i wish we had more time. my thanks to juanita, donna, and marg. my idea is your ed board should do a debate because you brought out the best in the candidates. it was the best i've seen biden, the best i've seen warren, cory booker and andrew yang. thank you, most of all, for watching. we'll be here all day long tomorrow. brian and i start at 11:00, chuck todd at 9:00. sit down, pop some popcorn, but right now "mtp daily" with katy tur starts.

welcome to monday. it is "meet the press daily." i'm katy tur in new york in for chuck todd. on the day before the impeachment trial of president trump, an historic trial that president trump's allies are apparent ly hoping will go away very quickly, two republican sources tell nbc news that a draft of the organizing resolution, essentially the rules for the impeachment trial that will be debated tomorrow, would allow each side 24 hours over just two days to present their opening arguments. that would cram arguments into four 12-hour days and nights. democrats are furious over what they say are republican efforts to conduct key parts of this trial in the dark of night. one democratic aide called it a complete sham. the white house defense team, meanwhile, has released a scathing trial brief today arguing the impeachment articles are an affront to the constitution and that president trump did nothing wrong in his dealings with ukraine. all of this is a dangerous

perversion of the constitution that the senate should swiftly and roundly condemn, adding the articles themselves and the rigged process that brought them here are brazenly political -- are a brazenly political act by house democrats that must be rejected. we're going to dive into those arguments in a moment, how the democrats are going to push back against it. also allen dershowitz, a member of president trump's legal team, told my colleague hallie jackson earlier today that the president should not be removed from office even if all of the allegations brought by the house are true. >> leave it to others to make judgments about his quality as president and that's a good issue when people decide who to vote for, but we have to very sharply distinguish between criteria that go into deciding who to vote for and criteria that allow the senate to remove a duly elected president. >> i'm joined by my colleague

cas kasie hunt. what is mitch mcconnell up to in cramming it into four 12-hour days. >> reporter: it's not too hard to figure out. there are two theories of the case. one is that he wants to speed it up ahead of the state of the union address because the president seems to be very focused on that. the other is that he thinks it's better for republicans to have this trial done and over with sooner rather than later and with the least amount of drama possible, which is why i think you see him trying to exert as much control over the process as he possibly can. the reality is that if he can keep his members unified, he doesn't need to worry about anything else. he doesn't need to worry about what democrats are saying or doing because he's going to be able to control the process. what democrats are trying to do is to break away enough, whether it's in terms of swaying public opinion broadly in a way that moves these modern republican senators or by making direct appeals to them and trying to focus their arguments and

evidence in order to try and put a crack in that republican conference that lets this trial take some sort of unpredictable turn. so he is, as you pointed out, keeping the rules of this trial so far very close to the vest. we do expect that he's going to try to push these arguments into two days, which would mean, if democrats want to use all 24 hours of their time, that they would be on the senate floor with 100 senators, many of whom are in their 70s and 80s, until 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. potentially listening to these arguments. i'll let you decide, i'll let the viewers decide whether they think they'll be up watching those arguments at that hour. that's essentially the democrats' argument. people will start turning this off. the reality is this is the most high profile, concise opportunity to date that democrats have had to make their argument against this president based on what they laid out in the house around what they say he's done and what they have laid out around the call with

the ukrainians and the aid that was withheld. so there's obviously a lot at stake here. mcconnell has been talking to his own members but not at all to democrats or democratic leadership in a way that is pretty unusual for the way business is usually done around here. >> and a departure from the clinton impeachment trial when both sides got together and hashed out the rules before they were even voted on. kasie, if the trial opening arguments are going to be in 12-hour -- in four 12-hour days, what does that mean for how long the entire trial is going to be? is it two weeks, is it a month? could we be going through the iowa caucus and then the new hampshire primary and the state of the union? >> katy, we are in the land of hypotheticals and fake mock-up outlook calendars, of which i have several trying to figure out -- >> how to schedule your nanny and when you think you might be back during the day. >> yes, which is never, by the way, for a while.

