♪for the holidays you can't beat home sweet home.♪ the united states postal service goes the extra mile to bring your holidays home. ♪ welcome to "kasie dc." i'm geoff bennett. tonight no rest for the weary. capitol hill usually quiet on the weekends. buzz is on with new testimony, new depositions and new angles as we prepare for another nonstop week of impeachment. we get information from figures with first-hand knowledge about the fateful call between president trump and president zelensky and what set off alarm bells for trump appointees. and later with gun safety

measures totally stalled between the congress and the white house, i talk to senator richard blumenthal as america grapples with another mass shooting. a remarkable speech from the attorney general. >> one of the ironies of today is that those who oppose this president constantly accuse this administration of shredding constitutional norms and waging a war on the rule of law. while the president has certainly thrown out the traditional beltway playbook and punctilio. [ laughter ] [ applause ] he was up front about what he was going to do and the people decided they wanted him to serve as president. [ applause ] >> so we are going to talk a lot about that speech in a bit with

a story in jon meacham. the weekends are just as revealing as the weekdays. already this weekend a deposition from mark sandy, a senior budget office official. now we don't yet know the substance of what he said. but intelligence committee chairman adam schiff said in part, quote, if acting white house chief of staff mick mulvaney had evidence that contradicted what we've already heard, he'd be eager to testify and provide documents. instead he is hiding behind and insisting in trump's efforts to conceal the truth from the american people. then transcripts were released of the closed-door testimony of vice president pence aid jennifer williams and former national security council official timothy morrison. that key july 25th phone call between president trump and ukrainab president zelensky with williams saying it was, quote, unusual and inappropriate and related to president trump's personal agenda. and morrison telling investigators he, quote, was not concerned that anything illegal

was discussed. morrison did, however, acknowledge, that during that phone call in question, he connected the president's references to investigating the 2016 election in the bidens to his previous conversations with gordon sondland. gordon sondland of course is the u.s. ambassador to the european union. now morrison said that it wasn't until a later conversation with sondland who sondland had said had direct access to the president that morrison felt a, quote, sinking feeling and realized that u.s. military aid to ukraine might be on the line. and with that i'd like to welcome in my panel for the night. with me on set here is kong regulation rational reporter for politico andrew who america got to see up close behind the ambassador bill taylor during that first public hearing on wednesday. you see him right there. also with me is white house correspondent jeff mason. and joining us from new york former nrcc communications director matt gorman. and news executive and former washington bureau chief for vice news, shawnna thomas. and, andrew, i want to start

with you. because since friday you had david holmes, the current state department official testifying about how he heard president trump and gordon sondland on a phone call. >> out to a restaurant in kiev. >> and president trump he says was checking in on the investigations. you have mark sandy on the hill testifying behind closed doors and the committee has also released the transcripts of jennifer williams and tim morrison. so what, from all of this, struck you as new and significant? >> any and everything that brings us to wednesday when gordon sondland testifies before the house intelligence committee is, i think, the most notable development over the last few days. the first thing being david holmes who is the embassy official in kiev witnessing gordon sondland and donald trump talking about the investigations during that conversation according to his opening statement which we now have. mr. holmes said that ambassador sondland told president trump that ukraine was ready to move forward with these investigations. that's yet another data point connecting this to the president

that democrats are using here to try to make their case for impeachment. the second thing being yesterday what we learned in tim morrison's deposition which was that ambassador sondland told him that everything he was doing was at president trump's behest. so anything that democrats can use to connect this further to president trump via gordon sondland, is going to be i think the best way to make their case more iron clad as they go through these public hearings. >> and jeff mason, president trump says he is not rattled by any of this. but his tweets tell a different story. he of course rage-tweeted at marie. and then today president trump tweeted this about jennifer williams. he says tell jennifer williams, whoever that is, to read both transcripts of the presidential calls and see the just released statement from ukraine. that spelling error is his, not ours. then she should meet with the other never-trumpers who i don't know and mostly never even heard of that work out of a better presidential attack. the first tweet appeared to be

an unforced error because democrats said they would use that in a potential separate article of impeachment. but what do you think is going on here? >> well, a few different things. i think that first tweet on friday definitely was seen as an unforced error, i think not only by democrats but also by republicans who struggle to defend that. with regard to the latest one i think it's part of a strategy to discredit in advance and afterwards in this case because she's testified once and will testify again. the witnesses and the people who are involved in these hearings and doing that sending it out by twitter giving his base sort of ginned up about it is a way for him to unleash that sense of rattledness but also to undermine. >> let's talk a bit more about the testimony from tim morrison because he is the top nsc aid who has been featured as a recurring character in the

formal national security adviser john bolton's testimony. so morrison described a previously reported one on one meeting in which bolton seemed to convince the president to unfreeze military aid to ukraine. he says it ultimately ended with bolton saying trump wasn't ready to do it. and that he was then instructed to round up cabinet secretaries and top national security advisers to have them make their case to trump. morrison also testified about his repeated attempts to inform john bolton of his concerns about gordon sondland. and morrison says bolton initially told him, quote, essentially ignore him, don't talk to him. he also said, quote, my consistent direction from ambassador bolton was do not get involved and make sure the lawyers are tracking. all right, shawnna. i just said john bolton's name about 37 times there. and yet house democrats don't expect to hear from him in this impeachment inquiry. but do you think they have to, do you think they need to hear from him in order to make this

ironclad case to the american people? >> i mean, i think it would be helpful to hear from him. i am sure they really, really want to know what he knows, when he knew it. and also how much is this related to him deciding that he could not be the national security adviser anymore? even though there are some questions about how that all went down. clearly something bothered him about this. and he clearly also wanted to distance himself from this situation. but the thing is what we're sort of seeing right now is like concentric circles closer to the president. the republicans basically said this week, hey, these people who testified didn't really talk to the president, weren't on this phone call, what do they know, hearsay, all of that. but what we know from tim morrison's testimony and what we know from jennifer williams' testimony is we are now getting closer to that phone call because they were on that phone call. so anything that continues to connect the dots -- bolton is one thing but to the president is the most interesting thing. i also think that with president trump's tweets, one thing he's

able to do in some ways is actually pre-but these people because we have the transcripts. a lot of america hasn't sat down and read these transcripts of morrison and williams. but he has the ability to do that. but the democrats also have the ability to preview what they expect thim to say. but everybody gets to try to spin this before we actually see these people. >> yeah. hey, matt, to shawna's point as this case gets closer and closer to president trump, you have house speaker nancy pelosi today on one of the sunday shows making the point to the president basically to put up or shut up. here she is speaking on "face the nation" this morning. >> do you think you will go through all of this and not vote to impeach the president? >> that remains the facts and the president has information that demonstrates his innocence which we haven't seen.

