thanks to everyone who rode along on a partial episode and e partial hearing. we have a lot more keeping you covered on everything that's happening today on msnbc. starting with "hardball" with chris matthews. >> battle to the finish. let's play "hardball." good evening. i'm chris matthews up in new york. today thes country heard the final case for the impeachment of donald j. trump. like a prosecutor's summation to theto jury, docounsel for the h judiciary told them how they obstructed congress. today articles of impeachment this week against president trump. lawmakers heard from lawyers representing both the democratic majority and the republican minority. each making their final closing

case in this phase of the house's impeachment drive. democratic counsel danny goldman summarized the 300 page report from the house intelligence committee highlighting the overwhelming evidence, he said, that showed thede president abud hispr power. he said there's an urgency to now stopping him. citing rudy giuliani's latest expedition to ukraine for more political dirt, for example, gold man said the president's solicitation of foreign interference represents a clear and present danger to this country. >> president trump's persistent and continuing effort to coerce a foreign country to help him cheat to win an election is a clear and present danger to our free and fair elections and to our national security. the evidence from these witnesses cannot seriously be disputed. the president placed his personal interests above the nation's interests in order to help his own re-election

efforts. >> most important, goldman made clear that from start to finish the president himself was directing the scheme to extort ukraine. here's how he answered a series of rapid fire questions posed by democratic congressman eric swalwell. >> who sent rudy giuliani to ukraine to smear joe biden? >> president trump. >> who fired the anti-corruption ambassador inco ukraine, marie yovanovich. >> president trump. >> who told them to work with rudy giuliani on ukraine? >> president trump. >> who told vice president pence to not go to president zelensky's inauguration? >> president trump. >> who ordered his own chief of staff, mick mulvaney, to withhold critical military assistance for ukraine. >> president trump. >> who asked president zelensky for a favor? >> president trump. >> who personally asked president zelensky to investigate his political rival, joe biden?

>> president trump. >> so as it relates to president trump, is he an incidental player or a central player in this scheme? >> president trump is the central player in this scheme. >> that was so well done. the republican's counsel steve castor offered a bizarre explanation. that's the conversation, of course, where the president personally asked zelensky for two investigations, one into joe biden, the other into that discredited conspiracy theory that it was ukraine, not russia that interfered in the 2016 election. the republican counsel said president trump's intent in that call was to help the united states, i love this, move forward after the russian probe. >> to impeach a president who 63 million people voted for over 8 lines in a call transcript is bologna. contrary to democrat allegations president trump was not asking for a favor that would help his re-election. he was asking for assistance in helping our country move forward

from the divisiveness of the russia collusion investigation. >> that part, their part, rather than defend the president's actions committee republicans resorted to partisan attacks and complaints about the process. i'm joined by u.s. congresswoman m madaline dean. barbara mcquade, and amish amisha sinderhouse. i want to get to the end of the fight. congresswoman, tell us about the role n,today, it seemed to me le a summary -- summation by a prosecutor bringing the case home to the jury. >> i believe that that's an apt description. this was a presentation of the overwhelming damning evidence of a president who sought foreign interference in our elections for his own political and personal gain and what he did was he put our national security at risk, he put our elections at risk, and what was interesting was the republicans, the

minority party didic not have o fact they could dispute. >> that's what struck me again, not just the overwhelming nature of that interplay back and forth between your colleague from california and the committee counsel danny goldman which was thorough, i thought thorough going and getting to all of the points, but the absolute lack of a point by the republicans. i'm not saying i felt sorry for them, but the republican counsel couldn't handle any central question. every time it came up to what was the president saying onme t phone with zelensky, he had to play dumb or say something orwellian to get out of it. >> the testifying and the questioning from the minority party was extraordinarily weak. i thought lieutenant vindman summarized it appropriately. it was echoed by 12, 13, 14 other patriots. it is improper for the president of the united states to say to a foreign leader, i need a -- we will need a favor from you though.

