largest economies, the u.s. and china, reportedly agreed to remove existing trade tariffs. although they said that it's heading toward the first phase of it. we don't really know what that phase is. but we'll keep an eye on it. markets are off their highs, but we will have new records on all three indices. that wraps up the hour for me. "deadline: white house" with nicolle wallace begins right now. ♪ hi, everyone. it's 4:00 in new york. brand-new transcripts out in the last hour from one of the witnesses in the impeachment probe who painted with explicit detail the jarring and disturbing picture of a foreign policy process hijacked by the president's political allies. george kent, a senior state department official in charge of ukraine policy testified about being sidelined by acting white house chief of staff mick mulvaney in favor of the three amigos. that would be gordon sondland, the ambassador to the e.u., energy secretary rick perry, and kurt volker, special envoy to

ukraine, who has since resigned. kent will appear on the first day of public testimony next wednesday along with ambassador bill taylor. kent is expected to detail the irregular policy process that sought to pressure ukraine to investigate trump's political rivals. today's transcripts confirming the president's explicit desire for a commitment from ukraine to investigating his political opponents from. that testimony, kent, ambassador gordon sondland had talked to the president and potus wanted nothing less than president zelensky to go to the microphone and say investigations, biden, and clinton. kent also details the level of alarm among career officials about the pressure campaign run by that irregular channel of officials and rudy giuliani. he describes an interaction with a colleague in which he warned of the danger in pressuring a foreign government to do donald trump's political bidding. kent, on august 15th, the new

special assistant to special representative volker, catherine croft, came to my office and asked me have we ever asked the ukrainians to investigate anybody? and i told her, if you're asking me, have we ever gone to the ukrainians and asked them to investigate or prosecute individuals for political reasons? the answer is, i hope we haven't and we shouldn't because that goes against everything that we are trying to promote in post-soviet states for the last 28 years, which is the promotion of the rule of law. today's release of kent's testimony revealing more corroboration of some of the most alarming allegations in the whistle-blower complaint in offering a preview of some of what we might hear from kent in that televised hearing next week as a next public chapter of the impeachment inquiry gets underway is where we start today with some of our favorite reporters and friends. "associated press" white house reporter jonathan lemire. former federal prosecutor for both the southern and eastern

districts of new york, berger. and political reporter for the "new york times," nick confessore. let's first go though to capitol hill where garrett haake is standing by. garrett, these transcripts, i wish they came out more in the 12 to 2 range, not in the 2 to 4 range. i am going to need a new prescription at the end of this. but what's amazing, what is sort of piercing in this testimony, and i think what distinguishes it even from the others is mr. kent almost sounds like the conscience of the state department. he articulates in his testimony the historical role that the united states under democratic and republican presidents has played in bolstering not just militarily these former soviet states but in helping them stand up a rule of law. it's startling to me to read his reaction and his sort of real explanation that it was our country's president assaulting

the rule of law. >> reporter: it's really interesting. it's clear why democrats are putting him together with bill taylor in that first open hearing on wednesday. these two are obviously ideological allies. you've got a pair of old cold warrors here now invested in building up these post-soviet states and trying to expand their institutions, teach them about the rule of law and shape their anti-corruption efforts that way. and as you read through kent's testimony, you see a couple things develop. first you see his alarm at rudy giuliani running around behind the scenes in ukraine and giving interviews and sort of trashing the now former ambassador marie yovanovitch. that's the first thing that gets kent's antenna up. and then over the course of the summer he sees other old ukraine hands get elbowed out of the way of kind of that perry, sondland, and kurt volker who are taking over ukraine policy on behalf of the president. he describes this as almost volker getting pulled to the dark side where voeler decides he's going to try to work with

giuliani to shape this in a way that kent and taylor are uncomfortable with. and their failures to push back on this. and, in fact, their efforts to keep him from coming to testify and what he says is misinterpreting his role in coming to had testify in the first place. it's a fascinating testimony, a deposition. and it dovetails so clearly with taylor's experience on the ground. you can see the story that democrats are trying to tell, i think, by putting these men together at a table on wednesday. >> well, i want to dig into the substance with you and everybody here. but i want to key in on something you just said. they're i.d. logical soul mates. the ideological they seem to share is american patriotism. it seems like democrats are trying to checkmate republicans and say you are against these two? these two don't have a right/left policy perspective. i've read every word of both of those transcripts quickly i will confess. but there is no right/left sort