his transcript of a phone call is tucked away in a high sensitive compartmentalized intelligence server. so we can't see that. if he has information that is exculpatory, taking away blarjs then we look forward to seeing it. >> so how do republicans answer that? she is saying if republicans have information, if the trump administration has information that's exculpatory, then it seems to mean they'd be knocking down the doors to tell that story, and they are not. >> this is a political fight, not a legal fight. so what is innocence? i think that's a key point. again, trump's not going to jail if he's impeached. he is simply being removed from his political office. and i think again even though essentially nancy pelosi might've been conflating the two, this is essentially an indictment from the house. the actual jury trial will be in the senate. but, look, i think the challenge

here among democrats is they need something that's easily digestible for the general public. they need very easy, simple takeaways that we saw during watergate. certainly the clinton impeachment hearing had a lot of that. and i think that's where the trump tweets come in. there was something that was easily digestible. if you continue to have trump tweeting, i think the democrats are really going to try and bait him into doing so, especially as gordon sondland, but also alexander vindman testify a little bit later this week. these are things that can really help break through and might improve their case. >> andrew, there was a time, it's hard to believe this now, but there was a time when the house speaker was resistant to impeachment, so resistant to it that she wouldn't even use the phrase impeachment inquiry because she thought to say that would lend it legitimacy. i asked her one time in the press conference and she said she was resistant to it because she said it would be a long, arduous process that would be

divisive and that president trump wasn't worth it. and yet it appears nancy pelosi was right. this is a long, arduous and divisive process and so far it appears to be entirely partisan. >> and that's exactly what i was going to say. she also said she wanted there to be bipartisan buy-in which at the time seemed like a pipe dream before these ukraine-related allegations came out. but nancy pelosi was very hesitant to launch this impeachment inquiry. she has said before in recent weeks that she felt like she had to after these revelations came out. but republicans have been sort of trying to use that against her and say, look, you shouldn't be launching into an impeachment process that is entirely one-sided and it's entirely from the democrats' point of view. but just to push back against that a little bit. the republicans have basically equal time in these hearings to make their case. and it's being undercut when the president tweets things. republicans didn't even want to go there. they didn't even want to join

in, in those sort of character assassinations. john ratcliffe was asked about that tweet. and he did the fake phone call. i think that perfectly encapsulates the frustrations that republicans have with the way that the president is handling it versus how they are going about defending him. >> and jeff mason, president trump has said all along he wants republicans to defend him on the merits. they haven't really done that. but has president trump felt good about the ways in which republicans have tried to rally around him in these hearings? >> the people who i have talked to have said in some ways yes. again we refer back to the frustration that we see on his own twitter account and i think sometimes when that comes out, if somebody else isn't making that argument that he feels he needs to. but there's certainly been a lot of outreach between the white house and people on the hill, more than at the very beginning of this process. i spoke to a source yesterday who talked about having invited people from the hill over for movie nights in the east wing of the white house and having them

come to camp david, really getting them on message so that republicans can go out and defend the president in a way that makes him pleased. >> i wonder what movie they showed in the anti-impeachment party? [ laughter ] >> the president makes a visit to walter reed for part of a physical, but the way the white house press team handles it is raising eyebrows. plus, jon meacham joins us with a look at this moment as only he can as we learn the president tried to stack the deck for his doral resort in the g7 summit. later i am joined by ray mavis as the president pardons three service members accused of war crimes. crimes we present limu emu & doug with this key to the city. [ applause ] it's an honor to tell you that liberty mutual customizes your car insurance so you only pay for what you need. and now we need to get back to work. [ applause and band playing ]

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one could certainly argue that this past week was a difficult one for president trump setting aside impeachment entirely. his lawyers took the fight over his tax returns to the supreme court in a last-ditch effort to keep them from public view. then his long-time confidant roger stone was convicted on all seven counts against him. and the "wall street journal" reported that federal prosecutors are probing whether giuliani expected to personally profit. the now indicted lev parnas and igor fruman. he has joked that he has very good insurance. joining the conversation now is nbc news correspondent covering national security and

intelligence my friend ken dilanian. ken, good to see you this sunday evening. which of these headlines we just ripped through do you think pose the biggest direct threat to president trump? >> i am going to say the rudy giuliani matter because i did some reporting a while back on parnas and fruman and their efforts to profit in ukraine. i've long thought that, you know, they weren't just doing this to help donald trump. i mean, they had a business plan in mind. they were trying to get a very lucrative natural gas deal. and if rudy giuliani somehow had a stake in that, and that appears to be what's being investigated, that will add a further dimension and make this whole ukraine matter look even worse than it does right now. >> we are not in the speculate business, we are in the reporting business, but i am going to ask you to speculate anyway. do you think that roger stone gets a pardon? >> that trump tweet sure suggested that that's possible. and this was an overwhelming case. yet stone put up very little defense and everybody watching

the trial knew he was going to be convicted and so why do that unless you are thinking that you're going to get a pardon? >> there was something that i saw come out of this entire roger stone episode where apparently he told president trump about the wikileaks dump before it happened. did he testify to that in court? >> no, no, no, roger stone did not testify. he did not take the stand. they played an excerpt of his testimony to the house intelligence committee. i mean, what this trial showed is that stone was in touch with donald trump. >> got it. >> all throughout his efforts to get an early look at the wikileaks dump and figure out how they could deploy it against hillary clinton. now prosecutors don't have the recordings of those calls but they sure presented a case and suggested that donald trump knew. then they presented rick gates who testified that he overheard a conversation between stone and trump where stone was saying, you know, a wikileaks dump is on the way. donald trump's credibility was on trial as well as roger stone. and it was found wanting. >> matt, what about that, what

kind of hit do you think this entire drama, this roger stone drama presents to president trump's credibility at large? >> i think certainly certainly with the wikileaks i think that is probably something they are going to explore. the roger stone, donald trump essentially marriage over the last 30 years has been rocky at best. he was on the outs and he was back in. roger stone, i mean. and so this whole thing developed from roger stone being on the outs of trump world, so to speak, so he concocted this back channel and had to sell it to trump. but i think in a lot of respects roger stone is, i think, a product of his own narcissism and ego and i never understood his reputation, whether it's a dirty trickster, what have you. i think the whole point of a dirty trickster is to not be known as one. as for the pardon, i'm not sure, i think ken would probably have

more insight into that. but it wouldn't surprise me either way. >> yeah. and, shawna, rudy giuliani says he's got receipts that if president trump tries to throw him under the bus, he has his own insurance policy of sorts. unpack that for us. >> i mean, who knows what rudy giuliani means when he says that. we know rudy giuliani knows a lot of people. we know he's been in a lot of rooms. we will see if that actually comes to fruition. i don't know if he's trying to scare the president of the united states or whatever. but we'll see. but i do think there is something that i have notice when did it comes to roger stone as well as the testimony we saw in the hill during the impeachment hearings. roger stone was convicted. the system apparently worked, as ken said, this was basically an open and shut case that he was convicted of lying to condition res which means there was something in our system that said, hey, you can't do that, and we are actually going to punish you for it. what we also saw in the hill this week was ambassador taylor and mr. kent and ambassador yovanovitch. and they talked about their jobs