but yeah, basically i took what happened under clinton, which is the only precedent we have and laid it on top of a calendar and combined it with what we know about how this trial will play out. the answer to that question really depends on the witnesses issue. this is why what democrats say and how they perform is so critical. we know mcconnell has made some sort of commitment, we're not sure exactly what form it's going to take, to consider the witness question at the conclusion of the arguments and the questions that senators have to ask. we're not sure it's going to be a vote on specific witnesses. we think it's a motion to say yes or no to the possibility of considering witnesses and evidence, right? so you could get really down in the procedural weeds. but there's some turning point at the end of this and that will tell us whether we're potentially over and done with this by the time we hit iowa and the state of the union or whether it continues out for days or even weeks. once you open up that witness question if they're going to try and call witnesses, you need

time scheduling them to come in, taking the deposition, deciding how you're going to show that before the senate, before the jury, before the american people. so it seems as they're trying to condense this by doing this, the way mcconnell is going to structure them, that it would keep it within a two-week time frame and he could be acquitted before the iowa caucus and the state of the union. but again, that's only really possible if the witness question is answered in the negative at the conclusion of everything else we know is set to play out. >> so the iowa caucus is monday, february 3rd. that's two weeks from now. >> that's right. >> the state of the union is tuesday, february 4th. kasie hunt, thank you very much. for more i'm joined here in the studio by jake sherman, co-author of "the political playbook" and an msnbc contributor, maya wiley, john

pod horetz. i always lean in and this person always gets blocked when i introduce them. i'm sorry to the veeiewer. jake, you cover the capitol just like kasie does. there's going to be a lot of wrangling over rules tomorrow. the democrats have the same argument republicans did in the reverse. when the democrats were doing closed door grand jury style testimony, smpts thometimes tha late at night. democrats control the house, republicans control the 1234sen >> the optics of a late-night session on tv is different than the optics of closed-door testimony late at night of just having your camera on a kroclos door, so there is an added sting to that. i will say, though, mitch mcconnell, i don't know exactly what he's trying to do.

kasie is right, he's trying to condense this process. i think he also wants to -- or he benefits from trying to make it painful because the witness vote, as kasie noted, is at the end. if you go through two weeks or a week of the trial staying on the floor from 1:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. does that impact people's votes on witnesses? they're tired, they're sick of this process, these are human beings for the most part. >> for the most part? >> i'm not sure how they're going to feel. yeah, listen, i think tomorrow you're going to see a lot of stagecraft. chuck schumer will offer a motion to get witnesses on the front end. that's going to be rejected. he could offer several motions to get witnesses. this could go easily into early wednesday morning so a lot of wrangling, as you said. >> so it must not be a very happy place on capitol hill? >> no, it's definitely not, and not for reporters either. >> maya, the argument the white house is making is this entire

process is unconstitutional and is a sham. alan dershowitz is saying even if the president did all of these things, abuse of power is not a high crime and misdemeanor. what do you think? >> i think that's a good argument if you want to shred the constitution. the constitution itself makes very clear, one, that the sole power of deciding what is impeachable lies with the house in terms of charging and the senate in terms of trying and making a decision on conviction. in the context here where you have for the first time in the history of the country a national security article of impeachment, where the constitution makes very clear there are certain powers the president has over national security and there are certain powers that the senate has. they're not the same powers. we have a gao report that says, yes, the president did violate the law. not a criminal law. andrew johnson, the first

president impeached in the united states was impeached for abuse of power. alan dershowitz knows that. but the point is it's about the balance of power between congress and the presidency right now. that is central to the constitution and it is the central power of the house and the senate to make that determination. that dincludes obstruction so im not only talking about the first article, but whether or not there is a power of impeachment, which is articulated in the constitution. >> i want to get to you in a second, john, but i want to ask you this, jake. the republican senators, are they having a discussion anywhere about the separation of powers and what it might mean for not donald trump but for the executive office going forward if congress says, oh, no, abuse of power is not an impeachable offense? >> no, they're not. but i will say this, when you were talking, i was thinking about this and this is a longer conversation. but congress has for decades ceded power to the presidency in a way that a lot of people think