of scent or odor in anything they say. their ideology is what john mccain used to be, what a lindsey graham seven versions ago used to believe, what democrats and republicans have believed since the end of the cold war, that the united states of america stands for the countries trying to stand up against russia. i mean, what the democrats appear to be trying to do is to put the least ideological, the least political, the most american voices up to look at the republicans and say what's your problem of these two. >> i think that's right. and taylor describes it probably more explicitly than kent does. this idea that standing up these post-soviet republics to be the firewall between the west and russia is not something there was any daylight between administrations democrat and republican. here you see a u.s. policy that's been consistent for 20 odd years and then a trump administration policy or perhaps not even the whole

administration policy but this small irregular sub group of people working closely with the president who are pursuing this other policy all together. and kent's the one who puts it into perspective saying this is not what we have been trying to do here for all this time. and, you know, he and taylor are trying to find out what's going on here and what role is sondland and the president and all the rest of these folks playing i think is something that we'll get more deep into as we get into the open hearings. the but these are the first two to sound the alarm. one from ukraine, one from washington, both very concerned about what they are seeing. >> you know, and jonathan lemire, another sort of plot line that keeps re-upping itself is pompeo's either impotence or what would appear to be the only other explanation, been coerced by trump and rudy as part of the conspiracy to extort dirt on the bidens. for which path he's on? >> right. at the very least pompeo did nothing to -- >> right, the impotence defense.

>> no objection whatsoever. i do think that you make a really good point, garrett did too about these two testimonies being paired this week. it's not just republican and democrat. it's what america is supposed to be about in terms of its foreign policy. i keep going back to taylor's opening testimony which was released a few weeks ago where he spoke about how this would undo all the progress that has been made in ukraine which should be a bulwark against russian aggression. they should be an ally who can depend on us. he looked over that bridge. he was in the ukraine and he looked over and saw those russian-backed militia forces over there and sort of put a real human face on this and said this is the toll here. it's not just about politics. lives could be lost if this military aid is not delivered. i think what the democrats are doing here is sort of outlining it at the stakes. in terms of pompeo, he looks, if nothing else, he looks impotent.

he's cowtowed to trump. he's yet another guardrail that has fallen away in allowing the president and in this case rudy giuliani and this other cast of characters to run rough shot over aern foreign policy and frankly american interests. >> i keep thinking about where this is heading and when you get to the specific charges that the democrats will be trying to prove. it'll be abuse of power. these are obviously effective and unimpeachable witnesses on that question. but i wonder what the specific sort of crime would be or article would be around the details about what they did to ambassador yovanovitch. i mean, some of the most searing testimony is around pompeo's refusal to defend or protect her from a smear campaign. i know you've got some great reporting today about the origins of the smear, some of the smears in this ugly, ugly chapter, trump's presidency. but let me read some of this from the transcript that just came out. kent says the request from the embassy endorsed by the european

bureau that there should be a high-level endorsement of ambassador yovanovitch. and then what happened there. kent responds there was no high-level department endorsement of ambassador yovanovitch. the questioner, what did the state department do? you described a series of complete falses in your words. kent responds, yes. questioner, fabrications, a fake list that's going to the heart of the ability of the ambassador to serve correctly. kent responds, correct. questioner, and so is it fair to say that this was a big league crisis for the ambassador? kent responds this particularly after there were tweets by members of the presidential family, was clearly a crisis for ambassador yovanovitch and a crisis that was threatening to consume the relationship. so our recommendation to our superiors was that there should be a clear statement of support for ambassador yovanovitch. obviously the rest is history. and on cane there still hasn't been one. in her transcript we learned

that on monday i think that she still feels threatened. >> and i understand why she does. i mean, this was just harassment at its most basic. i mean, it's difficult to try to put it into a purely legal context because, exactly as you said, the question is is it an abuse of power, at least from what we know so far it seems like there is a very definitive answer of, yes, this is an abuse of power. if you had to sort of find the equivalent legal statute for crime that may apply to it, in some ways it almost sounds like extortion. like you need to take certain positions, you need to do certain actions of, you know, praising donald trump publicly, maybe tweet something out or you're going to lose your job. that's not how we convince career public servants to do their jobs the right way is if you don't praise the leader you're going to get fired. we typically demand that based on their actions, not their tweets. >> and, i mean, jonathan, you've been there. he spent a lot of time in north

korea. he's got a real affection for putin. what you are describing is precisely the kind of conduct and relationships he covets from those autocrats. >> no question. the president has felt more comfortable with authoritarian leaders like vladimir putin and at times kim jong-un who he's met with now i believe three separate times. and this was a tweet from donald trump jr. that was the moment this referred to in the transcript where he suggested the ambassador was a bad actor and was a deep state plant to try to undermine what president trump is trying to do. and again it's just yet another example of how irregular this all is, that this is not how american foreign policy is supposed to be conducted. it's not supposed to be conducted by tweets of not just the president but the president's son. it's not supposed to be conducted by the personal lawyer of the president who is the former mayor of new york city who has no foreign policy credentials what's so far. what they are doing as to quote john bolton, it's a drug deal.