and the fact that they are part of the government, that they want to help these countries do better, that they are part of a system that still kind of maybe works. there was like this little light of good right now amongst all this, like, crazy washington, d.c. stuff that some of the systems, some of the processes in place do actually get to function. >> jeff mason, i want to switch gears here and talk about the president's unannounced visit this weekend to walter reed medical center yesterday. the white house says it was a quick routine exam and the first phase of his annual physical. but trump has had two previous physical exams as president trump. both of which were on the schedule with advanced warning. now here's white house press secretary stephanie grisham in an interview last night on fox news talking about this. >> the rumors are always flying. absolutely not. he is healthy as can be. i put a statement out about that. he's got more energy than anybody in the white house. that man works from 6:00 a.m.

until, you know, very, very late at night. he's doing just fine. >> the problem is, and i will put on my hat here as an nbc white house correspondent. this white house has burned its credibility on matters big and small. and so when you have an issue as critical as the president's health, you can't take her word at face value. >> it was unusual how it happened. the press pool accompanied the president to walter reed, which was normal. the pool goes with the president and presidents before president trump, wherever they go in town or out of town. it's unusual from a messaging perspective. i mean, they could have honestly just said he was going to meet and visit with wounded troops there because he ended up doing that, at least one. but they gave sort of this statement about half of a physical which doesn't really make sense which is why so many questions have been asked. >> my thanks to jeff mason,

andrew. i'll see you sometime this week in the halls. and matt gorman and shawna thomas. coming up, blame it on mercury in retrograde, but it's just another friday at the white house. jon meacham gives us a view of how this commander in chief's behavior sits in the context of american history. stay with us. he context of american history stay with us compelling new evidence goes public. the gop pushes back on the eve of another pivotal week of public hearings. ari melber has the latest. "impeachment: white house in crisis" tonight at 9:00 on msnbc. 9:00 on msnbc. ahh no, come on. i saw you eating poop earlier. hey! my focus is on the road, and that's saving me cash with drivewise. who's the dummy now? whoof! whoof! so get allstate where good drivers save 40% for avoiding mayhem, like me.

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even by trump administration standards, friday was an unprecedented day for breaking political norms. there was the call to the supreme court to keep eight years of tax returns from being handed over. on friday he also intervened in the cases of three u.s. military members who were either accused or convicted of war crimes. the "new york times" reports the pardons show president trump, quote, intends to use his power as the ultimate arbiter of military justice in ways unlike any other president in modern times. it was friday that we also learned the president's miami-area resort was added to the list of g7 location contenders at the last minute in an apparent effort to appease president trump. but after doral was announced as the host location, two days later plans were scrapped after a bipartisan outcry. the rnc says it still plans to hold their winter retreat there.

and it was friday that the president upended his party's strategy during the public hearing with former ambassador marie yovanovitch. democrats called his tweets that you see right there witness intimidation in realtime. >> what effect do you think that has on other witnesses' willingness to come forward and expose wrongdoing? >> well, it's very intimidating. >> joining me now is presidential historian and msnbc contributor jon meacham. and mr. meacham, every day as you well know in the trump administration is different and consequential in its own way. but what struck you about all the events that unfolded on friday in particular? >> it's kind of an elective madness. we've had incredibly hectic presidencies before. you think about john kennedy with the berlin wall, the cuban missile crisis, the bay of pigs,

civil rights, just incredibly complicated and consequential thousand days. you think about president johnson and the great society, the struggle over civil rights. but those were driven by events as much as they were by presidential behavior. in fact, the presidency throughout much of our history has been about the individual holding the office responding to attempting to manage that which has unfolded in reality. what president trump has done is done everything he can, and interestingly not always to his own benefit to create his own reality. almost everything you just listed is something he electively chose to do. so when we come at some point to right the history of this era, it's going to be incredibly complicated. but i suspect in an interesting way president trump would have been pleased with that because without question he is the central figure of the age.

he is the central figure on the midst of the stage who has dominated our mindshare, our cultural and political mindshare since 2015. and one of the things that i think people have to decide, we the people in the constitution is to what extent do we think the republic should continue to unfold as an audience for one man? and at what point will we reassert ourselves as an active part? >> that's such a great point that you make. because in listening to the many state department officials who testified last week, the takeaway for me is that they were explaining implicitly really why democrats are going about this impeachment inquiry on national security grounds. i think it was ambassador taylor who mentioned that the president's ukraine maneuvers not -- it wasn't just him using his public office for personal gain. he was upending some three decades of policy that was meant

to make ukraine successful in a legitimate state, and that the success of ukraine is enexlikbly linked to the united states. did you have a similar takeaway in listening to them testify this past week? >> absolutely. and i think all three witnesses were particularly compelling on that. i have argued for a long time, and i believe that in many ways the trump era is an exacerbation, a broad manifestation of perineal american sorss. synophobia, racism, extremism, extreme position, all of those isms have been part of who we are since the beginning and will be part of who we are forever. and right now they're flowing. so that's where this is on a conum. where it's not on a continuum to go straight to your question is in many ways you can look at american life from 1933 to 2017

as a kind of figurative conversation between franklin roosevelt and ronald reagan. as different as the presidents were, as different as the congresses were, this is not sont mental, it's not that everybody was wearing frock coats. ask george wallace, ferocious battles. but it was on a continuum. and it was two central questions had to be asked and answered, and one very much came up with ambassador taylor in particular this week, which is to what extent will the state play a role in the economy. that's one question, fdr represented one extreme, president reagan the other and everybody through president obama kind of governed in that conversation. and then the second question, particularly about foreign policy was what's the relative projection of force and influence against commonly agreed upon foes and rivals? and you could argue that somebody was more diplomatic,

somebody else was more, took a more military approach. but that was the conversation. this is not part of that. this is a part where that conversation has been disrupted. i sometimes think of it as remember the peanut's holiday specials where the characters could understand each other but the grownups went womp-womp. this is kind of a womp-womp in american history. >> jon meacham, sit tight because i want to get your reaction to the remarkable speech from the attorney general. here is a preview of what barr says about norms. >> the fact of the matter is that in waging a scorched earth, no holds barred war of resistance against this administration. it is the left that is engaged in the systematic shredding of norms and undermining the rule of law. [ applause ]

