birthday to my friend and colleague andrea mitchell, a little birdie told me today is a big day for andrea mitchell. >> well, let's just hope today is a big day for the nats. that's what i want for my birthday, i want the world series. >> that would be a perfect gift for all of us. >> it would, for you and all. thanks so much, my friend. coming up on "andrea mitchell reports," facts matter. an army colonel who listened in on president trump's ukraine call testifies he heard the president make specific references to joe biden in that conversation that were edited out of the partial transcript the white house eventually released, the white house touting that as a perfect and exact transcript. >> it was an exact transcription of the conversation. i released a transcript of my conversation, an exact transcript. all because they didn't evknow that i had a transcript done by very talented people, word for word, comma for comma.

open hearings. the house prepares to vote tomorrow to create the roadmap for impeachment hearings which could ultimately lead to a trial in the republican-led senate, where only a rare few are willing to comment. >> i'm doing my very best to keep an open mind and i'll wait to make comments on the evidence until we see all the evidence, all the facts laid out. and inferno. a massive new fire breaking out in california as we speak. hurricane-force gusts, dry air fueling more fast-moving brush fires across the state. >> all it takes is one ember be tossed in the middle of the night. good day, i'm andrea mitchell in washington. we'll have more on that california disaster, in fact in the simi valley area around the reagan library, coming up later

in the program. first, here in washington, president trump's claim that his call to the president of ukraine is "perfect" is being called into question by lieutenant colonel alexander vindman, a decorated iraq war veteran so i understand to the security council who testified that references to joe biden were eliminated from the partial transcript of the call released by the white house. vindman said he tried to include them but for whatever reason, they were edited out. he was so disturbed by the call that he reported it to the nsc council, all this according to one lawmaker present at the testimony and another source familiar with it. the iraq war veteran presents a political problem for the president who has been slamming the witness, leading one house republican to rebuke those criticizing the purple heart recipient. >> we're talking about decorated veterans who have put their

lives on the line. it's shameful to question their patriotism and their love of this nation and we should not be involved in that positirocess. >> a striking comment from liz cheney, who is in the house republican leadership. joining me now, msnbc contributor joyce vance. kristen, at the white house, the president striking back against lieutenant colonel vindman, other republicans, on fox news, joining in. the credibility of this witness is so startling and unimpeachable, how can -- how are they reacting? is there any shaking of their confidence as they approach this? >> if there is, they're not letting on at this point. we're seeing defiance from this

administration and from this president. let me read you part of his tweet, andrea, and then talk about the strategy you just raised. president trump tweeting, yesterday's never trumper witness could find no quid pro quo in the transcript of the phone call. there were many people listening to the call. how come they including the president of ukraine found nothing wrong with it. witch hunt. then he goes on to say republicans are internenergized unified. bottom line, andrea, it becomes increasingly difficult to undercut some of these witnesses, including the witness yesterday, lieutenant colonel vindman, someone who has earned bipartisan respect and is the first white house official to testify on the july 25th phone call in question. one of the things that's striking about vindman's testimony, it raises a lot of questions and potentially pokes some holes in the testimony by

gordon sondland, the eu ambassador. it will likely increase the calls for him to return to capitol hill to answer some of these discrepancies, andrea. >> he was already back on the hill looking at the notes of his previous testimony with some suggesting that he might want to revise and extend his remarks to avoid possible legal ramifications given the fact that his testimony has been so contradicted. geoff bennett, talk about the witnesses today and who we expect up there. tell us about katherine croft in particular. >> katherine croft is a current state department official. she had been the adviser to former special envoy to ukraine kurt volker. in her testimony, based on the opening statement which we obtained, she's prepared to tell house investigators a couple of things. one, that she received a number of phone calls from lobbyist bob

livingston, requesting, urging that marie yovanovitch be fired, the oust eed ambassador to ukraine. croft will say livingston characterized yovanovitch is an obama holdover and associated with george soros, the billionaire philanthropist. croft says she doesn't know at whose direction or at whose expense livingston was working. livingston is a former member of congress who was in line to be speaker of the house but resigned because of his own extramarital affair. house investigators are scrutinizing the smear campaign against yovanovitch to see how it fits into the pressure campaign rudy giuliani was running at president trump's behest, so goes the theory of the democrats' case.