that's what he assessed it to be, and that's how it comes across here. no matter it has rattled so deeply all these career officials. >> let me go to a place we don't go very often because it's confusing. but what also becomes clear here, an irregular -- the best thing and the worst thing about diplomats is that they use words like irregular. irregular means corrupt. this was the corrupt channel where rudy giuliani was smearing and shaking down the ukrainians for dirt on the bidens. the i mean, that's it. that's the whole story. but what kent details is that the whole cover story that they wanted a statement on corruption is i'm already in trouble for swearing. my son has a dollar jar for me, was bologna. they were putting their finger on the scale for the old ousted corrupt figures in the ukrainian government. they were getting rid of the people in american diplomatic core, and they were pressuring the new leaders of ukraine who were against corruption. they wanted the corruption, and

they wanted to corrupt the u.s./ukrainian relationship to smear the bidens. >> what happened in the ukraine from u.s. officials is how gangster states work. >> yes. >> imagine the surprise of the president of the ukraine that he's trying to clean up his country and transform it from a gangster state and into a free country. here comes the president's son and his private lawyer who, by the way is working on deals for himself, and essentially actually extorting him to get the u.s. aid in exchange he has to basically invent a story. and that is the key takeaway. >> so important. >> he says he wanted three words in there. investigation, biden, and clinton. it was almost like a mad lib. it didn't matter what they were going to say. what they wanted -- and the sole thing they wanted was an announcement, a public announcement that there was something being investigated. it didn't even seem to matter to them if it proceeded from there. what they wanted was a kujil they could take back home to the

u.s. and wave on the campaign trail. that is not how american foreign policy is supposed to operate. >> you know, garrett, there's so much rich detail in here about mr. kent's discomfort with these irregular policy channels. and you can almost hear the republicans say, well, donald trump can have whomever he wants involved in foren policy. but you can't say that the united states government has the right or the power to extort a foreign leader. i'm curious what sort of arbitrary lines are they drawing around the specific conduct they are going to excuse away and defend? >> reporter: i think this is the way that republicans will try to defend this. first they are going to try to discredit gordon sondland. both taylor and kent rely a lot on sondland. neither one of them spoke directly to the president. and republicans will say this is all coming second-hand from sondland who has changed his testimony once already. he can't be trusted. see? democrats aren't even calling him to come speak.

so they will try to blur the line on that. and buried in this transcript you've got republicans asking kent a lot of questions about burisma, which he says is a company that was, you know, not especially well regarded. they will try to blur the line here and make the case that the president was pursuing some kind of anti-corruption effort here. but you get into the weeds on what that means. this is not institution-building as a way to fight corruption. this is not building up the courts or encouraging ukrainians to follow a standard set of practices. this is very, very narrowly targeted effort by the president's allies here. and i think that's where you'll see the split. but republicans are going to try to hammer very closely on that line. republicans i have talked to on the hill have tried to focus everything back on the call. make this about the call, the call, the call. and i think that's part of the reason you are seeing ambassador yovanovitch come get called next friday. she is separate from the phone call. she is separate from the core allegations against the

president here. but by bringing her in, you expand the timeline. you say this was this long corrupt effort here that started in the spring. this wasn't a one-off phone call. there is this whole thing here. she is the prequel to the main story. but she will be i think a very important point as democrats try to keep a broad lens on this and republicans just try to focus on the narrowest possible definition of what the president did or didn't do. >> and it would seem that in either scenario, garrett, the president has a lot of exposure. today they had a witness who was sitting on the call on behalf of the vice president. and my understanding of the vice president's current state of nonanswers is that he didn't know that trump had asked for, had conditioned aid on a favor on that call, which i find hard to believe having traveled internationally with the president. those are long flights. there is plenty of time to read your brief and do your homework. and do we know anything about today's deposition from pence's national security adviser who