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nearly lost among this week's impeachment coverage were remarks from attorney general bill barr delivered friday night at a conference for the federalist society in washington. he decried the weakening power of the executive branch that he says is undermining the rule of law. take a look at this. >> i deeply admire the american presidency as a political and

constitutional institution. unfortunately over the past several decades, we have seen the steady encroachment on executive authority by the other branches of government. this process i think has substantially weakened the function of the presidency to the detriment of the nation. immediately after president trump won election, opponents inaugurated what they called the resistance. and they rallied around an explicit strategy of using every tool and maneuver to sabotage the functioning of the executive branch. i don't deny that congress has some implied authority to conduct oversight as an incident to which legislative power. but the sheer volume of what we see today, the pursuit of scores of parallel investigations

through an avalanche of subpoenas is plainly designed to incapacitate the executive branch and indeed is touted as such. the fact of the matter is that in waging a scorched earth, no holds barred war of resistance against this administration, it is the left that is engaged in the systematic shredding of norms and undermining the rule of law. [ applause ] >> all right. jon meacham and ken dilanian are back with me. did the attorney general know there was a camera in the room? it's one thing for an a.g. to have sort of a sweeping view of the broad authority of the executive. but that was something else. >> richard painter, former ethics chief under the bush administration called it a lunatic authoritarian speech and that may have been one of the more milder reactions i saw on twitter and elsewhere. he veered from a sort of an

esoteric constitutional argument right into extreme partisanship. sort of played into the worst notions of what democrats and independents fear that bill barr is all about. and he took a side here. he basically sought to normalize all of this behavior you were talking about in your last segment. he used this word, punctilio suggesting that, look, donald trump is doing some beltway norms but this is no big deal. just in my world the intelligence community. he went out to -- trump went out to the cia, gave a speech in front of the wall of stars commemorating fallen cia officers, barely mentioned the stars, talked about his crowd size. and that set the tone. he has denigrated intelligence officers. he has refused to accept the idea that unanimous assessment that russia hacked the 2016 election. so this isn't just punctilia. and bill barr has now said no

big deal. >> mr. meacham, i'd like to have you weigh in on this. what do you think the founding fathers would have thought about that speech? and seriously, does bill barr have a point? is the power of the executive office weakening? >> no. it's not. i could go on, and we could take the rest of the week and deconstruct the speech. no. it's irrational in a way and i mean that in a literal sense. the american revolution was supposed to be about reason taking a stand against passion in the arena, we respond to data and fact. and what the attorney general was doing is -- to call it a strawman is kind of an insult to strawman everywhere. this idea that the presidency has been weakened. the presidency has been weakened in terms of moral authority and in terms of his capacity to convince foreign leaders that he means what he's saying. but that's because of the occupant of the presidency, not the institution itself. the presidency is vastly more

powerful than the founders would've envisioned. it has been a steady growth, george herbert walker bush used to call mission creep. we can argue about that in a scholarly and democratic lower case-d way all we want. what's so enraging, that's a little strong -- what's so upsetting about the attorney general saying something like is this is a scholarly gloss on the basic trumper characteristic of grab as much authority as you can, say whatever it takes in order to set up a position in the public arena that people who are just passing by will say, oh, that must be true because someone important just said it. and, you know, george w. bush, barack obama, both enjoyed executive power. if you think that it's only the left that is blowing up norms, i

refer you to call judge garland tonight and see how things are going on the supreme court. and ask people who went through the benghazi hearings. ask people who went through fast and furious. it's just -- and i think what's insidious about this, with all respect to the attorney general, is he is lending an air of gravitas to an argument that i don't believe is tethered to reality and tends to shore up reflexive idealogically driven support for a particular person, not for the office which he's pretending i think to be defending. >> brilliant insights from the both of you. i appreciate that. jon meacham and ken dilanian, thanks so much. when we come back, president trump overrules military leaders clearing three servicemembers accused of war crimes. i will talk with former secretary of the navy ray mavis about what it do put american servicemen and women in danger.

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are ordered to leave last month. nbc's richard engel says the kurds are still under attack by turkey, even as recent as early this morning. he also reports the kurds are appalled that as these attacks continue, president trump went through with a visit for turkey's president erdogan at the white house earlier this past week. in as axios first reported while in the oval office president erdogan used his ipad to play propaganda video that depicted kurds as terrorists. joining me to talk about that is former secretary of the u.s. navy ray mabus. it's great to talk to you. >> great to be here. >> and what thoughts go through your mind when you see video of russian troops taking over an abandoned u.s. base? >> it's just another fallout of this withdrawal, this shameful withdrawal, this betrayal of allies that we have had.

the kurds fought with us, lost 11,000 people, 11,000 casualties, fighting isis with us. and so what you've seen is you've seen us pull our troops out based on a tweet, not any sort of plan, not any concern or care about what was going to happen. you've seen turkey attack and continue to attack, even though they claim there's a cease fire. you've seen atrocities that you've got footage of now committed by the turkish forces or people fighting with the turks and you've displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians. and now you see russia and this russian flag flying over a base that we built, flying their aircraft off of a runway we built. this was a huge, huge bonus and

gift to russia, to assad and syria, to isis, to iran. and there's just no way to spin it, to make it look good. the president welcomed erdogan into the office. he said he was a big fan of a strong man, a person that is attacking people, killing civilians and generally turns a relatively peaceful part of syria that had been calmed down after this atrocious civil war into one of the fierce battlegrounds now in the middle east. >> and as you know, president trump cleared three members of the armed services friday of war crimes that they were accused of

committing while serving in afghanistan and iraq. "the new york times" reports that top military leaders have pushed back against this. help us understand the consequences, even the unattended consequences of president trump making a move like this. >> this is bad any way you look at it. first it dishonors the tens of thousands, tens of thousands of americans who have served in those two theaters, who went to war willingly and who didn't murder people in cold blood, didn't commit war crimes. this just dishonors them. those tens of thousands of americans, in the words in the marine hymn, kept their honor clean. secondly, it undermines our whole military justice system. that's what we depend on, to keep good order and discipline in the ranks, that people know that if you do something like this, you're going to be held

accountable. you're going to be held accountable by our military justice system. in one case, a person was found guilty of cold blooded murder, sentenced to 19 years. the other one, the person was charged with murder, hadn't even gone to trial yet, been pardoned. and the third one, the navy s.e.a. s.e.a.l., where the prosecution was just a messed but reduced in rank by one grade has been restored. the message this sends to people is you're not going to be held accountable. you can do whatever you want to. there are no consequences for really bad acts. and, as i said, it completely dishonors those americans who have fought and many of them who have died in iraq and afghanistan without feeling the need to do these horrendous breaches of law.

