we spent that commercial break blow drying everything in the studio and still wet thanks to this one. we are all out of town for this sunday morning. i'm kendis gibson, lindsay, thank you for joining us. we'll see you next sunday at 6:00 a.m. eastern time. i'm garrett haake at nbc world headquarters in new york. overwhelming evidence. house managers argue they have a compelling case for the removal of president trump calling his behavior the framer's worst nightmare. the white house response before

the start of the impeachment trial in the senate. accusing bernie sanders campaign releasing an altered video attacking him on social security. is there really anything fake about that? a plan in place for harry and meghan to step back and live more independent lives. why the couple will no longer be his or her royal highness. and the president wakes up today at his florida resort before heading to texas for the farm bureau convention. less than 24 hours ago in the first legal filings for the impeachment filing, house members sent a 111-page brief outlining the quote overwhelming evidence they say proves trump used his official power to pressure crukraine to interferen the upcoming election. they called trump's behaviors and actions the framer's worst nightmare that present a danger

to our democratic processes. the white house says it's the impeachment articles and the democrats that are a, quote, dangerous attack on america's democracy. president trump's lawyers will deliver their own brief tomorrow with a house following a rebuttal by tuesday morning just in time for the trial proceedings to begin later that day. nbc white house reporter kelly o'donnell with the president in florida, national political reporter jonathan allen from washington, d.c., and here in new york shawna, also msnbc contributor. jonathan, what knew did you learn from this house filing last night? are there new arguments in it? >> a ton of new paperwork, garrett. trying to fit in the information from lev parnas, rudy giuliani and some of the other documents

that the house has collected that were not part of that original, those original impeachment articles. some fresh stuff here. there is an unusual amount, i think, for the house of sort of vitriol towards the white house. there's not exactly what you would call a match in terms of the white house's sort of language and its embellishments. but you have a place where the house actually says that the president is trying to essentially legitimize his presidency. and that suggests it was ilegitimate in the first place. >> you heard in the intro calling danger to democracy. is this a serious constitutional argument or will we see this cafeteria food fight bickering. >> we'll see some cafeteria food fight bickering but not that much bickering between the parties. it is a serious constitutional argument. a constitutional argument about

what constitutes an impeachable offense. you have the house managers who are democrats basically saying that high crimes and misdemeanors doesn't mean it has to be something illegal in the law right now, but that if the president is doing something that basically throws america under the bus, then that should be an impeachable offense. you have trump said or president trump side basically saying he didn't do anything illegal, they're even saying i think in their filing that he didn't do anything wrong. so, how is this impeachable? that is a conversation we're going to have. but these people are making it in front of senators many of which have already made up their minds, right? so, really, they're making those arguments to the public. >> i feel like we see this all the time at the white house where they deny a thing, deny a thing and admit the thing and say it doesn't matter. >> they're doing that literally in the filing. this is just a response filing

to what the house democrats did. we'll get a much bigger filing from the white house today or tomorrow, i believe. >> close of business today. >> yeah. so, basically, they're not saying the facts that they're presenting are wrong that the president did have these conversations and he did say these things and the white house released that transcript and they're being transparent. that is not impeachable which is alan dershowitz, the argument he is going to talk about. what does the constitution say? does the constitution say this is in peeempeachable. >> your piece on that i recommend, a trial that might acquit him does less in his favor, right. because he has got so much to dunk on the process that has gotten us this far. can you explain a little bit more about that. >> it is amazing, garrett. he has an institution in the senate that is built to protect

power. super majority votes and in this case with the constitution requiring a two-third vote and a republican majority here and the senate has for many decades for essentially its entire history been able to quietly kill things that it doesn't want to deal with and you can go through american history and see that. and, so, there's a lot of advice from republicans to the president that simply take the victory of being acquitted and walk away. instead, what he's attempting to do here. it appears he's attempting to do from his tweets and conversations with reporters and from the appointment of some of the people he is appointed and that he wants to talk about hillary clinton. what he's doing is suggesting he's going to put together a circus that maybe discredits this institution ready to acquit him. >> you use a piece of what the senate could do if they acquit the president here. i want to bring in kelly