gave a deposition or maybe she's still there today? >> she has left. we know she was on that phone call. i think the third witness now who's come in. folks are just starting to break up from this meeting. it was not a especially well attended as far as these depositions go. so we are still chasing down a lot of the details. but the point is interesting here because pence has been just a degree removed from all of this all along. one of the things we know from the changes to gordon sondland's testimony was that it was on the edges of this meeting between pence and zelensky that sondland pulled this ukrainian official aside and said, look, this is the actual deal here. so at least other people in pence's traveling party knew the real score here. it's strange to think that pence didn't when someone in his own staff was on that call. and as you point out, it's a very long flight to poland, in this case, and then it's on the sidelines of that meeting that the message is delivered to ukrainians. >> it's also, jonathan lemire, where the lie was told. the lie sondland told that it

came back to prevent a false statement to congress was in his conduct in the wake of the pence meeting. so if any sort of winking and nodding took place, we know they are not good at that. the stone trial is underway. manafort's in jail. they don't often pull that off. but the lie that sondland told pertained to a meeting where he sought aid in exchange for the investigation in the wake of a pence meeting. it would seem that there is sort of a link in the story that centers around what pence knew and when he knew it. >> right. the pence team has denied that he knew anything about this. it defies credibility that that would be the case that he would have no inkling whatsoever. even when he wasn't part of the original scheme that he would have no idea what was going on. he denies it. but that's what other people are trying to figure out. >> we know that after the call there was so much concern and a call came in from the general counsel to the cia to the white house counsel's office.

so -- >> the call was -- >> and the president's office is in it. so you've got the general counsel from the cia shows up. she is in the counsel's office. the counsel's office then locks down the transcript. it's for a call that his aid sat in. if all that happens there is a little bit of buzzing. so she was on this busy call that's now been locked down in a secure server. she said nothing in a 12-hour flight to warsaw? give me whatever drugs they are taking. that does not add up. >> no. it would not seem to me that there is no reason, as you point out, the west wing is very small. this is also a vice president who tries to stay very close with what donald trump does. >> and he's always in the oval office. >> he wants to be part of the conversation in part, because there have been such persistent rumors that someday he might be off the ticket. [ laughter ] the best thing he can do is try to stay close and prove his value and loyalty to the

president. the two of them share a ton of time another, not just a weekly lunch. but the vice president, there were times where we'd be called into the oval office and we were surprised to see the vice president there. he is part of the sort of permanent entourage. that donald trump's oval office has. it defies logic or believability that he would not have at least some sense of what was going on. >> i just picture the two of them in there like scrolling through twitter, like, "liking" all of laura ingram's tweets. when we come back, he is usually so quick to defend the president. so why not now? we'll go inside "the washington post" blockbuster new reporting on attorney general barr turning down donald trump's request to hold a press conference to defend his perfect call with ukraine. also the gop doubles down on its attacks against colonel vindman. new reporting from our friend nick confessore on the making of a smear campaign against the first active duty military person to testify in the

impeachment probe. and outing the whistle-blower. republicans hellbent on naming the whistle-blower weeks after his account has been corroborated piece by piece by piece by a dozen witnesses including rudy giuliani and donald trump. those stories coming up. when did you see the sign? when i needed to jumpstart sales. build attendance for an event. help people find their way. fastsigns designed new directional signage. and got them back on track. get started at fastsigns.com.

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might there be trouble brewing in the bromance? blockbuster new reporting from "the washington post" details a rare riff that's beginning to open between the two men over ukraine. the "post" details an effort by

the president to get attorney general william barr, donald trump's third attorney general, to hold a press conference to announce that donald trump broke no laws on that call with the leader of ukraine at the center of his impeachment, which barr ultimately declined to do. from that "washington post" report, quote, the request from trump travelled from the white house to other white house officials and eventually to the justice department. the president has mentioned barr to associates in recent weeks saying he wished barr would have held the news conference. the justice department has sought some distance from the white house, particularly on matters related to the controversy over trump's dealings on ukraine and the impeachment inquiry. they sparked those attempts include issuing a statement after the white house released its summary from the trump/zelensky call saying the president and the a.g. hadn't spoken about investigating the bidens, denying that the a.g. had any conversations with rudy giuliani about ukraine, and

denying having any knowledge that the white house withheld military aid for help with the investigations. the press conference like the one trump sought is so on brand for barr it's easy to see why trump was so sad that it didn't work out. barr's tenure has been bookmarked by a seemingly gleeful and globetrotting that's been in the press for weeks about his pleas for assistance from foreign governments with his investigation into the origins of the russia probe. it also leads to obvious questions about why barr is seeking distance when he hasn't on equally sensitive matters like mueller and the durham investigation. could barr be worried that a closer look at his actions and his department's actions will reveal something that he has to answer for? let's bring in wf national reporter matt who is byline on that blockbuster scoop. first of all you have been getting attacked by donald trump. what's so nice is the defenses