i'm going to hold up the aid to yourhe desperate country who is under attack by russia. you are losing lives. i'm going to hold up aid that is not mine to hold up until you do me ati favor though and the onl favor he wanted was the announcement of an investigation into his top political rival. an american citizen. it's extraordinary, and i just stood -- sat, there stunned to think, don't the rest of the minority members care about our precious constitutional rights? because what this does is it makes us less safe and it makes us less free if we allow a president to be above the law. >> congresswoman, i've been watching all day and for weeks like you have as a participant. i get the sense listening to the summationin today by what i sai sounded like a prosecutor's final statement to the jury that we were looking at probably two articles here sometime later this week? >> i think you're probably right. i'm not going to predict.

i know we're going to be taking a look at drafts. we have been able to talk to our committee and give our input on the drafting of the articles, but i don't want to presuppose them. we're supposed to see them soon. >> thank you soon. u.s. congresswoman dean of pennsylvania. let me go to yamisha on the reporting of this thing. you know, i wish everybody in america watched today, and i know they didn't. i watched the needle move a little bit into a plurality position for impeachment, conviction, removal from office but not a lot. have we reached a point and this is a good time to bring this to a vote, have we reached the point of diminishing returns? is this timely to vote this week? >> it's definitely clear where they're rehashing this and i had a colleague today tell me this was the least attended public impeachment hearing so you hadu all sorts of em tiz seats in there today. so that tells you there is

probably a point where democrats are going p to say, okay, let'so on with this vote. one of the most striking things i saw was republicans are trying to blame people with president a trump, they turned on the european ambassador gordon sondland saying he was an intelligence risk, no one understood why he was involved in ukraine janish use. steve castor said there's evidence that rudy giuliani wasn't acting at the direction of the president.at of course, democrats and these witnesses themselves, rudy giuliani said i was acting and am working very close with president trump. gordonp. sondland testified ver clearly, i thought the president was asking for a quid pro quo. the attorney for gordon sondland said his testimony speaks for itself. his testimony is he was doing all of this because he was having multiple phone calls with the president and the president made clear what he wanted. >> i wantle to get to barbara mcquade on this question of law and prosecution and what a trial looks like.

i want you to tell me how the defense, if you want to call it that, reflects a weak defense. the hearing highlighted the difficulty they have of defending trump under cross examination steve castor denied the meaning of the words that the president spoke to president zelensky. he denied the meeting when he was asking him to, quote, look into joe biden. the president and zelensky look into joe biden. here'sen how this poor counsel castor had to defend himself. >> president trump was asking ukrainian president zelensky to have the ukrainian officials look into vice president joe biden, correct? is that correct, yes or no? >> i don't think the record supports that. >> it doesn't say, can you look into it? president trump is not asking him that? >> i don't think it supports that. i i think it's ambiguous. i don't think the president was investigating an investigation into joe biden. he mentions an offhand comment --

>> well, castor's contradicting the record and he's contradicting the president's admission that he did want ukraine to investigate biden. he said it himself. >> mr. d president, what exactl did you hope zelensky would do about the bidens after the phone call? exactly. >> well, i would think that if they were honest about it, they'd start a major investigation into the bidens. it's a very simple answer. they should investigate the bidens. >> they should investigate -- barbara, we all remember baghdad bob, remember him? the character in baghdad that was denying they were under attack and going to be losing that war. is this what lawyers do when they're caught without a case and their client won't give them anything? >> not good ones. good lawyers concede points when they know that they need to. otherwise they lose credibility. i think that's what happened with mr. castor today.

even mick mulvaney, the chief of staff said, this was a quid pro quo, get over it. i think the republicans would be so much better served to take the position to concede the facts that are so clear and just say, we don't think this is sufficient for removal from office. why don't they do that? i think they don't do that because theyon realize that the conduct is so egregious that if people conceded those facts, everyone would agree that it is sufficient for removal from office. so they believe that's the only thing they have left, but i think they destroy any credibility they might have when they deny obvious facts. >> yeah. well, what about this denial of the number of words by saying it's only four sentences. i can imagine them saying terrible things in five or six words like get rid of that guy. i don't want to see him again. you know what i mean. language is very economical if you want to make a point. >> i will kill you is only four words but those can be pretty damning. i think onebe of the things tha republicans are trying to do here is focus all attention on