o'donnell down in florida. kelly, the house responded with the president's summons with this long op-ed piece slamming it as rigged and going after democrats. should we expect the president's legal filing later today and his legal strategy more broadly to take on that same political tack or will they be making more of a legal argument eventually? >> well, what's interesting, garrett. if we think for just a moment after all the tweets and all the rvegz can conversations on the south lawn and the style of the president, this is the first time he has formally responded to the impeachment articles with the six-page response to the senate summons. when you think we have been talking about this for months and the first time the president is putting in a legal way the case that he is going to lay out through his lawyers, his top lawyers, jay sekulow his top private lawyer and it does echo the president's sentiments and it does give us a sense of the

things that the president would want to hear. but it is wrapped in a more formal, outline of language and law and the full brief, which is due tomorrow will be much more substantial and that's where you'll see a lot of the hard work of the lawyers who are not the famous faces and the pundits who are part of the president's team. but the lawyers who are part of the counsel's office and the broader team who have been looking for the case law and the particulars that they will argue. so, i think now we'll move into a phase where it will be part trump style and part formal legal case. and it will be interesting to watch those two things come to the senate floor and how will that play out. so, at this point, they're saying it's both form and substance. they believe that the articles of impeachment are not constitutional. they argue that abuse of power and the obstruction of congress are not violations of law. of course, democrats view that very differently and there are legal scholars that view that

differently and expect that case to be made. and even assert things like the president was transparent because he released the rough transcript of the call or that he actually had a meeting with president zelensky. it was not the white house meeting that the ukrainian leader wanted, but they eventually had a meeting. look for lots of justifications of the president's conduct and look for ways to discredit democrats and look for them to say this is really about invalidating the election past and hampering the president as he goes into re-election in 2020. i think that's what we'll see play out. some of it will sound like beautiful legal language and some of it will sound like the president himself. garrett? >> the president is going to dabos later this week and so many big inflection points around and how does the white house feel that he is going to be overseas as this trial gets under way? >> well, they don't always get to control the timing. so, this is a case where the president likes to be on the

world stage with powerful people in the economic universe. he went to the davos world economic forum convention a couple years ago. could not go last year because remember that government shut down we were dealing with then. couldn't go then and so now he will go, of course, at least he's scheduled to go. there is always the possibility of a change. they will argue this is the president doing his job while the senate trial goes on. the optics, give the president both challenge and opportunity. you can imagine he would rather be watching what's happening, right? but at the same time, he will be mixing and mingling with world leaders and talking about economic issues. the economy and the u.s. is something he will argue is one of his strongest cases for re-election. so, they didn't get to schedule when the trial would happen or when the economic forum would happen. but now they will try to package it as the president doing his job while the senate and house democratic managers are trying to remove him from his job. >> so many echoes of the clinton

impeachment trial where you have president clinton trying to look presidential and trying to look like he was out there doing the people's work while the congress was focussed on his removal. shanna, i want to talk about the presidential legal team. staff work and then made for tv lawyers. >> the names we all know now. >> ken starr i mean, you can't get a louder -- >> or alan dershowitz for that matter. >> tv lawyers who the president likes to watch on tv on the president's team. a desire to dismiss it as a goofy strategy. this is a televised event. this is not like a normal trial. >> it is not a normal trial. the president has the danger in some ways and kelly kind of referred to this, everything feeling like it's reality tv so nothing feels real. in some ways it may help the president of the united states because it turns people off. but as i said before, alan

dershowitz, ken starr, his lawyers from the white house counsel's office and then these house managers are making a case to the public. how does this affect the 2020 election? that is the name of the game right now. and i don't, you know, i don't want to dismiss this constitutional process or the fact that impeachment is a weighty and heavy thing, but you cover congress on week days when you are not here on this set with me and we all pretty much know how this is going to go. getting 67 votes to remove the president of the united states from office is not really a thing. so then how does this affect 2020 and they are going to be making that case. and in that respect, president trump as we know is a little masterful when it comes to pr sometimes. these are the guys to make that case for him. >> the collision between the ritualized solof the senate and will be fascinating. >> also brings up all those other things. ken starr and his situation at

baylor university before or alan dershowitz. >> something for everybody. thank you all. still ahead, house impeachment managers are calling president trump a danger to our democratic processes. we'll speak with congressman hank johnson, a member of the judiciary committee, about the case for removing the president from office. and joe biden is accusing bernie sanders campaign of releasing a doctored video. we'll find out why the former vice president says the clip is a fake. coming up. you can find it in the vitamin aisle in stores everywhere. prevagen. healthier brain. better life. ♪ oh, oh, (announcer)®! ♪ once-weekly ozempic® is helping many people with type 2 diabetes like james lower their blood sugar. a majority of adults who took ozempic® reached an a1c under 7 and maintained it. here's your a1c. oh!