is quite dangerous. on a whole host of issues. national security, tariffs, foreign policy, war. we're going to war off something that's a decade old and not applicable to what we're doing now according to most people. i think congress only has itself to blame for some of its relative weakness in relation to the executive branch and i think that's something that has been in the works for a long time. now, broadly speaking on impeachment, even republicans that you talk to behind the scenes will concede that what the president's lawyers are saying is not accurate and doesn't meet the smell test. basically they're making the argument that, well, we're not going to address the facts. what the president did is fine. this whole thing is a sham, which is not much of an argument, frankly. >> alan dershowitz said it's up to the american public to decide, abuse of power, even if he did it is not a

constitutional violation, is not an impeachable offense, it's for the voters to decide. if the president did all these things and it gets laid out at the senate trial, if it's at 2:00 in the morning or whatever, how is that argument a good one for this white house when he's going up for re-election in 2020? >> so the brief that you're talking about, this 110-page brief, lays out a whole series of arguments. some are pretty good, some are much weaker. it has the quality of you whido like this one, i've got another one for you. you don't like the abuse of power thing? i'm going to say there's a long held view that the executive branch is so foremost in national security that the congress has no right to come in and say that how the president negotiates a phone call with volodymyr zelensky is beyond congress to intervene. that is in part because of what jake said. there are decades of precedent

in congressional deference to executive power that make that argument stronger than it ought to be, i think, which is also i think what maya was talking about, that in the 19th century, congress was vastly more powerful than the executive branch and it reacted to executive branch behavior as though it were prime prime fact of times. i think fighting over whether it's 12 hours or 1:00 in the morning, i don't think that matters. most people aren't going to be watching in realtime. >> even if it's at 6:00 in the evening? >> no, because there will be clips. it's all about what happens -- you know, what the highlight moments are during the day, during the night, and i will say that some of the most dramatic and powerful moments in recent memory, you know, particularly let's say the clarence thomas/anita hill hearings, a

lot of what happened that blew up in everybody's faces was at 11:30 at night. so i don't think that in the end, you're not going to have 50 million people watching from 1:00 in the afternoon to 1:00 in the morning. they'll see the highlights. >> and the clips just aren't on the morning shows in the morning, they'll be on social media, late night tv shows. just before we go i want to put up the latest impeachment numbers from cnn. convicted, remove, 51% support, 45% oppose. and for new witnesses, 69% support it, 26% oppose. >> except that poll has trump at its highest approval rating ever at 46%. that's the bizarre number here that doesn't add up. >> well, it does add up because it's whose witnesses. it doesn't say -- >> well, convict and remove, that's a pretty high number. we live in a weird upside down place where nothing makes sense. come on, john, get with the picture.

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welcome back. we are less than 24 hours from the start of the first major day of the impeachment trial of president donald trump. joining me now are two guests with two very unique views from the impeachment trial jury box. current senator maze e mazie hid former senator max baucus who was a member of the jury during the clinton impeachment trial. let me start with the current senator hirono. this idea that there might be four 12-hour days for the opening statements, do you think

that that will be sufficient? is that fair? >> well, i think that mitch mcconnell does not intend to have witnesses called and he wants a fast trial, not a fair trial. so that's where he's going. that's what we have. i don't like it. >> do you believe that all of the republicans in the caucus will vote alongside mitch mcconnell for days that might take you into the middle of the night? >> i'd say that he won't propose that in a motion if he didn't have all the votes already. >> so it gets started tomorrow and there's going to be a debate about all of the rules, including the length of the day and whether witnesses will be voted on later down the line. beyond that, though, when the house comes to make their prosecutorial argument that the president should be removed, what will you be waiting to hear from them? >> i've read their brief and

