"deadline: white house" begins right now. hi, everyone, it is 4:00 in new york. the prospect of a trial in the senate, donald trump is ending his year making the kind of history he did not want to make becoming the third president in u.s. history to be impeached by the house of representatives. the woman running the house, speaker nancy pelosi, is making history herself as the highest ranking and most powerful woman serving in elective office. the only woman to ever hold the position of speaker, a position she held twice. we have watched nancy pelosi square off against donald trump and refused to back down. even in the face of his bullying and constant harassment. which came to a head when she presided over the historic house vote on impeachment. >> today, as speaker of the house, i solemnly and sadly open

the debate on the impeachment of the president of the united states. it is a matter of fact that the president is an ongoing threat to our national security and the integrity of our elections, the basis of our democracy. he says article 2 says i can do whatever i want. no, it doesn't. today we are here to defend democracy for the people. he gave us no choice. >> she was challenged at the outset of her speakership by her own party, about whether she was the right person to take on trump. and, again, after the mueller report when she resisted moving forward. amidst all that over and over she has proven herself to be the president's most skilled adversary, landing the most damaging political blows to the president, iconic moments like the state of the union, when she essentially broke the internet with the clap examined around the world. effectively upstaging trump without saying a word, walking

out of a white house meeting with the president that she described afterward as a presidential meltdown. trump responded by tweeting a photo which he called her unhinged. to the rest of the world, the relationship looked quite different. pelosi was the one person in the room with the courage to stand up to trump. and as she banged the gavel on trump's impeachment vote, sealing his fate in the history books forever, many of her constituents started to clap, but clad in her black dress, she shushed them with a hand gesture, a somber time, not to be celebrated and with one look, she illustrated her command of the caucus once again. >> on this vote, the yeas are 230 and the nays are 197, the president is -- article one is adopted. >> that's where we start today with some of our favorite reporters. jonathan mennier, editor at

large for the conservative commentary site, the bulwark, charlie sites, chief public affairs officer for move on.org and spokesman for the chief of justice matt miller. she is his kryptonite. >> she is. we know during the campaign, you know, he was sort of one on one with hillary clinton and did a child tearing her down and we wondered as he was president who that would be. and nancy pelosi has been that foil, but to this point time and time again has beaten him. that's something that -- he may be her foil. >> that may be so. he told people according to our reporting that he has never really got a handle on how to deal with her. when he sort of cheered on her election to speakership, he told people he thought he could work with her, they worked together in the past as a private citizen, he felt like some was someone he could do deals with and there has been some legislation passed including the new nafta, trade deal, but more than that, she has been a real thorn in his side and has gotten

the best of him time and time again. some of those moments you just mentioned, we played the video, especially that state of the union clap that we'll always remember, how she navigated this impeachment saga, reluctant to do so during the russia investigation, that's what she said before, these were not moments she felt the party was there, didn't necessarily call for impeachment. but her hand was forced and with what happened with ukraine, and she has navigated this beautifully, held her team together, she held her party together, and here we are, he's now the third president of the united states impeached in part because of how masterfully she's landed this. >> i was skeptical of the decision to let all of the mueller findings land and do nothing. not just the democrats, but democrats and republicans didn't go through that report and censure the president or hold hearings, do more. but what she did by doing nothing in the wake of that report was establish in the public's mind her deep and genuine reluctant to take this step. and i think the fact that

impeachment has in polls close to 50% of all americans support donald trump's removal from office. less than a year from the next election and half the country wants him removed through this process. >> i'm going to admit i completely underestimated nancy pelosi and the way she's risen to this occasion is extraordinary. think donald trump famously said when you're a celebrity, women will let you do anything, she's proving that that's not the case. right. but also, she's a legislative master. i agree with you. i did question, i thought that the mueller report laid out such strong charges that she could have moved ahead, but i think she understood where public opinion was, where her caucus was, and she never gets out ahead of her caucus and i think that vote on impeachment was so extraordinary the way she held all of those representatives who have to go home to districts that donald trump won, you know. we don't have many profiles and