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with only 15 days until the iowa caucuses, it's crunchtime for the 2020 candidates trying to make end roads before the official start to this presidential election. with all the attention on early voting states like iowa and new hampshire, democrats are looking for ways to increase turn out among white working class voters. launched a major door knocking operation targeting minority voters in parts of michigan and wisconsin. nbc "meet the press" spoke with african-american voters on what it takes to get voters to show up at the poll this november. >> i think we relied on identity politics in the past. how to attract black voters to get a black candidate. how to attract women voters to get a women candidate.

folks are really struggling. they want someone who is going to raise wages. they want someone who will address student debt and affo affordable college and housing and prison reform and immigration reform. unfortunately, some of our minority candidates weren't speaking about those issues and that just goes to show no one will vote for you just because they look like you or identify with you, they'll fight for those on their behalf. >> let's bring in vaughn hillyard. goodern morning. we see the democratic putting pressure on communities. do you see as iowa positioning themselves for these other states further down the line? >> exactly. this is the reality check, garrett. you have iowa and new hampshire and likes of cory booker and l julian castro who is loud in this process and the way it

plays out. that woman you just heard from. marcelia from milwaukee county. if you'ric looine ilooking at a and you consistently heard and you know this from your time on the trial, they wanted to pick a candidate who is best positioned to beat donald trump in november. but a lot of back and forth over what type of candidate is that? is that frankly a white individual from the midwest or is that somebody who is an individual of color who is able to go into places like milwaukee county where marcelia is from. look back to the 2016 election. across the state of wisconsin, voter turnout dropped by 3%, but in specifically milwaukee county, the most diverse and democratic city in the state it dropped by 10% because as marcellia would tell you and other individuals across milwaukee county would tell you, the democratic party didn't do what it took to connect with

those voters. that's why you see a grassroots organization named block, as well as michael bloomberg in milwaukee county really turning an eye on making the case that, you know, it is important to reach out to individuals of color because that's what it is going to take to beat donald trump. >> the bloomberg operation is worth keeping an eye on. this latest spat between bernie sanders and one of the other top tier candidates. a feud going on between sanders and joe biden on entitlements. can you explain exactly what is going on here? >> we should note over the last few weeks it seems bernie sanders had a pension for lobbying these grenades via his advisors. not that they aren't legitimate c critiques or conversations to be had, but this back and forth was over criticism. joe biden was asked yesterday about a video that this voter saw which joe biden says it takes his words out of context. it was a 2018 remarks that were

given by joe biden over social security. essentially the case that joe biden was making because of the gop tax cut pass that ultimately there would have to be conversations about making cuts to social programs like social security. joe biden said that he stands firmly that that is not his intention to make cuts with social security, but a conversation has to be had because of what the gop pass its tax cuts. now, the sanders campaign has continued to push back and release additional clips over joe biden's career, including the years from in the senate suggesting that joe biden should be under much more scrutiny for his positions on the extent to which he would protect social programs for americans. >> so, the idea here is that biden was saying this is something that republicans will want to force because they have passed the tax cut and the sanders edited video made it seem like that was biden's position?