certainly have been keeping up with all the evidence that has been brought forth by the house in their impeachment inquiry. what i'm waiting to hear really, although i'm reviewing the president's people's brief, what is the real defense the president is going to put forward. from what i can gather, it's basically the bottom line is i did it, so what. that's the bottom line of his defense. >> do you believe that abuse of power is an impeachable offense? >> of course it is. >> why? >> dershowitz -- i don't even know where alan dershowitz gets all of this from because there are other constitutional experts, such as larry tribe, such as neil katyal who say basically impeachment is what the house decides is an impeachable action and then they have to make their case, of course. then it's up to the senate to decide whether they agree with the articles of impeachment or not. >> if the house -- i'm sorry, if

the house presents a compelling argument that he abused his power, one that he agreed with, do you think that is enough to remove him from office? >> i'd like to hear what the president has to say about why he withheld the aid to ukraine, why he had the kind of conversation he had with the president of ukraine, and also why during that july 25th conversation he mentioned both guiliani and barr in the same portion of the telephone call that he had with the president of ukraine. those are all evidence of something that was going on long before the july 25th phone call. so there's evidence out there, katy, and the senate republicans, led by mitch mcconnell, is very intent on not having any of that come out. >> if there are witnesses, say there are witnesses after the arguments are made, it's john bolton or mick mulvaney.

and if they testify that the president was actually very focused on corruption and that this wasn't necessarily about the bidens because they were a political rival, would you be open to being convinced that this is not an abuse of power, that what he was doing was fully reasonable and within the bounds of his duty? >> i'd like to see the documentary evidence that attests to the fact that he actually cared about corruption, because we know that the department of defense had already certified that their concerns about ukrainian corruption had already been answered to the point where they wanted this aid to be released. and in fact they advised the president to release the aid and the president ignored them. so i would like to see documentary evidence that this was going on. i'd also like to see documentary evidence as to why the aid was withheld and then also evidence as to why they suddenly in september released the aid. i'd like to see the evidence that backs up their testimony.

>> your colleague, sherrod brown, said he would be open to hearing from hunter biden if that meant you got to hear from john bolton or mick mulvaney. do you feel the same way? >> i don't know if chuck schumer is going to engage in that quid pro quo. i think when mitch mcconnell puts forth his resolution to move this impeachment trial forward, chuck will raise or ask f for an amendment to the rules, and the amendment will be that we have bolton as a witness. that will probably get voted down the way things are going. and then they could, the republicans could in turn make an alternative motion to have hunter biden be called forth as a witness. of course the house managers will say that that is not even relevant because hunter biden knows nothing about what the president was up to. but that is going to be voted on and quite possibly we will not get our witness who actually was

there to testify to what was actually happening with the president who called it in bolton's case a drug deal. and they might get their witness, hunter biden, who knows nothing about what happened. i think the american people will see through this. this is just a sham kind of effort on the part of the republicans. you know, let's have real witnesses, relevant witnesses. let's have relevant documents. this president, unlike the other two presidents who have been impeached, has done nothing. he has totally stonewalled. he wanted to make sure that nobody testified and he also did not respond to some 71 requests for documents. not a single document was produced by this president. there is no such thing, katy, as some kind of blanket executive privilege that covers any and all items. that is -- that's not real. but, you know, that doesn't prevent the republicans and his team from putting forth that kind of argument. there's no basis in law.