the house expects to hear from christopher anderson who will tell investigators, according to the testimony that we obtained, that john bolton once told him that he, bolton, viewed rudy giuliani as an obstacle to properly engaging ukraine on a range of issues. this is another echo that we've heard in testimony from career diplomat after state department official about the curious and concerning role that rudy giuliani played in trying to pressure -- in terms of pressuring ukraine's leaders to manufacture damaging information about the bidens, andrea. >> michael crowley, i want to talk about this for a moment. what becomes very clear is this was a much longer-based shadow operation. all of the others who were involved in trying to influence ukraine policy for their own benefit, for whatever profit they were making out of it, we don't know all of that yestert,

which was undermining the official state department, and the white house, as far as john bolton and the nsc were concerned, policy. let me play something that happened this morning. this is the senate foreign relations committee, the testimony of the man who is the nominee to become the new ambassador to moscow, to russia. he was asked by the ranking democrat, bob menendez of new jersey, about what happened when eliminated informed yovanovitch that she was being called back and why, because it was he who had to carry that out for mike pompeo. take a look at this. >> was there any basis to recall ambassador yovanovitch early? >> yes, there was, the president had lost confidence in her. >> the president had lost confidence in her. >> yes. >> and you were told that by the secretary of state? >> i was. >> did you ask why he lost confidence in her? >> yes. >> and what was the answer? >> i was told that he had lost confidence in her, period.

>> well, that's not a why. he lost confidence in her. he didn't explain why. >> you asked if i asked. i asked. sxh >> and the answer was -- >> that he had lost confidence. >> so mike pompeo doesn't even tell his deputy the real reason yovanovitch was pulled back. she had testified that sullivan, in carrying this out, had told her it was not anything she had done that was wrong. so he had gone that far. this was such a signal moment in the state department, and it so demoralized the state department, the foreign service, the troops, and led to a lot of them being willing to testify, against orders. >> that's right. i think it will further shake confidence in the career employees of the state department that the leadership didn't have their backs. sullivan says he asked the reason, got a repetition of this statement of fact. it's possible he didn't really

want to know. you know, in this administration there might be people who are starting to realize that there are things you're better off not knowing. however, if you're an employee of the state department, you don't want people at the top adopting that attitude, that, well, this might not be on the level, i'm not going to get too deep into it, i'm just going to carry out orders. there is a feeling that people didn't have their backs at senior positions and this monkey business that's coming out of the white house trickles through the bureaucracy and people play along with it. i think it's been terrible for morale there and probably contributes to, you know, the willingness of certain people to come forward and tell everything they know in a pretty robust way, which is really bad news for the administration. >> and peter baker, just to backtrack, john sullivan is an attorney, he's very well-regarded. he's a done well as deputy

secretary of state. he is not a career diplomat. he was in line to take a top job working under jim mattis at the pentagon and was brought over to the state department because he was needed to back up mike pompeo, to back up the secretary of state. but he's now being nominated for the russia job, to replace jon huntsman, a strange career move, to become ambassador to moscow after being deputy secretary of state. >> well, it is, yeah. and i think it says something about the nature of the state department right now that you would be 7,000 miles away than on the seventh floor. >> exactly. >> while the arrows are flying at each other's backs. sullivan had told masha yovanovitch that she had done nothing wrong but he was bringing her back despite the fact that she had done nothing wrong. that can't be something that he found to be pleasant, as a professional.

sitting in the embassy in moscow seems less hazardous to his well-being at this point. i think he has a lot of support on the hill from both parties for this job, but it comes at a very dicey moment for him. >> we want to also talk about rudy giuliani. joyce vance, let's talk about the role of the president's lawyer who has soft gone silent in recent days, may or may not be under scrutiny. there's been a lot of reporting, we haven't heard it directly from him. what more do we know about what rudy giuliani was doing and some of his colleagues and partners who are under indictment? >> some of the testimony that congress will hear today involves giuliani either inserting himself or being inserted by the president into the ukrainian policy process in a way that clearly surprised and ultimately shocked many of the career diplomats. for many of them, it appears that that was a turning point in their outrage about how this