>> one of the questions of our day is how much donald trump has changed the presidency. the presidency hasn't changed him that much. how much do you think he has changed the role of commander in chief? >> well, one of the things that the american military really needs and should expect is stability and one thing he has taken away is leadership by tweet. being a commander in chief without checking with people, without trying to understand what the consequences of his policy will be. taking the military by surprise. changing our policy on a whim, not to advance american interests but evidently, like in the case in turkey and syria, just to appease a strong man, just to suck up to a strong man in that part of the world.

and that is a very, very dangerous trend. the other thing that he has done, he keeps referring to members of the military as my generals. they're not his generals. they swear an oath to the constitution of the united states. they don't swear an oath to any president or any particular person. they swear an oath that says i will defend and protect the constitution of the united states against all enemies, foreign and domestic. >> secretary ray mabus, thank you. appreciate it. next, weighing through hundreds of pages of new documents just out this weekend in the impeachment inquiry. plus i talk live with senator richard blumenthal about the failure of congress to stop gun violence in america. and in his latest edition of "on assignment" richard engel

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kyiv. the member of my staff could hear president trump on the phone, asking ambassador sondland about the investigations. >> of course, statements like that had republicans issuing defenses like these. >> in any event, it's more secondhand information. >> secondhand, thirdhand, and even fourth-hand rumors and innuendo. >> so-and-so said such and such to so-and-so. >> we're not going to let him be convicted in the senate base on hearsay. >> a career foreign service officer named david holmes, testified he did, indeed, overhear that phone call between the president and sondland in which the president asked sondland if ukraine would follow through with an investigation into the bidens, and the american people will get to hear from sondland himself, who also has a great deal of firsthand knowledge when he testifies publicly wednesday. brand new reporting out from

"the wall street journal" make his upcoming testimony all the more intriguing. emails obtained from the paper say in the lead-up to that call gordon kept administration officials apprised of the ukraine push. sondland emailed a group of officials, including mulvaney and rick perry, saying that zelensky would open those investigations he wanted. the reporter who broke that story, wall street journal white house reporter rebecca bathouse. walk me through these emails. >> reporter: one question that sondland is certainly going to get on wednesday in addition to being asked about the call with trump you just mentioned is who in the white house and the administration did he keep

informed of his efforts to push for these investigations? because a key defense from him and from others has been that people in the administration knew what they were doing. bolton, for example, was also aware of what he was doing and they never told him directly to shut it down. and i think that gives us a lot more information about what sort of people in the white house were thinking in the lead-up to this call between trump and zelensky that we've heard so much about. >> it seems the reporting in your piece will only strengthen democrats' argument that they have to hear from people like mick mulvaney and rick perry who are implicated in this campaign. >> things based on hearsay, the democrats do and have tried to hear from people like mulvaney and perry, but they also don't want to hold up the impeachment

proceedings that go through lengthy court battles that seem like would be required in order to get these people to testify. >> what is the summary of gordon sondland's testimony on swens, i think he's supposed to appear. he paid the $1 million inauguration donation to get the job he now has and in his testimony, some of it at least, he's implicating trump. >> i think trump anticipated him being a friendly witness. his testimony has been a little bit muddled because he said one thing in his first round of testimony and revised it pretty substantially the second time around. he has now testified about some of the most challenging things for trump to overcome. for instance, that he had this conversation with the ukrainian official on september 1st in which he said that the hold on the aid to ukraine wouldn't be

lifted until zelensky or someone else opened up the investigations that the president was looking for. so that goes to the heart of the impeachment inquiry. that is a quid pro quo. i don't expect his testimony on wednesday to be necessarily helpful to the president. >> rebecca ballhaus, thank you for your reporting. i would like to welcome in my panel. white house reporter for the los angeles times, eli stokels, axios reporter alexia mchammonday and mark liebovic. the republicans i've talked to have already telegraphed that when he does testify they'll try to suggest that he's not credible because he has already had to change his testimony once before, so you can't trust this guy now. >> that's exactly right. republicans involved in the impeachment process told axios

they're going to use this strategy and say sondland talked to president trump a couple of times about ukraine, they weren't having all these conversations and now as rebecca's reporting shows, he was actually keeping the white house and the president apprised of everything in this scheme, to withhold aid to ukraine, and to get them to investigate joe and hunter biden. they haven't had a lot of guidance from the white house top down and short-sighted strategy soes far are being totally blown up by the witnesses themselves. it is problem atic for republicans and president trump that sondland revised his testimony, as you just mentioned. what's going to be in front of them, sondland has to look out for himself. he's probably the witness in all of this, especially in this week's public hearings who is at most legal peril compared to anyone else because of the way he had to revise that testimony. >> eli, the tapestry of witness testimony, evidence all points in one direction at this point,

that president trump orchestrated this entire ukrainian pressure ukraine to get the ukrainians to open investigations that would be politically beneficial to him. you're not going to find 67 republicans to convict president trump in a senate trial. >> it's a slam dunk case and yet we know the guy is going to get off. that's effectively what you're saying. because all the testimony has lined up so closely, the fact that sondland has comeh to come in, because testimony from taylor and others have had to change testimony, the president has no choice but to try to dismiss the entire thing as partisan. you heard lindsey graham say i haven't had time to read all this or change the transcripts. the president today is tweeting that the top national security adviser to the vice president is a never trumper. he's dismissing all these people as never trumpers. it's not anywhere close to being believerable unless you want to believe it. and that is where they're going, because they believe there are enough people out there who do

want to believe it, who will take republicans at their word for this. with sondland, the fascinating thing is, he's worried about will he perjure himself? did he lie initially? he has to protect himself, but he also is probably getting pressure from people close to the president. after the deposition friday and news about the phone call and what he said on that call, there's a possibility that he shows up on wednesday and may take the fifth when it comes to certain questions. that's another unknown as we look toward wednesday. we don't know what he will do, because he's really over a barrel right now. >> when you said that, my brain just exploded, that sondland may take the fifth. >> that's one of my points. they both took my points here. >> that's what happens when you go last. >> you're right. sondland has a lot of lawyers, they're smart lawyers. he's hearing from a lot of people. ultimately, he gave $1 million to president trump's campaign.