i want to make sure i understand this right. >> exactly. that is the video and those are the calls put out to voters. that is where joe biden had a strong rebuke saying that the video was doctored and over the course of just a couple hours yesterday, the campaigns each released statements back and forth and joe biden has maintained that was not his position. bernie sanders said, essentially, look at the videos over the course of his career. that is something we will be interested to hear the candidates discuss more directly as opposed to their advisors releasing statements back and forth like they just did yesterday. >> vaughn, i want to ask you about impeachment which seems to loom over everything and nothing more than iowa right now. a couple senators back in washington when they would rather be probably in iowa out campaigning. how do you see the fact that those senators will be largely off the trail over the next two weeks affecting what we see in the closing stretch in iowa? >> this is the crazy part, garrett. how about you thought you would

be in washington, d.c. right now and i'd be here in iowa with not many candidates and i would be in iowa with not many candidates to go cover, i think we would both be questioning what happened here in the country. that's where we find ourselves. the reality is not only amy klobuchar, michael bennet, they'll be up on capitol hill until after the sun goes down and that leaves pete buttigieg. crisscrossing the state trying to stay relevant by meeting voters face to face. at the same time, the senators will be up there with you on capitol hill having the opportunity to directly be a part of this process. now, the likelihood of them getting to speak during the course of the day is low, but afterwards they'll be able to comment on what they heard from potential witnesses and what they heard during this trial, which is an advantage when you're able to reach not only people in iowa and new

hampshire, but beyond. the question i think that we are all going to be watching, are any of these candidates going to get on a plane after the trial ends for the day and make their way over to iowa. and then run back and somehow be awake in the morning for the next day. >> very long day. maybe they'll stop at java joe's and get the red bull smoothie. >> you know that then you know they're up early here. >> thank you very much, appreciate it. coming up, his and her royal highness no more. prince harry and meghan markle will step away from the rest of the royal family this spring. we'll take you live to buckingham palace, coming up. when you shop for your home at wayfair, you get more than free shipping.

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you're looking at new video in this morning of queen elizabeth attending church just one day after signing off on a new deal. relieving prince harry and meghan markle of their royal duties. the duke and duchess of sussex will no longer receive public funds opting instead to head into the private sector. the couple will no longer use the term royal highness and pay

back millions from renovating their cottage. the queen praised meghan markle saying she is, quote, particularly proud of how meghan made herself part of the family. meghan markle's estranged father is weighing in on the decision. take a listen. >> it's disappointing because she got every girl's dream. every young girl wanted to become a princess and she got that and now she's tossing that away for it looks like she's tossing it away for money. >> joining us for more is matt bradley outside buckingham palace. what is the reaction in the uk to the latest news? >> yeah, garrett. a lot of folks here had some kind of anxiety about meghan markle. a lot of the reason why she decided to leave to begin with and maybe convinced her husband to do so, too, because she felt she was under attack by especially a british media, especially a right-wing british media. when you compare them to how they treated other royals, it

seemed a little bit more scrutiny. a little bit more criticism. maybe a lot more. and actually both the royal couple harry and meghan complained in the past this is something like racism and it's totally unclear. but right now it's looking like what was supposed to be nearly two weeks ago the two of them stepping back now really looks like they're stepping down. it looks like the queen has come out and said basically, you can't have your cake and eat it, too. either you're a royal or you're not. for those of us, garrett, who haven't religiously been watching the crown, this is mystifying. some details hard to parse out and they still will have their titles. they'll still be the duke and duchess of sussex. they will not use royal highness and that's not how they're going to be addressed any more and no longer have to be obligated to do the royal duties and thalvey have to pay back $31 million for

renovating the cottage. about an hour away from where i'm standing. what that means for the future. well, i don't think this royal couple will start to starve any time soon. they still have some money in the bank. >> they still have -- what kind of money are we talking about here? $31 million they have to pay back. what kind of money are they giving up by opting out of the royal family? >> well, it's only, it's really only maybe, well, only couple dozen million dollars a year, something you and i would like to have. so, they're going to be giving up that. the fact is that they already have a lot of money. they have a lot of wealth aside from their income, you know. they have properties. they have basically investments that they have accrued throughout the entire life of the house of windsor and their family and they inherited money. all of that is behind closed doors. we don't really know how much money they have, but we do know they won't get that steady

