organizations and pacs, they tell me that's because elizabeth warren walks into a room of black voters and leaves with more support than she walked into that room with, unlike any other candidate. >> interesting. all right. thank you very much. always a pleasure. course we'll be reading axios a.m. in a bit. you can sign up for the newsletter at signup.axios.com. >> that does it for us on this friday morning. i'm yasmin alongside ayman. "morning joe" starts right now. i spent every day, almost every hour of my life now trying to figure out how do i help to wake america up and say we are better than this? >> this president believes is he above the law, beyond accountability. and in my view there is nothing more dangerous than ann unethicl president who believes they are above the law. and i would just say to people watching here at home and around

the world, in the words of my great colleague, we are better than that. adjourned. >> chairman adam schiff in his closing statement yesterday echoing a comment, a familiar one, from the late elijah cummings. good morning, welcome to "morning joe" if the is friday, november 22nd. i'm wiley geist. joe and mika the morning off. with us, susan del percio. white house reporter for "the associated press," jonathan lemire. pulitzer prize winning columnist and editor of "the washington post," eugene robinson. msnbc analyst, former chairman of the republican national committee michael steele. vice president for third waves national committee program, and former retired four-star navy admiral. he's diplomacy analyst for nbc news and msnbc. good north to you all.

before we get into some of the testimony from yesterday from fiona hill and david holmes, jonathan, let me get a big picture from you. we're tend of the extraordinary two weeks. how is the white house generally feeling about where they are heading into thanksgiving? >> first of all, we should note how historic this is. this is the impeachment proceedings only the fourth time ever. we shouldn't lose sight of that if things are moving into partisan camps here. we have now had two weeks, five days of testimony, i believe, a parade of witnesses, almost all career officials and diplomats who painted a really extraordinary picture of what had transpired this past year between the president of the united states and the situation in ukraine where he has -- there's very little ability to dispute the evidence that he pushed ukraine to hold investigations into political rival in order to receive military funding and eventually a white house visit. he -- an ally, important ally in the united states and the west

and europe say bulwark against russia who he had let twist in the wind and lives were lost because of this decision. eventually that aid was released, we know that. fiona hill yesterday, extraordinary testimony, showed just exactly parallel paths there. there was the regular path in the u.s. foreign policy and as she put it the domestic political errand that rudy giuliani was doing to try to get this information about joe biden. the white house still shaken about the events. they feel confident that the republicans in the senate have the president's back. they do not believe he's really any risk of losing office. of course things can change and we'll see how this plays out the next couple of weeks. but this much is all but certain. president trump is going to be impeached. he's likely not going to be removed from office, but he's going to be impeevached. >> and, gene robinson, we saw in fiona hill, someone who worked for donald trump in the white house. >> for 2 1/2 years. >> come out and tell the truth

about what she saw. she was careful not to appear partisan. she did talk to the republicans about some of the conspiracy theories they've been floating and say i study this for a living. none of what you're saying about ukraine meddling in the 2016 campaign is true. she went out and she told the truth, and now, as jonathan says, it will be up to the house and eventually the senate and the american public to decide based on what they've heard for two weeks whether or not donald trump did something worthy of impeachment. >> you can see why they scheduled fiona hill as the cleanup witness. she was extraordinary the way she in a cool way sort of told us so much about what had happened, so much about herself, why she does what she does. she gave us a sense of why these career people serve the country the way they do.

and -- and how it felt to them to see foreign policy diverted by a president in this way. the consequences of that for ukraine, the consequences of that for her sense and the sense of others of what was -- what was right, what was acceptable, what was proper, what was the way the white house is supposed to work. and, you know, you mentioned the american people. ultimately if the needle is going to move from where it is now, which is that the president will be impeached, i believe he will be. i believe, you know, impeachment is almost analogous to an indictment and i think there's plenty of evidence for an indictment by now. but he is unlikely to be removed from office unless, number one, public sentiment moves in that

direction, which the republican senators will be paying attention to. and, number two, we're just going to have to see how this trial plays out. >> yeah. >> what are going to be the rules? we have so few precedents for this. there are obvious witnesses who were not -- who did not testify, basically because the white house told them not to testify. so will it be a trial in which the defendant, in effect, gets to decide who testifies or not? is that acceptable to chief justice john roberts who's going to be presiding at the trial? so a lot of questions going into this next phase, and i assume there will be a next phase. >> before we get to to that next phase, will chairman schiff pursue some of these witnesses like john bolton, mick mulvaney and mike pompeo or do they want to get this to a vote and not wait? >> we also have to note there's

not been an official word that they're done. >> that's right have some there's going to be thanksgiving week, but it's not entirely clear that they're finished with this phase. >> susan, let's listen to some of what dr. fiona hill said yesterday, the former top russia aide to the white house was asked about testimony from ambassador gordon sondland's deposition when he accused hill of being, coat, emotional while describing himself as being a shoulder to cry on. >> i think you might recall in my deposition on october 14th that i said that very unfortunately i had a bit of a blowup with ambassador sondland and testy encounters with him. one of those was june 18 when i said to him who put you in charge of ukraine and i was a bit rude. that's when he told me the president, which shut me up. and this other meeting, it was about 15, 20 minutes exactly as he depicted it was. i was actually to be honest, angry with him.

and, you know, i hate to say it but when women show anger it's not fully appreciated, it's often, you know, pushed on to emotional issues and perhaps are deflected on to other people. what i was angry about was that he waersn't coordinating with u i realized that during his deposition that he wasn't right. he wasn't coordinating with us because we weren't doing the same thing he was doing. so i was upset with him that he wasn't fully telling us about all of the meetings that he was having. and he said to me, but i'm briefing the president. i'm briefing chief of staff mulvaney. i'm briefing secretary pompeo and i've talked to ambassador bolt to b bolton, who else do i have to deal with? we have a robust interagency process that includes mr. holmes, the tail loylors, and ae

lot of other people. but when you put up on the screen yesterday ambassador sondland's emails and who was on these a emails, theer these are people that need to know. he was right. he was being involved in a national political errand and we were being involved in national security foreign policy and those two things had diverged. he was correct. i had not put my finger on that at the moment but i was irritate and angry that he wasn't fully coordinating. and i did say to him, ambassador gordon sondland, this is all going to blow up and here we. >> on the list of quotes that will be remembered from these two weeks, he was being involved in a domestic political errand may be near the top of the most memorable. >> what i thought was so interesting about dr. hill's testimony was that she was able to outline that it was -- by repeating sondland's testimony, that it was mick mulvaney, it was secretary pompeo, it was

secretary perry. these were people who were operating under the president's authority and operating a political agenda while she was trying to take care of protecting our country. and at what conflict and what frustration, of course, she must have had because her mission was to carry out foreign policy and protect our country. these guys were just really trying to help the president. and i think it brings in another interesting point, which is was rudy giuliani speaking to all of these people as an attorney for the president which would mean that they were all not working on behalf of the government but on behalf of donald trump personally, which could be a violation of certain rules. or, was rudy giuliani given permission to act as a part of the government, which in case he never went through background checks or anything else. i think his role will be thoroughly investigated. >> admiral, there was an interesting moment when dr. hill said she assumed there was a shadow foreign policy being conducted by rudy giuliani and

gordon sondland. and then yesterday she sort of revised that thought and said, oh, no, that was the foreign policy and it was coming from the ambassador to the eu who had no jurisdiction over ukraine. why was he here meddling in our business? and what you have again is state department and national security officials who found themselves to be working at odds with people in their own government. >> indeed. and i know fiona quite well, in fact, willie, when i was preparing to go be the supreme allied commander in nato, i was looking around and casting about for experts to talk to, everybody said, oh, you've got to talk to dr. fiona hill. the point i want to make is her knowledge of russia, ukraine, this region is really quite unparallel. she is bril at-bliant, as you s and she's also kind of tough as nails. she's literally a coal miner's daughter from the north of england. she's not backing up to anybody. and so when you had that kind of collision between legitimate national security, which, of

course, is getting this aid to the ukrainians, ukraine has a dag g dagger at its throat from russia. this is big ka tino for them. and that narrative diluted colliding with this national agenda. i've never seen anything like it. i spent several years as a combat commander working on this kind of foreign military assistance. never saw it diluted in the domestic sphere. fiona hill is donald trump's worst nightmare. >> and, mika, as the admiral says, we have a long list of national security officials, career diplomats who came over the last two weeks and told the truth and did something that perhaps donald trump and the white house couldn't understand, which was not put loyalty to the president before loyalty to the country. here i am as a fact witness, they said, and fiona hill said again yesterday, here i am telling you what i saw. i'm not going to give you my opinion on whether or not i

think the president should be impeached. but here's what i saw and here's what i heard. >> yeah. these witnesses are very important because, as dr. hill testified, they were pursuing the national security interest of the united states and the president was trying to subvert that for his own personal political benefit. these are a group of people who are copious note takers, who have the sense of separation between politics and national security. they're all bound by the thing called the hatch act which prohibits them from engaging in political activity on the job. so when they start seeing this kind of political activity, it is deeply alarming to them. we have rules and laws in place to try to prevent that from happening because people realize that political benefit really is about people's personal benefit. it is not in the national security interest of the united states. and these are people who could put those words into the president's mouth himself. >> so, michael steele, one common theme from dr. hill and david holmes' testimony was that the president's personal attorney rudy giuliani was a

problem. listen to this. >> i had already brought to ambassador bolton's attention the attacks, the smear campaign against ambassador yovanovitch. i had asked if there was anything that we could do about it. and ambassador bolton had looked pained and basically indicated with body language that there was nothing much that we could do about it. and in the course of that discussion said that rudy giuliani was a hand grenade that's with going to blow everyone up. >> did you understand what he meant by that? >> i did, actual. >> i what did he mean? >> well, i meant that what mr. giuliani was saying was explosive in any case. he was frequently on television making quite insinncendiary rem about everyone involved in this and he was clearly mupushing forward ideas that would come back to haunt us. and that's where we are today. >> it became apparent that mr. giuliani was having an influence on the agenda that the three

amigos were executing on the ground in ukraine. at one point during a meeg of the inaugural delegation, common wondered allowed why mr. giuliani was so active and immediate with ukraine? my recollection is that ambassador sondland stated, quote, damn it, rooudy, every te rudy gets involves he goes and, quote, fs everything up. >> there's another quote. rudy giuliani, the president's personal attorney, not an employee of the government, running this entire operation. >> absolutely. he's doing exactly what donald trump wants him to do. this is that bit of separation from trump directly that puts rudely rudy in the space where he can go in and throw trump's game around and he's got the power of that behind him. all of these career officials, they're kind of stuck. you know, they're sort of stumbling over how to work with this person who has been put there by the president.

