it's up if you prefer on the new podcast. i should mention we have all kinds of other exclusives he won't see on air including my recent talk with maya wiley and the impeachment when you go to our social pages. check it out. thanks for watching "the beat." "hardball" starts in-n-out. >> romney to vote to hear from bolton. let's play hardball. ♪ ♪ good evening. i'm chris mathews from washington. we have some breaking news right now. within the last hour, republican senator mitt romney of utah said publicly that he will vote as a senator to hear testimony from trump's former national security advisor john bolton. here he is. >> i support the clinton impeachment model, which is a vote on witnesses later. but as to which witnesses i'd want to hear from and so forth, that's something which i'm open

to until after the opening arguments. >> including john bolton? >> pardon? >> including john bolton? >> including john bolton, yes. he's someone who i would like to hear from and presumably i get the chance to vote for that. >> i get the chance to vote for that. it comes as the speaker of the house sends a shot across the bough if senate republic cans have a fair trial or we'll make you pay for it in the elections. this is how pelosi is setting the stage for impeachment trial which could start within days. she meets with her caucus to discuss next steps which includes the naming of impeachment prosecutors and sending over the articles themselves. that will leave it to the republican-controlled senate to decide whether they'll hear new evidence or witness testimony at trial. pelosi warned yesterday the choice will come with political consequence. here she goes. >> they take an oath to take -- have a fair trial and we think that would be with witnesses and

documentation. so that dynamic has -- now the ball is in their court to either do that or pay a price. the senators who are thinking now about voting for witnesses or not, they will have to be accountable for not having a fair trial. >> this comes as cbs news reports that the white house is already bracing for some republicans' defections over there in the senate. senior officials say, quote, they increasingly believe that at least four republicans and likely more will vote to call witnesses. we already lost one already. it's romney today. he's the first of the four to break the ice. senate republican majority leader -- minority leader is planning to keep up the pressure. according to politico, schumer will force a series of votes designed to squeeze vulnerable republicans and harm them on the campaign trail if they side with trump. both democratic leaders are together on this. meanwhile, the president can't seem to settle on a defense.

for weeks he's been fixated on calling his own witnesses and now he wants to avoid them altogether. yesterday trump tweeted, many believe that by the senate giving credence to a trial rather than an outright dismissal, it gives the partisan democrat witch-hunt credibility. that it otherwise does not have, i agree. he says i agree. he wants to cancel the whole trial altogether. it's likely mcconnell will weigh that proposal given his study admission last month eel coordinate strategy with the white house. >> everything i do during this i'm coordinating with white house counsel. there will be no difference between the president's position and our position. exactly how we go forward, i'm going to coordinate with the president's lawyers. total coordination with the white house counsel's office. >> again, i'm going to take my cues from the president's lawyers. >> isn't that amazing? a member of the jury saying he's going to side with the defense. listen to the lawyers for the defense as to what he does.

incredible statement. i'm joined now by democratic congressman eric swalwell member of the house intelligence and judiciary committee. heidi przybyla, nbc news, of course. joyce vance, former federal prosecutors. let me ask you about the new developments, romney is joining -- he's the first republican to break and say i'm going to vote to hear a witness and the witness i'm going to call to hear is going to be john bolton, probably the prime possible witness. >> the point is, chris, it's not just any witnesses because republicans called for, you know, irrelevant witnesses to come forward just to make a spectacle of it. this is a witness who has raised his hand who did not do so before saying, i've soon things, i have something to say and republicans are burying their head in the sand saying, we don't want to hear this. what a concept. you're going to have a relevant witness come forward. so it's a courage call right now and it's pay matter of whether other republicans will answer that call. >> do you have a sense he might break the ice? because 47, now 48.

