relationship so there's something in there for everybody. i will be back with a brand new special our first since the impeachment vote rules came out. this sunday 9:00 p.m. eastern, impeachment, white house in crisis with yours truly. i'll see you there. "hardball" starts now. the reckoning is coming. let's play hardball. good evening, i'm chris matthews in washington where the reckoning just drew more imminent. if you'd bet a lot less on donald trump getting impeached, bet a lot more today. this friday marks the end of a harrowing week in the house impeachment investigation. all foreshadowing the day of reckoning that's to come for this president. if you're listening to donald trump bragging about what a

perfect conversation he had with president zelensky you know he deserves what's coming. this tuesday congress heard from the first witness who actually witnessed to that first call with zelensky as lieutenant colonel alexander vindman whose testimony validated the concerns expressed by the whistle-blower. vindman also filled in the blanks of the white house's summary of that phone call raising questions about why there were first place. but most important his testimon morrison yesterday affirmed that military support to ukraine was indeed conditioned on the investigation into trump's political opponents. and that means that as of this week three witnesses have now testified under oath to the quid pro quo. military aid in exchange for political dirt. finally we saw more evidence that republicans are not going to fight this on the facts, which they have neither contested nor defended. the only person defending trump's conduct with ukraine is the president who still

describes his call with zelensky as in the usual word, perfect. all this was capped by the historic vote in the house yesterday which formalized the path forward in the impeachment inquiry. in making her case to the american people on the late show last night, speaker pelosi portrayed the trump's call with zelensky as a smoking gun that could not be ignored. >> this was something that you could not ignore. in one conversation he undermined our national security by withholding military assistance to a country that had been voted on by the congress of the united states. at the same time he jeopardized the integrity of our elections, the heart of our democracy. and in doing so, in my view, he possibly violated his oath of office to protect, defend and preserve the constitution of the united states.

some people believe that this is one of the investigations where the smoking gun came out first, and that call was a smoking gun. >> well, today impeachment investigators have received over a hundred hours of testimony from 13 witnesses behind closed doors. yesterday's resolution will now bring the inquiry out in the open with public hearings set to begin this month. by the way, it's november according to speaker pelosi. as politico reports they plan to showcase the witnesses with the most compelling evidence. i'm joined by jonah goose of colorado whose a member of the house judiciary committee, chuck rosenberg, a former u.s. attorney and senior fbi official. let me go to the congressman first. i think you're on course to center the public hearings this

month, perhaps articles of impeachment as early as next month. how do you see it? >> well, it's good to see you, chris. i couldn't say it better than the speaker did. i think ultimately what we're talking about is a betrayal of the constitutional oath and power of the president. and it's like ely the public hearing public hearing of the impeachment process will begin this month. and we'll follow the facts ultimately where they lead us. and your description at the beginning of the program of a reckoning brewing is such an apt one. and really it's a reckoning for my republican colleagues of the house. i was on the floor yesterday for that solemn and serious vote we took with respect to codifying the procedures for the impeachment process and ultimately the impeachment inquiry. and i will just tell you i was really aghast at the republican arguments, these farcical arguments about process because none of them could defend the facts. and they're going to have a choice to make whether they

choose country or over party. and i hope they choose the former. >> try to interpret for me why. why can't they see the essence of this charge? >> chris, i ask myself that same question and many of my colleagues in the democratic caucus are asking ourselves that same question as well. i think anyone who looks at the transcript of the call summary notes, anyone who reviews the text messages from ambassador volker, reviewed these opening statements from these patriots recognizes an abuse of power. and by the way, chris, the american people know an abuse of power when they see it, which is why the polling shaz shifted so dramatically in favor of the impeachment inquiry. ultimately this will be judged in the history books for decades and decades to come. and they're going to have to answer as to whether or not they're going to ultimately choose country over party.