>> and you believe the american people will see through it, but it sounds like if that is the case, they'll have to wait until 2020 to decide if that is acceptable. >> katy, that may be the only thing that we have left for the american people, that it's very clear that right now the republicans are not about to convict this president. >> senator hirono, thanks for joining us. let's turn now to former senator max baucus who served on the jury during the clinton impeachment trial. should i call you senator or should i call you max, what would you prefer? >> just call me max. thank you. >> so 12-hour days, four days in a row. having been through this before, how do you feel about the length of that day? >> well, i can tell you that come midnight, 1:00 in the morning, there are going to be some tired senators. not all of them are going to be there, frankly. they're all supposed to be there. but when i served at the clinton trial, i can tell you as days

wandered on, it got kind of boring frankly because all the evidence was so repetitious, there were a few stray senators. they weren't all there. >> so you think some people might just get out of there during the lengthier divisions. does it take a toll mentally being able to focus being there that length of time? >> actually the mental discipline required is quite significant because during the clinton trial, i did not hear anything from either side that i'd not heard before in the press, the print press or on tv. so i was trying very hard to listen very intently, is there something new here. i want to be responsible and do my job. i can tell you that i did not hear very much. it was somewhat painful to go through all this. now, this is a very grave question. no president in american history has ever been removed from

office by the senate, never has. so it's a big decision here for a senator to decide to remove the president or convict him. so they're going to be thinking very deeply but there's an awful lot of politics in this. don't forget back in the clinton era, president clinton did not control the democratic party. democrats were on their own. this is different now. this time president trump essentially controls the republican party. so a lot of republican senators are going to think twice before straying off the reservation. >> do you think because of that that it's possible to have a fair trial? >> well, fairness is in the eye of the beholder. this is not a court of law. this is not article 3. this is a political proceeding. sometimes senators will say, it should be a real strict trial,

we should have witnesses. sometimes senators will say, no, we don't have to have the rules, we've got any rules that we want. think for a minute all of the negotiations that have to go on regarding witnesses. now, it's one thing to say we should have witnesses, but what kind of witnesses and under what circumstances. back in the clinton trial, we did watch a tape of monica lewinsky and that was it, it was a tape. now, in this case if john bolton is called and there's cross examination, this could well turn more into a sensational circus rather than an honest assessment whether president trump should be removed from office. >> do you think abuse of power is enough to remove a president from office? >> oh, i do, in the constitution. the constitution so provides, there's no question about that. i think the second article is a little weak in my judgment. the first one is quite strong.

i think that the evidence, if it's there, will show that he did probably abuse power. but let's remember, it was a huge thing to do to remove a president. our founding fathers put this process in there. they thought there should be an opportunity to remove a president, not just wait until the next election. so this is a big deal as to whether or not this president should be removed. >> former senator max baucus. max, thank you for joining us and giving your opinions, we appreciate it. ahead, in a trial it's all about the arguments. and we've now got the road maps that both sides are going to use in this impeachment trial. we'll take a closer look at them, next. at them, ne ♪ ♪ ♪

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welcome back. in a series of trial briefs, both the house's impeachment managers and the white house defense team have now essentially laid out their opening arguments and there is a lot to unpack. so in order to do that, let's bring in msnbc legal analyst and former u.s. attorney joyce vance. all right, joyce, i want you to explain these to us. the first article is about abuse of power and the house argue, this is the first full screen, president trump's continuing presence in office undermines the integrity of our democratic process and endangers our

national security. what are they arguing there? >> so they're arguing that the president has abused his power in a fundamental way that rings the bell in the constitution where it says that a president can be removed for committing high crimes and misdemeanors. katy, we have to always remember that today's criminal code wasn't in place when the founding fathers wrote this part of the constitution, so when they say high crimes and misdemeano misdemeanors, it doesn't refer to crimes today, it refers to their understanding at that time, which clearly reaches abuse of power. alexander hamilton wrote about it in the federalist papers and it makes it clear that this sort of abuse of power qualifies. >> you probably already answered this but i want to give you the trump team's answer to the house democrats allegation. they say house democrats newly invented abuse of power theory collapses at the threshold