they only need three over there to get a fair trial and get witnesses. you have apparently a whole batch of them. maybe seven or eight republican possibilities that will shift and say, yes, we want a real trial. >> may not break the ice, but he may break public opinion on this because it continues to go up since we voted on impeachment and we withheld send ing it over to get assurances of a fair trial. the public demand for a fair trial has gone up. a quinnipiac poll today, 71% -- 66% of americans saying they want to hear from john bolton. i think many senators will list tone one thing, what do my constituents want. if you're in colorado, alaska, call your senator and say we demand a nair trial. even the president deserves a fair trial. >> congressman hold on. we're going to let you vote right now. please come back in a moment. i'm going to heidi przybyla on this. romney, i've said the other day, rather wistfullyl, he flirts with greatness. every once in a while you think

this guy is going to break with the party and be the independent candidate, independent republican. >> he probably will. he said right now he's going to commit most likely to voting for bolton. but you need flee more. here's the this can. even though the congressman is right, these members face really tough general election fights, anybody can primary them at this point that this trial is going to be going on. that primary window is still open. and actually, i've looked at some of the statements that the top four most vulnerable republican senators have made, and guess what? they're not too optimistic about witnesses. tom tillis, just last week was pooh poohing the idea. he's in the top 4. corey gardener in december called the whole impeachment venture a circus. martha mcsally has also said she hasn't seen anything after the entire house testimony that would convince her that impeachment is merited. so you need to get to four. mitt romney -- >> let me give you some candidates. ready? >> okay. >> murkowski has more guts than anybody i know.

>> that's why i think we're watching the wrong people. it's not necessarily the most vulnerable republicans sitting for reelection. it's those who are considered to have broken with the party in the past, people of principle. lamar alexander is one of them. >> one who is fearful, corey gardener, purple state, colorado. >> here's the thing again. you have to distinguish between the broad concept of witnesses because witnesses like the congressman said, could be anybody. and these four, whoever the four are, digging in and saying, we want bolton and assuming the president doesn't invoke executive privilege, and then block bolton. >> yeah, let's go to joyce vance. what do you make of this case? it seems to me the argument about whether to have a fair trial or not, the argument is still improbable we're going to win there. it looks like it's starting to go na direction. do you think pelosi has won her argument? holding this thing three weeks now has raised the issue of fairness and that is beginning to break people who are on the edge.

>> you know, chris, when people study the history of this era, i think one of the principles that they'll derive will be never bet against nancy pelosi because although people criticize her at the moment, in hindsight her moves have always been solid. and public opinion has changed, particularly as more information comes out. we learned over the last couple of days that lev parnas, the american ukrainian associated with rudy giuliani has shared information from cell phones from what's app communications. so there will probably be an increasing crescendo for witnesses and pelosi will get her way in the end. >> now we have two-thirds of the country doing exactly that. they say they want to hear from bolton in the senate trial, two-thirds. 66%. by the way, tonight we have another breaking story. we couldn't put it out front, but here it is. "the new york times" reporting tonight that the russians have hacked the ukrainian gas company

burisma. that's the company linked to hunter biden. he's working for them, lots of money per month. according to security experts, the hacking attempts against burisma began in early november as talk of the bidens, ukraine and impeachment was dominating the news in the united states. experts say the timing and scale of the attacks, the hacking attacks, suggest that the russians will be searching for potentially embarrassing material on the bidens, the same kind of information that mr. trump wanted from ukraine when he pressed for an investigation into the bidens. we're going to get to this. the congressman will be back in a moment. congressman, are you there? >> yes. >> let me get to you. what is the significance? they're only looking for dirt if there is any dirt. we don't know, but they're looking. are they trying to find some internal conversations within burisma about why they hired hunter biden? what are they looking for? >> i would say the russians are back, chris, but they never left. they persisted to do this because we don't have a president to represent us.