>> natasha, what brings that point to a head very early in this process, unlike nixon they had to wait until june, had to wait until august practically to get the smoking gun, this inquiry began with the smoking gun. we have a summary of a conversation which has not been challenged. the president said i want you to do something for me, though. and it's been backed up by three star witnesses this week. the smoking gun is already smoking, and the republicans don't need more information. they don't seem to want to hear any information. they've found a way to hide from this. >> yeah, and i think democrats have been pretty smart about this. they say democrats have been wise not to focus exclusively on that smoking gun call. they built an entire case around the call showing this was a vast wide ranging conspiracy before, during and after and that democrats with all of the witnesses they've managed to bring to capitol hill from the administration, pentagon, state department, white house, they've managed to show this was a

concerted effort being led by the president's attorney, rudy giuliani, to essentially extort the ukrainians. and by not focusing on that one phone call they have a whole mountain of evidence. >> it was your reporting that shows not only did they put this in this hideaway term, they had exciting stuff like this especially this political interview, they wanted to hide that conversation. but also mr. eisenberg, whose the lawyer for the nsc said don't talk about it. keep it secret. >> so we reported earlier that colonel vindman was very disturbed by not the fact that the lawyer john eisenberg had placed the call into this top secret nsc code word system where normally those calls don't go, that doesn't necessarily seem like a cover-up up to him but later he went back to him and said don't talk about this phone call. that's significant to him

because vindman was one of the people listening to the call and had first had knowledge of it. the other reason he said that to him is because he was trying to figure out a process to cleanup the mess the president had created but eisenberg felt it stymied his job. >> what do you make of that, before, during and after they had consciousness of guilt, they planned this conversation with the president of ukraine, they talked about the deal all the way up to it and afterwards they tried to hide it. >> there's a nefarious explanation for what the nsc lawyer did, a cover-up. and there's a non-nefarious explanation. it could be he's trying to figure out what happened, who knows about it and get a clean story for each witness. >> but butting it together, hiding it away, and then say

don't talk about it two days later. >> this is more good reporting from natasha. so correct me if i'm wrong so i believe with the president's 2017 call with the president of mexico leaked out other phone calls with other world leaders of the president were also stored in a similar way. so i don't know this is it first time that that happened with a presidential phone call. that aside, i think what i'm seeing from the house is that they're going about it the right way, chris. they're talking to lots and lots of people, gathering as much evidence as they can. as you said, before, during, and after because all of that is part of the tapistry that tells the story. >> there's so much evidence here the cake keeps getting baked again. every one of these witnesses says what the other witness said, this was a deal. >> and even for the witness that

is white house is talking about now, tim morrison who's on the nsc staff, he didn't think the call was illegal, he still said he was concerned about the call and he immediately went to nsc council about it. and he's not voting in the house. but even there who the white house is calling a star witness said he was concerned about the call and by the policies. so i think that should be concerning to this white house, that even the people who they say are saying good things, if the good thing is that it's not illegal in this person's perspective, that probably means your argument might have a little bit of trouble. >> congressman, you're going to go home this week and looks like you're already home with the mountains there behind you, but in a purple state how do you make the case for impeachment with your people at home? >> look, chris, in talking with my constituents if there's one thing very clear, they want us

to follow the facts in a methodical way which is precisely what we've been doing. as chuck knows, chairman schiff is former prosecutor as chuck is. so he has approached this in a very thoughtful serious way, and we've been able to uncover significant evidence of the president's misconduct. and as i said the american people and certainly my constituents recognize an abuse of power when they see it. they want us to meet the moment, so to speak, underscoring the gravity of ultimately the impeachment process. that's what the house democratic caucus has done, what we're going to continue to do. i hope my republican colleagues will mulultimately as i said ma thoughtful decisions. and this matters as it future of our republic as a republic. >> he's talking about where he's going to sit and talk to the

american people presumably some networks will give him maybe fox, maybe other networks will give him a full opportunity to speak to the american people apparently in prime time and read through the summary of his conversation with zelensky with ukraine in a way that suggests his total perfection. let me read this to you. the president's still describes it as an exact transcript defending the conversation itself as i said before, perfect. here's trump in a radio interview yesterday. >> it's totally false. we have a transcript that was an exact transcript of the meeting. and anybody that reads the transcripts understands it was a perfect phone call. the democrats are desperate. they're desperate. they have nothing. >> he ignores the fact the call record is actually very damning, showing when zelensky requested more missiles trump asked him to first investigate -- first investigate his political rivals.