so there's respect for that, i mean, because that's part of the traditional conventional way of looking at these things. if you're an envoy or representative of the president on certain matters, people give you some deference. but when it goes counter to the nation's foreign policy, that's where things get muddied. and i thought dr. hill yesterday just put it so profoundly out there for all of us to see. but here's the rub, willie. none of it really matters because the bed right now in the white house is the polling is showing that people are sliding off of had whole idea of impeachment. the united states senate republicans have affirmed by -- have been affirmed by the voice of one congressman will herd yesterday who was the hope in the house who basically stood on the front porch of donald trump and said, this is my space now. so the reality is that we're all

left with is that despite the explosive testimonies, the profound importance of that testimony, the consequences will virtually be nonexistent. and unless and until to eugene's point there is a movement by the public towards something more severe, rudy giuliani will continue to do what rudy giuliani's doing. donald trump will continue to do what he is doing, and the rest of us are going to be left scratching our head going what happened? >> if will herd was one of hopes for democrats, a vote they could swing to their side on the impeachment vote and he's come out already, he used his question time yesterday, as you said, to say i can't vote for impeachment. he's a former cia officer. he's concerned about some of things he saw. but he says, i've listened to all of this evidence, it might be bad, but it's not -- it didn't warrant removing the president from his office. so if he's saying that, i think we know what everyone else in

the republican party's going to say. >> exactly. >> in the house. and obviously we already know what they were going to say in the senate. we'll get no that in a minute. still ahead, president trump wanted an investigation into joe biden and now that's exactly what he's getting from lindsey graham. details on the senator's probe of burisma and ukraine. but first, bill karins has a look at the weekend forecast. >> a messy weekend forecast. we have three storms to deal with in six days leading up to thanksgiving and that means headaches for so many people from coast to coast. for today, heavy rain has broken out around areas from tennessee to kentucky. little bit of snow for our friends heading from colorado springs to denver. for today's forecast, mild in the northeast, little bit of light rain will come through. the cold front, this evening will be colder and chillier than this morning. this is the weather we're dealing with today with the rain this morning as we go throughout the afternoon that rage move to the southeast and later this evening. by the time we get to saturday,

heavy rain will be pushing from the southeast. rain will move into d.c. and richmond during the day. most of your saturday is dry. it looks like saturday night and anning you. i an ugly sunday in the northeast. it's going to be a cold which iy rain. not too much snow, just a little bit in the poconos. then storm two coming into tuesday and wednesday there are is the biggest impact in the middle of the country. if you have travel plans on tuesday, we could be dealing with significant snow and somewhere in the central plains and into the midwest, it's early to say who who. and then on wednesday that storm should be over the northeast. and finally by the time we get to wednesday and thursday a new storm comes into the west coast. this will be impacting california significantly by the time we go through tuesday and wednesday. so, again, three storms in six days moving across the country and that's going to mean a lot of patience needed on the roads and at the airports. but it doesn't matter, we've got the tree going up here.

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dr. hill, was it aparent to you that when president trump, rudy giuliani, or anyone else was pushing for an investigation into burisma that the reason why they wanted that investigation related to what president trump said here, the bidens? >> it was very apparent to me that that was what rudy giuliani intended, yes, intended to get to burisma was linked to the bidens. he said this many times publicly. >> and you understood that burisma was code for the bidens? >> yes. >> he had an argument about it didn't he say what are you so worried about. >> it is not credible to me that he was oblif vus. he did not say bidens, he just

said burisma. he said 2016, and i took it to mean the elections as well as burisma. >> dr. fiona hill undercutting part of ambassador gordon sondland's testimony from earlier this week. meanwhile, senate judiciary chairman lindsey graham sent a letter to secretary mike pompeo yesterday requesting documents related to former vice president joe biden in his communications with ukrainian officials. graham's new probe is focussed on any communication biden may have had with former ukrainian president regarding the firing of the country's to prosecutor victor spoke kin a viktor shokin and any calls. senator graham's probe is seen as an effort to legitimize president trump's accusations that while obama was president he put pressure on ukraine to protect his son.

this is republicans first such request for documents despite the fact they control both houses of congress from 2014 to 2016. joining us now on his birthday, the great donny deutsch. donny, happy birthday, my man. >> thank you, sir. 37 is a tough year. you grin, you bear it and say okay. >> you've lived a lot of life in those 37 years and it's all on display here. happy birthday, donny. let's go back a couple and let you talk about the testimony yesterday from dr. fiona hill, particularly that bite there where she said basically come on, eyes, it defies credibility, you know this. >> yeah. >> that the people involved didn't know that burisma meant joe biden and that president trump suddenly was interested in the corruption of one specific company unrelated to biden. >> thoughts on the whole week, i want to pick up a little bit where michael steele was. does anybody know bob loves abishola? >> yeah. >> that's a show on cbs, you

know, had about five, six million viewers. that's what these hearings have done. we live in a little bit of a bubble that we sit here and we watch. the reality is when you look at that new emerson poll where we've lost 5% of people believe he should be impeached and 2014% that he should be removed from office, somehow the democrats brand this in a bigger place. take impeachment and make it a bigger issue that can come back to kitchen table issues. this is the president betrayal. he betrayed the american trust. he betrard our national security. he betrayed the constitution, the presidency, he betrayed us on education. now i'm making the turn. he basically is taking our budget back 10%. he's going to betray us on health care. he wants to repeal obamacare. he's betrayed you on taxes. it needs to go to a bigger place because unfortunately come january and february the parade will move on and we get very hyped up in this building here,

we get very hyped up watching. the reality is if the games take trump out of office, you've got to take this betrayal and move it to a bigger place for the candidates to tuck the football under their arm and go. >> but, donny, you've said from the beginning of this you need a clear message, keep it short and keep people's attention. democrats did that. adam schiff said a lot in his closing statement. it was two weeks with strong witnesses so the if this didn't convince the american people, why do you think a turn will? >> because it's got to be about this guy is a corruptor, a betrb betrayer, and this affects me how? he did the same thing to my taxes, he did it to education. he will do the same thing to health care. take whatever adjective you want, betrayer, corruptor, thief, bring it back to the issues that matter. >> so you moved on now, you're at the campaign already. >> i've -- it doesn't mean you don't not use this. but this is not the thing.

this is a talking point that gets you to a -- >> if you can't trust him to protect our country, how can you trust him -- >> thank you. >> -- to take care of our children's education zm h? how can you trust him to take care of our health care? >> we see where this is going and we live in the moment. we live in this bubble. i go back to bob loves abishola show you ever heard of. that's how many people watched this this week. we all thought once the fear comes on that's going to change it. nothing is changing the senate. the frightening thing is the newest poll. i believe when the polls come out next week, you couldn't have had better witnesses, we're not going to get to that 60 so the democrats better be smart on how they use this other weiwise we' going to be standing here going what? what. >> now we can all nunn and watch that show for programming. but the democrats are arguing about something else.

it's not just about the campaign and the results of next year's election. it's about doing the right thing and constitutional duty. admiral, let me go to you on this. if this doesn't matter, if we all know the outcome, if we all know that perhaps the president will be impeached but not removed from office, isn't there a bigger picture here? why does it matter to the american people? why does it matter to the history books? >> yeah, i'm going to tie in also to the international world here. think about that word betrayal. that's what we did to the kurds in syria. think about how this all is impacting the international world and it weakens us with our opponents. the russians are taking enormous glee in watching this. in asia we're trying to negotiate burden-sharing agreements, who's going to pay how much for our troops in korea, our troops in japan. how can foreign nations feel

comfortable, a, on the trust issues and, b, on negotiation and understand even the process and how are we going to avoid continuing to drag all of these unbelievably important international issues into the domestic political side of this? i think there's a storyline there that is going to be part of the run-up to the election granted that foreign policy in the send not going to drive this one. but it's a supporting argument to what you just laid out. >> mika, if this plays out the way that donny and others suggested it will, the way michael steele suggested it will, which is that the president will be impeached in the house along something like a party-line vote and acquitted in the senate. for you as somebody who works in the policy world who cares about foreign policy, who's heard all this testimony over the last couple weeks and read transcripts of the deposition

wlars widepositions, what will have been the significance of this process for you? >> the think the failure to impose consequences on the president here for his being able to demand of a foreign country for a personal political benefit in exwhichange for what another country wants, other countries take lessons from this. so the chinese to lift tariffs that american farmers suffer with. other countries, the europeans, the north koreans, they know now one of the things they can put on the table to get the things that they want are personal political benefits for this president. and what we've seen over and over again with the mueller investigation and others is that when this president can get away with it, he'll do it again. and so that means that the intermingling of the president's personal interests and american's foreign policy will accelerate, not stop if this president isn't held accountable. >> and that was one of the points adam schiff made in his closing statement yesterday, which was this entire ukraine business began the day after the end of the mueller process.

coming up next, with just one tweet the president inserts himself into the navy's chain of command. he is insisting navy s.e.a.l. eddie gallagher will not lose his trident pin despite a high war crimes case. we'll ask the admiral about that next on "morning joe." t that next on "morning joe."

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yesterday president trump made an unannounced visit to dover air force base in dell wear to set of remains two of soldiers killed in afghanistan. according to the pentagon, they were both chief warrant officers 2s were killed on wednesday in a helicopter crash. they were army apache helicopter pilots when their clapt crashhe crashed. the president made the visit with first lady melania trump. trump supporter actor john voigt also attended the dignified transfer ceremony although can he did not interact with the families. meanwhile, president trump

reversed the decision by the united states navy to begin the process of ouftdisting the membf the elite navy s.e.a.l.s team. he wrote they will not be taking away his tie dent pin. this case was handled very badly from the beginning. get back to business. he was acquitted in july by a court martial for alleged war triems that included killing a teenage isis prisoner. navy demoted him from the elite s.e.a.l. rank after being convicted on a lesser crime for posing with a photograph with a prisoner's corpse. in reaction to president trump's surprise reversal the navy released a statement writing, quote, the navy follows the lawful orders of the president. we will do so in case of an order to stop the administrative review of special warfare chief gallagher's qualification adding the navy is, quote, awaiting further guidance on how to

proceed. admiral, let's go to you on this. what are the implications of the president of the united states putting his thumb on the scale and inserting himself into this? >> well, let's start with the basics here, which is that all of these cases, there's been a whole veefrs them nseries of th the president has come into the process and issued a pardon or clemency if the clemency. in all of those cases, these were crimes that were uncovered by fellow s.e.a.l.s and green berets who turned in these people. that's how we got here. and then those people were convicted in the ultimate jury of their peers by other special forces operators, s.e.a.l.s and green berets. so personally i put a lot of stock in what those professional special operators have come up with in all these cases. and i think when the president

reaches all the way down in the chain of command to make a decision about a warfare device, i think that does undermine good order and discipline as follows. it says to all of those special forces operators, you know, you could go out and report something that you see that's a terrible crime on the battlefield and if you do that it will just get reversed later on. it undermines the ability of the navy chain of command to keep that good order and discipline. and that's why you see secretary of navy richard spencer who is an absolutely fabulous former marine, very capable near cabinet official in the chief of naval operations, they're essentially saying that the president, we're going to do this because we're going to follow the law, but you can detect the sense that, you know, this is not where we want to go. it's going to have repercussions on the battlefield for us going forward. >> admiral, how rare is this for

the president of the united states to step into a case like this and to, that in fact, hand down a directive to the navy? >> it's extremely rare. it does occur, you see it just like you do in the civilian world, willie, you see where a president and all presidents have done this, issue pardons along the way. but in the military, because we have our own system of justice with the investigators, the juries, the judges are all military, it's very rare for a president to step into that process. and in the context of this particular case, to step in in what are convictions for war crimes. i can't recall another case of this. >> this has now been a few times the president has stepped in in military cases and ruled against and offered clemency to soldiers who have been convicted who have, you know, in this case, you know, with the military honor and seem to be as the admiral said, undermining their

fellow officers. these are people who had their own platoons, i their own units were the ones who were witnesses against them. mika, my question to you is why is the president doing this? do you believe -- is this something that he feels is truly a miscarriage of justice or is this some sort of political signal he's trying to send, perhaps, to a group that he's hoping will back him again next time around? >> yeah, this is a president who has advocated for war crimes, wanted the gloves to come off, suggested that we should kill the family members of terrorist. these are all things that our military which prides itself on its professionalism finds abhorrent. so this president fundamentally has a very cruel vision of what war should look like. he's not someone who's ever served and so he doesn't really understand the culture and the professionalism that our military takes tremendous pride in. so he thinks that he's actually catering to a military audience, but, in fact, a number of people feel like he's really undermining military culture.