they're looking to influence the upcoming caucuses and primary elections. what if we had a president who told them, enough, you're not going to do that to us. what if we told them there would be consequence, who put the country's interests over his own. it is up to congress to do everything we can to protect america. i have a real sinking feeling about this russia is going to do all they can again to elect donald trump. >> well, heidi, if there is a parallel purpose here, the purpose, of course, according to rudy giuliani was to get dirt on joe biden. he was front running in the polls at the time he was doing his dirty work over there looking for dirt. now the russians who may be a bit behind schedule, but the fact is they think biden is still the front runner. they're going after him. >> look, we want to be level headed about this. unless they find an email from joe biden saying, you need to hire my son, highly doubtful. then any level-headed person would look at the information that they're going to offer here and say, it cuts against the

narrative because the narrative is that president trump is saying that joe biden helped his son and got this prosecutor fired. so it is highly unlikely they're going to come back with that kind of information. but if this was a successful hack, there is a parallel, and that is what the russians did to hillary clinton in 2016 with her emails. and, you know, the media ate it up. and published these innocuous exchanges about her food, her dietary preferences, and it all amounted to a lot of big bag of nothing. >> there was some stuff in there that was anti-catholic conversations going on. >> there were a few things that were damaging in terms of her ties to lobbyists, but there was no huge kind of smoking gun that if you ask a person on the street if they remember what the take away was from hillary's emails they're going to be able to tell you what that was. but the concern here would be that they come back with something similar that could be spun up into something. >> well, joyce, it looks to me like you go looking through the

baggage of some sleazy oligarch over in the extractive industries business in russia. the heart of everything bad over there is a gas station with nuclear option over there. you might find something that doesn't look very kosher. just a thought. what do you think? they're looking for anything dirty, they can make it look dirtier. >> so, i think like heidi, i would caution restraint here. this is the first that we've heard about this hack. we need to be careful about the forensics and make sure that it actually is attributable to russia, not someone else. and then if damaging information is brought forward -- and i suspect it's not there because this story talks about a hack during october, new york. that would have been the time to leak it if they found it. if something shows up late, we need to be careful to determine that it's authentic before anyone gets too spun up over it. there's too many opportunities here for russia to be a bad actor and they proved in 2016

and thereafter, and probably before, that that was exactly their goal. their goal is to sow dissent here. we shouldn't let them do it. >> we have to report what they're doing. anyway, it's "the new york times" big story tomorrow, probably top of the fold. pelosi said yesterday regardless of what happens in the senate, the president will be forever tainted by the stain of impeachment. here she is putting the knife in. >> we have confidence in our case that it is impeachable and this president is impeached for life, regardless of any gamesmanship on the part of mitch mcconnell. we feel very proud of the kus g courage of our members to vote to impeach the president. there's nothing the senate can do that can ever erase that. ten months from now we'll have an election if we don't have him removed sooner, but again, he will be impeached forever. >> that is so interesting in a rhetorical way, congressman,

because the president, we're assuming if he gets acquitted in the senate, if they don't get the votes against him, the two-thirds, which would be a big chunk of republicans as well, th that he would come out like a mobster on the courthouse steps and say i've been exonerated. not just acquitted, exonerated. that will be his headline. pelosi as she often is as sharp to get ahead of him and say, no, no, you will always have been impeached. your thoughts. >> well, the goal is to remove him because he's hurting our national security. but, chris, we at least exposed him. what we have learned with the president is when you expose him you can actually stop his corrupt ways. the example i'll give you is ukraine was not getting the aid they needed until donald trump got caught. then they got the aid. if he had not gotten caught, they would not have gotten the aid. only because people stood up to him, ukrainians who needed it got the aid. we have now exposed him for the cheat, for the corrupt leader that he is, and hopefully that prevents and heads off other corrupt schemes that he may be trying to run as president.

so you have to keep exposing him. ultimately if he's not removed, yes, it will be a judgment for the american people. >> thank you so much. u.s. congressman eric swalwell. heidi przybyla. joyce vance. this look is going to be on tenor hooks. we may get a real trial in the leadership so far. mitt romney might bring in three republicans. coming up, no one wants a trigger happy president. new polling shows the majority of americans feel less safe since trump ordered the drone strike that assassinated an iranian general. and what about all the mixed messages coming from the administration? here's what former secretary of state john kerry had to say about that. >> we've heard all kinds of different stories about imminence, about embassies, no, there aren't embassies. this is a shifting story, but so shifting i think it's beginning to look like a cover up. >> well, more on this from secretary kerry tonight on this program. by the way, he's backing his