come from everyone, the four other news organizations or three at least have matched your reporting. and it seems that there is a pattern here that when someone is so right, it hurts, trump attacks them five times like he's done with you today. >> yeah, certainly. it's never a pleasant to be on the receiving end of a trump tweet. i kind of know how jeff sessions feels now maybe. >> or rod rosenstein. >> or bob mueller or jim comey or andy mccabe, any number of these folks. the but, you know, we obviously stand by the reporting, and i'm eager to talk about it and the consequences of it. >> so take us through what you reported. >> yeah. so last night we reported that president trump wanted bill barr, his attorney general, to have a full on sort of press conference declaring that bill barr had looked through this transcript of president trump's call with his ukrainian counterpart and determined that trump broke no laws. i'm sure everyone remembers

around the time that the administration released that rough transcript. the justice department put out a statement sort of saying that. they said that officials had looked at the rough transcript of the call and determined that there was no reason to investigate campaign finance violations. but that was a written statement, and it's kind of very specific to that one issue. and trump wanted more. now, we haven't reported that he sort of directly ordered barr to do this or even had a personal conversation with barr. our understanding is it was routed from him and then it makes its way over to the justice department. barr doesn't want to do it, again for reasons that we don't know. maybe it's for his own political reasons. maybe he thinks, well, the statement is sufficient, i just don't want to get in front of the cameras. for whatever reason he doesn't want to do it. and in more recent weeks president trump has complained to associates, hey, i wanted bill barr, my attorney general to do this. everyone knows how much he loved bill barr's mueller press conference. that let the president feeling at least somewhat frustrated.

>> i alluded to this before. it's easy to understand why trump thinks that bill barr will gladly go to the doj briefing room and perform for him because it's precisely what it is viewed across the ideological spectrum that he did after the mueller probe. but, i mean, barr isn't special. donald trump wanted jim sessions, jim comey, dni dan coats, rogers and mike pompeo to all proclaim his innocence. if you're not worried about some sort of exposure, why do you want all of your officials announcing publicly that you're innocent, matt? >> right. i think president trump too is very concerned about public perception. that's why sort of a written statement isn't enough. he wants a bit of a show. he is a showman. so he wants bill barr to get out there in front of cameras. and he liked how well that went for him when bill barr did that at the end of the mueller

investigation. he liked bill barr out there saying, i think his direct quote was as the president has said there was no collusion. so the president likes when bill barr gets up and does that. but in this instance, bill barr has sought some distance. and it's not just refusing to do the press conference. but all throughout the ukraine scandal, you have seen some moments where the justice has sought some distance from the white house. >> one of them is we sort of mentioned them brief. i want to ask you if you think that there's been parsing and that there could be a shoe to drop. because it doesn't seem that barr is motivated by, just to be blunt, what you or i think of his conduct in terms of serving as attorney general for donald trump. so letting it be known or at least not denying that he wouldn't do a press conference and sort of putting out there i know the department aggressively made clear that they never would've let the head of the criminal division meet with rudy giuliani had they known sdny was

investigating him. not to know that a criminal investigation out of the largest office it runs? >> boy, that one is a little weird. because this is a campaign finance case. and all campaign finance cases, even out in the u.s. attorney's office, have to be run by the public integrity section, which is under the criminal division. now it's certainly possible that when that is run by public integrity, it's just a lev parnas and igor fruman and their names don't mean a lot and it doesn't get up to the head of the criminal division. we don't know whether rudy giuliani was actually a subject or a target at that time. but i think the weirder thing is the head of the criminal division through a spokesman coming out and saying later i never would've taken that meeting if i had known and couple that with a couple other instances. mick mulvaney sort of admits the quid pro quo and the justice department immediately says that's news to us when this transcript of the phone call comes out and the president is

offering up barr's service to help the justice department immediately comes out and says, look, the president and bill barr never talked about this before his services were offered up. so it's all of those things collectively to make it seem like on this, which is a little different than other things, bill barr and the justice department have sought some distance. >> you know, i saw you shaking your head. i want your reaction to sort of the feasibility of some of these efforts. but -- go ahead. is it really plausible these places where they are putting some distance? >> look. -- >> oh, i'm sorry. we'll come back to you, matt. >> i find it very unlikely that people at doj would not have been briefed regularly about an investigation that touched upon rudy giuliani, given his close role with the president, i just can't wrap my head around it. speaking from experience, i mean, this is not, you know, something that they just let u.s. attorneys offices go and do whatever they want, especially