so i think that in many ways this could backfire on him. >> national security expert mika, admiral, great to have you both on this morning. thanks so much. coming up next on "morning joe," last week the rnc denied helping donald trump jr. top "the new york times" best seller's list by buying a load of his books. now we've learned otherwise. plus, former president obama has a message for his party. chill out. we'll explain that ahead. "morning joe's" coming right back. ahead. "morning joe's" coming right back. (logo whooshes) (logo chiming)

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the my account app makes today's xfinity customer service simple, easy, awesome. not my thing. welcome back to "morning joe" on a friday morning in new york city. "the new york times" reports the republican national committee has now admitted to buying thousands of copies of donald trump jr.'s new book to ensure

its spot on the best seller list. the book was released november 5th, the following week it topped "the new york times" best seller list. already has sold more than 115,000 copies, which is a lot. financial records show the rnc paid nearly $100,000 to a book seller just a week before the book was released causing skeptics to raise eyebrows as to its unusual for the rnc to promote a book written by a candidate's son who's not a politician and is not running for office. the spokesperson for the rnc previously said it was ordering copies as supporters requested them but since has confirmed the bulk purchases. michael steele, you ran the rnc for a while. there was an asterisk last week in the "new york times" best seller list i that sthhowed the were bulk purchases from this book, didn't say from whom and now we know it was the rnc. >> of course it was the rnc. sobs. >> can you repeat that, michael? >> you know, look, let me just

tell you how -- how screwed up this is. as national chairman, before i became national chairman, i had written a book on how the republican party can regroup after the 2008 shellacking, after the 2006, you know, bang-up at the polls, and move the party forward. and people looked at me and said, how dare you write a book and try to protest off of the rnc. and these days they're just giving away $100,000 to the president's son, are you kidding he had? this is the kind of internal corruption that people complained about inside the rnc for a long time. and then guys like myself and others come along and try to change the system, we get booted out, they rei state instate it big and bold with it. and then to sit up and lie up front, no, we didn't do that, knowing that they've got to report it on the fec report and when it comes out everybody in

the world's going to see it and they're going to say what it this $100,000 for? it's just unbelievable. >> who's money is that? who's $100,000 is that? >> those are donors. those are donors. those are moms and dads, grandpas and grandmas who write a check for $50, a hundred dollars to the rnc to help elect candidates. not to good out and buy some dumb behind book that nobody's going to read, all right. and the fact of the matter is, it's just -- it's incredible just the sheer corruption top down throughout the rnc now, just been wholly owned as a subsidiary of the trump organization. it's not just the books, folks, it's everything else. it's legal fees, it's trips, it's all kinds of expenses that the rnc is taking on, spending donor money to take care of the business of the trump family and

its organization. so i don't want to hear the whining from the members anymore about where the money's going and why candidates are running for county council and mayor in local races aren't getting cash. go buy the book and try to sell it and get the money back. >> you know the parallel, the trumps are a criminal organization and whether it's take the -- the theme is whether it's taking charitable money, they just paid a fine of $2 million, money that people give to go to firefighters and children. >> yes. >> exactly. >> or taking taxpayer money, $400 million of military aid which we pay for and say i'm going to use that in favor of my campaign or taking money that joe the plumber 20 bucks because i want to get republicans elected going to selling his son's book, once again, bring it back, it's all corruption, betrayal. he will even betray you on your $10 donation. he will even betray a fireman when it comes to charity. and this is the bigger picture. but there is -- there's no limit to what they do.

>> and two great political parties is acting like the democratic people's party of north korea would act toward the kim family. i mean, it is, you know, so of course we must buy the dear leader junior's book and share it with the world because it's such a wondrous and marvelous thing. and of course the dear leader can have done so wrong in this impeachment farce. >> kimberly is our next first lady, i'm watching the two of them up there, i wanted to puke. >> there's the white house wedding coming, donny. for the corruption at the rnc. too bad it wasn't in ukraine, the president would have cared more. let's talk about donald junior. he was someone that was popular on the campaign trail during the midterms in a red country. he's been out already playing a role for the campaign this fall. they anticipate hundreds of events next year, he's going to

be one of their top road warriors. how effective do you think he's going to be for the president next year, but are we going to see him run for office? he's said not now but he won't rule it out for the if you zblur he future. >> he is popular out in the country and there is a crowd and people talk about him. there is talk of him running for governor in montana where he's spent a lot of time. he's out there as a hunter. that's where he wants to maybe make a debut, if you will. >> nothing screams montana like growing up at the top of a skyscraper. >> exactly. >> during president trump's first five months in office, this is another big story, the secret service spent more than $250,000 at the president's properties. according to the "washington post," the records were obtained by the group property of the people after an open records lawsuit and it details some of the revenue that trump derives from u.s. taxpayers. the records show charges on

credit cards used by the secret service, spending on average nearly $2,000 per day. the post reports the president has set up an extraordinary arrangement. he kept ownership of his businesses and then visited them repeatedly bringing along aides and security officials and charging the government for what they bought. a previous batch of records had shown aides staying in guest suites at mara l-a-lago for $54 night, ringing up a liquor tab of a thousand dollars. the white house declined to comment on the story. while both the trump artion and t organization and the white house declined to comment. you've got the rnc using donor money, the president making money off taxpayers by brings his entourage to his properties and charging them to stay there. >> $100 million was spend the for him to play golf. it's amazing when he ran for office he was going after obama and he had 200 golf outings.

the taxpayers spent $100 million for him to play golf. you know, it's part of his sociopathic behavior. he does not look at voters or people as people. they are just pawns like his father taught him. there are killers and there are losers and he treats the rest of the world as if they don't exist they're losers. you don't exist as people and you can give me money, you can give me $50 to fight for firemen and i will take it and i will put it in my pocket. >> he shakes down his staff too. bill barr is having his holiday party at a trump property. you show loyalty by giving him money. >> willie, i'll just know that mar-a-lago season begins next week for thanksgiving so the president will make trips there again. >> and eric trump is tweeting out at the end of a long week you know what you could use? some trump wine. selling the wine. >> why are you all speaking this way of the dearly -- >> coming up, 12 witnesses over five days of public testimony in the impeachment hearings. we will discuss what we've learned and whether democrats

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attacked us in 2016. these fictions are harmful even if they're deployed for purely domestic purposes. >> isn't it also true that some of president trump's most senior advisers had informed him that this theory of ukraine interference in the 2016 election was false? >> that's correct. >> so is it your understanding, then, that president trump disregarded the advice of his senior officials about this theory and, instead, listened to rudy giuliani's views? >> that appears to be the case, yes. >> dr. fiona hill closing out the testimony in the impeachment inquiry for this week. welcome back. still with us we have white house reporter jonathan lemire, republican strategist and msnbc political analyst susan del percio. birthday boy donny deutsch. former chairman of the republican national committee feeling fired up this morning, michael steele. and joining the conversation, editor and chief of the atlantic magazine, jeffrey goldberg and

columnist and deputy editorial page editor of "the washington post," rouge markus. joe and mika have the morning o off. jeffrey, that piece you have up about biden gave some people pause about what they're seeing on the stage. we'll talk about that in a little bit. but first just, you general impressions of yesterday. you can do the whole two weeks if you want to, but dr. fiona hill and david holmes yesterday. >> i'll do it in 30 seconds. >> please. >> i happen to know fiona hill. i don't know her well but i have a little bit of a running joke with her that she knows the name of every blast and subblast in russia. there's nothing she doesn't know about russia. i was watching it with that in mind, that this is the go-to person in washington before she joined the government had she was in that think tank, this is the go-to person to understand russia, its interference, why it interferes. she was an extraordinary witness, quite obviously. we're at the point now where --

i don't want to overstate it, but it just seems to be that everything is known at this point. everything is known over and over again. we heard the same narrative, the same quid pro quo narrative. and, you know, the only -- the only good thing in this whole process, to me, is that the american people have been allowed to see some great public servants who ordinarily don't get any attention for the good work that they do on behalf of the american people. >> jonathan, one of the things dr. hill did right out of the box, we got a preview of it when we saw her opening statement about 24 hours ago was to go right at republicans on the committee and say, you're pedali peddling a fiction. i study these things, i know she's things better than you sitting up there, she didn't say it that way, but it was russian that meddled and by meddling these fictions of ukraine, you're helping russia with their

propaganda. >> rightly the focus of her testimony has been how she outlined the president's relationship with ukraine and that attempted coercion. but we shouldn't overlook this part of it too. she made it very clear this is -- russia remains a threat. russia is who tried to interfere with the 2016 election and succeeded. it was not ukraine. were there leaders in ukraine who hoped hillary clinton would win? sure. that happens in foreign governments all over the place. they figure out who they're going to try to support or cozy up to, but there was no interference. that has been a fever dream and the fringes of the right wing swamp. they said it wouldn't have been russia helping the president, it was ukraine. >> and the president used it on a phone call on july 25bling, led with crowdstrike. >> this is a conspiracy he gout bought into because he cannot accept that russia helped him. he was time and time again refused to criticize president putin standing next to him for doing so. he has not issued measures to safeguard the next elections.

that's what dr. hill stressed yesterday, how damaging this is to focus on ukraine, which is nonsense, anding i not n ignorea did in 2016 and going forward. >> you're right, but you refer to the fever dreams of the right wing fringe. this isn't in the fringe anymore. >> it's crossed over. >> right. >> it's a popular idea. >> and it's in the white house. >> it's in the white house. >> i mean, the white house is fringe but we have a dealership problem. >> deeper problem. >>. >> so, ruth, where does all of this leave us after two weeks of compelling testimony from nonpartisan diplomats who worked under republicans and democrats and as jeffrey said painted a clear picture of what happened here. are we where we are when we began, when which it so to say on a party line vote the president will be impeached in the house and acquitted in the republican-led senate? >> well think there it's simultaneously true that we know a lot more and we have a very

convincing picture of what happened and how concerning it was to the really impressive foreign policy professionals that we've seen. and at the same time, as you suggested, that it hasn't really shaken even if republicans are shaken in private, it hasn't shaken loose a single republican vote probably in the house or in the senate. i do want to take issue, though, with one thing that my good friend jeff goldberg said. he said everything is known. i think we have conclusive proof of fundamentally outrageous, disturbing behavior that occurred at the direction of and by the president of the united states. but there's a lot more to know. imagine if we could hear from john bolton, if we could hear from mike pompeo, if we could hear from mick mulvaney, if we could hear from the vice president how much more we would know. >> there is some debate about whether or not democrats should

pursue that testimony, susan, from john bolton and mick mulvaney and from mike pompeo, in other words, extending these hearings. or we've seen what we need to see, let's get on the record and let's go ahead and vote before christmas is what democrats are arguing. do you think we'll see john bolton's testimony? >> not as yet. but it doesn't mean it won't happen if the doesn't mean that it can't be requested further down the line. it doesn't mean that -- we said this last hour, that the hearings are necessarily over. i'm not sure that they are because there's a lot of threads to still pull at that. but, i think to jeffrey's point and ruth just to push back a little bit, is i think that everything is known meaning what else are we going to find about the quid pro quo? we know it happened. if john bolton testifies were we're still going to know the same thing. we may learn more, but we'll still basically have the same facts out there that the president used his power for political gain. >> it could be a terrible mistake for them to go on. it doesn't mean in the future we can't continue to listen. if you're a prosecutor, you have

your case, you make your case. i'm going back to the poll that i cited in the previous hour, the emerson poll, people, i do believe that people are -- have a wear-out factor on this stuff. and the more you say something's on fire. oh my god, you say something's on fire a hundred times you get a bit desensitized to it. you have your case, you haven't it any clearer. that doesn't mean we can't revis the john bolton or rudy giuliani or mick mulvaney in the future. but tie this up right now. you have the silver bullet, use it. >> but this is a legal process and i understand that people are, quote, tired about it -- >> it's a political process. >> i know. but it is ultimate irrelevant in the pursuit of truth you have to pur stew where it goes. let me argue against interest and side with ruth and the criticism -- >> jeffrey goldberg say wiseman. >> i know. >> you take one punch and -- >> i know, but it's a pun frch ruth markus, that's not an ordinary punch. i will stand by my assertion,

but there's enough -- we have the fact set related to the particular behaviors. it would be good to obviously know exactly what mike pompeo did, mike pence's role because we have to understand their level of culpability or not culpability. there's always obviously more to know. . >> what i mean is we have enough to go on right now. i think people understand the basic dynamic that the president wanted ukraine to investigate joe biden on false charges in order to create a political problem for joe biden and he was going to hold up aid. >> but to donny's point about having it go on, the fact is at that point that the democrats were making with saying this is not -- it's a political process in the nature of it has to happen. but this is about what's good for the country, making the right choices, which is personally why i thought they should have sought impeachment back in may based on the findings of the mueller report. but if you're going to do what's right in your constitutional responsibility, you can't just say i'm going to stop now because we got an election in 2020. that's -- that's where --