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welcome back to "hardball." after a week of of shifting rationales for the attack on general soleimani, the contradictions continued over the weekend. this time it was defense secretary mark esper contradicting the president, telling cbs he was never shown any specific evidence that iran was planning an attack on four american embassies. >> well, the president didn't say it was a tangible -- he didn't cite a specific piece of evidence. what he said was probably, he believed -- >> are you saying there wasn't one? >> i didn't see one with regard to four embassies. what i say is i share the president's view that probably

my expectation was they were going to go after our embassies. >> his statement there from the secretary of defense came two days after the president told fox news that he believed the threat was real. once again, he provided no evidence for why he felt -- felt is probably the right word -- that way. >> did they have large scale attacks planned for other embassies? and if those were planned, why can't we reveal that to the american people? wouldn't that help your case? >> i can reveal that i believe it would have been four embassies. >> you know what i thought watching that? laura ingraham pushed him harder than he thought she was going to push him and he b.s.'d his way through that interview. he didn't have any idea how many embassies. he didn't have any idea about the evidence. a according to "the new york times," several officials said they did not have enough concrete information to describe such a threat as imminent. despite the administration's assertion. but they did see a worrying pattern. since launching the strike, the administration has skraum bld to

put forward a coherent offense. late this afternoon president trump told reporters the administration has been totally consistent. >> totally. >> what's the intelligence? >> first i think it's been totally consistent. but here's what happens' been consince tent. we killed soleimani. >> a new poll conducted by ipso said they believe the killing of soleimani has made americans safer. 25% agreed. 52% said they made us feel less safe. i'm joined by larry fifer, former chief of staff to michael hayden. and speech writer under ash crawford. white house warriors. there it is. larry -- >> yes. >> -- is this b.s.? i'm asking, under pressure, he says four embassies. i'm not sure he knows which come triz the countries these embassies are in. why is he playing defense? the first time in a long time this president is sitting around saying imminent, imminent,

imminent. because what? nobody believes it was something -- it's like a hitchcock movie where a guy is about to assassinate somebody and they shoot the assassin. it doesn't look like that's what happened here. >> a gigantic credibility gap on this issue. number one. number two, i think we have an administration that has got to have the worst communications team and communication planning ability of any administration. if this truly was a plan that was approved seven months ago, they've had seven months to come up with a coherent communication plan that they all should be executing on and they're not. getting back to your first question, is the president just pulling this out of his ear, i think that's a very distinct possibility. the thing i fear is that there has been some really sensitive, really good intelligence that has talked about some specific threats that everyone is trying to protect, and the president perhaps slipped as he's been prone to do in other instances

in the past. if you look at the folks who attended the gang of eight briefing, if you look at their public statements, they've been largely circumspect. or if they've been complaining about anything, it's been more about the process, should have briefed us first or you didn't study the consequence enough. but they haven't really addressed the rationale. so that leads me to believe that there may be something to this, but -- >> let me tell you, i question that. >> sure. >> let me go to john. i have watched this for years. every time there is a question whether to go to war or not, to kill somebody or not, the onus is always on those who don't want to do it. the hawk always wins the argument. the hawk is popular. if you didn't support the assassination of this guy you'd be weak. nobody wants to look weak. of course, i have no problem with it. democrats as well as republicans, we're seeing the problem with biden now. we see the problem with kerry. hillary clinton had the problem. all supported the iraq war. because that was -- and godfather language, that was the

smart move. always back the war. >> yeah. >> right? that's always the soft, easy answer, back the war. >> i think the one thing that's changed is the iraq war situation. even my students at the university of pennsylvania who were barely born when the iraq war started, know that it was based in part on trumped up intelligence. the american people are smart consumers on this and they're asking smart questions. >> we're more vulnerable. >> exactly. i think the other thing is what the trump administration is trying to do is put out the story of an organized process to say trump got together with the smartest people and defense secretary and everybody else. but every time they'd come out and say something about this story, the intelligence, they screw it up. so i don't think you can sell an organized process when you keep messing up the basic messaging. >> as long as they were honest, that's a hell of a presumption. suppose they've been doing this small-time operations, harassing us, killing a person there, going after a contract person here, constantly nibbling at us.