in high-profile political cases such as this. i can't believe they wouldn't have wanted to be informed about sort of every step of this investigation. >> and, matt, that's what i want to come back to you on, and i want to get nick and jonathan on this too. obstruction of justice is donald trump's brand. he didn't deny it. he never really assailed the second volume of the mueller probe. he simply said, you know, it was basically -- i don't think he knew why it was his right to do it, but basically leaned on the fact that a president has the authority to do those things. i mean, this would appear to be, for student of pattern recognition, this would be his very truman pattern. he thought to interfere with the investigations in sdny through matt whitaker. he sought to have jim comey say he wasn't under investigation. he attacked rod rosenstein for the tenure of his investigation. and now he sought to have his attorney general say he hadn't broken any laws. the thread that runs through it

is when he's guilty he wants high-level people in the law and order wings of the u.s. government to say he isn't. >> yeah. to come out and do it in a very public way. i think the comey example is maybe the most parallel. so comey is telling him privately, look, sir, you are not a target of this investigation, at least not right now. but because comey won't go out and say it publicly after multiple requests, the president fires him. then insists on making that a part of sort of the firing letter. he doesn't even sort of try to hide behind the pretenses. he says thanks for telling me three times i wasn't under investigation. because it just so vexes him that jim comey won't go out and say that. maybe we are seeing the early signs of that with barr. this is not a session situation yet. but it certainly is parallel to some things we have seen in the past. >> that's right. the comey example is spot on. that is perhaps one of the largest reasons why he was fired. the president asked him

repeatedly and he wouldn't do it. barr has since earned more than comey. but certainly he has said to people around him that he finally has the attorney general he's always wanted. they've got a long way to go to be where they were with jeff sessions who the president to this day is still so angry at. he's considering actively campaigning against him for his alabama senate run. incidentally, the president will be in alabama on saturday. it's the first sort of divide between this attorney general and the president. it'll be interesting where it goes from here. >> speaking of his attitude about this, i think the most eloquent statement we can find about his kind of view of his power is that his lawyers went to a judge in new york and said actually if he kills somebody in new york he cannot be investigated for it. if that doesn't say everything about his conception of what the presidency entitles him to, i don't know what does. >> matt, it's a great piece of reporting. thank you for spending some time with us. berit, thank you for spending

some time with us. up next the anatomy of a smear campaign. how low will the president go to attack an impeachment witness? we'll be right back. cologuard: colon cancer screening for people 50 and older at average risk. i've heard a lot of excuses to avoid screening for colon cancer. i'm not worried. it doesn't run in my family. i can do it next year. no rush. cologuard is the noninvasive option that finds 92% of colon cancers. you just get the kit in the mail, go to the bathroom, collect your sample, then ship it to the lab. there's no excuse for waiting. get screened. ask your doctor if cologuard is right for you. covered by medicare and most major insurers. at outback, steak & oh no, it's gone.ck. phew, it's back with lobster mac & cheese. it's gone again. oh, it's back with shrimp now! steak & lobster starting at only $15.99. hurry in before these three are gone again. outback steakhouse.

we also know he was born in the soviet union, emigrated with his family, young. he tends to feel simpatico with ukraine. >> isn't that kind of an interesting angle on this story? >> i find that astounding. and some people might call that espionage. >> what evidence do you have that colonel vindman is a never trumper? >> we will be showing that to you real soon. >> that's who they are. real soon though has come and gone. surprise, there's been no follow-up from the white house on that comment, that threat about lieutenant colonel vindman. but make no mistake. this is a strategy, a profoundly immoral one at that, straight out of the trump playbook, falsely hinted improp rightry.

he'll tell you about that real soon. then just leave it to hang out there. your friends at fox fanning the flames. no need to follow through yourself. the mere suggestion of corrupt behavior without evidence is enough to muddy the waters so the thinking goes. if it sounds familiar, recall donald trump's comment about u.s. ambassador to the ukraine marie yovanovitch. trump said this, quote, she is going to go through some things. he said it to the ukrainian president. it's a comment the ambassador has testified to, and she's also testified to the fact that she still feels threatened. but the smearing of vindman predates that episode on the white house lawn and the attacks from fox news for that matter. our friend nick confessori notes that by the time trump made that comment, the attack on colonel vindman's character and motives. that "new york times" report then goes big picture.