the call as if the call is the entire case. i thought one of the things that dan goldman did so effectively today was to explain that this is about a month's long scheme. it was about all of the pressure. it wasn't just this particular call so i think that framing is important to understanding what was really happening here. >> yamisha, you put your vision, your high beams on right now and you're looking ahead on the road. is this going to be the republican trial in the u.s. senate that they control, that they're going to avoid discussingid the merits of the main case against the president, that he traded public trust for personal political gain to get around and talk about everything else from joe biden to hunter biden to adam schiff to nancy pelosi? will they stay away from the central charge because they can't challenge it? >> republicans have been loathe to talk about the actual allegations against president trump and whether or not they -- most of them, including white house officials, refuse to

answer the question is it okay for a president to pressure foreign government to investigate a political rival. that's been a key question that's been asked over and over again. they won't answer that. a the other thing they know is the white house is saying they're going to have lawyers at this trial. the white house is saying they're going to have to take this very seriously. onse steve castor's language, president trump didn't mention the 2020 election on the july 25th call but of course he mentioned joe biden who is a 2020 presidential candidate. we'll see language and nimble defenses going forward. >> biden was at the top of the heap. he still is. he was clearly at the top of the heap as they had that conversation on july 25th. thank you. barbara and amisha, thank you. much more on the impeachment. giuliani and the ukraine? because he's digging up dirt on joe biden. he's still at it. the white house says it has no idea, i low of this one,

plausible deniability, they have no idea at the white house what rudy's up to over there. the doj obliterates trump's claims about the mueller investigation. his claim that obama was spying against him. nothing of the kind according to michael who are rhorowicz. william barr is twisting the facts to please his boss giving his own interpretation of the inspector ogeneral's report. the way he sold the mueller report, the way he packaged his way. totally dishonest. coming up, more of it. stay with us. my body is truly powerful. i have the power to lower

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this was spying on my campaign, something that has never been done in the history of our country. this was after overthrow attempt

in the history of the presidency. >> they spied on my campaign. >> they spied on my campaign, it's as simple as that. it's so illegal, probably the biggest scandal. >> it was illegal spying, unprecedented spying and something that should never be allowed to happen in our country again. >> donald trump has accused the intelligence community of, his words, spying on him. today the department of justice's inspector general found no evidence to support those claims. none. according to him, the fbi had an authorized purpose when it opened cross fire and hurricane, the investigation into the trump campaign, to obtain information about or protect against a national security threat or federal crime. quote, we did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the decisions to open the four individual investigations. that's from the inspector general today. the inspector general was critical, however, for serious

performance failures in handling of fisa applications. that's when you apply to court to surveil anyone. responding today the president misrepresented the ig's findings and promoted a partisan investigation conducted by john durham at the direction of the president's personal attorney general bill barr. >> i look forward to the durham report that's coming out in the not too distant future. got his own information, which is this information plus, plus, plus. and it's an incredible thing that happened and we're lucky we caught them. >> in a shocking breach of precedent, durham weighed in objecting to the nonpartisan findings. durham wrote, while our investigation is ongoing, last month we advised the inspector general that we do not agree with some of the report's conclusions as to predication

and how the fbi case was opened. the attorney general also weighed in on the findings, quote, the inspector general's report says the fbi launched an intrusive investigation on the thinnest of suspicions that in my view were insufficient to justify the steps taken. for more, i'm joined by brad berger, ken delaney and greg bower, former assistant of the fbi. i want to go to greg on this. it's about the credibility of the fbi. how will this work -- how is this going to be received at the fbi, this report today? >> chris, as you saw, the director of the fbi today accepted the findings of the inspector general, accepted and agreed to consider the recommendations and i'm sure his team is working on taking a very close look at those recommendatio recommendations.