and we have to brush them back like a baseball. teach them a lesson. this isn't for free, buddy. we knock off their top guy, we kill this guy. okay, next time you go into these operations, be careful, we're going to kill you. why didn't they just say that? that's -- it seems to me that's the honest assessment of what they did. >> i'd have to agree with you. it seems to me like a logical thing to say. and i think the joe six-pack walking the street is going to say bad guy killed equals good. one would think that it could be a compelling argument. there -- they seem to be wrapping themselves around this notion of legality associated with imminent threat. and somewhere along the line someone decided, we have to say there was an imminent threat. >> i agree. first time he's on defense. on defense himself, president trump administration has offered contradictory justifications for killing that general. >> we know it was imminent. this was an intelligence-based assessment.

>> soleimani was planning against personnel. >> it's a collective, a full situation of awareness of risk. if you look for imminence, you need no further than the days that led up to the strike that was taken against soleimani. >> they were looking blow up our embassy. >> soleimani was actively planning new attacks and he was looking very seriously at our embassies and not just the embassy in baghdad. >> we don't know precisely when and we don't know precisely where, but it was real. >> we had specific information on an imminent threat and those threats included attacks on u.s. embassies. period. full stop. >> okay. here's something after that full stop, mr. secretary. after we kill soleimani, the most beloved general, right, they still show restraint in their missile attack on the base in western iraq. they killed nobody. they showed restraint. he's arguing before the killing of soleimani, they were planning to blow up four u.s. embassies.

i would consider that an act of war by iraq -- iran who would want to go to war. why would a country blow up four embassies and not expect to be at war with the country they blew up their embassies? it's an insane plop significance. why would iran do this? >> i think you're adding -- trying to use rationality -- >> the president of the united states is saying they're going to blow up four embassies. >> i don't think there were exactly -- he's not making a rational case for this. >> we discount everything trump says as b.s. and move on. >> i think if you actually isolate what secretary pompeo is saying, whether you agree with it or not, he has had a consistent stream of logic behind what is happening here. but there's been -- >> he said they're going to attack four embassies. the president. >> the president did. >> i'm sorry, he's the chief executive. >> if you isolate what pompeo said, he laid out the most articulate -- >> the president is the one who okayed the killing. he fingered him. he calendar him. he killed the guy. he did.

you don't explain it. larry, thank you, gentlemen. up next i talk to former equity of state john kerry about iran, impeachment and iowa, the three is. you're watching "hardball."

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everything your trip needs for everyone you love. expedia. welcome back to "hardball." it's been ten days since president trump assassinated eye aronian gener iranian general soleimani. they are trying to get on the

same page why the attack was carried out. i spoke with former secretary of state john kerry today. i asked if he can trust the trump administration to simply tell us the truth about this. >> well, chris, obviously they've been all over the place. and, in fact, the decision we now learned to go after soleimani was made in june. we heard all kinds of different stories about imminence, about embassies, no, there aren't embassies. this is a shifting story, but so shifting i think it's beginning to look like a cover up over their original choices. and it really raises extremely serious questions about avoiding the responsibility to engage congress when you have a calculated program for assassination, that you have decided to implement months ahead of time, and you haven't even shared that because of the consequence potentially of going to war. and we literally came to the brink of war based on that decision, and i think congress and the american people have

ev every right to be deeply upset again over a cover up from the trump administration. >> how dangerous is four more years of this president, especially on the iran front? can we bumble ourselves, can he bumble himself into war? >> yes, obviously he could. i mean, he almost did. and the fact is that it's a sad day when the united states of america has to rely on the decision of a regime we neither like nor trust, to have them be the ones who behave somehow in a way that saves donald trump from his own decision. i think outsourcing america's security to a regime like iran is a dangerous thing. so i think people can see for themselves now, if you measure this administration in the last years, the president pulled out of the tpp, didn't even bother to negotiate a better deal. he's supposed to be the world's best negotiator. he pulled out of -- according to

him obviously. he has not achieved anything with north korea except two major publicity coups for kim jong-un without achieving anything moving the nation -- our nation into a safer place because kim jong-un has been using this time to build a larger arsenal of weapons that are dangerous to the region and to us. he pulled out of the paris agreement. everybody in the world knows that the evidence of what is happening in terms of climate change facts on the ground is growing and growing and growing with extraordinary danger to the world. americans are already dying from this. in fires, in floods, in storms, in mudslides. and the president is sitting there saying this is a chinese hoax. so we're in a very dangerous place. i mean, nuclear arms agreements have been chucked away.