policy was being conducted. and so for instance yesterday when lieutenant colonel vindman indicated that he believed the policy was being conducted in a way that impaired national security, this had as much to do with the insertion of a person who was not part of the foreign policy apparatus of the country into the process as it did with the orders that he received. today, ms. croft will testify that ultimately she was told that the orders to withhold aid to ukraine came directly from the president. and so giuliani's relationship with the president will be front and center when congress tries to determine liability and perhaps culpability for conduct that took place here. >> and apparently at that continuing john sullivan confirmation hearing, kristen, he has testified in answer to questions that the order to state department officials not to cooperate with the inquiry came directly from the white

house. >> well, and that is not surprising, andrea. that fits in with the strategy that we have seen here, the administration of course releasing in the early days of the impeachment inquiry, that letter, saying they don't think it's legitimate. that has been their strategy, their attempt to say they're not going to cooperate moving forward. >> geoff bennett, as this procedural resolution moves through the rules committee today, and proceeding to a floor vote tomorrow, there's no question it has overwhelming support given the democratic majority. >> you're right about that. house speaker nancy pelosi says she can't speak for republicans, but by our count there are six democratic holdouts on this resolution. all of them represent districts

president trump won in 2016 and they were able to flip in 2018. the votes are there, otherwise the house speaker would not allow this to move to the floor unless she already knew she had the support she needed, andrea. >> peter baker, as this evidence piles up, especially alexander vindman yesterday and some of these other career people who have no axe to grind, does it appear to be shaking any of the republicans on the senate side? >> well, i think behind closed doors, if you got them to talk off the record or on background, they would tell you yes, in fact it's been very disturbing. they're not out there defending the president on the substance of this, they're out there maybe attacking the process, saying the democrats have been unfair, that the impeachment inquiry is illegitimate or not giving the president due process. but they're not getting out in front of the facts because what they're learning so far is with each witness more information comes out that puts this in a darker light and that makes it

harder for the republicans to argue that nothing bad happened here. it may or may not be impeachable, it may or may not be a legitimate thing to bring to a trial in the senate, but they know they're going to be jurors and they're using that is a way to try to stay out of the public conversation as long as they can. >> and do we expect, michael crowley, that john bolton will be testifying in open session? >> i think we don't know, and we don't even know if he does, what posture john bolton is going to take. he has emerged, as peter baker wrote in a great story a couple of days ago, as an unlikely hero of democrats and people who oppose president trump because he stood up in some of these meetings and said, this is wrong, this stinks, we have to report it to the lawyers. but john bolton has not suddenly become some fan of nancy pelosi and the 2020 democratic presidential candidates. it's not at all clear that he's looking for the president to be taken down. so people should not get their hopes too high. but it will be very interesting

to see what path he chooses. >> kristen, do you have any insights on that? >> well, we are certainly looking closely to see if in fact he will testify, andrea. we know he's an under a lot of scrutiny as this impeachment inquiry unfolds. we're getting a little bit of an update at the white house, andrea, because the administration announcing essentially that the apex summit is not going to take place. let me read this, if i might, andrea, quickly, from hogan gidley, the principal deputy press secretary. he says apec will not occur in chili and there is no secondary site prepared. andrea, this is significant because we accepted president trump to sign on to phase i of the trade deal with china there. hogan gidley says, we look forward to finalizing the

agreement with china within the same time frame and when we have an announcement, we'll let you know. so essentially they're looking for other locations to try to move that forward, andrea. >> as we know, moving the summit like this is an extraordinary challenge at the last minute. >> absolutely. >> this was only supposed to be less than two weeks, week and a half away. plus there was going to be another face-to-face between president trump and vladimir putin. maybe they could do it at the trump doral. just kidding. kristen welker, thank you very much. geoff bennett, peter baker, joyce vance, michael crowley, thanks for starting us off today. coming up, red flag warning. new wildfires raging in simi valley, california as hurricane strength gusts are expected to worsen. wildfires are blazing across the state. you're watching andrea mitchell. e state. you're watching andrea mitchell. liberty mutual customizes your car insurance so you only pay for what you need. i love you!