political courage out there. you did see that. but nancy pelosi brought them along, provided them cover, and as one of the most masterful parliamentarians of our time. >> she's also building the bigger political tent. she had scene from her song book, former founder of the freedom caucus, all of the members of the most progressive wing of her party, sort of the national security -- all making the same points and charlie's talk, i think part of the reasons republicans who aren't trump supporters admire her so much is because of this hole in our hearts about the lack of political courage or talent on the right. >> yeah. nancy pelosi's going to go down as one of the most influential, powerful speaker in history, full stop. she has managed to outmaneuver donald trump at every turn. i'll quote cardi b., she has dog walked donald trump at every turn for all the youngsters who are watching.

and -- >> charlie. >> thank you. >> but it is just been phenomenal to watch her and i doubted her too. the same thing, when the mueller report came out, i thought we need to impeach, impeach, impeach. because she held it off, it made it her argument to finally get to impeachment was even more emboldened because she could say i didn't want to do this. and so it is -- as she has been masterful legislatively, masterful in holding her caucus, controlling her caucus and one more thing she did that no other speaker has done against any president on article of impeachment is she got the most votes, 230, and then the second one, 229. i mean, she is -- she is someone that needs to be studied on how you do this right. how you strategize, how you run your conference, how you beat

the speaker and how to be the most powerful woman in elected office. >> the other thing she is, you know, trump defeated 16 republicans in the primary. trump defeated a political powerhouse in hillary clinton. the democrats who wish to replace donald trump in 2020 can pull some lessons from her and granted she's a master of a very different body, but she's also master of the asymmetry. she knows how and when to get in his face, and point her finger at him and humiliate him in front of generals and other men sitting in the table, but she knows when to pull back and work with him on legislation. >> she has never been afraid of him from the beginning. it has come clear in every interaction they have, and especially when you see the two of them on camera, one thing about trump, every time you see him in any room, he dominates the room. it is true. it has been true, true that republican debates he was on stage with very accomplished political figures and he dominated that stage. saying ridiculous things, he was

the presence. you see him in the room with nancy pelosi, she's the one dominating the room. it is a remarkable thing. and i will say, i put me in the category of people who underestimated her, there was a big debate going in this election whether she was the right person to lead democrats, i worried about it, i thought not because she was too old or too liberal from san francisco, i thought it was a problem for our party to have someone who was so well known be the face of change. i couldn't have been more wrong and i think people that doubted her ability to run this caucus couldn't have been more wrong as well. she has shown the ability to unite all the factions of the party, to hold off the liberals who wanted to impeach trump too early and to bring the conservative moderates along. i think it has been a masterful effort to watch. >> a few months ago people were thinking the beating heartst democratic party in congress was the squad, right? it was aoc and how aoc was defining nancy pelosi and helped frustrate nancy pelosi was and think where we are right now, nancy pelosi has reasserted her

mastery of that caucus, no question about it, she has weeded out some of the people who i think were thorns in her side, and she's pulled her party back to the center. i think she's also going to play, as big a role as she played in 2019, i think she's going to continue to play in 2020 basically reminding people what works and what doesn't work if you're a democrat. >> she also is playing a game that no one else is playing. she's beating trump because she's playing a long game. trump plays whac-a-mole hour by hour and he's like that movie memento, the guy has to -- trump doesn't remember what he was mad about the day before, he has to scroll through his twitter feed to find out. she plays a long game. she took the darts and the arrows after mueller and she -- i think she displayed this skill when she beat trump for lack of a better word, people were suffering, i hate examining it in strictly political terms, but she ended the government shutdown by shaming trump until he ended it.