the inf agreement, now the star treaty is also at risk. when you start running the list -- and what's worse, our president, the president of the united states of america, the leader of the free world ostensibly, goes to a meeting of nato in england and the leaders of the rest of the world are laughing at him. so much so that he picks up his marbles like a kid in a school yard and goes home and then starts to just tweet in solitude. we are in a dangerous place and i think people know it. >> let's talk about the democratic fight for president against a president who could well -- >> do we have to? no. >> you get the wrong candidate, you might lose the whole thing. what about bernie sanders, do you think he's a danger as a president, as a candidate? you're out there fighting like hell for joe biden. how much a danger is bernie sanders who is now leading in the polls in the latest poll out there in iowa, how big a danger would he be to the country or to the party, the democrats? >> well, chris, i made a vow to

myself that in coming out here, i'm not going to be drawing distinctions between the candidates. that's up to them. they have a debate tomorrow night and i'm confident that those distinctions will be drawn. but i will say there's a reason i'm here, and the reason i'm here is that joe biden, vice-president biden, i think is the only candidate who comes to the table with a skill set, with the experience, with the relationships, with the knowledge of exactly how to get things done so that he can begin on day one to put the world back together. and literally the world is coming apart right now. it needs the leadership of the united states of america. and one of joe biden's great strengths is his experience and knowledge in foreign policy. he has been the chairman of the foreign relations committee for eight years. and one of the reasons i think bernie and others are criticizing him is because they know they don't have what he has, which is eight years of

experience as the top surrogate for the president of the united states, as the person the president asked to help get the troops out of iraq. as the person the president asked to help resolve a problem of migrants flowing over our borders, which he did working with the presidents of latin american countries, central american countries. so i think joe biden comes to the table with exactly the set of qualifications that americans want right now. they want to calm things down. they want somebody who can work across the aisle. they want somebody who can bring people to the table who is not a pol pol polar izer, someone could can get things done. >> ted kennedy, your late colleague, said that was the most important vote of his career, voting against that war. where do you stand? you voted for the authorization. how do you deal with that charge from bernie? >> well, again, chris, as i said, i think bernie is striking

out at joe because he doesn't have all of the things that i just listed, the qualifications of having had eight years sitting on the national security council and working as effectively as he did with countries all around the world. but the fact is that as chairman of the foreign relations committee, joe used the committee to expose what was happening in iraq. he used the committee with hearing after hearing in order to figure out how we were going to get out of that mess. and he knew full well that, that, that the reason we got there was the administration made a bunch promises to all of us about what it was going to do with respect to building a coalition, with respect to exhausting the channels of diplomacy and going to huaraz a last resort. that is not what they did. i think that joe obviously acknowledged because of what happened it was a mistake. he made up for that with his

leadership and the effort to get us out of iraq, bring the troops home and deal with the, with the fake or badly interpreted contrived evidence that was put forward with respect to what was happening in iraq at the time. and everybody now knows that it wasn't a slam dunk. it was anything but. it was totally trumped up, no pun intended. >> yeah. >> and as a result, joe and i and a whole bunch of others opposed the war once george bush decided to go, notwithstanding the vote. >> thank you so much. one quick question. a gesture note. do you think mitch mcconnell will run a fair trial in the senate on this impeachment? >> joe, it appears as if mitch is working with the white house to set up the rules. and obviously that raises a

serious question about the impartiality as a senator. he also takes the oath to be an impartial juror. and i'm very, very concerned about what is happening. i hope senators will decide that they have to have witnesses. this is a very different situation from the clinton impeachment, which i sat on as a juror. this is a situation where they haven't heard the evidence in the way that they had in the clinton impeachment. and it is critical. there is no way americans will trust that there was a fair trial if they don't hear witnesses. >> thank you so much. former secretary of state john kerry campaigning in iowa right now for joe biden. thank you so much, sir. up next, two new polls out of iowa show two different candidates in the lead. plus elizabeth warren and bernie sanders are disputing details of a 2018 meeting they had. warren says sanders told her he didn't believe a woman could win