additionally disclaimer on that memo explicitly cautions it's not a verbatim transcript. he's the president and doesn't read his own stuff. >> when you look at the mueller report, volume 2 it's the whole obstruction of justice story. every pronouncement by donald trump, every tweet by donald trump in some way ended up in the report. what he was doing that whole period of time was creating evidence for prosecutors. i know you can't charge a sitting president, but every time this president talks about what he did, which apparently he thinks is perfect, he creates more evidence. i can't wait to hear him read the transcript because he's going to ad-lib inevitably and prosecutors and investigators and agents are going to be listening very carefully. when my subjects talked, when my targets talked when i was a federal prosecutor my reaction was have at it. >> would you put him on the stand? >> would i put donald trump on the stand if i were his lawyer or a prosecutor? >> lawyer. >> not a chance.

>> this president has enormous self-confidence and he does have almost 40% of the public who will eat it up. whatever he says, he won't use the word, though. i don't think he's going to mention that word, just guessing. >> i think the democrats would love for him to read it out loud, then they have it for their ads and whatever they want to do with it. look, the president clearly thinks this call was great. but what democrats are saying is that they don't think this call was great -- >> in your reporting do you know anybody besides trump who thinks this call was okay with zelensky? >> even when i talked to people at his rallies said they didn't like that call. they like trump but they're concerned about what he did on that call. so it's a very tricky thing if he wants to read that out. independents say this impeachment inquiry should go forward. so when he starts reading that out, it's a risk. >> reminds me of mayor laguardy

reading the comic pages to people because they couldn't get the newspaper. he will be believed by some. thank you so much coming to us for the mountains, looks great behind you there. chuck rosenberg, as always. coming up, my colleague rachel maddow joins me in this next segment to talk about the sober lessons. plus will trump follow through with his proposal for that fireside chat, i can't wait, about his ukraine phone call? and we're going to talk about rachel's fabulous best selling book on the corrupting power of oil. plus, it's a big night in iowa for the democratic presidential candidates. a new poll shows the battle out there is wide open and looks like lelizabeth warren is risin still, joe biden is falling still and the big surprise could be mayor pete winning the whole thing in iowa. e winning the who

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the most important thing for the american people to realize and understand is no one is above the law. the president of the united states or not. this for me has nothing to do with politics. people said, well, you didn't want to do it because you would jeopardize some of your -- it had nothing to do with politics, only about patriotism. >> that was speaker nancy pelosi last night hours after the house voted to formalize the impeachment inquiry into president trump. many back in their districts where they'll make the case for impeachment at home. a "the washington post" abc news poll just out this week before the house vote showed 49% of

americans say president trump should be impeached and removed from office. 47% say he should not. president trump is floating a new idea, by the way, of how he'd like to make his case to the american people. he told the washington examiner, quote, at some point i'm going to sit down perhaps as a fireside chat on live television, and i will read the transcript of the call because people have to hear it. when you read it, it's a straight call. joining me right now is my colleague rachel maddow, host of the rachel maddow show on msnbc and the author of "blow out corrupted democracy rogue state russia and the richest most destructive industry on earth." thank you, my friend. we'll get to that book in-depth in the next segment. i never know when you're going to wear the glasses but this is great. let's get serious then. first of all a little frivolous question.

trump as fdr in front of the fireside warming the cockles of the hearts of the american people, but in this case defending himself against impeachment. >> you know, alexandria ocasio-cortez, she responded to the president's announcement that he was going to do this thing and he tweeted in all caps, read the transcript. her response to that online was we did read the transcript. that's why we started impeachment proceedings. and i checked just before we got online and i think that's got something like 340,000 likes at this point. 40,000 re-tweets. i mean, the idea that the transcript is going to be his way out of this when the transcript is literally what led nancy pelosi to open the impeachment proceedings, i just -- i don't know -- sometimes i can follow his logic and this one, i don't get it. >> what do you think of pelosi in these last several weeks especially, her strategy, her

thinking, her leadership? >> nancy pelosi knows her caucus and has never as far as i can tell ever been caught out with the behavior of her caucus surprising her. we've both been following her for years. i can way she intended them to go and the way she knew them to go. so i feel likeing to be out the for her caucus to do something they might not do. she's only ervin front when she knows she's got them behind her and where she can lead from a position of confidence and strength because she knows where the people are because she's got them there. i feel like watching nancy pelosi right now, i'm less interested in sort of figuring what she might want or what might be her own analysis of the political impact of this impeachment. i feel like watching her tells you what the democrats are going to do because she's never wrong about her own folks.