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and our breaking news, that fast-moving brush fire in california erupted in the hills above simi valley, near the ronald reagan presidential library, as californians brace for a major wind event that could make the wildfires much worse. hurricane strength wind gusts up to nearly 80 miles an hour are expected over the next few days. that could lead to more blackouts, new fires added to

the fires already ravaging the state. miguel almaguer joins us with more. >> reporter: andrea, the biggest fear that firefighters had was the wind. it certainly has materialized just a couple of minutes ago. we felt what felt like a 60-mile-per-hour gusts. you can probably hear the helicopters in the background. they're making a massive stand at the reagan library here. we're at the gate here at the front. this is the main entrance to the reagan library. as carlos pans over to the right, you'll see this entire hillside was scorched with fast moving flames that game down and whipped right up this area. you can hear the wind now as it whips through this area. it's difficult for the air attack to beat back the flames because it's so windy. you'll see an air attack team right here waiting to do a drop

on the other side of this hill on a residential neighborhood. imagine the difficulty of these helicopters trying to drop water on a hot target as a 60, 70, 80-mile-per-hour gust whipped through here. this is a battle they have to focus on the ground but firefighters are losing the fight because the hot embers are traveling upwards of a mile, starting new spot fires all across this region. firefighters continue to race through this area, on the back end here, as the helicopter comes for another drop which we hope to see here. they are squarely trying to get out the hotspots that continue to spread from one location to another. you can see these air attacks, they've been successful. they're also missing their target because of these strong winds. it's what you mentioned, andrea, the hurricane-force winds that were the greatest concern of firefighters, and they've now materialized. >> miguel, it's just stunning.

thanks for toughing your way through that. an area that we know so well, it's where ronald reagan is buried. we've been many times. our hearts go out to the people throughout the state, as you've been covering. we'll come back to you with any updates. meanwhile, joining me is the chief, the fire chief from simi valley police department, david livingstone of the police department. chief livingstone, tell us how you were hoping to contain this. >> i'm actually the police chief. we received calls for this about 6:00 this morning. it was a fast moving fire with the force of the winds. we had to evacuate some residential areas in between the reagan library and the point of origin of the fire. our officers were out there. it moved very quickly. thankfully we were able to get people out of there and now we're working closely with the ventura county fire department and all the other assets out there to ensure that it doesn't

destroy any property and endanger any lives. >> chief livingstone, so far how contained is the area? what can you tell us about how you're managing this with these incredible winds? >> well, right now the fire is moving very rapidly. i would say there's probably no and itme containment on it. we're trying to keep people out of the area and monitor closely in residential zones. the fire department is using air assets very effectively to try to control it. >> we wish you and all the police and of course the fire teams the very best as we show people aerial pictures of what is going on right now in the iconic area. thank you very much, police chief david livingstone of simi valley, california. and coming up, "get over it." former president barack obama's message to particularly young democrats and maybe the

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former president obama has weighed in on the democratic primary race and appeared to be chiding candidates for going after each other. idea of purit you're never compromised and you're always politically woke and all that stuff, you should get over that quickly. the world is messy. there are ambiguities. people who do really good stuff have flaws. there is this sense sometimes of, the way of me making change is to be as judgmental as possible about other people and that's enough. >> joining me now, jim messina, former deputy chief of staff in the obama white house, and jim of course managed the reelection campaign. and eugene robinson, a columnist for "the washington post" and msnbc political analyst.

welcome, both. jim, you can be the obama whisperer. tell us what message he was delivering. >> well, first of all, i'm really glad he recalls ihe realy did it. he's saying everybody needs to calm down, we need to stay focused on beating donald trump, it's not about ideological purity. he's been saying this for ten years. during the obama negotiations and passage, there's lots of people in his base saying, oh, there needs to be national health care, if you don't do that, it's not good enough. ten years later we have a bill that's popular in the country and changed health care for millions of americans. he's continuing that campaign. in this primary i think he's doing the role that ronald reagan once did, saying to his party, stop trashing one another and stay focused on the general and let's win this thing. >> to jim and eugene, we both