stream of income and none of it will be coming from taxpayers. that was the real sticking point here. they will be able to exploit what remains of their position. it's kind of interesting. why would they suddenly raise this fuss thinking it would decrease press attention, this will increase press attention in this royal couple, especially if they're heading to north america where there is ton of interest in the royal family. also means they're going to be left with a trademark. a brand name, if you will. they will still be able to use all of their merchandising, their instagram and social media and everything and their website now is just called sussex royal. so, there's a lot of questions. how can they still continue to use the word royal in this trademark sussex royal if they're not going to be performing royal duties. they're going to have that name and recognition and brand name and pedal that around and use it as claims to celebrity to make money off of, well, just about anything. you know, this isn't really a new thing. there has been comparisons to nearly 100 years ago the

abdication crisis because he was directly in the line of successi succession. this is a little different than that. it is unclear how this will all end up working out. it seems like the sussexes doing pedaling around and making some money for themselves. maybe lending their image to things in the way any celebrity would. >> i'm interested in this. two of the most publicly recognizable people on the planet. not as if they're going to go disappear and be hermits in canada. they will be public, but they won't be royal? >> yeah. that's what a lot of people are wondering here. they can't ever escape that. you know, just no hope for them to ever become regular commoners and why would they want to be if they could still make some money off of that name brand recognition. you know these questions you're asking, garrett, everybody in the world is asking them because it looks like it will have to be

played by ear. the palace themselves are wondering how they're going to square the circle on this going forward and the real issue here is what this will mean for future royals for the succession of future royals who may or may not want to inherit this title and the obligations along with it. will they divorce themselves from the royal family. could this be the beginning of the end and the privatization of the royals and these are questions that a lot of british people and people throughout the world will be having. >> it is a fascinating story. money and politics and family and matt bradley in a suit outside buckingham palace. matt, thank you very much. coming up, president trump on the attack as democrats preview their impeachment case against him at trial. and some key republicans now signal their willingness to side with democrats over more witnesses. we'll be back.

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with impeachment under way, how this senate trial will take place. democrats are facing challenges as they push back on mitch mcconnell strategy of protecting the president. meanwhile, the majority leader is looking to keep republicans in line and on track and he's facing some of his own troubles. moderate republicans like susan collins could have outside influence on the proceedings and those invulnerable states may be looking to protect themselves and their seats by voting with democrats on some issues. the majority leader only has a four-vote majority so any

defections could matter. mcconnell could face another challenge. that is the president. he's always unpredictable and the senate is looking to be walking a fine line in an effort to appease the president and keep him off twitter and keep his party together throughout the trial. with us rina shaw and a. scott bolden. do mitch mcconnell's interest and the president's interests align over how this impeachment should be handled? >> i think they very much do. many months ago we would have said no and mitch mcconnell would have be trusted to do the right thing and really focus just on who he has in the senate and those are him and his republican senators and they could say to trump that, listen, you need to be quiet. but i think the tables have turned. i think trump controls them and we see that get even stronger over the past many months. this past week told us through some of the statements from some of the republican female senators like senator susan collins and martha mcsally they

revealed them selves to be partisans. the house really should have done their job. martha mcsally said the cnn reporter was a liberal hack. these people are going to new lengths to show just how good they will remain in the graces of the senate majority leader. >> one thing we heard whispers about on capitol hill is that the senate might try to speed up the trial, not by shortening the hours, but by lengthening the days to try to get through this as quickly as possible. is the idea here to just limit the possibility of mistakes, defections, accidental tweets from the president to get through this as quickly as possible? >> that's exactly it. i think, listen, we shouldn't hold anything back from mitch mcconnell because this is a guy that will use every tool in his arsenal. he wants to make sure they look united. already in the outside messaging members of his caucus put out there. you hear that. i think we should expect that he will want to get a tighter grip on the caucus and he will want people like mitt romney who want to call for witnesses. he'll let them do that.

look for what happens after the witnesses. i think that is where we will learn everything and it will take us, i know it is early to tell but i think it will take us to a point where we don't see senate republicans removing this president. >> scott, late in the week the gao, the nonpartisan group that audits government released a report saying that the white house, the omb violated the law when it withheld that money that congress had allocated to ukraine. i heard a lot of democrats talking about this. probably more than they were talking about the lev parnas allegations coming out on friday. do you think that is the kind of thing that allegation of law breaking no matter how obscure it might be swaying those who support the president. >> i'm not sure the gao report will get republicans on board. it is persuasive evidence and another arrow in the arsenal for the democrats and the democrats are talking about it because it's a third-party independent agency that works for congress that says by holding up this money, there was no carve out regarding policy.