>> i think she's got a great listening network out, people who tell her what people are thinking. thursday's house vote, yesterday, was almost entirely on party lines. almost every single republican voted against the resolution. "the washington post" poll shows the public is just as divided along party lines. 82% of democrats say president trump should be impeached. 82% of republicans sayis, i guen maryland, you live in massachusetts and new york. in geographies, i do know people, though, relatives who just will not give. how do you account for that? evidence is not moving people. >> well, i think it's important to recognize where we are in the process. i mean, they're going to move to their public hearings now. and they believe that they have -- i mean, what we know about how they're planning the public hearings right now is they're taking witnesses who they've already heard from behind closed doors, selecting some of them and they're going to put them in front of the

public with staff questioning them in a way designed not only to elicit information, they've already got that in the depositions. they can just take that information from the depositions and put it in the report if they wanted to. but they're going to pick the witnesses who they want who they believe can tell the story to the american people. if people are watching the way the evidence is laid out i think the idea is honest people will be persuadable. i think the president will have his defenders no matter what he does, even if he does shoot somebody on fifth avenue. but the impeachment process is supposed to be one that persuades the public and that hasn't started yet. >> you and pelosi have one great strength, or one clear strength in common. you're both teachers. the way you go about your business are very illustrious and how people ought to think and report. and are people learning right now about our constitution? are they learning?

>> yes. well, i think so. i mean, i don't know that i have my finger on the pulse of anybody other than myself and i'm not even sure how well i know myself sometimes. but through our own process of reporting on and trying to explain this presidency for the past two plus years i feel like, boy, have i learned a lot about, you know, the federal court system. boy, have i learned a lot about foreign influence operations. boy, have i learned a lot about the fbi and the cia and presidential scandal and the ways that, you know, witnesses can be compelled or not. i mean, there's so many aspects of this presidency that we've had to learn in detail simply because it's been scandal after scandal after scandal, and we have to learn it just to stay up on what's going on. now, at the same time, our democratic processes are under direct attack from the president in a way we've never seen in u.s. history before, and i think that's making us learn about them if only to understand what

it is that's threatened. and so it's a -- this is time for sort of i think for specific dedication, to be dedicated to learning what our own responsibilities are as citizens and to pay attention what's happening right now. this is not a time where you can just let the news wash over you. >> it's a new book called blow out by you. i've learned so much. i hope we can get a couple of teasing aspects so people can go out and get a copy of this. you learn so much about putin, what's been motivating his end of the skanldal, why he is the way he is especially on sanctions. his insanity in going after them. i learned it from you, and that's coming up next. what's motivating vladimir putin in this ongoing trump scandal. why is he obsessed with getting all those meetings with trump people up in trump tower and his family members? what's all this oil got to do with all this? it's all in rachel's new book

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welcome back to "hardball." for the past three years the country has been following along as investigators pursued russian interference in our 2016 election. specifically the role president trump and those around him played. but understanding what motivated trump is only half the story. why was it that russian president vladimir putin was so intent on messing with our

elections? actually a hundred contacts between trump associates and russians during the campaign? those are just some of the questions that led rachel maddow to write her new book, "the new york times" best selling book "blow out, rogue state russia and the richest most destructive industry on earth" as this country's sole economic industry of oil and gas was being strangled by u.s. sanctions. the russian federation ultimately embarked on a deliberate and aggressive campaign to tear apart western alliances, to rot democracy and to piss in the punch bowl of free elections all around the world. well, that desperation was understood by one world leader, german chancellor angela merkel. quote, i understand why he has to do this to prove he's a man. he's afraid of his own weakness. russia has nothing.