>> or people are bored. >> or people are bored and they've had enough. i understand your political point and i agree with it, but i still put the constitution above politics. >> we talked a lot about dr. hill this morning, undersecretary of state david holmes also sitting up there yesterday and recounting the july 26th cell phone call he overheard between president trump and eu ambassador gordon sondland at a restaurant in kiev. >> so you heard president trump ask ambassador sondland is he going to do the investigation? >> yes, sir. >> what was ambassador sondland's response? >> he said, oh, yeah, he's going to do it. he'll do anything you ask. >> and was that the end of the ukraine portion of the conversation? >> yes. >> afterwards you described a follow follow-on conversation you had with ambassador sondland where you asked him generally what did

president trump think of ukraine, is that right? >> correct. >> what did ambassador sondland say to you? >> he said he doesn't really care about ukraine. >> did he use slightly more colorful language than that? >> he did. >> what did he say that he does care about? >> he said he cares about big stuff. >> did he explain what he meant by big stuff? >> well, i asked him, what kind of big stuff? we have big stuff going on here, like a war with russia. and he said, no, big stuff like the biden investigation that mr. giuliani's pushing. >> republican congresswoman mike conaway of texas later accused holmes of showing indiscretion in sharing details about that call he overheard. >> we couldn't figure out how many people you actually shared that information with. and i would argue that the information is unflattering to the president, unflattering to the ambassador, and that you're discretion is, you know, at odds here. your testimony, your deposition said that you shared that with folks who you thought would find

it interesting. well, i'd argue that everybody in the back rowe would find it interesting, but i don't know that that's necessarily criteria. on a go-ed fforward basis, can articulate in the future this that when you're privy to certain circumstances that would be embarrassing to the principal that if it's the principal you share it with the ambassador that's fine. but folks within the embassy that don't have a need to know that you wouldn't regale them with your recounting of those instances? >> sir, i think it was gordon sondland who showed discretion by having that conversation over a cell phone line. >> so the congressman's suggestion is that david holmes should not have shared that with his superiors and told him that he heard the ambassador of the eu talking with the president about a political investigation. donny, what do you got over there? >> i want to try to exercise on my phone. the big question is can he overhear somebody that's on the phone. i'm going to call my mother. >> has has been done. >> this is what chris cuomo, he tried. other day.

>> don't put it on speaker phone, that might disprove your point. michael steele, let me ask you about the republican approach which was a revelation to a lot of people and why david holmes was there yesterday, which was to say, you know, what else -- recount for us chapter and verse everything that was in that conversation? oh, you couldn't remember? why did it enough to asap rocky in sweden? he said i heard what i heard about ukraine and then he moved on to a different topic. republicans didn't have a lot of places to go with david holmes yesterday. >> no, they didn't because he, you know, it was very clear that he was in the space with the ambassador. the ambassador basically confirmed what holmes was going to say before he said it because he acknowledged that the call took place and in a public, open space. that it was loud enough for a third party to hear. and homes was that third party. the fact that republicans not just with holmes but with hill,

especially near the end, just ran out of gas. they had no more questions. they had no other point to make with them except to then attack them and say to holmes, well, you know, the next time if you hear something like that you just, you know, mind your ps and qs and don't tell your bosses. and this idea that you randomly told it to anyone and we don't know who that was, well that's not true. he told it to his bosses, he told it to his superiors, and it moved up the appropriate chains. he didn't just tell the person at the next table, did you hear that? no. that's not how it worked. but that's where republicans were left yesterday. and, willie, it speaks volumes about the fact that while they are confident that this thing will die in the united states senate, that the public will be so bored to the point that was made around the table. agree with donny 1,000%, that this is as much about communication as it is about

process and the law. and the republicans know that. and their long term game and their short-term game is to wear this thing down to the point when it gets to the senate there's no runway left. and mitch mcconnell has two very important options, one, not to even hold a trial because the evidence coming from the house isn't sustainable, or, two, to hold it but then we know what the vote's going to be because it's already locked and loaded. and so those moments like yesterday i thought reflected that reality for a lot of republicans. it was like, okay, well, we're done. you know, so let's take out the trash by trashing these very credible witnesses. >> so, donny, the case we heard from congressman will herd, republican, former cia officer who's used his time yesterday to say he was not going to vote for impeachment in the house was one that may sound reasonable to a lot of people, which is i've heard all this evidence, i hear some stuff i don't like, i don't

like foreign policy being run this way, but i don't see enough here to remove an elected president from office. it's an argument republicans may have made from the beginning, may have been more compelling, but they couldn't do it because the president was denying everything. is that a winning argument, something that can carry the day? >> yes. >> bad stuff but not impeachable? >> it's the only argument. to your point they should have done it from the beginning. hey, look -- because what we've learned about this president is not only will people accept playing outside the lines, that part of it is part of his brand. it's like, yeah, this is a president that pushes hard, made a mistake, certainly should not be removed. i don't want to betray the voters who voted for him. you want him out of office, vote him. and it's actually a -- if you're not an absolutist about the constitution, if you're not, like i said, what we do for a living and follow this, if you're an average joe voter out there, you go, yeah. because, by the way, we've seen atrocities that he's done. we go back to something to me, he stole from his charity. he stole from a charity.

you go to jail for that and there could be nothing more morally corrupt. he did this dealing back with dealings, these things happen, it was a mistake, don't do it again, it's the only argument. >> but we're only there because of his last three years of behavior as president. this is a very big monumental thing. >> it's a huge thing. >> and the reasonable reason the public is not where it is and i agree with you, donny, they are thinking, is it that bad? is because of what he has done to this country. >> it's not only that, yes, we're defining down moment, that's not worst thing he's done. there's another thing that is going on, the american people have become aculture tried the this kplut power executive and the line repeated over and over again, he's the president, he makes the law and the foreign policy. if he wants to do "x," does "x." so we are where the people don't understand the branches of government as coequal. >> which is why the next election is the most critical election in our lifetime. because now imagine four more

years? democracy is in play. you cannot be anymore severe or passionate. anybody that doesn't get that has got their head up their butt. >> certainly there is that idea that if the president is impeached here, is not removed and then wins re-election, how does that embolden him going forward when he never has to face voters again? >> go ahead, michael. >> i was going to say, you know, based on everything that's said around the table, here is where i come down on this. and this is really a question to will herd and everyone else who just have seen and heard everything that we have seen and heard over the last two weeks. tell me where your line is. tell my your line is. so if this doesn't rise to a point -- this is not about, you know, impeachment is unelecting a president, that's just a bs argument that people like to throw out there to distract. this is a constitutional -- constitutionally, you know, guaranteed process. it's given to us by our founders. if a president behaves in a way

that's ultra constitution -- other words, undermines that constitution and its founding principles and they laid that out. so if bribing a foreign government, holding up foreign assistance to that government to get a personal political favor, this was not, oh, this is part of the foreign policy of the united states. this is part of, you know, moving an agenda in europe. this was helping donald trump get re-elected. if that's not your line, then tell me what your line is. what can this president do or any president do beyond this that you would then say, oh, well, guess what? that's a problem. >> and to be clear, donny wasn't defending the will herd argument, he was explaining why it may be effective to some people. >> absolutely. >> it makes me sick to my stomach, but this is the reality we have. and we can't just kind of howell at t howl at the wind. the game is get this tyrant out of office and deal with the

realities in fronts of you. the sad reality is no matter what you say to these republicans, it's not going to make a difference. >> right. >> they have sold their souls to the devil. let's accept that and move on and do what it takes to win. >> and, ruth, the republican arguments, the public defense that were presented before the last two weeks of hearings have been one by one shot down by the witness that it was about ruption. no, we cleared them of corruption in may. one after another the arguments have fall sewn now they laen so wasn't impeachable. >> some of them aren't quite that far yet. but i think in the end and in the senate it is going to come down to that. and i think michaels that right. the four words that democrats should say back to them are why not and what saturday doedoes? why doesn't it rise to the level of impeachment. explain that. and if this doesn't, what does?

>> coming up, congressman adam smith is our guest. he joins the conversation next on "morning joe." the conversat on "morning joe." (people talking) for every dollar you spend at a small business, an average of 67 cents stays local. shop small and watch it add up. small business saturday by american express is november 30th.

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. in russia, my act of expressing concern to the chain of command in an official and private channel would have severe personal repercussions in offering public testimony involving the president would surely cost me my life have some that was lieutenant colonel alexander vindman testifying earlier this week on capitol hill. our next guest says he is keeping a close eye out to make sure the army officer does not suffer retaliation from testifying in the house impeachment hearing. joining us now is chairman of the house armed services committee congressman adam smith of washington. chairman, thanks for being with us this morning. we appreciate it. >> thank you. >> what are your concerns for lieutenant colonel vindman? we've heard that the army's looking at moving him to an army

base to make sure he and his family are safe. what are you hearing and what are your concerns? >> the concerns are broad. the trump administration has reacted to anyone who says something they don't like and attack their character, i attack their personality. and we want to make sure that all civil servants, dod and elsewhere are protected if they're telling the truth, doing their job, we ought to protect them. certainly it's important for lieutenant colonel vindman, but it's important for the entire government to know that you can do your job and not be punished by the president. it undermines our ability to whether you're talking about the state department, dod, for these people to be able to do their job here and abroad. >> do you have any specific concerns? are there threats against lieutenant colonel vindman. >> not that i'm aware of. we want to make sure that he and everyone else is protected. >> he also spoke powerfully about his father that if they were still in the old soviet union if he spoke truth to power like this that his life would be in jeopardy.

he said to his father that wouldn't be the case here but you're saying there are threats. and we're seeing that with the whistle-blower if publicly identified there could be some problems. moreover, lets me ask you about impeachment. where do you stand? has this been compelling? what's your vote there. >> whole series of questions there. >> that's what i do. >> the big thing is -- i just have to unpack them in my brain. we want to make sure that, you know, you've seen some of the things that the president said about the whistle-blower, flat out threatening. he's going to ruin this person aens credperson's cred. i think if there's another attention to the issue it will make it less likely it will happen. which is how the whole scheme in ukraine fell apart. once it became obvious that people were paying attention, that this wasn't going to go unnoticed, they backtracked in a hurry and that's what happened here. basically what i'm watching, the most discouraging for me is you were saying, there's no question what happened here. you know, i work with jim

jordan, i don't know what the hell he's doing. he's sticking to this narrative that is obviously untrue. the president tried to leverage ukraine to do an investigation on hillary clinton, the whole crowdstrike thing, and on joe and hunter biden by pressuring ukraine. what's whthat's what rudy giulii was going dog there. we should move on to the discussion of how does we keep it from happening and hold the president responsible for that. i'm waiting to hear other ideas, but right now this seems like the only legitimate avenue. >> i could come back to lieutenant colonel vindman. if you could talk about vindman and the worries you have in relationship to the other case that's going on related to the president trump's intervention in the s.e.a.l. case. in other words, we're dealing with a president who reaches far down into the military to get his way.

