. if something happens to joe biden, if he slips there's lots waiting in the wings to pick up the support. >> you look at iowa where the retail politics still work, the things happening every day don't

necessarily register in the national news but if we're going to look up and see an unexpected candidate suddenly up popping up there. but let me stay on warren for a minute. one question is she's gotten to 26% right now nationally. is there a ceiling there or can she keep building that coalition? right now more liberal, college educated, more white, can she expand that realistically? >> i think she can. and with iowa we have to remember it's a caucus not a primary. and that actually considers sway what goes on there. with warren she was their second choice and she's slowly moving into the first choice for a very diverse group of candidates. and she's also done much better than biden in the debates. they're moving her from the second place to the first place because we know that biden in debates, you know, doesn't really finish his thoughts, is essentially using this as if

he's the heir apparent, and kamala had a first debate but husband struggled since then. cory and julian castro haven't really had their moments. but elizabeth warren has been quite steady and we'll see if she can solidify and make that argument because this is the obama 2007, 2008 argument. can you see me as a viable candidate? and beyond her plans she's showing the democrats she can be the executive. >> all eyes will be on that debate next weekend. thank you for being with us. you're watching "hardball." than. you're watching "hardball. we call it the mother standard of care.

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get customized security with 24/7 monitoring from xfinity home. awarded the best professionally installed system by cnet. simple. easy. awesome. call, click or visit a store today. welcome back to "hardball." in an exclusive interview with nbc news today senator bernie sanders said he misspoke when he said earlier this week his campaign would slow down in the wake of his heart attack. >> i misspoke the other day. i said a word i should not have said and, you know, make people think media drives me a little bit nuts to make a big deal about it. but the word was i was going to slow down. surprise, surprise, we're tomorrow goiwe're not going to four events a day, but we're

going to get back into the groove of a very vigorous campaign. i love doing rallies and extraordinary town meetings and we'll get back into that quite soon. but i want to start off slower and build up and build up and build up. but we're looking forward to a very vigorous campaign. we're starting to do some planning for the debate. >> that is "hardball" for now. all in with chris hayes starts right now. tonight on "all in." >> president trump has indicted himself. >> the drum beat for impeachment gets louder. >> donald trump has violated his oath of office, betrayed this nation and committed impeachable acts. >> as the evidence of corruption and a cover up grows. >> you'd have to ask rudy. >> just how many people knew the ukraine aid was being held up for corrupt purposes but officials looked the other way. then as trump world