quote, while the white house has scrambled to mount an organized response to the house impeachment inquiry, there is no consistent message from mr. trump's team in little formal guidance to surrogates. twitter has become trump's war room. the president and his supporters including his family have used twitter to frame his defense, torch his democratic inquiz tomorrows and try to undermine public officials like colonel vindman. joining us is mark leibovich and emily jane. it's your reporting, take us through it. >> well, this is a story of how impeachment is being bought from the white house. and here we have an attack on vindman that started with a tweet storm by a retired army colonel who is disabled. he says i remember that i served with vindman on an exercise in europe with russian/u.s. forces in 2013, and i overheard him saying things about globalism

speak positively of obama and the agenda of obama and i think he's a partisan hack and i think he's a bad guy. and he goes on with this for a while. then it moves its way from this guy's twitter feed into donald trump jr.'s twitter feed. that went out to millions and millions of people it. >> moves through the alt-right conveyor belt. on which the threat comes from. and it's important to point out first of all if it's true which we are not sure it is, he said something nice about obama. he was talking with some russian officers. his job at the time was to be a foreign area officer. so in a sense talking to the russian reporters, he is supposed to talk to russian soldiers and try to get information out of them. but even so, it shows you the tactic here is to cast dispersions on his motives and his character. they can't knock down the facts

or what he's saying. so you have this swarm on social media coming out and saying, look, he is a bad guy, check this guy out. >> you and i are old enough to have been around campaigns peddling in oppo. but campaigns have been used in smears, lies, since the beginning of time. but if the smear ends up in a petri dish with normal politicians on the right and left around them, that usually, you know, is the disinfectant and reporters fact-checking them, those are the disinfectants in the petri dish of lies and smears. now in the petri dish, you have donald trump's son, donald trump jr. even his friends say he isn't the smartest of offspring. you have no moral compass inside the political leadership of the republican party. you also have dead men walking. so in that petri dish it grows and it grows and it grows. and you see on cable television

smears against a military man. >> right. i think there are a couple points worth making. one, social media is a graveyard of social conscience in any way, shape or form. but this doesn't just appear on social media. what you can't see are the threats, are the disruptions to these people's lives, you know, what their families go through. i mean, there is a lot of sort of accounting now of what people who get into the crosshairs of donald trump of his twitter followers, you know, what happens to them. and it really does mess with their lives in a big way. the other thing is donald trump has somewhat successfully turned the term "never-trump" into kind of a catch-all smear. if his approval rating is, say, about 40, 60% of the country presumably does not like trump, which technically i guess would make them people who are not going to vote for him or would never vote for him. maybe 50% or something like that. i guess by a clinical term,

mostly it's republicans like originally who weren't supporting him in '16 and that group has sort of grown. >> i think he is usually talking about romney. >> anyone who was against him. >> or mccain. in his head he is usually talking about five people. jeb bush, mitt romney and john mccain. >> for the bulwark a lot of people contribute here. and, look, you know who they are. we all know who they are. and dhefz been very vocal and very, very willing to attack donald trump from the right. it obviously bothers him more than sort of the garden variety attacks from the left. but i do think that being a never-trumper in his world is a terrible thing. if someone is serving in government and they are not for donald trump, they are a never-trumper and that should be interchanged with the notion of treason or something. >> it's all about branding. that's what this is that they have branded anyone who is not or who has gotten in his way,

who has gotten in the way of the narrative that spent to spin it off of the ukraine story, as someone who is disloyal to this country. but the only way through this is to brand anyone who's not for them aggressively as disloyal and disloyal to the president, disloyal to the country. >> unbelievable. after the break republicans seeking to unmask the whistle-blower going a step further today what they had planned for the person who sparked the impeachment inquiry. that's next. for better things than rheumatoid arthritis or psoriatic arthritis. when considering another treatment, ask about xeljanz xr, a once-daily pill for adults with moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis or active psoriatic arthritis for whom methotrexate did not work well enough. it can reduce pain, swelling, and significantly improve physical function. xeljanz can lower your ability to fight infections like tb;