>> when she became speaker earlier this year, speaking of longing, she was thinking about 2020. she was already beyond all of us and thinking what is this going to look like election year? how am i going to get 41, you know, freshmen re-elected. how am i going to keep and bring this caucus together? how are we going to take back the white house? and we have to remember, and this is something that i think i forgot. which was she's done this before. right? she's -- and she's been through an impeachment before. she's been, you know, dealt with republicans before. she's dealt with the republican president before. none of this is new and one thing i always admired about her, when i would watch her speak, the way she really articulated the moment that we were in. how she brought in the founding fathers, she quoted them. and she really laid out the time, the moment that we're in and how unprecedented everything was.

and the constitutional duty she had and everyone in her caucus had and how they had to move forward. she laid out that plan every time she stood behind that podium and i think that is the miss that many of us had, she knows this space better than anybody else. >> what you're saying is that donald trump plays whac-a-mole and she plays chess. >> she plays chess. >> she also is one of the only politicians in the time of donald trump who makes her faith part of how she governs. i think that unnerves trump. here she is explaining she doesn't hate him. >> do you hate the president, madam speaker, because -- >> i don't hate anybody. i don't hate -- i was raised in a catholic house, we don't hate anybody, not anybody in the world. so don't you accuse me of -- >> i did not accuse you. >> you did. you did. >> i asked a question. representative collins suggested democrats are doing -- they just don't like the guy. >> nothing to do with -- let me say this.

i think the president is a coward when it comes to helping our kids who are afraid of gun violence. i think he's cruel when he doesn't deal with helping our dreamers of which we're very proud. i think he's in denial about the constitution -- about the climate crisis. however, that's about the election. this is about the -- take it up in the election. this is about the constitution of the united states. and the facts that lead to the president's violation of his oath of office. and as a catholic, i resent your using the word hate in a sentence that addresses me. i don't hate anyone. i was raised in a way that is full -- heart full of love and always pray for the president, and i still pray for the president. i pray for the president all the time. so don't mess with me when it comes to words like that. >> two reactions to that, first is, the use of the way she uses prayer. she said frequently she prays

for the president. she said so coming out of meetings in the white house, i'm praying for the president, he's in a tough way. that drives him crazy. he finds that deeply insulting and he himself had a tweet a few days before the impeachment, he suggested he was going to pray for her. some sort of attempt to hit back. >> what would that look like? >> unclear. he does not go to church service all that often. more than that, the idea of hate. she spoke about that, she doesn't hate him. that's important. what we saw in that impeachment vote is how many republicans are trying to define this along the lines. the word hate was used repeatedly, congressmen would say they're trying to impeach the president because they hate the president and they hate the president's voters, trying to suggest this is cultural wars, the democrats hating the deplorables, hillary clinton talked about in 2016. and trying to define that as tribalism to enflame passions and get the republican base angry about this and therefore turn out the next elections.

she's trying to tone -- take down that temperature a little bit, saying this is not about hate, this is not about culture this is about the rule of law and the president broke it. >> it is also how you win. when i became the communications director in '04, i showed my entire staff war room, the film about the clinton campaign, which in '004 the clinton campaign was the best campaign that existed in -- before 2004, we tried to innovate on technology and then obama innovated beyond where we were and that became the best campaign and now the trump campaign is the most interesting campaign. but the point being to defeat an adversary, you have to love the adversary and understand the adversary. i think what she said there goes beyond her faith and it really is channeling to the squad or to liberal members that we can't beat him with hate because that's his weapon. he's speaking to the people motivated by hate. his sort of green lighting hatred in the political arena, that's their tool. that's not ours. >> it is a political lesson and

religious lesson, she's showing clearly for someone who has been vilified by the religious right for years for its entire time in the universe, she's taking the bible to heart. the thing about it is you can tell trump does not understand that. if you look at that letter he wrote, the screeching letter, one of most revealing passages was where he said she doesn't really pray for me unless it is to pray against me. showing he has no perception or understanding of -- he can't conceive of wishing well on opponent. it is inconceivable to someone like him. >> yeah. >> unbelievable. after the break, william barr's role as donald trump's chief defender. r's role as donald trump's chief defender ptured our hearts. female anchor: how often should you clean your fridge? stay tuned to find out. male anchor: beats the odds at the box office to become a rare non-franchise hit. you can give help and hope to those in need. with moderate to severe ulcerative colitis or crohn's, your plans can change in minutes.