no successful pockets or economy. all they have is this. rachel maddow is back with me. that is delicious set of paragraphs, rachel. you have nailed it. the key here, i'll get to a couple of things. one is sanctions, they needed western technology to explore the arctic circle. if they couldn't get more oil and gas, they were going to go broke. that explains all those god damn meetings. >> it explains their -- he likes what he can do with oil and gas, how he can use it as a weapon around the world, but he also wanted to have complete control of it, so he consolidated all the oil and power in his own country under his own control. he's got his henchman running the russian oil and gas industry, they're terrible at it. geologically russia is running out of all the easy to get oil

and gas. they now need to be doing the more hi-tech stuff, but they've got these terribly run companies. they need to be able to run these in order to get at their future oil and gas. and they can't get it because of the sanctions on them because of putin's behavior. and putin is strategic but he's short-term strategic. and in the long run his short-term behavior, it all made sense in terms of grabbing up that industry and wielding influence around the world in such a maligned way. those things got to be on a collision course, and he threw a total hail mary when it came to us in 2016 to try to get hillary clinton out of there and specifically get those sanctions undone. and all of those meetings you were just describing basically all of them during the campaign had something to do with sanctions. >> and this gigantic country as we look on the map that includes europe and asia, that gigantic country has a gdp smaller today

than italy's because of that awful decision he said let's just do oil and gas, let's not have a real modern economy. that was his decision to choose personal interest where he could be a dictator over one sector over the street of his country just like trump. >> well, you know, the thing about a diversified economy is that in order to have one, in order to have a growing, vital economy you need a few things. you need the rule of law, you need property rights. you need a relative lack of corruption so that people can, you know, get permits and higher people and businesses can grow and compete on the basis of their merit. putin wasn't willing to concede all of that. because that would have meant him giving up some power and him being susceptible to power within russian bounds. and so instead of allowing russia to grow in that way which they could have done, they could

have absolutely be a super power once again in the world instead of having their major exports in the world be oil, gas and organized crime. they could be a big deal in the world except for putin keeping his foot on the neck of his own country. >> did you think about it parallel between oil and gas and gold and silver in the days of the colonizer and they never did trade, they got to get the gold and silver and destroyed their economies through the mechanism and destroyed it because it inflated the economy, and doing the same thing with russia, committed the old crime of going after subterranean minerals as opposed to developing a modern economy like we did and the brits did. >> and in the modern era you see countries that have natural resources that need to be extracted and then sold on the international market, those countries no matter how that resource is and is on paper, it

almost always makes your country more poor. it almost always hurts the rule of law. it almost always results in a worse society with more violence, more propensity to get involved in war and your citizens end up worst off even as the elites get rich and corrupt. that resource curse is an academic thing people have talked about for years. i think we should see russia as suffering from that sort of its on its own terms and i think that's part of how we got them in our sights in 2016. >> there's so much in this book. i was thinking of the great muckrakers of the early part of -- you're smiling because you know you're on the same terrain. you're a great muckraker because you pointed out there's something malevolent about oil not just about destroying economies but destroying culture, the corruption that comes from it. you talk about these oil guys like tillerson and their

coziness with russia. what is it about the malevolence of oil? i don't know what to say except you've really captured a point of view. commercial ports like seattle, new york, boston, women can get ahead in those places because of commerce. women can rise quickly in those companies. but extractive industries are particularly deleterious to women. did you give thought to that? >> it's a really good point. it's part of the reason micro finance initiatives are good for women. they promote diversified lower level economic growth where people can write their own plot. when you've got industries like oil and gas coming into wherever it is they're going to drill wells what you get is billions of dollars of up front capitalization. that means they are in there and they have to pay off for decades to make it worth that up front

capital investment. you get construction jobs for a minute, a few jobs associated with the ongoing production of the oil once the oil is drilled. but really you end with environmental damage, very few jobs for very few people, and a revenue stream that comes from outside the country to the elites. and that benefits when the rule of law favors the outside industry rather than people who live in that country. and you just see it over and over again. >> i'm so excited about the book. the first action of it trump administration in your book -- i didn't know this -- was to get rid of the public exposure requirements on american corporation oil companies doing business with african countries like nigeria. so it was meant that law to expose the pay offs, the corruption that allowed these government leaders to have houses in malibu and london and everywhere else in south africa while their people are starving to death. and they got rid of that transparency law as the first act of congress under trump. >> and never talked about it. we didn't have big national