because it fails to allege any violation of law whatsoever. so you're arguing, joyce, that the criminal code didn't exist back then so the idea that this needs to be a violation of the law is absurd? >> i think that's right. and although in some ways it's a technical legal argument that nonlawyers might want to tune out, i think it also appeals to our common sense because we know that when we're talking about impeachment, it's very serious, it's not something that we bandy about cavalierly. it's meant to address serious abuses of office by the president. what's more serious than abusing his power to try to achieve his own political goals? clear clee this falls within that realm. >> we're looking at video of the president's attorneys at the senate today. they were going through a walk-through of what things would be like on the floor. if they're arguing that the president cannot abuse his power and they're saying that it collapses at the threshold, what

about -- because there's no violation of law, what about what the gao has found, that the president did violate the impoundment act, which is law. isn't that a violation of a law? doesn't that count here? >> so it is, but it's important to remember that the impoundment act doesn't provide for any criminal penalties. so i think there's an argument frankly that standing on its own that would not be a high crime and misdemeanor. what it does do, though, is it feeds into the president's knowledge, his state of mind, and this evidence that supports the civil violation of the impoundment act is the same evidence that shows us that he went to extraordinary lengths to withhold this aid. that it wasn't something that was being done in a legitimate exercise of his power. that it was in fact being done in order to try to secure from ukraine a promise that they would not investigate hunter biden but that they would announce that investigation.

trump knowing full well how dangerous, how damaging an announcement like that can be in the midst of a political campaign. >> so the first article is abuse of power. the second article is obstruction of congress. here's what the democrats are arguing with that. although his sweeping cover-up failed, 17 people testified and provided documentary evidence of the president's wrongdoing. it will do irreparable damage to our constitutional system of divided powers if it goes unchecked. house democrats say removing the president based -- accepting that theory would do lasting damage to the separations of powers. i had former senator max baucus on a moment ago and his argument was that the first article of

abuse of power was stronger than the second article, which is obstruction of congress. what do you make of it? >> i think they're both strong. and i think this obstruction argument is very compelling when it comes to impeachment. this isn't a president who turned over some documents, made some witnesses available and then said enough is enough. he just completely stonewalled. he withheld all evidence. he essentially told congress i won't participate in your investigation into my conduct. and that's a very serious matter. you know, you had a brilliant conversation in the first part of your show about how congress has permitted the executive to expand its power. perhaps in unwarranted ways that have created a too powerful presidency. it's time for congress to say, no, we do have the ability to engage in legitimate oversight, particularly when there are allegations of criminal conduct. and on the technical front, katy, the president has never really asserted executive

privilege. he's simply stood in congress' face and said i'm not going to play with you. i'm not going to send you anything. so if he has legitimate privileges, let him assert those. he has not done that to this date. you think this is a very strong count when the senate comes to look at it. >> joyce vance, keep your coffee cup full. it's going to be a long maybe two weeks if not more. thank you, joyce. >> it is. >> and be sure to stay with msnbc all day tomorrow for complete coverage of the impeachment trial of donald trump. chuck anchors with brian williams, nicolle wallace, chris matthews and ari melber beginning at 9:00 a.m. eastern. ahead, sending a message on this martin luther king day. how the 2020 candidates are trying to use the holiday to make a point.

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i am grateful to join this historic march to honor a man who forever changed the course

of history. >> dr. martin luther king jr., who we honor today, was a nonviolent revolutionary. >> we don't celebrate dr. king just for his dream, we celebrate him for the sacrifices, the hard work, the determination, rand above all, for his actions. >> welcome back. tonight in 2020 vision, martin luther king jr. day was a multi-state affair for the top names in the democratic primary. candidates started their day leading a march and speaking at a rally hosted by the naacp in the all-important primary state of south carolina. from there it was on to iowa, where candidates made their case to african-american and latino voters at the black and brown presidential forum. and while the message on this holiday was unity, it comes as front-runners are trading pointed attacks on this final campaign day before the impeachment trial begins in earnest tomorrow.