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i was spied on. what they did to me was illegal.

it was illegal on the other side. >> do you stand by your statement that the campaign was spied upon? >> oh, clearly spied upon. >> they knew right at the beginning that it was all a frame-up, a setup, but they hid it so that nobody could see it, so they could keep it going on. thinking they were going to hurt us politically. >> remember, there was and never has been any evidence of collusion. and yet this campaign and the president's administration has been dominated by this investigation into what turns out to be completely baseless. >> don't forget, ukraine hated me, they were after me in the election. >> i am confident that russians attempted to interfere in the election. i don't know about the ukraines, ukrainians, i haven't looked into it, frankly. >> all those alarming claims from the president of the united states and the attorney general

who consistently declines to break with trump, crying out for a fact check. here's one from trump's only handpicked fbi director chris ray. >> the inspector general did not find political bias or improper motivations impacting the opening of the investigation or the decision to use certain investigative tools during the investigations. >> as far as you know, based on the findings in the inspector general report, is the fbi -- was it part of some deep state? >> well, i think that's a kind of label that is a disservice to the 37,000 men and women who work at the fbi, who i think tackle their jobs with professionalism, with rigor, with objectivity and with courage. so that's not a term i would ever use to describe our workforce. and i think it is an affront to them. >> real gap opening up to the attorney general and christopher ray who repeatedly demonstrated

a willingness to correct the record when it comes to trump's misinformation against ag barr who consistently declined to push back against the president's smears and conspiracy theories, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary and might end up heeding the warnings of eric holder who wrote in a recent op-ed in the washington post that barr's recent conduct has rendered him unfit for the office he holds. as a former u.s. attorney general, i am reluctant to publicly criticize my successors, i respect the office and understand just how tough the job can be. but recently ag barr has made a series of public statements and taken actions that are so plainly ideological, so nakedly partisan, and so deeply inappropriate for america's chief law enforcement official that they demand a response from someone who held the same office. virtually since the moment he took office though, barr's words and actions have been fundamentally inconsistent with his duty to the constitution, which is why i now fear that his conduct running political

interference for an increasingly lawless president will reap lasting damage. you have been at the front line of sounding the alarm about attorney general barr since before he was confirmed. i -- makes me sad to say you were right about all of it, all along. >> look, i'm going to continue to call out lies when i see he them from this attorney general. they're unacceptable. they were at least two or three in the clip that you just played. he says there was no collusion found, there was a ton of collusion found there was no criminal conspiracy that was chargeable as per the mueller report. keeps using the word spying, there is no spying. there is lawfully authorized investigative techniques against the campaign and against people that were validly viewed as a foreign threat. this goes on and on and on.

and the gap between the director of the fbi and the attorney general is likely to widen in the weeks and months ahead as we get more and more details perhaps out of john durham's investigation, being micromanaged by this attorney general. and we almost know the outcome of this. attorney general's been hinting, giving us clues about where his own personal investigation is going to go. he calls it spying. he doesn't like the idea that people were investigating the campaign. well, i guess that's what we're going to find. and we're going to have to see whether the fbi director stands up to that or not. >> frank, one thing that is so interesting to me as a former communications person is the way barr is so comfortable pushing out this information from the doj press podium. he stood there and lied about mueller's findings. he stood there and prespun the mueller report hours before they hit send on the actual text of the report. and on the day that horowitz, someone whose claims he liked when horowitz the inspector