fights about it. they just quietly got that done. that's the power of the industry in our own government that they got that done as the first order of business with the republican house, republican senate and a new republican in the white house. literally a provision that singly and only allows oil companies to bribe other countries and get away with it. it's the first thing they did, and the power of the oil and gas industry to get that done tells you something about how big a deal they are in our own politics and around the world. >> well, read this book, everybody. know friday night is good night to have a book. when you're out wandering around -- at least people used to wander around the malls on saturday and occasionally see a bookstore that's still there. get into that bookstore and buy that book. this is your education right here. it's at least a year of good college right here. it is fantastic because it ties together all the things we've been talking about here, all the things. i'm not a marxist but i do

accept there's a lot of economic determinism. richard nixon went down because the economy sucked when he was in trouble. watch the economy, follow the money. rachel maddow has done just that. "blowout," get a copy this weekend. up next, presidential candidates and their supporters are converging on iowa tonight. now it's called the liberty and justice celebration, very woke. that's out there in and this is new poll. can biden reverse his fate, can mayor pete, and i'm big on this guy, surprise everybody in iowa? you're watching "hardball." y, s? you're watching "hardball. t-mobile's newest signal reaches farther than ever before... with more engineers, more towers, more coverage. it's a network that gives you...

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thousands of people have descended on downtown des moines. 13 presidential candidates are expected to peek tonight at the party's annual dinner which is expected to draw about 13,000 people. look at that crowd. back in 1975 a little known georgia governor named jimmy carter began his run for the white house with a victory, a vote at that dinner tonight. since then it's helped propel several candidates to the front of the pack. one columnist called senator barack obama, jefferson jackson's speech out there the best of his campaign. >> america, our moment is now. our moment is now.

i -- i don't want to spend the next year or the next four years refighting the same fights that we had in the 1990s. i don't want to -- i don't want to pit red america against blue america. i want to be the president of the united states of america. >> well, tonight in front of the biggest crowd in the dinner's history 13 democrats will try to convince iowa voters they're best suited to take on president trump. so could tonight be the start of something big? that's coming up next. you're watching "hardball." g bi? that's coming up next. you're watching "hardball. nice. but, uh... what's up with your... partner? not again. limu that's your reflection. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty, liberty, liberty, liberty ♪ that life of the party look walk it off look

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that's a lot of words. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ with just three months to go until the iowa caucus that's february 3rd a now pool shows four candidates locked in a close race at the top. the poll shows senator elizabeth warren pulling ahead with 22 points among likely caucus voters these are good polls followed by bernie sanders. pete buttigieg has moved up to 18 and joe biden the previous front run, but uncertainty remains about which direction iowans want to take the democratic party. two thirds say they still might choose a different candidate than they have now before the caucuses. one campaign came to a sudden

end as congressman beto o'rourke as he's withdrawing from the race hours before he's supposed to be talking at the dinner. for more i'm joined by axios political reporter who's covering the race. edward mcmullen, and at 2016 independent presidential candidate. and jason johnson of course politics editor. what do you smell particularly with regard to the rise, the dynamic of mr. pete buttigieg? >> you know, it's interesting about that poll that you just showed on-screen is that i've been talking with a lot of democratic strategists in the last few months who sort of said the wild card they think is how or why mayor pete buttigieg performs better than expected in iowa. a few weeks ago i was like i don't know if that's going to happen, but now the polls are confirming these rumors or

ideas. they think pete buttigieg especially being from indiana, a midwesterner plays well in the midwest, and wee shouldn't overlook someone like him and his ability to surprise people in that very important caucus state like iowa. >> i think he's going to win it. jason? >> i don't think there's a chance in heck. >> in iowa? >> no, i think elizabeth warren is going to win. mayor pete is improving because he's got the money and connections. i think warren wins iowa, bernie wins new hampshire, biden blows them all away. >> i think pete is going to win iowa, bernie is going to come back and win new hampshire because he's doing rely well up there. i don't know who harry reed is going to get behind but i think you're right about biden. so we agree on one. >> i don't think mayor pete has to win iowa. >> you see its projected how fast he's moved. >> in iowa he's been moving up, he's been gaining ground for the last couple of months.