know what happened at that debate where they were turning their fire, a lot of them, against president obama to try to get at joe biden and that really backfired. eugene, president obama, whom we have not heard from a great deal, if at all, in this primary season, is sort of a hidden weapon, the most popular democrat around. >> yes. my question, and jim kind of touched on it, is, is this just the beginning of more frequent intervention by president obama. he is basically a pragmatist. he's not really an ideologue. he is a very good politician. hall of fame. and so -- but to get this message across, i don't think he can be a one off. i think he's got to -- you know, to get a message across, you have to drive it home and you have to repeat. i'm curious as to how active he

will be. >> i want to ask about mick mulvaney, the acting chief of staff, if he still is acting, and what does it mean to be the acting chief of staff. it turns out, according to carol lee's reporting and the other reporting from our white house team, stephanie ruhle, hallie jackson, he was completely in the dark on the al baghdadi operation. can you imagine the white house chief of staff not knowing about that operation? we see in the pictures, the bin laden pictures in the situation room, bill daley, the chief of staff there, was very much there as were other top leaders. jim messina, you were deputy white house chief of staff. does that make any sense? >> it makes no sense, it's unprecedented. you would never do that unless mick mulvaney is one of two things, number one, on his way out. the white house will pardon two turkeys as they do every year, maybe this year he will be the turkey that gets killed. or the second reason you would

do it is if the president believed the white house chief of staff would leak it. and both those things are incredibly startling revelations. it's unprecedented in modern american political history that the white house chief of staff would learn about a major operation that if it would have went bad would have seriously damaged the president's reelection chances. he learned about that on twitter. that is an incredibly dysfunctional white house where you have the president making calls without any sort of guidance from senior officials, and the only thing that happens then is mistakes. and so i think this is really troubling. >> the other possibility is that there is no white house chief of staff, there hasn't been since john kelly. >> just as there is no white house press secretary. >> no one is fulfilling that role as you know it, as jim knows it, as i know it. there is no one acting as chief of staff, donald trump is his own chief of staff. mick mulvaney does what trump says and trump sort of punishes him for it.

>> and the other thing i want to tee up because we'll all be focusing on this tomorrow is the vote on the floor of the impeachment inquiry. jim and eugene, nancy pelosi resisted and resisted and resisted this now. is this a concession to the criticisms of process that have come from the republicans or is this just the next logical step in order to enhance their ability to fight for witnesses and testimony? >> you know, in our lifetime there's no smarter political operative than nancy pelosi. she is the best legislative strategist i have ever seen. she's figuring out how to do this in real time. this thing is moving very fast. she's going to move the levers that has has to move to get this thing done. i don't think it's a concession, anything it's her looking at the terrain and saying how am i going to move this thing forward. i think she's going to win her vote tomorrow and moves forward the process that gets it done quickly and, two, protect her

politically vulnerable republicans. >> will any republicans go along with it? >> that's a big question. you wouldn't bet on it at this point but you kind of never know. this is a vote on procedures. you can say i'm voting against process, i'm not voting against any substance. so we'll see. >> we'll of course have live coverage of all of that tomorrow. jim messina and gene robinson, thank you so much. coming up, a spokesman from the trump re-elect committee responds to xeechimpeachment questions. that's next here on "andrea mitchell reports." next here on mitchell reports." the clock is ticking on irreversible joint damage. ongoing pain and stiffness are signs of joint erosion. humira can help stop the clock. prescribed for 15 years, humira targets and blocks a source of inflammation that contributes to joint pain and irreversible damage. humira can lower your ability to fight infections. serious and sometimes fatal infections including tuberculosis, and cancers,

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this is the only president to the best of my knowledge who has ever asked three different countries, foreign governments, to get engaged in the political apparatus and the political affairs of the united states. and to this day, he has not acknowledged that putin got involved in the 2016 election. >> former vice president joe biden calling into our show yesterday, slamming president trump on his foreign policy strategy and for denying russia's interference during the last presidential election. joining me now is mark lauder, director of strategic communications for the 2020 trump reelection campaign. welcome, nice to see you. here we are on the eve of an impeachment vote on the house floor.