general or watchdog for the justice department was hard on the president's political enemies was someone that barr threw under the bus and in a nanosecond when the findings didn't line up with what he knew trump wanted and what barr seemed to have wanted too. how much risk is durham in? he's the u.s. attorney out of connecticut, who is handpicked by barr to run this parallel now criminal investigation into the origins of the russia investigation, which the inspector general found to have had no political bias? >> well, former attorney general holder actually cautioned durham in his op-ed. he said, look, durham's a man of integrity, but needs to look at everybody around trump that has done the wrong thing. they have gone down for the count. and we have already seen a bad sign from durham, very reputable u.s. attorney by him giving a statement in violation of doj policy in the middle of this

criminal investigation. you know, we heard everybody say that trump has found his roy cone. i hope that's true. i hope this is roy cone cloned. you know why? roy cone was identified as a crook and a fraud, disbarred by the new york state bar association, and we all know that roy cone went down in infamy because he was identified as somebody defrauding his clients. we're being defrauded by our attorney general, the attorney general, he's walked away from us. the american people are supposed to be his client, he's abandoned us and gone over to the president. >> it is such a good and ominous point, matt miller. if the president's happy with his attorney general, we already know from the president's statements to the new york times that what he wanted in an attorney general was someone who protected him personally. we also know from news reporting from multiple news organizations that what one of the things don mcgahn, former white house counsel stopped was donald trump's desire to investigate his enemies.

if he likes william barr, what is william barr doing that we don't know about? >> i think it is what we don't know about, what we know about, he's doing both of those things. i think bill barr is by far, by far the most dangerous member of donald trump's cabinet, the most dangerous person anywhere inside the administration besides the president himself because of the views he holds and the position he's in where he can execute those views. those two areas are the two areas that when you know a country is slipping from the rule of law and into aing to ut as you've seen bill barr do, not just by the way he spun the mueller report but killed an investigation in a criminal investigation into the ukraine scandal and then tried to keep the evident from being turned over to congress. and in the second -- trying to get investigations into your political opponents. it is very clear to me this is -- that's what the durham investigation is. it is an investigation to get comey to get brennan, to get

clapper, to get the people that the president said i want prosecuted. doesn't mean they'll ever be charged. but they'll be smeared and the thing that worries me the most, donald trump has a playbook. the modern republican party has a playbook, create a scandal and somehow turn that into an investigation in the middle of the election. they got caught trying to do it to joe biden. i worry that whoever the democratic nominee is, donald trump and bill barr are going to find a way to get an investigation open into that person. doesn't matter whether they ever get charged or not, it will be an issue in the campaign, doubts in the voters minds and it is inconsiderably, incredibly dangerous. >> let's m me ask you what it i like for the men and women of the fbi. it has to be assuring to see chris ray go out and say the grass is down when the ag report came out, he was able to speak to the good news, good news for every american there was no political bias, the investigation into the trump campaign was properly predicated. and the bad news, christopher ray talked about the problems, he didn't call them abuses, but grave mistakes in the fisa

application process. attorney general was -- disagreed. the attorney general talking about how this report wasn't credible to him, he's running his own report. how does that gulf, that gap affect the life and the day to day conduct of the men and women of the fbi. >> i talked to a few in the last couple of weeks. and christopher ray's statement coming out, supporting his troops, saying the phrase deep state doesn't cut it with him, he won some big capital. they are the rank and file and leadership, they're with their director. they get it, their head's down, moving forward, recruiting numbers are way up for the fbi right now. young people are saying, sign me up for that kind of action, i get it. and that's very encouraging news. >> frank, thank you for spending some time with us, always grateful. after the break, the first television interview for a big name familiar to those who have covered the russia investigation. amiliar to those covered the russia investigation. hey there!