talk about that case and sort of the other. >> it's beyond that. the president, the way he's micromanaging is the wrong word. the way he is threatening and pushing -- >> it's not management. >> the government doesn't work for donald trump, they work for the american people, just like believe it or not the, people on my staff don't work for me. we all work for the people in this country and i have a role in that. but we always have to put the country first. the president's made it clear that he doesn't really view it that way. it's about him. you know, go all the way back to comey, you know. i want to know, are you going to be my guy? no, actually, that's not my job, okay. so, yes, i am worried about that. but the other big point that i want to make and the whole question of what happened here, as the chairman of the armed services committee, when they cut off this money, we kind of found out about it. but not the way we normally do. this does happen, but when it happens the white house, the dod, they tell us we're holding this up and here's why. we found out by accident. we found out primarily because

the defense contractors were like, hey, i'm supposed to be getting paid here, how come this isn't happening? and we called up dod and asked and they were like, yeah, well we just stopped it. well, why? can't really tell you that. which led to this whole effort go and eventually people found out why. they found out because it was the president's personal decision and here was why. >> do you remember when that was when you said why is that money being held up? >> it was sometime around the july into early august time frame and then a very aggressive lobbying campaign started to free up that money. so the reason ultimately in september he released it was really twofold. one was, yes, the whistle-blower was coming out, they knew it was public. but also the pressure was mounting. there's collateral damage here, mr. president. you may be thinking you're playing your own little side show here, but there's a lot of ukrainian lobbyists, a lot of defense companies that are counting on selling these weapons and they're not happy and they're not going to sit

quietly by. you're not going to be able to do this without people noticing. >> as a head of the armed services committee, ukraine was right there and we've been talking about it, but there's a lot of other things you oversee. >> you think? >> and your relationship with the white house is critical in addressing those things. what is the relationship now with the white house? are you able to move things? are there things that you are concerned about today other than ukraine that are not happening and we should, as the public, be aware of? >> here's the odd thing. i get along quite well with the white house, which may sound odd given my current position. but there are quite a few people at the white house who are very much trying to do their job. and we have kind of agreed that whatever else is going on over here, we have got to find a way to keep functioning as a country. right now we are just this close to passing the national defense authorizing act, the defense bill. and i've worked very closely with the white house. i try not to get engaged in the whole personality thing. i was at the meeting when the speaker and the president sort of went at each other and they all stormed out, bizarre

experience. but i stayed because -- and the joint chief of staff was there, mark esper was there, that was about syria and what was going on there. that's sort of the way approach it. we do this but we have do our job. i will look to find someone at the white house to work with me. i found them. there are quite a few people over there and we are working together even though this other stuff is going on. >> you said a minute ago you know jim jordan and work with him and don't know what the hell he's doing to use your words. >> that's true. >> most people know what he's doing, which is protecting the president. you know these guys better than we do, obviously. in private conversations or when you all get together, are they being as dishonest as it seems they're being? in other words, they hear the evidence, they're smart men and women, they know what happened and yet they're going a different direction. what's in it for them? why are they doing this? >> first of all, i really want

to emphasize think there it's incredibly important that you work with people. i've been in politics for a long time and i've seen all manner of different penalties. and i always stick to the fact that we got to work together and i'm, as i like to put it, i'm not a monument of justice, i'm not trying to figure out if this is a perfect person, this is who i have to work with. so we're going to find a way to get along and do that. i do think they are defending the president because they believe that that's the right thing to do. when i say i don't understand, i could understand him saying, look, this impeachment is wrong, it's over the top and doesn't need to be done. it's to go down this whole road of implying the only reason he held up the money he was cared about corruption in ukraine. that's not credible because apparently the only corruption that he thought was going on in ukraine was at burisma and because of hunter biden. >> right. >> that's it. >> but if you were having a beer with jim jordan, would he concede that to you. >> if i was having a beer with jim jordan we'd be talking about the seattle seahawks and the cleveland browns and make wisconsin wrestling. we don't talk about this. >> in private, republicans don't

concede to you that, yes, of course there's something to see here but we can't admit that in public. >> not that republican. there are other republicans. i had a republican, like, shortly -- and i won't say who, ask me in all sincerity, do you think -- do you think the russians have something on trump? because i'm starting to get worried about it. so, yes, there are a lot of republicans who are worried about it. and they swhees goiee what's go here. the impact is so broad. i was in the middle east for eight days, turkey, syria, jordan, everyone over there is like we can't work with you because you're the ambassador or you're sitcom commander. but we know if we get up tomorrow morning if the president sends a tweet there's no point in me talking to you because you don't have any authority. that's undermining our credibility all across the world. >> that's happening to congressmen and women and diplomats around the world. we've seen that he some some of the testimony. final question, is russell wilson the mvp of the nfl this

year? >> i'm no from seattle, he's a constituent, what do you think? yes, total. >> not only a right answer, that's a smart answer from a politician. chairman of the armed services committee, congressman adam smith of washington, thanks for being here this morning. >> thanks for the chance. coming up, joe biden's verbal stumbles during the democratic debates have caused some concern among democrats. an incredible new piece. a must-read in the atlantic magazine explains what joe biden cannot bring himself to say. we will talk to jeffrey goldberg about that piece next. lk to jeg about that piece next. i am all about living joyfully.

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welcome back to "morning joe." ruth markus is out with a new book entitled supreme ambition. brett kavanaugh and the conservative takeover. it comes out just after thanksgiving but "the washington post" is starting to report out the book now. ruth, congratulations. you set the stage a little bit with the kavanaugh hearings. i think in a similar way as we've been watching the impeachment hearings only in the ways that it mirrors the sort of

tribalism that we've seen, the rush to judgment, political parties running to their battle stations before the evidence is presented '. what are the parallels here? >> well, so a bunch of people including both me and tucker carlson of all people, this feels a little bit like kavanaugh 2.0, impeachment does. and what i mean by that is some of what you mention, the reflects of tribalism, the unwillingness to consider evidence, the unwillingness to call witnesses who might shed light on the matter as we were discussing earlier. and the complaint, we heard this from republicans about the last-minute nature of the allegations about justice kavanaugh. the complaint about process on why is this coming up at the last minute, and now republicans are unwilling to entertain the arguments about impeaching president trump because, well, democrats have been looking for a way to get him for three years now. well, yes, maybe.

but we have to deal with the facts that are right before us. and it's that unwillingness to deal with serious allegations and the reflects of tribalism that i think ties the two together. >> ruth, i can ask, this is more in sort of the personal cost issues rather than the larger political issues. but i'm fascinated by this. people talk about people like kristine blasey ford, they come out and say they're doing it for personal gain or for whatever reason. but there's one of your revelations here that's fascinating that the morning after kavanaugh was confirmed, her father, ralph blasey, emailed his golf friend, kavanaugh's father, to say that he was glad that brett had been confirmed. i'm fascinated by that detail. can you talk a little bit about her and her life and what happened with her after the confirmation hearing was over? i know it's a big part of your book. >> sure. well, i spent many hours speaking to kristine blasey ford and she spent many, many hours

agonizing before she came forward about whether to come forward. and one of the main reasons that she felt as if it was her civic duty to come forward but one of the things that initially encouraged her and worried her about coming forward was what the impact was going to be on her family. and specifically the impact on her family here on the east coast where her father, ralph blasey, is a fellow member and golfing friend of brett kavanaugh's father at the elite burning tree country club in bethesda, maryland. and so this had this impact on her life that completely upended her life. she was unable, after the story became public, she did not get back to her home for three months. and even now she has to worry about security. and my conclusion was that she did not come forward for

partisan reasons, she came forward because she believed, perhaps naively, that she had a civic duty to do this, from all the witnesses we've heard previously. and also that senators who heard her allegations would -- needed to know and be swayed by them. >> so, ruth, apparently justice kennedy pushed kavanaugh as a potential nominee for the court. could you talk about that? what was the connection and why? >> sure. brett kavanaugh clerked for justice kennedy and that was really his first step on a road to legal stardom. so he -- and he became one of justice kennedy's star clerks become a federal appeals court judge. and justice kennedy was incredibly fond of him. and like many, many people in washington, was very surprised

when brett kavanaugh very largely because he was viewed as a bush person and the trump does not like bushees. when he did not appear on the supreme court list, a lot of people were alarmed and thought they should change that. dr. justice gorsuch's swearing in, i report justice kennedy asked if he could have a moment alone with the president and said, hey, there's another clerk of mine, justice gorsuch clerked for justice kennedy, there's another clerk of mine who's not on your list who you ought to take a look at. and the trump administration, president trump, was desperate for another supreme court vacancy, the most likely person to go was justice kennedy and when justice kennedy talked, they listened. >> we've got a million more questions for you but the book's not out yet. this is a preview -- >> i can come back and answer for mes

more questions. >> i was just about to say that. >> thank you for the invitation. >> you will be back. the new book is supreme ambition, brett kavanaugh and the conservative takeover. ruth markus, thank you very much and we will be back in a couple of weeks when the book comes out. jeffrey, i want to turn to the piece in the atlantic that i sort of teased and hour or so ago. new piece by john hend e hendrickson entitled what joe biden can't bring himself to say in which he rights that the verbal stumbles from voters worried about his mental fitness. but maybe they'd be more understanding if they knew he's still fighting a stutter. the author rights in part, maybe you've heard joe biden talk about his boyhood stutter. a nonstutterer might not notice when he appears to get caught on worst as an adult because he usually maneuvers out of those moments quickly and expertly. stuttering is a neurologic disorder that affects 70 million people, about 3 million of whom live in the united states. after trying and failing at speech therapy in kindergarten,

he waged a personal war on stutter in his bedroom as a young teen. biden says he hasn't felt himself caught in a traditional stutter in several decades. i can only speculate as to why biden's campaign agreed to this interview, but assume the reasoning went something like this. if biden disclosed to me, a person who stutters, that he himself stull actively stutters, perhaps voters would cut him some slack when it comes to verbal misfires. as well as errors that seem more related to memory and cognition. but whenever i ask biden about what appeared to be his present-day stuttering, the candidate became clipped. he said he didn't remember or spun off to somewhere new. jeffrey, this is an extraordinary piece because you have in john hendrickson someone who has battled stuttering his entire life and understand what's joe biden may have been going through. i think this is a detail that people realized may have heard but didn't realize how prominent it's been. >> joe biden seems to be ashamed

of it. he was mocked as a child for it and that is something that stutterers obviously have to deal with. it's an extraordinary piece and john hendrick son wson who is o expert reporters he saw something that other people might not see. he came to the conclusion very quickly listening to bide enclosely that biden was using all of these kind of sir come la constitutions or word choices or going down different pathways to avoid trip wire words or situations. and that's his analysis as a stutterer himself. much of the piece is the back and forth with biden about are you still a stutterer are you not still a stutterer. but john's theory, and it seems very compelling, is that some of the moments when you think joe biden is just having a senior moment, quote unquote, or some issue of cognitive decline is actually biden trying to get out of a sentence that, as a long-time stutterer has a hard

time getting out of otherwise. it's it really gives you new feeling about joe biden. >> that's obviously a very personal choice if it's something he wants to address. but from a branding point of view i think it would help him. the big concern obviously is his cognitive ability and that's a very simple explanation. at the same point we know a president then being the heinous person who picks on people's physical disabilities would jump on it. that does explain a got. >> it does. >> once again it's up to him to decide if it's something he wants to embrace or deal with. but fascinating argument. >> but at the same time like you almost can't stop thinking that this is something that was very calculated and maybe it was there to address some of his, quote, senior moments. but also maybe it's something that softens him up and it a good piece to put out there to the public. >> and that's -- >> if there is a -- >> i mean, the interesting thing is biden won't really address it. maybe his staff thinks that, but he won't because he wants to think of himself as a former

stutterer. but, yeah. if it's true, it's true. >> yeah. i'm not saying -- >> if it's true it's true. and when you think about the way biden talks, which sometimes is a little weird. sometimes he will start a sentence and then take a detour for reasons that are not immediately apparent. >> right. >> and so that explanation really makes sense in terms of what you observe. >> right. >> and then -- >> i think people can empathize with that. >> john makes that point, maybe his campaign thought this is something we need to put out there as an explainer by way of explaining away some of the moments we've seen in the debates. but joe biden as you point out in the piece when you read through it says i'm not looking for pity. i became vice president of the united states and hopefully the president of the united states by overcoming my stutter. >> it's deeper political writing than sometimes we're used to and explains that these people are multifacet and complicated. >> worth a read for sure. coming up next, while president trump's actions on ukraine are

scrutinized in the house impeachment inquiry, our next guest digs into russia. that and much more on "morning joe." we'll be right back. more on "morning joe." we'll be right back. (people talking) for every dollar you spend at a small business, an average of 67 cents stays local. shop small and watch it add up. small business saturday by american express is november 30th.