he doesn't feel like it was worth it at this point, i'm guessing. he's basically going to think about what his future is, right? i think he realizes his place in history is somewhat assuredly muddled at best and will want to tell the truth, i think. and he wants to stay out of jail. >> to add on to those two threads, he's watching roger stone, close trump associate, sixth close trump associate to be convicted because they're so loyal to him he's lying. >> just stop there. six of president trump's friends are convicted, some of them sharing jail time. so much of this stuff just blows past this. that's just -- >> astonishing. >> right. >> he's watching that, while thinking about publicly testifying, and looking at the way that president trump publicly attacked marie yovanovitch and goes out of his way to intimidate witnesses who

speak out about him. he's trying not to perjure himself after already having to change his testimony and perhaps pleading the fifth when he's in front of those cameras. >> the impeachment does seem inevitable, right? it will move off the house floor. when speaker nancy pelosi said they were doing this on principle not on politics, i take her at her word. democrats have expended a ton on this impeachment question. the question is, does it blow back on them in the election some way? do you have a sense of that yet? >> it depends what we learn going forward. i'm one of these people who doesn't believe impeachment is inevitable and even an acquittal is inevitable. it all looks likely but this has been so unpredictable. donald trump -- people have gone down the road in their own reputations to defend donald trump. they keep changing their rationale. you can sort of look at the tick

tok of how the lindsey grahams and the mike pompeos, just the whole -- >> jim jordans, mark meadows. >> you just don't know. there could be other testimony that i'm sure will be surprising. look, donald trump had a very bad week last week. he may have another bad week this week. we'll see where it chips away to. >> results from kentucky the week before. the idea that impeachment was somehow -- the democrats were spending political capital and it was going to hurt them in some way, haven't seen that, right? >> good point. >> trump continues to erode support for republicans who have tried to make their races about trump. they're getting killed with suburban voters. even in southern states, not just the mid western or western states. so republican senators, to your point, who are about to be jurors, are looking for that. and we're thinking trump needs us. this idea if we upset him, he will take us out.

we've seen evidence to the contrary. >> that's a great point. if he doesn't have coattails, the question is, why are republicans in lockstep on this impeachment thing? are they more afraid of him and his tweets or more afraid of the propaganda machine, fox news of the world? >> it all starts from the top. it's like -- i think fox news is basically running somewhat in lockstep with donald trump and his tweets. the fact is, there are a lot of republicans up next year. most of them are pretty safe. as we're seeing, having the base at your disposal is not necessarily a good strategy. >> going back to the election, you had this reporting, too. senior white house official told axios they're hoping a lot of the country is tuning out from these impeachment hearings and this narrative of what trump may have done wrong and this narrative doesn't seep into parts of the country. they're watching public polling

getting better and better for democrats. they're worried as more people tune in, they'll turn against president trump. they're hoping nobody watches. >> the ratings suggest that people are tuning in. >> and to fox news of all places. president trump makes another governor's race an unnecessary referendum on himself. and later another shooting at another high school here in the country. here in the country. [ gunshots ] >> all right. that was friday night in pleasantville, new jersey. a 10-year-old boy, a 15-year-old boy and a 27-year-old man were hit. five people have been charged. that, of course, comes on the heels of the attack at saugus high school in santa clarita,

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call, click, or visit a store today. one point republicans made time and time again this week in an effort to undercut the democrats case against the president was the aid to ukraine was ultimately released. the question is why was it released and when was it released? here is nancy pelosi, follow bid jim jordan. >> chairman schiff said he

learned of the whistle-blower complaint the 9th and aid was released days later. do you see a connection there? >> of course. the president wasn't going to -- republicans like to say, if you want to talk about them, oh, it doesn't matter. the aid was released. no. the whistle was blown. the whistle was blown. >> she argues that the aid to ukraine was only released because of the whistle-blower. what reason were you given that the aid to ukraine was eventually released? >> because president zelensky met with officials five times, he just won an overwhelming majority, and he was legit and worth the risk. >> so the whistle-blower complaint and the september 11th release of the aid you're saying that's just that the calendar -- >> the aid didn't have to be released until september 30th. >> joining me now is democratic senator richard blumenthal,

member of the senate judiciary committee. good to see you this evening. thanks for your time. >> thank you. >> what did you make of that argument you heard from jim jordan there? >> it's pretty transparently ridiculous. the aid was released only after the administration learned about the whistle-blower report, which showed that the president was, in effect, abusing his office for personal benefit, holding up the aid to pressure the president of ukraine to interfere in our elections, but also there was a congressional uproar. i wrote, along with other senators in early september, demanding that the aid be released. there was building congressional pressure this argument really falls on its own weight. >> what surfaced during this past week of testimony that surprised you? democrats have said that so much that has emerged in this case doesn't necessarily surprise them because that's sort of where this inquiry was headed

and they know what president trump did to be an impeachable offense. is there anything you heard this past week that made you think differently about this case that democrats are building toward impeachment? >> in a sense, the strongest evidence against president trump is his own words. that is, his words to the president of ukraine on july 25th. and we have a virtual transcript of those words. this testimony was really powerful and moving, and the dignity and grace of ambassador yovanovitch and taylor. the face and voice of our national interests as opposed to the venal self interest that comes across in that transcript. so, they really were so powerful and moving, which in a sense was surprising, a little bit like going to a movie after having read the book, and finding that the big screen is more powerful than the words on paper. but i think also, frankly, the

increasing evidence of direct contact between gordon sondland and the president, the testimony about david holmes overhearing the conversation, relating to sondland's contact with the united states. and a prospect of a conspiracy here, involving mick mulvaney and others. conspiracy on bribery. they could be indicted even if a sitting president is not. >> i want to move on and talk about this persistent effort in both the house and the isn't to enact tougher gun safety measures. we saw that horrific video out of new jersey going into break. of course there was another shooting in california. there was a moment on the senate floor thursday which i don't think a lot of people saw. you were talking about gun violence and news broke of that school shooting in california.

take a look at this first. >> gun deaths are, in fact, rising, not declining. the trends are absolutely alarming and appalling, and we are complicit in these deaths if we fail to act. as i speak, on the floor right now, there is a school shooting in santa clara, california. how can we turn the other way? >> i'll put that question back to you. what is to be done? democrats get this question all the time. the truth is that democrats have done a lot on this issue. it's the white house and the republican senate. and this is not a partisan statement but a statement of fact. it's republicans who have not taken up some of the bills that democrats have tried to pass.

so the question is, what can be done in this current era? >> great question, geoff. i was on the floor of the united states senate along with other colleagues, demanding that we have a vote, asking for unanimous consent to move forward on universal background checks. i raised the red flag or emergency risk protection order statute that we have proposed along with republicans. and, frankly, there is a fair degree of unanimunanimity. he listens to wayne lapierre of the nra more than he listens to

those who favor the common sense, sensible legislation. lindsey graham and i are at the three yard line. we've reached virtual agreement on an emergency risk protection that would save lives by taking guns away from dangerous people. universal background checks, i think, we could do as well, preventing dangerous his opposition is relied on by the leader of the united states senate, mitch mcconnell, majority leader. he controls what comes to the floor. and he is behind the inaction of the united states senate, which will make us complicit if it continues. tranlgcally and unfortunately, there will be more mass shootings. and we need to be ready to move forward because the american people won't tolerate this kind of inaction. >> another question on this topic. you represent connecticut, of course.