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former fbi lawyer lisa page spent two years watching the president and his supporters smear her after the release of her text messages with her colleague peter struck. following a watchdog report that found no political motivation, lisa page is ready to talk in her first televised interview, page spoke to my colleague rachel maddow about her experience including her work on the clinton email case and ultimately the russia probe. >> you ultimately ended up working on the russia investigation deeper into 2016. obviously you were one of the people who was involved in the justice department and the fbi in such a way that you knew a lot about both of those cases. did you and the other people involved in those two cases struggle at all with this discontinuity that the clinton

investigation for the reasons that you just described was very public and various steps were disclosed to the public, had a huge political impact, where as there was a live very provocative, very disturbing investigation into president trump and his campaign as well, and that was kept from the public. did you struggle with that discontinuity or the fact there wasn't a parallel there? >> not at all. not at all. the two investigations couldn't be less similar. the clinton investigation, you're talking about historical events, three years prior, her use of a private email server that was a public investigation that everybody knew about. with respect to the russia investigation, we're talking about trying to investigate what the -- an incredibly hostile foreign government may be doing to interfere in our election. we didn't know what the answer was and it would have been deeply prejudicial and unfair to candidate trump for us to have said anything before we knew what had happened. >> in terms of the way this played out ultimately, you have become a poster child with

several of your colleagues for claims from the president and now increasingly from the current attorney general that the trump russia investigation was cooked up on the basis of false allegations or even some sort of conspiracy, specifically to hurt his chances of getting elected. now, of course, the problem there is that nobody in the country knew about that investigation before people had the chance to vote on him. and i just -- as an observer, i find that flabbergasting. how does it strike you and how does that comport with your understanding of that process given what you just described? >> there is no one on this set of fact who has any experience in counterintelligence who would not have made the exact same decision. this is a question about whether russia is working with the united states person to interfere in our election. we were obligated to figure out whether that was true or not and to figure out who might be in a position to provide that assistance. >> in terms of the critique i just implicitly made that if

there had been some sort of conspiracy against candidate trump, that could have just as easily been linked to the public, so people would know about that when they went to the polls, is that a fair critique? >> it is. but we were extraordinarily careful not to do anything that would allow this information to get out before we knew what we had. >> you described as i mentioned the sort of self-consciousness around the clinton investigation that everybody involved was very conscious that everything that was done was going to be scrutinized, that anticipatory sense of scrutiny as i've talked to james comey about it seemed to drive some of the decisions in terms of public disclosure what blowback the fbi would get. given what has happened ultimately to everybody who is involved in that russia investigation, do you look back now and recognize any of the same self-consciousness about that? was it the same sense that the sort of scrutiny or blowback was going to be brought to bear on all of you? >> i wouldn't characterize it that way, because this was a

counterintelligence investigation, first and foremost. the fbi conducts counterintelligence investigations every day, and no one ever hears about them and no one will. so it is entirely possible that this investigation could have ended that way, had nothing been found, had there been no relationship between people on the trump campaign and people in russia. it is enactuarialtuirely possib could have remained a secret investigation for the very reason you wouldn't want to perenni prejudice if you didn't find connections between the russian federation and members of the trump campaign. that's not what mueller found, but you shouldn't assume that a counterintelligence investigation will be made public because the vast majority of them are not. >> in terms of the text messages and the allegations that have been made against you, you've sort of explained yourself in time, putting these -- those text messages in greater context in terms of what they meant and the way they were used against you. can you explain to us tonight

what was meant by, for example, the insurance policy text message. this is you and peter strzok. >> it is an analogy. it is not my text, so i'm sort of interpreting what i believe he meant back three years ago, but we're using an analogy, talking about whether or not we should take certain investigative steps or not based on the likelihood he's going to be president or not. you have to keep in mind, if president trump doesn't become president, the national security risk if there is somebody in his campaign associated with russia plummets. you're not so worried about the what russia is doing vis-a-vis a member of his campaign if he's not president. because you're not going to have access to classified information, you're not going to have access to sources and methods. so the insurance policy was an analogy, it is like an insurance policy when you're 40. you don't expect to die when you're 40, yet you still have an insurance policy. >> don't just hope he's not