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♪ welcome back to "morning joe." joining us now author and editor at large for ""the daily beast" michael weiss. he is out with a new piece entitled- the alleged russian mobsters in trump's world's orb bit, a dirty dozen." we will get to that piece in a moment. good morning. >> good morning. >> i want to ask you about your expertise in this area, about the testimony of dr. fiona hill yesterday. from your perspective, how significant was it because of who she is and what she knows? >> first of all, i would say don't mess with someone from northern england. >> we learned that. >> i met her a few times.

i have followed her work for years. she wrote one of the most insightful biographies of putin. rather than caricature him as a kgb officer, she tried to create a compendium of who the man really is. she is a russian analyst, not quite a russian hawk as the way it was alleged. as she testified yesterday he was against sending javelins to the ukraine. in one would describe her a squish on the kremlin. she delivered not just to donald trump but also the republican conspiracy theories that, na namely, no, it was the ukraine who hacked the dnc and they were

meddling in the 2016 election. the most important thing she said is these conspiracy theories themselves are a concoction of the russian security services. they are propounded by putin spice and his vast array of disinformation and propaganda networks. for the republicans to embrace these things, they are de facto doing the work of the russian government. >> she effectively told republicans you are getting played by the russians. >> exactly. >> gene. >> so why are the republicans doing this so enthusiastically? i mean as if they're dealing with, you know, a north korean style leader? >> i think because it is a combination of guilt, you know. they do realize that they were the beneficiaries of foreign election interference, and frankly indifference. hey, if vladimir putin helped us get the white house, that's great, so be it. g.k. chesterton once said when a man thinks any stick will do he reaches for a boom rang. my point is republicans inviting foreign interference in the american political system are

inviting their own eventual demise. it was a little-noticed item a few weeks ago. microsoft came out in "the new york times" and said actually we're seeing foreign states interfering in the 2020 u.s. election, states such as iran and russia. if i am in the iranian corps who would i want to hawk? donald trump. if they wake up in 2024 and realize, wait a minute, a foreign state, a hostile power robbed us of the white house now, maybe this idea of inviting rogue actors into our election systems is actually a bad one. >> michael, i want to get to the piece. as a new yorker we heard over the years about mob connections and i always said trump is a criminal enterprise. what are you alleging in the piece? >> we are painting a tableau of all of the dodgey and, again, alleged mobsters from the former soviet union who by hook or crook found themselves in donald trump's mostly entrepreneurial

orbit going back decades. a lot of the guys came to biton beach. >> specifically? >> the main one who himself never met donald trump but has left tenants and emissaries who wound up buying properties in trump tower including running gambling rings in trump tower, he is known as the boss of bosses in the russian mafia, on the fbi's ten most wanted list until he was taken off. responsible for a pump and dump fraud in pennsylvania which is why he is wanted in the united states. the best thing about him is that he lives openly in moscow. the russians never will extradite this man despite his vast fchbl fraud in the united states. the fbi alleged not only was he trafficking in arms, vehicles and you name it but nuclear materials.

remember when the collapse of the soviet union was the big threat of wmd proliferation and where were these going. he came to the united states and set up shop here to create a russian mafia syndicate. one of the button men, mr. evonkov was rogue and lost to the fbi until they discovered he was living at fifth avenue in trump tower. another guy arrested by the fbi was running an international gambling ring out of trump tower. for some reason donald trump and his organization has been a lodestar for these mobsters who came to the united states. some of this goes back to the '70s where his hotels were buying -- >> you say in the piece he never met the man. >> he hasn't. >> what is the allegation, the connection again them. >> the people that are part of the crime family who he has met or who wound up living in properties he owned.

another figure is firtash who is involved in the impeachment saga. he is a ukrainian oligarch who told then u.s. ambassador to ukraine, bill taylor, i got my start in life through him. he is now linked up with igor fruman and through them rudy giuliani and trying to paint the conspiracy theory was the ukrainians who interfered in the election. michael wise, thank you for being here. sure. still ahead, several senators who likely will serve as jurors in his likely trial while they strategize how the trial might play out. we discuss the next steps as the house pours over evidence to determine whether to draft articles of impeachment. "morning joe" is back in one minute. - [spokeswoman] meet the ninja foodi pressure cooker,

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wake america up and say, we are better than this. >> this president believes he is above the law, beyond accountability, and in my view there is nothing more dangerous than an unethical president who believes they are above the law. i would just say to people watching here at home and around the world, in the words of my great colleague we are better than that. adjourned. >> chairman adam schiff in his closing statement yesterday echoing a comment, a familiar one from the late elijah cummings. good morning. welcome to "morning joe." it is friday, november 22nd. i'm willie geist. joe and mika have the morning off. with us msnbc political an lest susan del percio. jonathan lemire. prize winning columnist and associate editor of "the washington post", yu yeen robinson. msnbc political analyst, former

chairman of the republican national committee michael steele. vice president for third ways national security program and an msnbc contributor, mika o'yang. former nato supreme allied command four star retired, james stavridis. good morning to you all. before we get into the testimony from yesterday from fee own fio and david holmes, we are at the end of the weeks. how is the white house feeling heading into thanksgiving? >> this is the impeachment proceedings, only fourth time ever against a sitting president of the united states. we shouldn't lose sight of that even if things are rapidly moving into partisan camps here. we had two weeks, five days of testimony i believe, a parade of witnesses, almost all career officials and diplomats who

painted an extraordinary picture of what transpired this past year between the president of the united states and the situation in ukraine where he has -- and there's little ability to dispute the evidence, that he pushed ukraine to hold investigations into political rival in order to receive military funding and eventually a white house visit. an ally, important ally in the united states and the west and europe, a bulwark against russia who he let twist in the wind and lives were lost because of the decision. eventually the aid was released, we know that. fiona hill yesterday in extraordinary testimony showed just exactly parallel paths there. there was the regular path of u.s. foreign policy and this, as she put it, the domestic errant with what rudy giuliani was trying to get information about joe biden. at the end of two weeks the white house shaken by events. they feel confident that the republicans in the senate have the president's back. they do not believe he's in risk at losing office. of course, things can change.

we will see how it plays out next couple of weeks. this much is all but certain, president trump will be impeached. likely not removed from office but likely to be impeached. >> gene robinson we saw yesterday in fiona hill a career diplomat, someone who worked until july for donald trump, worked in the house. >> worked for two-and-a-half years for donald trump. >> come out and tell the truth about what she saw. she was careful not to appear partisan. she talked to the republicans about some of the conspiracy theories they've been floating and say, i study this for a living, none of what you are saying about ukraine middling in the 2016 campaign is true. she went out and she told the truth and now as jonathan says it will be up to the house and eventually the senate and the american public to decide based on what they've heard for two weeks whether or not donald trump did something worthy of impeachment. >> yes. you know, first you see why the democrats scheduled fiona hill as kind of the cleanup witness. she was extraordinary the way

she, in a very cool way sort of told us so much about what had happened, so much about herself, why she does what she does. she gave us a sense of why these career people serve the country the way they do, and how it felt to them to see foreign policy diverted by a president in this way. the consequences of that for ukraine. the consequences of that for her sense and the sense of others of what was -- what was right, what was acceptable, what was proper, what was the way the white house is supposed to work. you know, you mentioned the american people. i mean ultimately if the needle is going to move from where it is now, which is that the president

will be impeached. i agree with jonathan on that, i believe he will be. i believe, you know, impeachment is almost analogous to an indictment, and i think there's plenty of evidence for an indictment right now. but he is unlikely to be removed from office unless, number one, public sentiment moves in that direction, which the republican senators will be paying attention to, and, number two, we're just going to have to see how this trial plays out. what will be the rules? we have so few precedence for this. there are obvious witnesses who were not -- who did not testify basically because the white house told them not to testify. so will it be a trial in which the defendant in effect gets to decide who testifies or not? >> right. >> is that acceptable to chief justice john roberts who will be

presiding at the trial? so a lot of questions going into this next phase, and i assume there will be a next phase. >> and before we get to that phase will chairman schiff and the democrats pursue some of the potential witnesses like john bolton, like mick mulvaney, like mike pompeo or do they want to get it to the vote and not wait. >> also. we have to note there's no official word they're done. there's thanksgiving week, but it is not clear that they're finished with this phase. >> susan, let's listen to some of what dr. fiona hill said yesterday, the former top russia aide to the white house, was asked about testimony from gordon sondland's deposition when it accused hill of being, quote, emotional during a june 18th meeting while describing himself as being a shoulder to cry on. here is how dr. hill recalled that meeting. >> i think you might recall in my deposition on october 14th that i said that very unfortunately i had a bit of a

blowup with ambassador sondland and i had a couple of testy encounters with him. one in june 18 i said to him, who put you in charge of ukraine? i will admit i was a bit rude. that's when he told me the president, which shut me up. this other meeting, it was about 15, 20 minutes, exactly as he depicted it was. i was actually to be honest angry with him and, you know, i hate to say it but often when women show anger it is not fully appreciated, it is often pushed on to emotional issues or perhaps deflected on to other people. what i was angry about was that he wasn't coordinating with us. now, actually realized having listened to his deposition that he was absolutely right, that he wasn't coordinating with us because we weren't doing the same thing that he was doing. so i was upset with him that he wasn't fully telling us about all of the meetings that he was having, and he said to me, but i'm briefing the president, i'm

briefing chief of staff mulvaney, i'm briefing secretary pompeo, and i've talked to ambassador bolton, holes do i ha -- who else do i have to deal with? the point is we have a robust interagency to deal with a lot of other people. it struck me when you put on the screen ambassador sondland's e-mails and who was on the e-mails and he said these are the people that need to know and he was right because he was involved in a domestic political errand and we were being involved in national security foreign policy, and those two things had just diverged. so he was correct and i had not put my finger on that at the moment, but i was irritated with him and i angry with him that he wasn't fully coordinating. i did say to him, ambassador sondland, gordon, i think this is all going to blow up and here we are. >> so, susan, on the list of quotes that will be remembered from these two weeks, he was