the supreme court announced it will not block a lawsuit brought by the sandy hook families. that means the families of those killed in that unspeakable 2012 school shooting, they get to move forward that claims remington's marketing that inspired that gunman to carry out the shooting. what does that mean going forward? what does it mean for the sandy hook community? >> the parents and loved ones of the 20 beautiful children and six great educators who were killed in sandy hook are bringing this action against the gun manufacturer, saying they promoted negligently and illegally these assault weapons. their only person is to kill and maim human beings. they've encountered an obstacle.

it's a pretty unique obstacle that almost gives xlo s complet immunity. guns have this kind of immunity. it's the result of a statute, sweetheart deal with the gun manufacturers. i've introduced legislation that would appeal it. these families are in court seeking very simply access to the justice system and the manufacturers are invoking this statute. our connecticut state supreme court said they deserve a day in court and they're going to have it. they will get discovery. in other words evidence from the gun manufacturer's files. and they said they won't review our state supreme court. that's a major victory. the gun manufacturer will have to answer and they will have to answer not only the legal issues, but also their accountability for violating our consumer protection statutes in

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in kentucky, we elected everybody. the governor got brought up in a few short days, 19 points. i went. we made a speech. the whole ticket was there. the governor is a really good guy. 19 points is a big thing. he lost by just a few thousand votes and the headlines the next day, trump took a loss. i lifted him up a lot. you've got to give me a big win, please, okay? okay? >> you didn't just vote for me. you voted for four more years of putting louisiana first. and as for the president, god bless his heart. >> bless his heart, he says. all right. president trump has not been shy about injecting the issue of impeachment into a string of recent gubernatorial races but kentucky, louisiana and now with

a close finish in mississippi shows that the strategy may not be working. eli, i want to go to you on this. what should we make of these trump losses in kentucky? trump-related losses, let's call them in kentucky and louisiana. >> you can overextrapolate. i would advise against that. all the elections in the trump era, the gop has continued to hemorrhage support in the suburbs, especially with women voters that. continues and it continues now into southern states. yes, you can say that in kentucky andy beshear has a name to run on and matt bevin was completely unpopular, so maybe trump was immaterial there. it's worth pointing out since you played the sound, trump did not pull him from 19 points down. they were within the margin of

error. it shows you that the president, when he goes out there and tries to make everything a referendum on him, that seems to be animating voters on the other side. those trump voters, people that go to these rallies, they're going to turn out and vote. expanding at base, winning state-wide races, it hasn't been working following that model. the president is the one who wants to do this. his political team is saying, i don't know that i would go out there. you heard him in the sound say i need a big win. it's all about him. every election is a chance for him to measure his support. he makes it about himself, even often times against the wishes of his top. >> what was it, a week or two ago where he went from sporting event to sporting event in order to find a crowd that apparently would cheer fror him? mayor pete, cnn/des moines

registronstrar registrar. what do we make of mayor pete on top of the pack now? >> the first iowa poll came out a few weeks ago and he was at the top of the pack, everyone was like, the sample size is small, one poll does not a front-runner make. now we've seen several polls in iowa, specifically, where mayor pete is leading the pack. i don't think that's something to ignore. he has been running a pretty sophisticated ground game in io iowa. you don't have to look far to kamala harris who broadcasted her reboot, saying she's moving to iowa, spending thanksgiving there, doing all the things that she thought it took to win over iowa voters. that clearly hasn't wokked out for her, as we see mayor pete, working more quietly than she has, to rise to the top of the pack. being a mid western mayor plays well. mid westerners love other mid westerners. i think there's truth to that.

the re-elect campaign is watching him. they think buttigieg has a better chance of winning which is consequencen than someone like elizabeth warren, who he otherwise would like to run against. >> mayor mike bloomberg potentially jumping in. i covered politics for new york one back when he was mayor. when he was mayor, the city was clean, crime was down, he was scandal free. but there was this stop and frisk policy that terrorized black and brown people for most of the 12 years. he's apologizing for it. >> people who covered him, we were stunned by that. not unlike donald trump, he is not someone who does 180s like that, especially on something he was pretty stubborn about at the time. i don't quite know what his intention is, as far as running for the democratic nomination goes. it was certainly worth noting. having said all that, i don't think his entry into the race and duval patrick's entrance to

the race has really shaeken things up. joe biden is still the national front-runner. >> i was going to get to that next. >> and he has a pretty significant lead in south carolina and in states where african-americans vote, you know, far more heavily, certainly, than iowa or new hampshire. you can't forget about joe biden. >> everybody knows joe biden as a candidate is not as popular as the idea of joe biden being a candidate is, right? >> i'm not sure that the idea of joe biden being the candidate is not that exciting for democrats. >> joe biden is not new and exciting. the thing that makes him a good general election candidate is the fact that he's safe and steady but that doesn't get you much in a primary race. >> no, it doesn't. again, iowa, new hampshire like new, much more experimental. they can -- they have a much

more strategic approach. mayor pete is from the midwest. it's a long haul. it's been a great bunch of polls for mayor pete. >> the idea of biden may be enou enough, even if the reality is not exactly great. people voted for donald trump because of the idea they have of him from the apprentice. i don't know how many people said i know he's going to do a great job because i've seen him so many times. people have these idealized things they see when they look at these candidates and they're not paying the attention that we are. i would put -- i don't know that pete will be the nominee. you don't get to 25% in iowa without inspiring people, whether that's the reality on the ground, we got a long way to go here. what he has done, nobody else has done. he started from nothing. now he's leading the field. >> you're right.

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progressive helps protect what you built with customizable coverage. -and i'm gonna -- -eh, eh, eh. -donny, no. -oh. impeachment has largely held a spotlight here. poised to allow the trump administration to end daca, federal program permitting nearly 8-000 young people known

as dreamers to avoid deportation and remain in the u.s. the same day the president tweeted, quote, many of the people in daca, no longer very young, are far from angels. some are very tough, hardened criminals. none of that is true, we should point out. also that day southern poverty law center public leshed an article releasing hundreds of email emails of stephen miller. article releasing hundreds of sent to a breitbart writer in 2015 and 2016, showcasing extremist immigrant ideology undergirding the president's policies. somewhere in all of this are the

people affected. tania romera has lived in the u.s. 15 years, stage four cancer survivor and is still struggling with weakened health and facing possible deportation. i.c.e. requested travel documents for deporting her according to the hon duran consulate but it refused because it's looking into whether romero would get the medical care she needs if sh she were deported. her children, one who goes to yale, are fighting her deportation. from our atlanta nbc affiliate. >> i can proudly announce that we have ended catch and release and we are building the wall faster than anyone thought possible. [ crowd chants ]