it's just as much about expectations i think as it is about the result. >> let me ask you this question. is a vote in iowa a real presidential vote, or is it a february vote ini think it's a february vote. it's not a november vote. they don't have to pick the president. they could say right now i think the best of the candidates is buttigieg, i'm voting for him? >> i think mayor pete is going to have a moment after iowa. even if he doesn't prevail there, if he finishes in the top three he's the only one below 70 years old. >> he's 37. >> and i think he'll have a moment. he's very young, but i still think that he will really arrive on the stage after iowa -- after iowa completes this. >> a new poll has former vice president joe biden still seen by voters as the best candidate to beat president trump. the former vice president leads trump by 5 points.

warren trails the president by 1. president trump beats mayor pete by 6. i don't know what to make of this. we're all guessing. >> here's the thing, people may not want to pick their president in iowa, but they're thinking they want to pick somebody that can beat the president of the united states, which is donald trump. that's why i don't think it'll be pete. again, if he pulls off some sort of obama surprise and blows everybody away. -- giving the speech now in november -- >> my question in the beginning, is this a november decision like next november, a year from now, are they picking the president of the united states or the person who's going to beat trump, or are they saying right now the strongest of the candidates the one that impresses me the most is pete buttigieg? me, i'm voting for him because i like the kind of his jib. is that the kind of decision they're making out there? >> based on the conversations i've had with voters i think people very much want to feel

courted by these democratic kan candidates. that might be found in someone like a 30-year-old gay candidate like mayer pete or elizabeth warren being in the senate for 7 years, 8 years is new to a lot of people at least on the national stage. but one thing remains to be seen is that's where and how voters define what it takes to beat donald trump. is that someone who can win over voters, white working class voters in the upper midwest, someone the so call leader of the resistance, someone a woman? i think that remains to be seen, but i think this question of electability has a lot to do with those folks who can win the electoral college not just the popular vote. >> there is this obvious tension between those on the democratic side who want to see this progressive agenda and even populous agenda go forward that's represented by bernie

sanders and elizabeth warren and et cetera. but what elizabeth warren has done has bridged both. and that's what her advantage is. >> thank you so much. jason johnson is probably right in his own mind. up next november 8, 1999, what happened on that day? stay tuned to find out. it matters a lot to this place. you're watching "hardball." to e you're watching "hardball. ♪ things are getting clearer, yeah i feel free ♪ ♪ to bare my skin ♪ yeah that's all me. ♪ nothing and me go hand in hand ♪ ♪ nothing on my skin ♪ that's my new plan. ♪ nothing is everything. keep your skin clearer with skyrizi. 3 out of 4 people achieved 90% clearer skin at 4 months. of those, nearly 9 out of 10 sustained it through 1 year. and skyrizi is 4 doses a year, after 2 starter doses. ♪ i see nothing in a different way ♪ ♪ and it's my moment so i just gotta say ♪ ♪ nothing is everything

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let's play hardball. well, "hardball" is on msnbc tonight as well as cnbc so i've got to explain terms. here's the definition of "hardball." it's clean, aggressive machiavellian politics but practiced most openly and unashamedly in the world of politics. that was from my book in 1998, "hardball." that was the first episode of "hardball" on msnbc, november 8, 1999, 20 years ago next week. it's a big milestone for us. so we're going to take a look back into the "hardball" vault. some of them are exciting in the past two decades. this is an important chair right

here, this "hardball" chair. over the last two decades i've had the privilege to having not just a front row seat to american politics but into the lively politics of the country. and for that i'm obviously thankful. and that's "hardball" for us tonight. "all in" with chris hayes starts right now. tonight on on a special edition of "all in." >> no one is above the law. >> impeachment begins and the use of a trump talking point ends. >> what we do know is there was definitely no quid pro quo. >> tonight the mountain of evidence there was absolutely a quid pro quo no matter what you call it. >> there is no pro quo. >> plus new signs that the facts of impeachment are actually penetrating the trump tv bubble. >> you'rehe