compare that to the attorney general's recommendations. i don't see how it's tenable how you can have an attorney general doing this with others accepting the same conclusions. i don't know how this is going to work. >> let me go to ken on this. you've been covering everything for us tonight. the power of words. you say spying when in fact the fbi's investigative body is counter intelligence. you're supposed to look at any influence from abroad that's illegal. it seems to me that's exactly what the fbi was doing. they got the word that there was russian collusion with the trump campaign, they began to investigate it. and then trump says, well, because it's my campaign, it's wrong. >> right. and there's an important distinction here, chris. the fbi uses confidential human sources to gather information. they did so in this investigation. they ran informants at members of the trump campaign. that's not the same as saying they spied on the trump campaign. those informants were not

talking to trump aides about political strategy or what they were doing in the election, they were talking about their interactions with russians and whether the campaign knew anything about the russian hacking of the email and that sort of thing. that who ahorowitz found that w justified. at the same time he did find significant -- we should not minimize this. huge mistakes by the fbi in how they applied for secret national security warrants. this is a subject that is concerning for libertarians. it wasn't politically motivated and that's very important because it shatters the conspiracy theories that president trump has been putting forward for years now as you said. >> one of my mental tricks, barrett, welcome to the show, is to ask what if they hadn't done it. suppose if the fbi heard about this, heard about the australian ambassador, bherd there was some back and forth, getting

together, in fact the campaign knew all about the russian hacking, knew and were totally in ka hocahoots and if they had investigated it. what would that have said about the fbi? >> there would have been hearings for the gross misconduct if they hadn't opened some investigation. the threshold for opening an investigation, even a full investigation which they were authorized to do here, is pretty low. this was well predicated. he was critical of how they happened. none of those were political in nature at all. >> i want to go back to greg. you're the inches spi tuesdayal guy. i just watched "midway." the smart guy who did know there was trouble, he didn't know where the japanese government was, what yamamoto was up to. he knew they didn't know. because they didn't know they

had reason to worry it was coming for an american site like pearl harbor. if you knew the russians were up to hacking the democratic national committee and you knew that and you knew the republicans were somehow cognizant of the whole thing, how they were in the know, it seems to me it would be your job to blow the whistle and to do an investigation. again, back to the point, it's their job. >> right. chris, i don't think there's any doubt about it. i never thought there was doubt. i was not involved in this investigation although i was at the fbi at the time but i've since heard it briefed many, many times, both within the fbi, at the department of justice and on the hill. the ig's findings didn't surprise me at all. more importantly, the ig's findings confirmed, as was said earlier, that this investigation had to be done. it was reasonable to do it based upon the information the bureau

had t. would have been a dereliction not to open it. >> let's talk about the durham report. ken, he's dressing it up like it's some big profound thing coming out because his tottiestottie is digging stuff up. where is that going to take us, the trump counter attack? >> chris, as greg said, it was absolutely extraordinary that john durham, the u.s. attorney in connecticut choose today to issue a statement saying that even though his investigation isn't over he disagrees with the ig's findings. i've never seen that before. he's a sitting u.s. attorney and he's talking about a pending investigation. this statement today was stunning and it's going to cast i think a shadow over everything he does.

he and barr have been grilling foreign countries about what the cia was up to. the idea that there was some criminal conspiracy at the heart of this doesn't seem to be supported. there's a lot of questions. >> in his memo, there's an mo about this president. if he doesn't like the government he's got, he creates a side government of his. he creates this little -- he dep pew advertises people and makes them into his own government. thank you all for coming. up next, congressional republicans show outrage that everything except trump's misconduct. they don't like anything in the world, but they like trump. you're watching "hardball." -twins! grandparents! we want to put money aside for them, so...change in plans. alright, let's see what we can adjust. ♪ we'd be closer to the twins. change in plans. okay. mom, are you painting again? you could sell these.

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i insist on my point of order unless you're willing to immediately schedule a minority hearing day. >> that is not a proper point of order. >> i have a parliamentary objection. >> i will not recognize a particliamentary inquiry. >> is this when we hear staff ask questions of other staff and the members get dealt out for the next four hours? you're going to try to overturn the results of an election. >> the gentleman will suspend. >> feign outrage. those were some of the republicans on the house judiciary committee today trying to stall today's impeachment hearing by repeatedly

interrupting and while democrats use today's hearing as a closing argument, republicans focused on distraction and changing the subject. in one particularly heated moment doug collins berated danny goldman demanding to know who decided to include call records in the intelligence committee's records between rudy giuliani and lev parnas and devin nunes. >> who did it? was it chairman shiv or was it you? >> be careful, you're under oath. >> i know i'm under oath, sir. >> i am going to go on record and tell you i'm not going to tell you how we conducted this investigation? >> i can tell you what the importance is. >> i'm done with you for right now. we're done. >> that was well done. during questioning republicans may know to defend the president. choosing to complain about the investigation itself.