and i know the president was talking about this leading up to it for months and months, as a problem for democrats. but isn't it, as evidence accumulates, also a problem for this president? you now have alexander vindman, an army lieutenant colonel, colonel vindman, who is a decorated war hero from iraq, injured in an ied attack. and his testimony is, but that call was so disturbing, he reported it to the general counsel of the nsc. >> well i think the first thing, we need to honor the lieutenant colonel for his service in uniform to our country, the injuries he sustained. >> why has the president trashed him, why have his supporters trashed him, laura ingraham on fox news? >> i can't speak to media hosts. >> the president has. >> we can have a difference of opinion with someone regardless

of their heroic service to our country. what we have now is this lieutenant colonel giving his opinion of a call where the transcript or the memo summary of the call has been released. >> but he's the ukraine expert who was on the call for a reason. he's in charge of the team on the call. it's there to make sure that he can correct the record if there are misunderstandings, mispronunciations, misspellings, rather, of the things that are said, the names. that's the expertise he brought to it. he was the senior person on that call from the nsc. >> but ultimately the senior person is the president of the united states. as you can see from the transcript, there was no quid pro quo. the lieutenant colonel yesterday testified that the record of the call is the record of the call. and so i don't think it shows anything different than what we have seen and known since that record has come out. >> there's plenty of testimony that there was president on president zelensky and our own

reporting from ukraine, we have a team on the ground there, is that this had actually preceded the call, this had been going on for months, pressure on president zelensky to go along with rudy giuliani. why was rudy giuliani involved in ukraine policy in the first place? to the discomfort and concern of many of the career professionals, military and diplomatic? >> well, it's not unusual for presidents to use outside, even private citizens to help conduct foreign relations. it goes back to the founding of our republican when people would be sent overseas to negotiate that are not necessarily always directly connected to the federal government. but what we also have -- >> usually you have some diplomatic or foreign policy experience. >> not always. there are examples where that has not happened. also it's very important, i think we get to the bottom of the fact that you had a sitting vice president of the united states in joe biden who had warnings given by the state department, by other people, who said that there were appearances of impropriety and those should be investigated, those should be looked into. so i think as we deal with the

fact that has not changed, that there was a history of corruption in the ukraine, then i think it's an entirely appropriate for the president of the united states to ask a new administration that's coming in on an anti-corruption platform to make sure they're following through with their commitments and also look at these questions that have been raised, whether it is now about joe biden in ukraine, now china, we're actually seeing there's reporting out here recently this week that there were calls made to the department of justice and the department of homeland security encouraging policies that his son had been hired to lobby on behalf. these are a lot of questions that are now being raised. >> there is no evidence that hunter biden did anything inappropriate, and questions are only being raised in the political context. it's very clear that the code word for corruption, in fact why was joe biden eliminated and edited out o transcript? there were suspicious ellipses that were testified to by colonel vindman. one of the other things that is

very clear is from bill taylor. he said it's crazy, crazy to condition withholding aid on a political campaign. so there's been plenty of testimony, you don't -- maybe you wouldn't call it a quid pro quo but the tradeoff here and the fact that corruption was being used, as code for going after the bidens rather than going after what was clearly the issue, which is the russian threat to ukraine and their need for the congressionally appropriated military aid, which according to the witnesses was inexplicably withheld. >> i think it's important to point out that presidents of both parties, and you know this so well, andrea, they have often used foreign aid as a leverage point to change behavior in foreign relations. >> in consultation with congress and with others in the foreign policy field. not as a secret deal being negotiated by the president's private lawyer who had also

conflicts of interest because of his own business dealings in ukraine. >> and -- but what we have to do is remember there is a long history of corruption in the ukrai ukraine. if there are questions that need to be asked about the former vice president who from a basic ethical standpoint was leading a policy team in an area where his son directly benefitted, that is something that is against federal regulations and ethics guidelines. >> let me just say that the former prosecutor, shulkin, was being removed under pressure from all of the western democracies, that was the stated policy of those who wanted shulkin out. shulkin was not investigating any of the bidens, he was a problem of corruption in ukraine. i'll have to leave it there. on a much better note, congratulations on your first grandchild. >> thank you, she shares your birthday, which is special. >> her name is?

>> lily belle. >> a beautiful name. >> thank you. we'll be right back. especially these days. (dad) i think it's here. (mom vo) especially at this age. (big sis) where are we going? (mom vo) it's a big, beautiful world out there. (little sis) whoa... (big sis) wow. see that? (mom vo) sometimes you just need a little help seeing it. (vo) the three-row subaru ascent. love. it's what makes a subaru, a subaru. johnsbut we're also a cancer fighting, hiv controlling, joint replacing, and depression relieving company. from the day you're born we never stop taking care of you.