going to be elected and therefore not press forward with the investigation hoping, but rather press forward with the investigation just in case he does get in. >> exactly. >> what about the text message that -- in which you and strzok were talking about your fear that trump would be elected and he said, no, we won't let it happen. >> by we, he's talking about the collective we. like minded, thoughtful, sensible people who were not going to vote this person into office. you know. obviously in retrospect do i wish he hadn't sent it, yes. it has been mutilated to death and it has been used to bludgeon an institution i love and i disappointed countless people. but this is a snapshot in time, carrying on a conversation that happened earlier in the day, that reflected a broad sense of -- he's not going to be president, we, the democratic people of this country, are not going to let it happen. >> lisa page on the rachel maddow show. when we come back, the trump presidency has seen many firsts. now get ready to add to the

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and improves 7 key areas of visibly healthy skin. try olay total effects. donald trump became the third president in our country's history to be impeached in an historic vote that may have been unavoidable. from the day he took office, mr. trump made clear that he would not abide by the conventions of the system he inherited. so perhaps it was inevitable that at some point he would go too far for the opposition party, leading to an historic date of debate on the house floor where he was depicted as a constitutional villain or victim. now trump is in a unique position as one of my next guests characterized as the first insurgent incumbent president in american history. joining our conversation, presidential historian and author of "the soul of america" john meacham. explain, insurgent incumbent, what's that? >> well, he's going to be running as an outsider as an

impeached president against a system of which he is the chief executive officer. so he's managed to do something above all the things we could get, this wasn't one of them. even for him. so he will be running saying washington is rigged, the system is against me, it is against you. we got to change it. and he will have been president of the united states for four years at that point. so it is the ultimate outsider campaign being run by the man who is in the inner most room of american power. >> you know what strikes me when i listen to you detail that, and that's absolutely right, is that it is going to test how fact immune his base is. it took a while, but in three years there have been independent investigations into whether his claims of a rigged system are true or not and none of them are. the idea that there was a deep state conspiracy at the justice department to get him was debunked by careful three-year

independent investigation. the idea that there was massive voter fraud, jonathan mennier pointed out on this program turned out not to be true. his conspiracy theorys have been debunked one after the other by people inside the house, tom bossert, his own former homeland security adviser debunked the ukraine conspiracy theory and this will test his basis in faith and myth. >> fact immune is a great phrase. the trump base of support is interestingly impervious to contrary data. the argument i tried to make is the one way we can talk about what is unfolding now is by talking about what has unfolded in the past. that can be one piece of the utility of history. and i would argue that if you talk about what has been true in the past, you -- at least open the aperture a bit, you raise the chances a bit for people to

actually understand that data can change, circumstances can change, people you have faith in can disappoint you. we all know -- we all know this. and the argument i make is that's what the american revolution was about. really the key intellectual insight of 1776 was trying to bring together all these strands that had been unfolding in the previous three or four centuries in the western world. guttenberg, immoveable type, which democratized information, the enlightenment, the scientific revolution, this entire shift from the world being organized vertically where popes and kings and pellets ruled by fiat to a more horizontal understanding where we were given the capacity to make decisions about our own destinies, it wasn't applied enough, wasn't applied as broadly as it should have been, it is still not now. but at least the revolution put a process in motion that has created a country that for all

of its problems most of us want it stay here. if you can argue to people who believe in this president, right or wrong, that if you believe in him when he's wrong, you're not being true to that tradition, maybe there is some slight chance they'll begin to actually react to facts that they don't like. >> i pay a million dollars, jonathan, to watch jonathan meacham say all that to donald trump's face. and watch him try to process that. because it is so right. it is sort of putting your faith in the lie and then believing the lie when it fails you. >> i had guttenberg on my meacham bingo cards. that's a win for me here. that is certainly right in terms of the president. who has no sense of history, who proudly says he doesn't really read. we had brief flirtation at the beginning of the term he was embracing legacy of andrew jackson, a president that mr. meacham knows well. but that was something that steve bannon created.