of course attack democrats. >> folks, you have made joe mccarthy look like a piker with what you have done with the electronic surveillance involved. >> i came up here where we've had order and rules and i've seen nothing of the kind here today and it's outrageous that we're trying to remove a president with a kangaroo court like this. someone told so and so and there you have it. that's their effort to impeach the president of the united states, 11 months before an election. >> joined by a professor of princeton university. this is great character study opportunity. there's jordan looks like he sits at the job table at dinner. you recognize him as one of the bullies at school. gomert is a birther. he says obama was born over

seas. he snuck in the country. he's a nut. and he's out there talking like he's in judgment of truth. >> it's true. what we saw was a display of bad faith. i know the politics of it all but it was bad faith. >> these characters, talking about them, who are they? >> this is what i'm trying to figure out, chris. maybe you can help me. i don't believe or maybe i should believe that all of these folks are defenders of donald trump. >> really? >> trump must be an avitar for something else. >> power. >> power, greed, survival. they are afraid to go home to all of their maga people. they're afraid they're going to be beaten. >> that's self-interest. the general consensus is donald trump is who he is. he's not this kind of states man. he's not this important person.

he's not very bright. >> he's an institutionalist. why is he behaving like this? >> i think everyone is in it to defend the president. it's as simple as that. the republican case is it's all very confusing and so this impeachment is illegitimate. >> they're just as smart as we are, pret. they know what happened on the phone call. >> it's incredibly clear and it has been incredibly clear from the first day in which we learned about the president's call and how he behaved. the idea is to essentially throw marbles on the floor and see if someone slips. >> i remember an example like that. back in 1984 when ragan bobbled the first debate. he lost his concept of where he was. so lee atwater said, change the

subject from how trump's brain -- ragan's brain is working to what side are you on? make it tribal. that's what it seems like they're doing now. >> it was very effective in 1984. >> are you a republican or lefty democrat. that's how they played it? >> right. that play has short term political zbgain. >> we are on the knife's edge. today for nine hours we saw exactly what it means to dance on that knife's edge. >> proof in the pudding. another guy. i've been in to private briefings. one i remember, he's very smart. here he is in an interview with fox news, of course, offered a bizarre defense when the host cited a republican poll suggested impeachment is helping president trump in key states. let's watch. >> you just answered why they want to impeach him. in modern history we've never

gone after impeaching a president in the first term. >> no first term impeachment. i can't find that in the constitution. >> right. if only we had learned about the watergate break-in -- >> which was in the first term. >> which was in the first term. by the way, in the case of johnson, that was also a first term impeachment if you considered -- >> he never was elected. >> he never was elected. >> june 23rd conversation trying to use the cia was june 23rd of 1972. first term. >> obviously these folks aren't very bright because that isn't a very smart defense at all. they're just throwing something against the wall. >> you have to ask them, so let's assume the lewinsky saga had emerged in public, what was it, 1998, 1995 contemporaneously when it actually occurred. would the republicans have therefore said to themselves, this is a first term situation,

we clearly have to wait for the mandate of the voters? >> you know the provision in title 2, article 2 of the constitution, it says first term, anything goes. i think it's in there. this is kevin mccarthy's argument. >> what we do know is consistency is not a value. >> the democrats, the truth is there are two imperfeatives her. many of them are eager to get this over with before christmas. they don't want it interfering with their own political and election calendar. that's a fair process. if we're really doing this, if we want to get to the bottom of it, we could let it play out. >> you'll never get the witnesses, not in real time. look at people, mcgahn, it will be like a death row thing. he is going to go from one appeal to the next. he's not coming to testify. >> you don't want to have bolton

testify. >> who says he wants to? >> oh, i think he does. >> he's got another plan. >> to be honest with you, i see it as a fair argument when you have people engaging in good faith but i still have the kavanaugh hearings. >> justice delayed is justice denied. thank you for agreeing with me. >> i really think you have to hit it when the iron is hot. two months now up to christmas and holidays, they won't have the focus. people have to understand this. you need an audience for this and there's an audience right now. up next, president trump's giuliani problem. talk about having a strange relative wandering around somewhere in the attic. what is he doing? what's he doing in ethiopia? ukraine. now attorney general barr sees rudy as a liability, political liability. he works with ukraine to dig up political dirt on biden. he's not stopping. the fingernails are growing on