being involved in a domestic political errand, may be near the top of the most memorable. >> absolutely. what i thought was so interesting about dr. hill's testimony was that she was able to outline that it was -- by repeating sondland's testimony that it was mick mulvaney, it was secretary pompeo, debbie wasserman schultz secreta s it tick ticket -- it was secretary perry. what conflict and frustration she must have had because her mission was to carry out foreign policy and protect our country. these guys were just really trying to help the president. i think it brings in another interesting point, which is was rudy giuliani speaking to all of these people as an attorney for the president, which would mean they were all not working on behalf of the government but on behalf of donald trump personally, which could be a

violation of certain rules? or was rudy giuliani given permission to act as part of the government, which in case he never went through background checks or anything else. i think his role will be thoroughly investigated. >> admiral stavridis, there was an interesting moment when dr. hill said she assumed there was a shadow foreign policy being conducted by rudy giuliani and gordon sondland. yesterday she revised that thought and said, oh, no, it was the foreign policy and coming from the ambassador from eu with no jurisdiction over ukraine, why was he here meddling in our business? what you have again are state department and national security officials who found themselves to be working at odds with people in their own government. >> indeed. i know fiona quite well. in fact, willie, when i was preparing to go be the supreme allied commander in nato and looking around and casting about for experts to talk about, everybody said, oh, you've got to talk to dr. fiona hill. the point i want to make is her

knowledge of russia, ukraine, this region is really quite unparalleled. she is brilliant, as you saw. she's also kind of tough as nails. she is literally a coal miner's daughter from the north of england. she is not backing up to anybody. so when you had that kind of collision between legitimate national security, which, of course, is getting this aid to the ukrainians, you crane h ukr sword at the throat from russia. i spent seven years as a combatant commander in latin america, in the caribbean and in europe working on this kind of foreign military assistance. never saw it diluted in the domestic sphere. fiona hill is donald trump's worst nightmare. >> still ahead on "morning joe," new signals from one house

republican who was thought to be on the fence about impeachment. the latest from retiring congressman will hurd next on "morning joe." first bill care ons has a check of the forecast. >> it plbwill be a messy lead uo thanksgiving. we have three storms in six days. this is bringing snow from kansas into colorado, spreading rain in areas of kentucky and in tennessee. yesterday it was the same store responsible for making it look like a winter wonderland. this is phoenix. this is phoenix, arizona. it looks like it snowed but it was from a hailstorm that rolled through yesterday. let's get to the maps. going throughout the day today, okay on the east coast but we will see light rain in the northeast with a cold front going through. colder later on tonight. as we go into saturday, heavy rain from areas from atlanta to the carolinas, washington, d.c. with rain moving in later in the day. it is not severe storms but enough winds and rain for

airport delays out of this and it won't be a fun drive either. on sunday we will wake up to an ugly morning in areas through philly to new york and boston. the next storm we will phoning us on is tuesday and wednesday of next week. it could be a snowstorm in areas of the central plains, rain ahead of it. by the time we get to wednesday, the busiest travel day of the year, high winds and rain and snow, not the best to travel in. chicago looking nice, a little cold and chilly, but at least you will have sunshine as you go throughout your day. you are watching "morning joe." we will be right back. if you have moderate to severe psoriasis,

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michael steele, one common theme from dr. hill and david holmes's testimony was that the president's personal attorney, rudy giuliani, was a problem. listen to this. >> i had also already brought to ambassador bolton's attention the attacks, the smear campaign against ambassador yovanovitch and asked if there was anything we can do about it. ambassador bolton looked pain, basically indicated with body language there was nothing much we could do about it. he then in the course of that discussion said that rudy giuliani was a hand grenade that was going to blow everyone up. >> did you understand what he meant by that? >> i did actually. >> what did he mean? >> well, i think he meant that obviously what mr. giuliani was saying was pretty explosive in any case. he was frequently on television making quite incendiary remarks about everyone involved in this and that he was clearly pushing forward issues and ideas that would, you know, probably come

back to haunt us and, in fact, think that's where we are today. >> it became apparent that mr. giuliani was having a direct influence on the foreign policy agenda that the three amigos were executing on the ground in ukraine. in fact, at one point during a preliminary meeting of the inaugural delegation someone wondered allow why mr. giuliani was so active in the media with we expect to ukraine. my recollection is ambassador sondland stated, every time rudy gets involved he -- everything up. >> there's another quote we can pull. rudy giuliani, we know this already and have for a long time, the president's personal attorney, not an employee of the government, running the entire operation. >> absolutely. he is doing what donald trump wants him to do. it is that bit of separation from trump directly that puts rudy in the space where he can go in and he can throw trump's name around and he's got the -- you know, the power of that

behind him. all of these career officials, they're kind of stuck. you know, they're sort of stumbling over how to work with this person who has been put there by the president, so there's respect for that. i mean that's part of the traditional, conventional way of looking at these things if you are an envoy or representative of the president on certain matters people give you some deference. but when it goes counter to the nation's foreign policy that's when things get muddied, and i thought dr. hill yesterday just put it so profound -- pro foundly out there for all of us to see. but here is the rub, willie. none of it really matters because the bet right now in the white house is the polling is showing people are sliding off of this whole idea of impeachment. the united states senate republicans have affirmed by -- have been affirmed by the voice of one will -- congressman will

hurd yesterday who was the hope in the house, who basically stood on the front porch of donald trump and said, this is my space now. so the reality that we're all left with is that despite the explosive testimonies, the profound importance of that testimony, the consequences will virtually be nonexistent. unless and until, to eugene's point, there is a movement by the public towards something more severe, rudy giuliani will continue to do what rudy giuliani is doing. donald trump will continue to do what he is doing, and the rest of us are going to be left scratching our head going, what happened. >> yeah, i mean, michael, if will hurd was one of the hopes for democrats, a vote that they could spinningwing to their side impeachment vote and he has come out already and used his question time to say, i can't vote for impeachment, he is a

former cia officer who is concerned about some of the things he saw. he said, look, i have listened to the evidence and it might be bad but it doesn't warrant removing the president from his office. if he is saying that i think we know what everyone else in the republican party is going to say in the house. >> exactly. >> obviously we knew what they were going to say in the sen at. on "morning joe," senator lindsey graham is prepared to do what ukraine never did, investigate joe biden's ties to burisma. the latest on the senate republican's new probe into the former vice president next on "morning joe." it is nice.

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...but dedication can get you there. so just start small... start saving. easily set, track and control your goals right from the chase mobile® app. ♪ ♪ chase. make more of what's yours®. . >> dr. hill, was it apparent to you that when president trump, rudy giuliani or anyone else was pushing for an investigation into burisma that the reason why they wanted that investigation related to what president trump said here, the bidens? >> it was very apparent to me that that was what rudy giuliani intended, yes, intended to convey that burisma was linked to the bidens, and he said this publicly repeatedly. >> and, mr. holmes, you also understood that burisma was code for the bidens? >> yes. >> is it credible that bahamian

sondland was in the dark about this all summer? >> -- he was oblivious. >> i couldn't hear your answer. >> he did not say bidens, he said burisma, he said 2016 and i took it to mean the elections as well as burisma. >> dr. fiona hill yesterday undercutting part of gordon sondland's testimony from earlier this week. meanwhile senate judiciary chairman lindsey graham sent a letter to mike pompeo yesterday requesting documents related to former vice president relating to his communication with former ukrainian officials, and any calls that referenced an investigation of breeurisma. according to "the washington post" senator graham's letter is seen as an effort by the republicans to legitimize president trump's accusations

while he was vice president biden put pressure on ukraine to fire the lead prosecutor to protect his son. graham's letter did not specify a deadline to the state department to produce the documents. it is the first request for document despite the fact they controlled both houses of congress from 2015 to 2016. donny deutsch, happy birthday, my man. >> thank you, sir. >> 37 is a tough year. >> you grin, you bear it and say, okay. >> you lived a lot of life in those 37 years. >> yes, i have. >> it is all on display right here. happy birthday, donny. let's go back a couple and let you talk about the testimony from dr. fiona hill and that bite where she said basically, come on, guys, it defies credibility. you know this. that the people involved didn't know that burisma meant joe biden. >> sure. >> and that president trump suddenly was interested in the corruption of one specific company. >> yes. >> unrelated to biden. >> thoughts on the whole week, and i want to pick up a bit

where michael steele was. does anybody know bob loves abasholva? >> yeah. >> it is a show on cbs, about five or six million viewers. the average person at home wouldn't know it. we live in a bit of a bubble that we sit here and watch. the reality is when you look at the new emerson poll where basically we lost 5% of people that believe he should be impeached and 14% removed from office, it is so critical coming out of this because we know where it will end in the senate, that somehow the democrats brand it in beiger place. take impeachment and make it a bigger issue that come back to the kitchen table issues. this is the president of betrayal. he betrayed the american trust. he betrayed our national security. he betrayed the constitution. he betrayed the presidency. he betrayed us on education. i'm making the turn. he is basically taking our budget back 10%. he still wants to repeal obamacare. he has betrayed you on taxes.

it needs to go to a bigger place because, unfortunately, come january and february the parade will move on and we get very hyped up in this building here, and we get very hyped up watching at home. the reality is if the game is to take trump out of office, you have to take this betrayal and move it to a bigger place for the candidates to tuck the football under their arm and go. >> donny, you said from the beginning you need a clear message, you have to keep it short and keep people's attention. democrats effectively did that. adam schiff said a lot of what you said in his closing statement. it was two weeks with strong witnesses. if this didn't convince the american people, why do you think a turn will? >> because it has to be about the voter. okay. this guy is a corrupter, this guy is a betrayer, an extortionist, a briber, and this affects me because how? he did the same thing to my taxes. he is doing it to education. he will do it to health care. take a -- whatever adjective you want, betrayer, corrupter, you know, thief, and bring it back

to the issues that matter to voters. >> you have moved on now. you are at the campaign already? >> it doesn't mean you don't -- you don't not use this, but it is not the thing. this is a taking point that gets you to a very place -- >> if you can't trust him to protect our country, how can you trust him to -- >> thank you. >> -- take care of our children's education. >> yes. >> how can you trust him to make sure you will have health care. i think that's a kind of pivot. >> so make that turn. you don't let go of this. but we see where this is going and we live in the moment and we live in this bubble. i go back to bob loves abashola, a show you never heard of. that's how many people watched it this week. we thought once the theater comes on, it is going to change it. nothing is changing in this sense. the frightening thing is the newest poll. i believe when the polls come out next week, even and you continue have better witnesses, you still will be around 50%, 51%. you are not getting to the 60%. the democrats better be smart on how to use it otherwise we will stand here going, huh.