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welcome back to "hardball". the iowa caucuses are now just three weeks away from today. and a new poll shows the race for iowa voters remains a free for all. the monmouth university poll just out today shows former vice-president joe biden has taken the lead in that poll with 24%. he's up five points since november. senator bernie sanders is also up five points and second at 18, six points separating those two. however, former mayor pete buttigieg is down 5 since november. and 17 falling from first to third. he also lost in another poll we showed you on friday. and senator elizabeth warren is a close fourth at 15 in this poll. all these numbers, put these four candidates within the margin of error. the pool of candidates, hawkeye states will choose from got

smaller today a after new jersey senator cory booker announced he's suspending his campaign, citing fund-raising challenges complicated by not qualifying for tomorrow night's debate in des moines which is a killer for most of the candidates not getting into the debate. the last qualifying poll for that debate, des moines register poll friday showed the same four leading with senator sanders moving up to first and warren at number 2 in a statistical tie with buttigieg there and with biden. anyway, the swords are out right now tonight on the left. stay with us. 1 gram sugar. it's a sit-up, banana! bend at the waist! i'm tryin'! keep it up. you'll get there. whoa-hoa-hoa! 30 grams of protein, and one gram of sugar. ensure max protein. but since they bought their new house... which menu am i looking at here? start with "ta-paz." -oh, it's tapas. -tapas. get out of town. it's like eating dinner with your parents. sandra, are you in school?

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welcome back to "hardball." with just 21 days until the iowa caucuses, that's three weeks from tonight, it's a fight between bernie sanders and elizabeth warren. finally a real fight. an end to a long-standing nonaggression pact between these two. over the weekend politico reports sanders' campaign is giving volunteers a script to slam warren as the candidate of the elite. saying people who support her are highly educated, more affluent people. tensions escalated today amid multiple outlets according to warren, that's the senator, senator sanders told her in a private meeting in 2018, two years ago, that a woman would not win the presidential election. that's it. that's what he said, according to her. in a statement to nbc news, senator sanders called the charge ludicrous. i'm not sure that's a denial.

moments ago, warren responded in a statement confirming the meeting, adding, among the topics that came up what would happen if democrats nominated a female candidate? i thought a woman could win. he disagreed. i have no interest in discussing this private meeting any further because ernie and i have far more common than differences on punditry. margaret, i've been waiting for a real fight. i like fights in politics. this is about a fact. this isn't about a philosophy or ideology or policy or medicare for all. this is about what did you say in that room. she says, the senator from massachusetts, that the senator from vermont said, a woman can't win in 2020. she said that's exactly what he said. this is great stuff. >> yes. and, you know, we want to sharpen differences between candidates without it being totally negative and not

helpful. my instinct is to believe her because sanders had a campaign in which he had to apologize to the women who worked for him for not treating them as professionals and giving them responsibility. >> how about contemporaneous comments, she told people right after that meeting what he said. that's usually the way we suggest credibility in our business. >> indeed. i think tomorrow sanders' team is going to try to position him to respond to this in a way that makes it look like he does believe that the democratic party can nominate a woman -- >> that's not the issue here. the issue is what did he say in that meeting. >> right. but i think what he's going to have to do is convince voters he is not a sexist in the way that these comments are coming off to his critics. >> yeah. that's what i would do. that's a good smart move. but it is b.s. because the issue here isn't what he thinks in a meeting with the woman.