this was just straight political pay back or rather political leverage in order to have a democratic candidate for president investigated. i mean, the facts are all there. i think the gao helps them in their political argument, but it won't help them much, ultimately, in the litigation and the trial before the senate. >> scott, i'm fascinated with this idea that, once again, democrats are counting on some of these middle of the road republicans like a susan collins or lisa murkowski to advance a democratic priority calling these witnesses. how should democrats approach those senators? is this idea to have a big campaign and whip them and make an issue of it or do you want to let senators like a collins, murkowski find their own conscious as they go forward? how would you approach that as a strategist? >> as a white collar criminal defense lawyer and smcomeone wh has done it a long time, i would certainly engage them and talk about their constitutional

obligation for impartial justice. senator mcconnell couldn't even take the oath and he did anyway and neither could graham. senator graham because they announced already there was political and this was nonsense at how they were going to vote. most of the senate republicans have done that, even though they took the oath. i would remind those four that to get to the truth, that the president blocked documents, the president blocked witnesses in the house which is like the indicting group, if you will. and that the job is not done but even without those documents and those witnesses, we have a very strong impeachment articles of impeachment remind them that the goal should be to have a fair process and to get to the truth, if you will. and we will not know what all happened here until we hear from the most important witnesses and the most important documents that the president has barred from coming into this process. if he is innocent, as his team will argue and has said that he should let the documents and the witnesses in to show his

innocence. what he is afraid of and what is mitch mcconnell afraid of? the truth. >> so, rina, respond to that a little bit. go ahead, please. >> i would say this whole past couple weeks for me is i talked to members of thetuo house. i talked to members of the house and all i hear over and over again is this is a partisan process and democrats really all they want is the president out because they don't like his personality. nothing criminal has happened here and this impeachment process, the article should address criminality. i say to them, listen, this is not about criminal acts. this is about behavior just like it was with clinton. and they use it when it's convenient and don't use it when it's not convenient. i say to them that when we have a foreign leader engaged with our u.s. president in doing his political bidding, that's so wrong. at what point do we say behavior is wrong and we're trying to sell out the country and you're putting your personal interest above the country's and that is abuse of power.

forget sexual behavior and i found that impeachment behavior and putting your personal vendetta against a rival, if that is not against the office, i don't know what is. us using the constitution to advance democrats partisan narrative is wrong. so, therefore, i feel that republicans will not change their minds, even if they allow witnesses. >> i think that is the tight rope that mitch mcconnell is trying to walk here because he can let three of his senators vote and if you get into that witness phase where you might have more and more information coming out, then all of a sudden it gets a lot more challenging to keep all his ducks in a row. rina, i'm curious -- go ahead, scott. >> i'm sorry. go right ahead. one thing we haven't talked about that mitch mcconnell is also balancing is the integrity of the senate. the political holiness and independence of the senate. that's really important here because that's on trial. the gop and their integrity is

on trial and the world is watching to see whether we can get to the truth. now, that may be something ruder than integrity and wholesomeness and what have you, but it's very really. not withstanding the partisanship which is driven primarily by t primarily, it should be about the integrity and getting to the truth. drive in opposition, if you will, and not in the same space that trump wants, which is to be acquitted. >> during the clinton trial one idea they had an idea to win by losing. make the point it was an entirely partisan process. i wonder if you see republicans in a weird way doing the same thing here with the majority where they can say, look, this is purely a democratic attack on us. knowing that they've got the votes in their back pocket. do you expect the president to admit some level of wrongdoing? we saw like the smallest hint of

this from alan dershowitz, the argument this is not an impeachable conduct. is that a tenable strategy for the party at this point? >> it's not one for the party nor for those in the senate who want to see this president survive this. it is something the president will do. as he open his mouth and as he gets more nervous and he will, naturally. time will go on and he will see things come out into the public sphere and he will see public opinion shift a bit. we've seen polling from the 538 project. they aggregated all these polls where people were asked about removal. yes or no. we're still seeing overwhelmingly about 50% of americans want to see removal. the public relies on removal day by day to shift his behavior. and his behavior will reveal, yes, he has engaged in improper activity and this is not a court of law. this impeachment is a purely political process and underlying that the democrats do not want