>> thank you. >> meanwhile, nearly a year after the last government shutdown over the border wall funding, the president is still insisting that the wall is being built. >> and i can proudly announce that we have ended catch and release and we are building the wall faster than anyone thought possible. [ crowd chants ] >> thank you. it's being built. it's going up good. and it's a big deal. >> it's a big deal, president trump says. after my colleague, peter alexander, pressed acting customs and border protection

commissioner this week, that's not quite the case. listen to this. >> how many miles of wall has been constructed? not replacie ining old wall but wall. >> 75 miles. >> much of that is replacing wall, that the president said is insufficient. how many miles of wall exist where there was no wall? >> every mile of wall being built is a new mile of wall. >> no disagreements, but just for a breakdown, how many miles formerly existed and how many miles new where nothing existed? >> 78 miles that have been built have been built where there was an existing form of barrier. we just started breaking ground in rgv where we're building miles of new wall where there has been no structure there at all. >> that's just now starting, construction of new wall? >> that's correct. that's correct. >> all right. so the takeaway there is what

president trump said was not true. but all of that sound took us on a journey. let's start at the beginning, where we started talking about stephen miller. any other universe, any other administration, stephen miller would have been forced to resign or would have been fired once all of that damning information showing his white nationalist views has come out. >> right. but those views are what you hear from the president, at his rallies, the day he launched his campaign at trump tower. the white nationalism you're hearing, xenophobia, that is a feature, not a bug of this administration. that is the reason that stephen miller went from being a staffer on capitol hill that other republican staffers kind of looked down on to now being the big man on campus at the white house who is in charge. the position that he occupies in this white house because his ideas line up with one of the central organizing ideas of trumpism. that is that immigration is a problem, being taken advantage of by people coming from other

countries and we've got to get tougher, we've got to prevent them from coming in. that's one of the things that initially sparked trump's appeal with the republican base even though the party thought they had to move in the opposite direction. that's what lit the match with trumpism. >> yet, alexia, the demagoguery, does that diminishing returns from the white house? >> what i hear from voters around the country is said, regurgitation. i'm not racist but we don't have time to take care of immigrants. i'm not racist but we shouldn't be giving anyone health care who doesn't live here or wasn't born in this country and it's these fears of somebody who simply doesn't look like you. it's at the core of this white nationalist ideology, this idea that anyone who doesn't look

like you, just a white man, is doing something wrong inherently by being born the way they were born. one of the most striking things is when you hear the folks at the rallies chanting "build the wall" wasn't that then candidate trump to remember to talk about immigration in any way? now they're chanting it over and over again as if it's getting done. >> thank you so much for your reporting. >> thank you so much reporting. (johnson) what is going on in here! i can't hear myself think! (grover) what does it look like, sir? i am here to help you with your water heater. (johnson) oh! [sighs defeatedly] (grover) do not worry sir. i also fix cars! [johnson groans] (bert) grover is a monster of many talents! (burke) and we covered it. at farmers, we know a thing or two because we've seen a thing or two. (bert) mmm. ♪ we are farmers. ♪ bum-pa-dum, bum-bum-bum-bum do your asthma symptoms ever hold you back?

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there has been so much happening on the home front this weekend that it's easy to overlook the fact that parts of the world are literally on fire right now. in paris thousands of protesters lit fires and destroyed public property to mark the one year anniversary yellow vest demonstrations. in iran, backing the government's decision to race gas prices, calling protesters who have been lighting fires there thugs and raising concerns of a potential crackdown by the military. and in hong kong some of the most violent images we've seen. for more on the escalating violence, matt bradley reports from hong kong. >> reporter: yeah, jeff. it's been a vicious, bruising battle on the streets which is just across the harbor from

where i am. there is a column of smoke rising. that was the last of five universities that were besieged and taken over by protesters in just the last couple of days. it is the last holdout of the universities that were taken over by the protesters as we enter now six months into this protest movement. tonight the hong kong police are moving in and they are viciously taking over. now, we were there just a couple of days ago walking through the grounds of the university. it is a beautiful place. the protesters basically took it over. they were filled with provisions, with food and water. they set up check points to make sure that no one was coming in with weapons. little hospital stations. they set up a press room for briefing the press, and they had tons and tons of weapons. they were tearing up bricks from the ground to throw at police. they made cap puts, mounted them with moltov cocktails.

you are seeing it being used against the police moving in to hong kong university. on the police's side, they've got tear gas, rubber bullets and batons, and they're not afraid now. it is unclear what's going to happen next. everybody is looking at beijing and how they're going to move. jeff? >> matt bradley, my thanks to you for that important reporting. when we come back, the kasie dvr. the sunday shows so you don't have to. make nature's bounty hair skin and nails step one. it's the number one brand uniquely formulated for silky hair, glowing skin and healthy nails. nature's bounty, because you're better off healthy. (honk!) i hear you sister. that's why i'm partnering with cigna to remind you to go in for your annual check-up, and be open with your doctor about anything you feel - physically and emotionally. but now cigna has a plan that can help everyone see stress differently.

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it's been a big week in the impeachment hearings. >> you think democrats have had a big week. >> i don't think the president has had a good week. >> president trump was attacking the ambassador. >> your reaction to what the president tweeted. >> i would prefer he not provide that type of tweet. >> i find the president's tweets generally unfortunate. >> do you see this as adding up to witness intimidation. >> it's really not witness sb intimidati intimidation. >> the message that's being sent to everybody else that's thinking about testifying is chilly as well. >> is he a credible witness? >> his story continues to change. >> it is never too late to tell the truth other than perhaps for roger stone. >> you used the term "bribery". >> quid pro quo, bribery, yeah, that's what that is. >> the republicans like to say, oh, it doesn't matter. the aid was released.

>> the real bottom line is he got the money. >> there is all kinds of talk about these, but it didn't happen. >> if they're going to try to impeach a president of the united states, shouldn't it be based on something that actually happened. >> to withhold military aid, which did happen. >> you seem to blame this on everybody but the president. it was the president's actions. >> i'm not blaming anybody, chuck. >> the republicans moving the goal posts. i think the goal posts were last seen crossing the mississippi. that does it for us tonight on kasie d.c. we'll be back with you next week. up next ari melber looks at new evidence in "trump & ukraine: impeachment crisis." at 10:00, rich chart engel hosts "on assignment." and a reminder, msnbc and "the washington post" hosts the next democratic debate on wednesday live from atlanta, georgia.

the moderators, andrea mitchell, rachel maddow, kristin welker and ashley parker. for now, good night from washington. good evening. i'm ari melberme. welcome back to "trump & ukraine: impeachment crisis." how these hearings are transforming the debate on impeachment. new implications regarding the president. what democrats are explicitly calling bribery. we have another week of high stakes public hearings and we will begin a special panel of expert guests in a moment. we have reporting on who's who in the bribery plot and tracking bill barr's role.

later with the prosecutor who ran the office who is