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welcome back. is the impeachment investigation going along again this week, it's finishing up this week. rudy giuliani continued to do what he was doing. giuliani went to ukraine again to meet with former ukrainian prosecutors. "the daily beast" described as a group seen at home as odeus and discredited. great company you're keeping. he was there for oan, russian owned. the first two installments included more of the same debunked theories on ukraine. maybe it's not russian owned but of that point of view. a preview of the next episode of oann corresponded and reached a new level of bizarre with

unfaulty claims that troops were sent to kiev to monitor giuliani. and a possible confrontation with george soros. >> reporter: within hours of our presence in ukraine, roughly 1,000 troops were suddenly patrolling the city. no public statement was made on why. as media started closing in on our location, security determined we needed to leave the country. three major testimonies taped and recorded, we chartered a midnight jet to vienna and sped to the airport. we were ushered away from the vehicles. we were told ukrainian oligarch was seen entering one of these vehicles. two other eye witnesses spotted george soros. we have not confirmed this. >> didn't confirm it. it didn't happen. they tweeted that none of what the correspondent claims was true. there was no increased police presence in kiev. there are always black cars at

the airport because it has a business terminal. giuliani said today that he planned to present the findings of his ukraine trip to congressional republicans this week. >> i was going to do an outline of it and try to present it at the convenience of the republicans in congress and the attorney general this week. i should have it ready wednesday or thursday. i don't know when it should be made public. i worked on it all weekend. >> not all of trump's allies are on board with giuliani's investigations. there are some high level defectors out there that don't think this is good for trump. that's up next. you're watching "hardball." so when a hailstorm hit, usaa reached out before he could even inspect the damage. that's how you do it right. usaa insurance is made just the way martin's family needs it - with hassle-free claims, he got paid before his neighbor even got started. because doing right by our members, that's what's right.

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ask your doctor if cologuard is right for you. covered by medicare and most major insurers. welcome back to "hardball." first of all, the oan right of fox news. i thought that was russian owned. it's owned by an american. i'll straighten that out. i just did. in the house judiciary committee, the counsel said president trump and his lawyer, rudy giuliani, said they pose a clear and present danger for what rudy is doing. even one of the staunchest allies called giuliani's recent trip to ukraine weird. here it goes. >> it is weird that he's over there and i'm grateful that very soon after i made those comments on cnn the president put out a statement that said that rudy giuliani does want to come into congress and explain his role,

explain what he's been up to, and i believe that the president urging mayor giuliani to provide that clarity to the congress will be helpful in what seems to be odd having him over there at this time. >> when matt gaetz says it's weird, it's weird. attorney general william barr has counselled trump in general terms that giuliani's become a liability for him and a problem for the administration. in one discussion the attorney general warned the president he will not be -- it's not being well served by his lawyer. that's an understatement. joined by devlin barrett, thank you, and thank you susan percineau. you work with rudy. you love to do those recognitions. what is he up to? this is risky business. >> first let me say this is not the rudy i worked for. when he was mayor of new york city a lot of us do not recognize the rudy giuliani of today. that's clear because he is -- >> looks like him.

>> it looks like him but it doesn't act like the man who i worked for. >> what's your hunch about why he's so driven? >> it's all about attention and wanting relevance. >> there's big articles this weekend. "new york times" and washington post. it is, he wants to be in the papers. >> he never thrived as much as he did in the last ten years as when he went on the campaign trail for donald trump. he loved the attention. he loved being number one with donald trump. the more outlandish. >> that's what peggy calls the habit of importance. >> wllet me go to devlin. is that what drives and makes rudy run? >> i think it really is. i think there's another layer of that. that's that he is really -- he really wanted to be the secretary of state in the trump administration. he didn't get that job. >> why not? >> he he get it? >> he had so many business deals