with just 14 days until the iowa caucuses, those attacks are significantly ramping up. the bernie sanders campaign and joe biden are quarrelling on the former vice president's record on social security. sanders and elizabeth warren are continuing to spar on gender and electability. and biden is making the electability argument against both sanders and warren. coming up, we'll dig into this wide-open 2020 race where even newspaper editorial boards can't settle on just one democratic candidate. macwith more "mtp daily" right after this. ado hd it's beautiful. you want to take it for a test-drive? definitely. we're gonna go in that. seriously? i thought we were going on a test drive. we are. a heavy-duty test drive. woo-hoo! this is dope. i've never been on a test drive like this before. this silverado offers a 6.6 liter duramax diesel that can tow up to 35,500 pounds. awesome! let's take these logs up that hill. let's do it. wow! this truck's a beast. are you sure there's a trailer back there? this is incredible. best test drive ever.

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welcome back. call in the 2020 democratic primary. call it the 2020 democratic primary in a nutshell and a decision that epitomizes how divided democrats are, the editorial board decided to endorse two candidates, amy klobuchar and elizabeth warren. "the times" suggested the two senators are the best choices in their individual lanes. klobuchar as the pragmatist and warren as the progressive. but it did not make a decision on which lane should carry the banner for democrats. they wrote both the radical and realist models warrant serious consideration. if there were ever a time to be open to new ideas, it is now. if there were ever a time to seek stability, now it is. that's why we're endorsing the most effective advocates for each approach.

all right, maya, what do you think? did it help you make your decision? >> i'm just going to say yay for a vote for women, because i think in the debate we've just had in the in the past week, to have them essentially say yes, women can win the presidency, i'm going to celebrate that. i think you're point, i don't think endorsements by major newspapers make anybody's decision for them, in all honesty. and the fact that at least it is an effort to say to democrats you have choices. stop fighting. but i think they punted. >> i do think it would be really interesting to see two women go through the final stretch in the primaries where it would be mostly -- would it be mostly an argument about policy ideas? would it get personal? we've never seen that before. and i'd be curious to see it. i think women are very good at debating the issues and leaving everything else out of it. >> yeah, i agree with it. at a certain point. >> at a certain point you have

to beat donald trump. >> and you also have to beat each other. >> is to get personal? >> i don't know. that's worked in the past, hasn't it for a lot of people? >> what if it's a bunch of women? >> maybe you're right. maybe it changes the dynamic. but i agree. i don't think these endorsements matter at all. and i think if you watch the deliberations, if you read what they said and listen to the commentary afterwards, it's clear that they were very torn, and they said so in their endorsement. it adds to the confusion. it's maybe a perfect thing for the donald trump era. >> so i think, john, tell us -- >> i think that "the times" could have done a lot if it endorsed only klobuchar. that is if it had come out and said this person who is a respectable fourth or fifth place is actually the right person to guide the party, and then she could run with that, use it, try to wedge, say the most important newspaper in the country is endorsing me. what i think actually happened

is this is a colossal failure of nerve. "the times" wants to be an opinion leader in the united states to say, you know, it is guiding american public opinion, and it could not -- >> i don't know. >> let it -- >> i don't know if it matters. what i think is interesting is what you're see in the democratic party, and just the country as a whole are people who don't believe in the system any longer, don't believe in the system any longer. it's one of the reasons why donald trump is president. and what you see in the democratic primary is a slit. you see elizabeth and bernie sanders saying this system does not work. we've got revamp the entire thing, which not with the details, but that general argument is what donald trump said. and ten you amy klobuchar saying no, we can work within the system. we can just make it better. >> you know what's really interesting is the person who is benefitting perhaps the most today is joe biden who didn't get the endorsement, but got a woman in an elevator who took a picture with him, and that's gotten -- >> it's been viewed a lot more