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he's a baby! outing the whistle-blower. an escalation today in the threat against the whistle-blower whose complaint put in motion the entire impeachment process. congressman and trump defender jim jordan today saying republicans intend to subpoena the whistle-blower as part of the impeachment investigation despite laws designed to protect whistle-blowers' identities. though, democrats are almost certain to block any moves to out the whistle-blower, jordan's announcement has an ominous ring to it. it's the day after donald trump jr. tweeted the name of someone he says is the whistle-blower. a name we won't repeat for obvious reasons. trump has tweeted attacks on the

whistle-blower at least 79 ti times. >> so what we're seeing here with the attempt to go after the whistle-blower, even though virtually everything the whistle-blower has said has been corroborated. by witnesses, frankly by the memo the white house put out. is an attempt to roll back a part of what they did to combat the robert mueller special counsel investigation. where if they can't find on the facts of the investigation, they try to find those involved with the investigation. in this case, the whistle-blower. trying to damage this person's credibility. trying to suggest that this person was an obama stooge. or in their words, try to say this person had an agenda to undermine this president. and of course, that -- the whistle-blower at this point is almost a minor part of the story. you know -- >> i mean, the whistle-blower part of the story to me feels like be careful what you wish for. i mean, the whistle-blower could bring down -- my understanding is the whistle-blower went to the cia general council. the cia general counsel went to the white house's counsel's office. the whistle-blower still represents a part of the story

where the white house has major -- >> no question. but it is just a part of the story. and it's obviously the impeachment inquiry is moving at a pace on so many other lanes. so yes, the president has been frustrated with this. he is trying to make the whistle-blower the lisa page of this story where these were people that sort of refresh the audience memory. who were fbi agents as part of the russia investigation who did not seem to be fans of president trump. there were text messages discovered. now, there was no suggestion that their dislike for trump biased the investigation. >> right. >> but there were people that became almost shorthand though for this sort of deep state anti-trump movement. >> but you look at just the difference between how the public processed the mueller probe, there was never i don't think more than 40% of the public supported impeachment. you've got 55% supporting impeachment and removal. and part of because you're all reporters, the whistle-blower was like a tip that comes into any of your newsrooms. i mean, the whistle-blower gave the tip. donald trump confessed to half the things in it.

rudy confessed to the other half. and witnesses have corroborated it. >> he i think is in their kind of pr campaign at this point to try to create a shady, nefarious character at the middle of this even if he's kind of peripheral at this point. i think it's almost as if they think we're going to get impeached anyway. if this adds another count to it or adds a little bit to their case, who cares? we're going to do it. we might as well use this as fodder for our campaign of public opinion. but i mean obviously, you know, playing so fast and loose with this when you're talking about the president's son and who knows who else will name him is a pretty slippery slope. >> you know, talking about brand. i mean, trump's brand is too weak to win without foreign help. >> sure. and their strategy in that brand seems to be let's forget about anything that we've ever done. let's put this on these -- these nameless people who we can completely characterize in the way that we want to. and there's a bad guy that he can name at a rally over and over again and don jr. can tweet

about, that's all they need. they need a foil. donald trump made hillary a foil in 2016. he's now making the whistle-blower a foil. what i thought today was especially disheartening and pretty lame was don trump jr.'s explanation for why he tweeted out the name or alleged name. he said i don't understand why the media is so outraged by me tweeting this. no one was outraged when they sent a letter filled with white powder to my house. had nothing to do with it. it just felt like the lamest possible justification for that. >> it's the same tactic over and over and over again, which is that everyone is on the take. everyone has a motive. and you can't believe anything anyone says except for me. from the fake news media to vindman to 12 angry democrats and bob mueller, and now to the whistle-blower. same over and over again. avoid the facts. avoid the actual facts at hand. it's all about motive. they're all bad guys. listen to me. trust only me. that's his main political tactic for all purposes. >> and he -- and he did it

earlier. i mean, i think it was more than a year ago that he said don't believe what you see. >> right. >> don't believe what you hear. don't believe what you read. only believe me. i mean, he told us this was how he was going to survive. >> and there's a portion of the country that does just that. i think this whistle-blower, let's remember what the person's attorney tweeted in the last 24 hours. this is putting someone's life in jeopardy. the president of the united states who has 66 million twitter followers and even bigger following throughout the country is tweeting very ominous things about him. senator rand paul has threatened to announce who this person is from the senate floor. there will be -- i mean, figuratively if not literally a target on this person's back and i think that is something that everyone should be really concerned about as we go forward. >> oh, god. we're going to sneak in our last break. we'll be right back. g to sneak t break. we'll be right back. it's tough to quit smoking cold turkey.

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my thanks to mark, emily jane fox, jonathan, nick. most of all, to you for watching especially as we're reading and ripping and reading. that does it for our hour. "mtp daily" with chuck todd starts now. welcome to thursday. it's "meet the press daily." good evening. i'm chuck todd here in washington where it's been another busy day in the impeachment front. new deposition transcripts and some new testimony. today, house investigators released the transcript of the deposition with one of the state department's top diplomats george kent. kent testified about president trump's desire for a commitment from ukraine to investigate his political opponents and that rudy giu