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three weeks after president trump first announced he was pulling troops out of north syria. the senate is going to be briefed today about president trump's strategy. what's the strategy?

the president gave turkey the green light to invade syria. since then hundreds of kurds, u.s. key allies have been killed and 200,000 have been forced to leave their homeland. joining me is senator tim kaine. senator, thank you very much. i know you have been asking a lot of these questions. the fact that democrats were not briefed, republican senators were brought in before the saturday raid. lindsey graham was part in all of this. the speaker of the house was not briefed. president obama called george bush 43 around one of the first calls he made. what about the protocol and the involvement in a bipartisan foreign policy. that does not seem to exist anymore. >> in administration does not brief us on anything and normally not the democrats,

sometimes not the republicans either. >> muller omar, the founder of the taliban died in 2013. osama bin laden was killed in 2011 in al-qaida. it is great that is baghdadi is gone. isis is not gone. the problem about president trump's actions in syria that were decided just on a lot consultations, we have abandoned and betrayed and in their own words, tricked the kurds. we got the kurds to be our principle partner. we got them to go outside of the kurdish region to help them take back raqqa. they trusted that we would be

there. so they followed our instructions and when we pulled out, that was the language of the chief kurdish military leaders. they did not you abandon or betrayed us. they said you tricked us and made us do things at wt's unacc. >> what about the inse sertion the u.s. troops? >> i have been reading on events around d.c. the u.s. policies will protect al oil but not allies. that's what it seems like. that should not be our policies. our alleies and people who are n arms with our u.s. troops, they should be a higher priority than oil wells.

we are an energy dependant now. >> i know you came from a confirmation hearing. he could notlly answer by ambassador yovanovitch was recalled even though we had to execute that order. >> i think there was a bomb shell in there. he said i was told by the secretary of state that president lost confidence in him. when i asked what that meant, he repeated the president lost conference in him. secretary sullivan acknowledged today there was a concerted political campaign to get rid of her. when he told her that she was fired, he said you are fired but you have done nothing wrong and you are being fired because there is a concerted political campaign against you, a campaign

that was led by rudy giuliani and others. in that conversation between president zelensky and trump. president zelensky would ask about russia sanctions instead of talking to rudy giuliani and bill barr. he asked about military weapons and talking to the secretary of defense and the ambassador, talking to rudy giuliani. how about energy and trade and talk to rudy giuliani and bill barr. there was nothing in these guys' portfolios had anything to do with sanction and weapon sales or with energy or trade. the president talked to the relevant agencies of the u.s. government talking to rudy giuliani. and barr. barr was a u.s. employee. john sullivan did not know because he had to change his testimony during the hearing whether rudy giuliani was working in coordination with the state department or not.

>> are you confident that alexander vindman is going to be prote protected? >> we'll do everything that we can to protect him against the smear that's being levelled against him. this is an individual who ser simplived his country with a purple heart. you try to trash them, that's disgraceable behavi disgraceab disgracable behavior. >> and speaking of more from the nats, i gather you had a bet with ted cruz on hoping nothing political about this. i hope you win your bet. >> i do. >> it will be an andrea's

birthday gift for the nats win. if we lose i have to wear astros gear. if the nats win, he has to wear the nats gear. >> i want to see. >> don't worry, there will be plenty on social media. >> thank you senator, it is always great to see you. >> thank you very much. >> thank you. we'll be right back. >> thank you we'll be right back. wow. thanks, zoltar. how can i ever repay you? maybe you could free zoltar? thanks, lady. taxi! only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪

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thanks for being with us, finish the fight, go nats and here are ali velshi and stephanie ruhle. i was so touched and moved by your birthday wish by the end of the show. i would like to wish you a happy birthday, my friend. >> bring me a world series victory >> simple request. >> never again will october 30th, the hell night, it is andrea mitchell's birthday. >> happy birthday, andrea. >> it is wednesday, october 30th, it is andrea's birthday. coming up, we are watching the impeachment inquiry. the state department officials are answering questions behind closed doors and another