>> our producer has put together a match-up of all of the big moments from the impeachment inquiry. that's next on "morning joe." the holidays are here and we want to keep you connected to those you love,

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every day, comcast business is helping businesses go beyond the expected. to do the extraordinary. take your business beyond. m ♪ back to "morning joe." a live picture of the united states capitol at 8:36 in the morning washington time. former national security adviser john bolton just posted a cryptic tweet that reads, glad to be back on twitter after more than two months. for the backstory, stay tuned. jonathan lemire, we know some in the democratic party are still holding out hope john bolton might testify in the impeachment inquiry. he certainly had his chance to over the last couple of weeks, instead focused on his book deal. what do you read into the tweet? >> it seems to be more of the same. it will inflame democrats or people that want to see the

impeachment proceedings as thorough as possible that he will not show up on capitol hill and not testify. apparently his focus is writing his book and teasing on twitter. perhaps this will change. maybe it is a signal he is willing to talk. to this point he has certainly shown no willingness to do so. >> so michael steele, in some ways dr. fiona hill yesterday was a proxy for john bolton. she worked with him closely. she was a witness to what john bolton allegedly called the drug deal meetings inside the white house with ukrainian officials. is john bolton worth holding up the process for? in other words is it worth it to fight in court to force him to come and sit before the intelligence committee and the impeachment inquiry? >> there's no doubt that he is an important linchpin here. i think dr. hill did provide a lot of color, if you will, to that narrative, but having someone like bolton -- bolton represents not just what the narrative is but the proximity to the president, someone of a stature and level that gives

credibility to the underlying argument that there was something corrupt here, so corrupt that he referred to it as a drug deal. i mean that in and of itself, i don't care how republicans want to spin this all day long, when you have john bolton, who has cache in important conservative circles inside and outside of washington refer to the behavior of rudy giuliani at the behest of the president as a drug deal, there's a lot there to be told. i think to jonathan's point that what you are seeing is a little bit of a tease, you know. it is like a shoulder-strap-down kind of deal. we do the twitter thing and all of that, but i think in the end with the right mix of opportunity and pressure bolton can come to the table without having to go through the courts. i think that's what nancy pelosi -- not schiff, not anyone

else, but nancy pelosi is probably working on the backside of this. >> i never knew you, michael, to wear a little off-the-shoulder number, but i'll take the visual for the morning. of the past two weeks we saw 12 witnesses, over five days of testimony in the impeachment hearings. it is a lot of digest and synthesize so we thought we would give you a look back this morning. >> in mid august it became clear to me giuliani's efforts to gin up political motivations were infecting u.s. engagement with ukraine. following the call with president trump a member of my staff asked ambassador sondland what president trump thought about ukraine. ambassador sondland responded that president trump cares more about the investigations of biden, which giuliani was pressing for. >> and now the president in real-time is attacking you. it is designed to intimidate, is it not? >> i mean i can't speak to what the president is trying to do, but i think the effect is to be

intimidating. >> i found the july 25th phone call unusual because in contrast to other presidential calls i had observed it involved discussion of what appeared to be a domestic political matter. >> it was also clear if ukraine pursued an investigation into the 2016 elections the bidens and burisma it would be interpreted as a partisan play. >> in hindsight i now understand that others saw the idea of investigating possible corruption involving the ukrainian company burisma as equivalent to investigating former vice president biden. >> what did ambassador sondland tell you that he told mr. yermak? >> that the ukrainians would have to have the prosecutor general make a statement with respect to the investigations as a condition of having the aid lifted. >> mr. giuliani's requests were a quid pro quo for arranging a white house visit for president zelensky. mr. giuliani demanded that ukraine make a public statement

announcing the investigations of the 2016 election dnc server and burisma. mr. giuliani was expressing the desires of the president of the united states, and we knew these investigations were important to the president. was there a quid pro quo? as i testified previously with regard to the requested white house call and the white house meeting, the answer is yes. everyone was in the loop. >> your staff at least gleaned from those conversations that ukrainian embassy was aware that there was some kind of a hold on the assistance? >> sir, the way i would phrase it is that there was some kind of an issue, yes. >> which ambassador heal then are you saying marie yovanovitch is a dedicated and courageous patriot? >> i endorse what you say exactly. >> and she served with grace and dignity in the face of the smear campaign?

>> yes, she did. >> it struck me yesterday when you put up on the screen ambassador sondland's e-mails and who was or the e-mails and he said that these were the people that needed to know because he was absolutely right, because he was being involved in a domestic political errand and we were being involved in national security foreign policy, and those things had just diverged. i did say to him, ambassador sondland, gordon, i think this is all going to blow up, and here we are. >> it became apparent that mr. giuliani was having a direct influence on the foreign policy agenda that the three amigos were executed on the ground in ukraine. my recollection is ambassador sondland stated, quote -- rudy, eve every time rudy gets involved you -- everything up. >> joining us now, an gearen. it was a lot to keep up with, a lot of long hours for americans who stayed up late to watch it and woke up early to watch it. what does it amount to you?

we have been talking about will hurd who signalled inside the hearing room that he could not vote for impeachment based on what he had heard. he was one of the few republicans democrats thought they might be able to convince to jump over and vote for impeachment. where are we at the end of the two weeks we just watched? >> i think there are two answers to that. politically we are moving toward the house writing and voting on articles of impeachment in the judiciary committee, writing them, the house voting on articles of impeachment. sometime within the next two months would be -- would be my guess. nancy pelosi pointedly refused to give a timeline yesterday, but also made clear she is not going to hold up this proceeding to wait for john bolton or anyone else to testify. so politically we have a train that essentially has left the station and is moving toward a house vote of impeachment, probably with no or even if

anything one or two republican votes to your point of a mom ago. the other place i think that this is moving is that, you know, we now have laid bare a foreign policy crisis that it will fall to the next president, whoever that is, to deal with because politically over this next year it is probably going to be too far a stretch for president trump while running for reelection to do much to remake the russia/ukraine relationship, which it -- you know, you see right there in fiona hill's words where that whole process stands. the ukrainians are left wondering who their allies are and they're not going to get a particularly strong answer from the white house or congress over the next several months. it is probably not going to

be -- that element is not going to be a huge part of the democratic platform, although certainly they will be asked to address it. russia is benefitting, and as she and many other witnesses over the last two weeks have warned, russia is picking its spots and trying to figure how best to influence the 2020 election because in their view it went great last time. >> hey, ann, it is jonathan lemire. president trump is doing another interview on another cable show and he says, quote, i want a trial. obviously he doesn't get a say in that. the democrats have the votes it looks like for impeachment, looks like we will get a trial. what can you tell us about what the trial would look like? some republican senators were at the white house and sketching this out. what are the contours of what the proceedings might look like in terms of when, how long and what they might look like? >> yes, jonathan, there are a couple of ways it looks like it is shaping up. there's the question of whether a long trial is better because

it ties up democratic candidates who would -- in the senate who otherwise would be visiting important early states, and it sort of -- a longer trial could potentially play into a republican argument that this is something that the democrats are visiting upon trump and trying to change the outcome of the election, versus a short trial which would allow the white house to say, well, that didn't take long, look at that. the democrats' best effort which took months and months and months, tied the country in knots, and it is all over in a matter of days in the senate, which voted the right way and on we go. for the rest of the campaign, then the president will be able to point to the failed democratic effort. our sources are indicating that a shorter trial is more likely and that that is likely to take place early in the new year. >> all right. we have to fit in one more break

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all i have, i would have given gladly not to be standing here today. the greatest leader of our time has been struck down by the

foulest demons of our time. no words are sad enough to express our sense of loss. no words are strong enough to express our determination to continue the forward thrust of america that he began. >> that address to congress from lyndon banes johnson five days after the assassination of president john f. kennedy, which was 56 years ago today. vice president johnson was abruptly sworn in on air force one and addressing the country there. jared cohen, adjunct fellow, adviser to hillary clinton at the state department. and author of the book "eight men who changed america."

he is one of the leading authorities on chester arthur. >> i'm so excited you have an entire thing on chester arthur. >> you were a presidential historian. let's talk about what we're seeing right now. president trump, yes, but the presidency. what are we learning about over these two weeks of testimony and how, if president trump is impeached or president trump is not impeached does the view of the presidency change? >> i think we're talking more about presidential power and accountability than we ever have since richard nixon. how is there such an air of partisan politics that's surrounding all of that. if you look at the founding fathers, the founding fathers decided to use a political mechanism as a means to hold the president accountable and then they all died before the first articles of impeachment were brought.

whether it's been debates on the floor, it's always had this air of partisan politics. we got it right in nixon and we screwed it up again and basically had impeachment resolutions since every single president since george h.w. bush. that's why it looks like such a mess right now. they're talking about presidential succession and presidential accountability on a day-to-day basis in ways we haven't seen in decade. >> you're saying it looks like a mess right now and we screwed it up after nixon in terms of impeachability. what is it intended to be? >> we're mixing up politics and accountability. where it fits in the election cycle. this is the era of social media. it's all playing out in public. there's a different audience than there has been historically. we're late in the election cycle. by the way, that's not the first time that happened. andrew johnson was impeached at the very tail end of his

presidency. >> you go through eight presidents who took office, either their predecessors were died or impeached. let's fast forward. not that it's going to happen, trump is taken out of office, mike pence becomes president. is there any parallel across these presidencies that we might see? >> harding left office due to death, but he left sort of an avalanche of scandal that was about to fall on calvin coolidge. florence harding, the first lady, refused to leave the white house and she was burning documents. two months after coolidge takes over, he has to deal with teapot dome, corruption all the way up to the attorney general, corruption in the veterans affairs bureau and it ends up

being the most corrupt administration and the first cabinet member in history goes to jail. >> of those eight accidental presidents, who is the best and who is the worst? >> the worst is andrew johnson. we basically winged it when it came to presidential succession and we more or less muddled our way through and were supposed to get abraham lincoln's idea of revisionism. instead john wilkes booth gave us andrew jackson. harry truman was prepared for a most daunting set of. only meets fdr twice, not briefed on the bomb, never steps foot in the map room where the war is being planned. april 12, 1945, he becomes president, eleanor roosevelt tells him you're the one in trouble now, he makes some of the most important decisions to end the war and shape the post

world order. >> i'm going to go back to what willie touched on about the presidency itself. you have these men who have sort of fall into this job. what kind of impact does it have on the rest of the country? how have the american people responded to these individuals who suddenly -- you didn't think about them as president. they were vice president or sort of put on the ticket. now they're in the job. how does that shape or reshape the presidency itself? >> that's a great question. since it's the 56th year anniversary of the kennedy assassination, americans who voted jfk into office were horrified by the idea of lyndon johnson as president. think about civil rights, lyndon johnson was a southern segregationist who used the "n" word and was primary architect of the whittling down of the

civil rights bill. on foreign policy this is the man who, when sent to south vietnam, was handing out free senate passes to street children on the streets of saigon and asked photograph ers to take pictures of him chasing cattle around and was undressing in front of reporters, taking meetings in the bathroom and went to pakistan and invited a camel driver to invite him to the white house. by the way, the camel driver, one day, showed up. >> i want to go to bar trivia with you. we would never lose. >> we would crush it. >> you two have brunch at the regency, pick up the conversation. thank you very much. "accidental presidents:8 men who changed america." let's look ahead a little bit. as jonathan referenced, the president was on fox & friends, presenting the defense we all knew was coming. he led with crowdstrike again, despite what dr. hill testified to yesterday, that that was a

wild conspiracy theory, that ukraine's tampered in the 2016 election. he's proceeding forward with that, undermining the process. what's your take on where this is headed next as we head into thanksgiving week? >> well, yes. happy thanksgiving, everyone. so the white house will, to only a small degree, attempt to turn the page. there remains a very strong feeling around the president that this entire episode, although he hates it, just hates it and feels it's mightily unfair, that the process itself has actually been politically beneficial for him. so, i do not expect them to just move on and say, all right. so on monday we've got the bulgarian prime minister, true, visiting the white house and we're just going to focus on bulgaria. they'll continue to talk about what they see as a politically beneficial failed exercise by

the democrats and in the president's case, that will continue to mean that he raises disproved conspiracy theories, some of which he appears to believe but also which he sees as politically beneficial. >> donnie deutsch, happy birthday, my man. >> thank you. enjoy your weekend. stephanie ruhle picks up our coverage. >> thanks, willie. good morning. i'm stephanie ruhle. it's friday, november 22nd and here is what's happening now. the evidence is in and now the house moves closer to drafting the equivalent of formal charges against the president of the united states, potentially looking at everything from abuse of power and bribery to obstruction of justice. and how is that for a holiday season? a house vote on articles of impeachment, just in time for christmas and a senate trial to kick off the new year. i have the perfect people to break all of this down this morning. peter alexander at the white house, garrett haake on