both want to be the candidate of the democratic left. one says to the other, i don't think you can win. i think that's what he said. >> so far nobody's laid a glove on bernie. nobody goes after sanders the way they go after -- well, bernie -- bernie has two things in common with trump. one is he has a rock solid base and they get mad and don't -- and vote for jill stein. >> you mean come november if you're the democratic nominee, you don't want bernie's troops out against you? >> you do not. he can shoot someone on 5th avenue and not lose one of the bros. they're with him forever. so people don't want to have that kind of shooting match with bernie on stage, and this is -- that elizabeth warren did this, she's the progressive, she's the professorial populist. he's the populist populist. they're going after the same voters. at a certain point they were going to have to drop the -- it was inevitable. >> she was smart for months.

anyway, the sanders campaign also escalates its attack on former vice-president joe biden over the iraq war. this is a sitting duck opportunity here. senior advisor jeff weaver released a statement on behalf of the sanders campaign on saturday, calling it appalling -- i can just hear that from him -- that after 18 years joe biden still refuses to admit he was dead wrong on the iraq war. gooen, has biden admitted he was wrong? >> he hasn't clearly admitted that he was wrong. what he's going to do with the current situation is of most concern to present voters. will this be an issue to progressive voters who, of course, are upset still about iraq? of course. is this going to make people leave biden and start supporting sanders because of what he did in 2003? not likely. >> ted kennedy, before he died, said the most important vote of his life was voting against the iraq war. it's hard for a democrat running for president to deny the importance of those votes. >> right. >> in fact, hillary clinton, joe biden, john kerry, a whole bunch

of them all voted for the iraq war. >> 77 people voted for the iraq war. >> what's this again? >> 77 people voted for the iraq war. >> 77 what? >> members of the senate. >> some top grade presidential types, too. >> the best explanation i've heard and response was from your interview with john kerry just now in which he said that biden spent his time as senate foreign relations chair explaining what went wrong, why the bush administration didn't follow through. it was dick cheney's war. he fooled a lot of people -- >> he lied. he said they had nuclear weapons before the vote. he said it before they went to war, they had nuclear weapons. by the way, godfather talk. i'm glad when people make the smart political move, shot out of water. thank you, gene scott. when they get too clever, i won't vote for the war because they can't get hurt.

we'll see what happens. you get hurt. margaret carlson, thank you, my friend. successful in one area at least, always letting us know how they're taking the low road. that's one thing they're on est about. they take the low road and they let us know it. you're watching "hardball." cologuard: colon cancer screening for people 45 plus at average risk. i've heard a lot of excuses to avoid screening for colon cancer. i'm not worried. it doesn't run in my family. i can do it next year. no rush. cologuard is the noninvasive option

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is let me close tonight with a calibration of just how low

donald trump and his people are willing to go. and if it upsets you, try to take heart history has never made more clear what kind of people are now leading this country. this administration has been successful in just one regard, letting us all know precisely who they are on television, on twitter, and elsewhere. here's today's edition of the people now in the white house. the president's press secretary was asked today why she retweeted and why the president retweeted a doctored picture from an unverified source of speaker pelosi and senate democratic schumer dressed in traditional muslim dress with the caption "democrats 2020." here's what she said. >> i think the president is making clear that the democrats are -- have been parroting iranian talking points and almost taking the side of terrorists and those who were out to kill the americans. i think the president was making the point that the democrats

seemed to hate him so much that they're willing to be on the side of countries and leadership of countries who want to kill americans. >> again, that's the spokeswoman for the president of the united states making a scurrilous attack on the leaders of the united states congress. your tax dollars at work. isn't it nice to know how your tax dollars are being spent on this kind of political garbage? that's "hardball" for now. "all in with chris hayes" starts right now. >> tonight on all in. >> this president is impeached for life, regardless of any gamesmanship on the part of mitch mcconnell. >> reports that the white house expects republicans will defect. >> i think the president's afraid. >> tonight why the white house is reportedly preparing for at least four republicans to vote to allow witnesses in the trial of donald trump, as still more evidence comes to light. >> mr. president, sir, what conversations -- what conversations have you had with lev parnas and i