he sort of said, he's a populist, you should embrace this, this was not something trump ever had any affinity towards. and we are at a moment now where he, you know, he doesn't -- it is lie upon lie because he's not trying to win the new cycle, just trying to win the moment. everyone in the white house holds their breath when he goes out to the south lawn and talks to reporters in front of the helicopter because he's trying to win that exchange, trying to win that moment, even though it creates more trouble for him down the road. we have seen to this point, he largely got away with it. that has now changed. he has been impeached and going forward here, the test of this election is going to be as you said, like, what do people believe? where do they choose to get their facts? do they consider there could be a truth anymore? it is a real test, we always hear this is, every four years, most important election of our lifetime, this seems clearly to be it. >> coming back and how we do it, that's my next question for john meacham after the break. that's my next question for john meacham after the break. re.

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we're back. jon meacham, you're up. this is a depressing conversation, the death of truth, the trump base not caring about facts even when their conspiracies are blown up in full view. what do we do? >> one of the things i resist in all of our considerations about all these issues is this idea

that the american president is somehow separate from the rest of us in terms of public will and public opinion. they're not like -- we've talked about gouttenberg. how about fortinbras? it's going viral, particularly in elderly facilities. the fact is, bingo, that was very clever, jonathan, i noted that. knock the tapioca over, we'll move on. where we are, it seems to me,iss fortinbras comes in, everything is in order, and the idea that presidents do omniscient things is really wrong. the acts of the powerful are made possible by the innumerable

acts of the powerless. lyndon johnson can do what he does on civil rights because rosa parks and martin luther king and innumerable others made that possible. that's true. and yet, and yet, and "yet" is the keyword of american history, i don't think we would be having this conversation with quite this depth of concern if it weren't for this particular president who has made this the air he breathes. the air he breathes is this warped truth. and i do think that some individuals who attract enormous public attention and support can begin to change this. one of the great questions before us is what happens in the republican party after trump? does trumpism survive trump himself? and i don't know the answer to that. here's hoping that we end up with someone, for all their

faults, like dwight eisenhower or ronald reagan or george had he been better walker bush or george w. bush or john mccain. for all their faults, those were people, those were politicians who believed in the basic direction and the basic value of the american system. president trump believes in the basic value and the basic direction of president trump. >> and that, corinne, seems to be the strength of the democrats' impeachment case, it was all about facts, it was all about witnesses who testified in full view. the whole process really played out, i kept calling it like a puppy calm, we watched the whol thing. >> can i just say, from cardi b. to fortinbras. we started off the show talking about nancy pelosi, that's the brilliance of what we've seen since september, how they went for facts and evidence and laid

it out for everyone. but, you know, meacham says something which touches me which is the civil rights movement, when you had rosa parks and martin luther king. you see that in the resistance of the last three years of people taking to the streets and being very loud and clear. if you think about the muslim ban, if you think about the women's march, if you think about trying to stop the repeal of aca, if you think about people coming out. there is a hope to stop what we've been seeing, and 2020 will be that last stand. >> jon meacham, an epic performance, i'll replay this on my computer every day to get fired up. we'll sneak in a break and be right back. ck and crispy crab-stuffed shrimp rangoon. how will you pick just 4 of 10? it won't be easy. better hurry in. the good news? our comfort lasts all day. the bad news? so does his energy.

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my thanks to jonathan lemire, jon meacham, charlie sights. "mtp daily" with chuck todd starts now. welcome to a special holiday edition of "meet the press daily." i'm chuck todd here in washington where a block one of thor year waits us in 2020. i know what you're thinking, can you really top 2019? we better. not only are we anticipating a senate trial to remove the president from office but we're counting down for the fight in the first four when the first voters will have their say in the 2020 presidential election. for months we've seen democratic candidates in iowa, including some no