with questionable clients, some weird arrangements. >> so does trump. >> well, sure, but he got elected. look, he didn't get to be the secretary of state. what you see him doing now, if you talk about internal motivation, i think susan is absolutely right. hey, susan. but he's in his own mind trying to do some of the job of secretary of state that he always wanted. >> an overseas envoy. over the weekend president trump said he should present his findings to congress. >> i just know he came back from someplace and will make a report to the attorney general and to congress. he says he has a lot of good information. i have not spoken to him about that information. rudy has been one of the great crime fighters of the last 50 years. he did get back from europe just recently. he has not told me what he's found, but i think he wants to

go before congress and also to the attorney general and the department of just. i hear he's found plenty. you know, susan, it sounds like when trump would say i have investigators in hawaii, and they're coming back with interesting stuff. it was all b.s., it seems to mely fabricated. >> absolutely. unless he put something together on some trump property stationary like he did for pompeo and decides to give it to barr. devin wrote a great story that came out today. >> did he talk with you? >> he did not. but it was a great story. the back and forth with bar barr, the tension that exists, because rudy is moving in and out. you said an envoy, kind of jokingly, but he is moving in and out of the private sector and working in government. that's really dangerous. that's why he's a lot of liability in a way to the

president. >> did you get to the president's attitude towards it? he didn't throw him under the bus, but he put some distance there. he hasn't talked to me yet. i don't know what country he's coming back from. he was playing a little dumb there. >> i think privately and publicly the president loves what rudy does. he wants someone out there fighting for him and making these arguments on a regular base. whether those arguments hold up is a completely separate question. if you think back a sec, when we were waiting for the mueller report, rudy kept saying we'll have a big you counter-report, and the page number kept clanging. at the end of the day there was no counter-report produced to any of that, but it was a thing to just argue about and yell about and make the points about, and the president clearly loves having someone doing that for him. whether there's any meat to it or suck stance is almost irrelevant at this point. >> all the guys that did it for

him before are in jail. it's incredible. >> and rudy is under investigation. >> devin, great reporting, but take-out piece. susan, thank you. up next how we have been misled, like in vietnam we were lied to all those years. same horrible deal just been reported by "the washington post" that we've been thrown at with afghanistan. we're not winning over there. there's no progress. the taliban needs to be dealt with, and we have no widea how o deal with it. you're watching "hardball." witt you're watching "hardball. seen it. covered it. at farmers insurance, we know a thing or two because we've seen a thing or two. ♪ we are farmers. bum-pa-dum, bum-bum-bum-bum ♪ walkabout wednesdays are back! get a sirloin or chicken on the barbie, fries, and a draft beer or coca-cola - all for just $10.99.

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♪ from the time we went into afghanistan, after 9/11, u.s. forces knew the time would come for them to return home. so did the taliban, who wished to retake power when we did. according to "the washington post" today, the u.s. has send three quarters of a million troops to afghanistan since 2001. over 20,000 have been wounded. in fact 157,000 people have been killed in our afghan war. through all of this, through all 18 years we've been in afghanistan, the world from the oval office has always been positive. >> we remain on the offensive in afghanistan. where a fine up and national assembly are fighting terror while building the institutions

of new democracy. >> we are building an enduring partnership with them. >> together wee matter tremendous progress. >> and through all of this, the world from the field has always been positive. you hear and see it over and over again, where we're, quote, making problem. today we're face-to-face with a report that all these gung ho assessments were wrong, that we have failed to built a counter-force, that the afghan army is not up to defending itself or the country. stable areas don't outlost the on the ground presence of american allied troops. reports, offer reasons, that afghan lacks a history of a central government, our military commanders could never steve articulate a mission over there. nbc news has not verified the

findings of this report yet, but the central reasons is the american forces will eventually come home. we know it, the taliban know t. and the afghans who fear know it. why the 18 years of rosy predictions whose prime purpose was to keep us there? that's "hardball" for now. "all in with chris hayes" starts now. president trump's consistent and continuing effort too coerce a foreign country to help him cheat to win an election is a clear and present danger to our free and fair elections, and to our national security. house democrats plenty evidence for impeachment. >> president trump got caught, so he released the aid. house republicans get fast and furious. >> heed ambassador taylor that i conveyed this mex emergency to mr. y