times than anything else. >> that's a really perfect encapsulation. >> speaking of joe biden, can we talk about the bernie sanders campaign blasting out an op-ed that called him corrupt? i have one of bernie sanders's campaign folks on my show today, and they were arguing that, yeah, you know, social security, look what he has done. the voters can decide that. is that the best argument to make or is it a better argument to make that the system is a mess and lawmakers are corrupted by it because the system is legally corrupt, and joe biden is an example of it. >> well, i think if you're talking about working within a system and doing things that democrats don't like, perhaps joe biden is somebody that has participated in that. he engaged in a months' long negotiation with eric can kante over fiscal discipline. to put things on the table and discuss different things that republicans wanted to do that democrats would never in a million years be caught dedham bracing today. listen, here is the truth bomb

of that bernie sanders email. every single campaign, whether they admit it publicly or not is engaged in opposition research to reporters and is blasting nasty things about their opponents to reporters. >> i want to compare this to 2008, to 2016. i'm sorry. bernie sanders made colossal strategic mistake in october of 2015 when he said i'm sick of hearing about your emails to hillary clinton. if he had gone on a second track and said not only is the system corrupt, not only are republicans corrupt, not only this, but my rival is corrupt as well. you need to vote for me because she is in trouble. the fbi is investigating her. >> and trump is going to run against her on that. regardless, trump will run against her on that. >> any republican. and he took that arrow and he put it back in his quiver. to me, running an op-ed now that says that biden is, though not on burisma and ukraine stuff is a way of signaling democrats

that biden is part of the system and he -- and the trump -- the corrupt system, and he is now willing, he may now be willing to go for biden's jugular. and i think that is smart. >> but i think now more than ever democrats and a lot of people who are not just democratic voters but also independent voters and never trumpers are looking for people who are going to rise above the fray. >> or are they looking for somebody who can take the fight to trump and somebody could can win? >> those are not mutually exclusive things. and in a primary, there is a difference between showing that you are tough enough to beat trump versus you're so tough -- >> but what if saunders made the argument trump is going to go after him. regardless whether it's true, voters might think it's a little dirty what happened with burisma and it's going to work against him. you have ten seconds. we have breaking news. go, maya. >> difference between

electability and unfair attack. >> okay, guys, thank you very much. on our way out, we do have breaking news. senate majority leader mitch mcconnell has released the organizing resolution he hopes will establish the rules for the upcoming senate impeachment trial. those rules will include giving each side 24 hours to make its presentation over two days, as we've been reporting. any witnesses that are called must also be deposed first. that is new. we're going to have much more on this story throughout the night. we will be right back. don't go anywhere. (whistling) (whistling)

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asand achieved new york city'sed cacleanest air quality in more than 50 years. as a leader in the fight against climate change, he helped shut down over half of the nation's coal plants, then led one of the biggest pollution reduction efforts in history. as president, he intends to reduce emissions by fifty percent within ten years. because if we want to stop climate change, we need to make a change. this is a fight-we can't afford to lose. i'm mike bloomberg and i approve this message. oh no, here comes gthe neighbor probably to brag about how amazing his xfinity customer service is. i'm mike, i'm so busy. good thing xfinity has two-hour appointment windows. they have night and weekend appointments too. he's here. bill? karolyn? nope! no, just a couple of rocks. download the my account app to manage your appointments making today's xfinity customer service simple, easy, awesome. i'll pass.

that is all for "meet the press daily." "the beat with ari melber" starts right now. hi there, ari. >> hi, katie. thank you so much. thanks to everyone at home for joining us on this federal holiday, martin luther king day. but it is not a holiday for the news. new action in donald trump's impeachment trial beginning tomorrow. tonight we have new reporting on his defense strategy and why it's different from what the house republicans had been focusing on. we also have a special preview of donald trump's new lawyers. many have tv experience, including interviews on this show. in fact we have two renowned lawyers here tonight to handicap these new editions and how they can shape the trial tomorrow. also, we have one of our special reports tonight, something we have been working hard on. we think it could be pretty relevant. it's everything you need to know about rudy giuliani's foreign business work and why it may have helped bench him from this trial. so all that is coming up. but our top story is the race to tomorrow. we are