him. so expect that senate republicans led by mitch mcconnell will reverse the tables and tell us what we see is wrong. the reality of all of this, garrett, this is a process. we know how this will end. it saddens me. we should ask for the integrity and in asking so, what we are asking them to do is put aside what they did with people like merit garland, for example, look back to stuff like that. the leader does not care about the integrity of the senate and they care about their agenda and protect and re-elect this president. >> i think we can have this conversation all day long, but, guys, i'm sorry, we have to wrap this up. rina shah and a. scott bolden. we will reair all of rachel maddow's lev parnas interview. how some house conservatives are not all in. the republicans going to war with a new ad campaign against donald trump. that's next.

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republicans for the rule of law launched a new ad campaign urging the senate to call witnesses in the trial. look. >> republicans in congress during the house impeachment inquiry were critical of witnesses without first-hand information. >> second-hand opinion. >> somebody told somebody, told somebody else. >> not all first-hand information and not even second hand. he was on fourth hand information. >> now john bolton with a witness with first-hand information has agreed to testify in the senate trial. senate republicans, americans deserve the truth. let bolton testify. >> joining me now is bill kristol, the director of defending democracy together and republicans for the rule of law. bill, you're dropping a million bucks on these ads on fox news. the president's go-to network. is your audience the fox news viewer? is it the senators you're targeting or trying to get under the president's skin or some combination of all three? >> some combination of all three. i do feel like the senators, i mean, some of these republican senators might still have some

pride in their office. some belief in the oath they just took individually to do impartial justice and, obviously, impartial justice doesn't mean they're sequestered like jurors. they have opinions and they have judgements and they are supposed to take a look at the evidence. here you have a clear case where there's more evidence available and they should, one would think, be open about them. somewhere in the papers you may not be able to count on the verview ve virtue but count on their pride and they don't want to look like lackeys but what has been so striking about the party in general, garrett maybe they should stand for something more than the most kind of pathetic accommodation to and really pandering to the president and his poorders. >> your group criticizes the party's response to pass witnesses.

but in the ad you're just focusing on john bolton. why bolton? because he is more willing to testify or do we think he knows more useful information than a pompeo or mulvaney or one of these other witnesses? >> he said he would testify and he was national security adviser to the president and we know from second-party testimony that bolton called the thing a drug deal and advised twice, twice advised deputies of his to go to the white house counsel office and report what he had seen. it's worth stressing how extraordinary that is. you're in the white house and doing a million policy things and dethithings you don't agree and advising one of your deputies to go to the white house counsel office to report what you had just seen. when you are reporting something the president is personally behind is astonishing. bolton is key. but, look, it's up to the house managers. this is a trial. the house managers should be able to call who is within reason. the presidents lawyers should be able to call and the senators sitting there as judges with the

chief justice and that could be overruled by the senate. let the trial be a trial. i mean, that's what is most offensive about this. this notion that mitch mcconnell is calling and telling republican senators what to do. they individually signed that oath. and they should have the nerve to say, look, in this case, we to do need to hear this witness. some other cases maybe not. the idea that mcconnell is whipping them and telling them what to think, they have no. >> bill, you considered yourself a never trumper since that was a thing. the president considers everyone who disagrees with him a never trumper. yesterday you added that to your twitter profile. i'm not interested in the twitter part of this. it feels like the never now trump movement is dead or dying. you have the president's primary opponents and not able to get on ballots and is the never trump movement still a thing?

>> well, that's why i wanted to add it. it seems to me a couple candidates tried to run against president trump and the republican primary shut down the primary. no real support. donors intimidated. no elected officials. they privately have all their concerns but onboard for re-election and seen what happened in the house and most likely the senate. we'll see with some of the republican senators. some of the majority are going along. no, nothing has changed. he's bad as we expected and worse, really. he is distorting the separation of powers and creating a kind of imperial executive and flaunting the rule of law in ways beyond what i expected and it's important to say that. >> never trump republican bill kristol, thank you very much. we'll be back right after this.

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