moment. >> will summer and have a knee at a gupta. that is "all in" this evening. the rachel maddow show starts right now. thanks for you at home for joining us. exactly one year from now on january 20th, 2021, whoever twins next presidential election oop will be sworn in as president of the united states. president trump was sworn in three years ago today. either he or somebody else will be sworn in one year from right now. and what better way to celebrate the occasion than by kicking off the senate impeachment trial of president trump tomorrow. kind of the numeralolojy. if the president is not removed from office through this impeachment process, if the senate doesn't convict him on one or more articles of impeachment and remove him from the presidency, if he manages to

stay president through 2020, you know, through the election on november 3rd, it will still always be true for the history of this presidency that day one of his fourth year in office started with day one of the trial in which u.s. senators will decide whether or not he should be convicted and removed from his post. i mean, that is how this is going to look from a a wide-angle lens in history. this is how we're starting year four of the trump presidency. that's the wide-angle lens. if you look through the narrow lens of this particular news cycle, it's a little bit crazy, at least remarkable, that it wasn't until after the close of business tonight, it wasn't until roughly 6:00 eastern time tonight, the night before the trial is due to start that the republican leadership of the senate finally released their proposed rules for how the trial's going to be conducted. i mean, you kind of think that all of this time since the president had the articles of

impeachment passed against him in the house more than a month ago, you think that the senators would have been preparing, the house impeachment managers would have been preparing for how they're all going to handle their individual, specific roles in this all-important trial that's due to start tomorrow. i mean, i'm sure they've all been preparing in general, but none have been preparing in specific detail on what each of them individually is going to do because before just tonight nobody has known how the trial was going to be conducted because it was only tonight when for the first time mitch mcconnell released this four-page resolution laying out how he's proposing the trial should go. and it turns out, now that we can finally see his roped rules is that he wants a significant proportion of the trial of the president to happen after midnight on week nights. oh. we're going to get some expert advice on this in just a moment. but just from a layman's point

of view reading this stuff, looking how the rep leadership of the senate is saying they want to conduct this trial, i mean, it's almost hard to believe that what they're doing is something that they want to be called a trial. first of all, at least as i read it, there are no guarantees that the senate will hear from any witnesses at all. we'll have more on that in just a moment. there's also appears to be no guarantee that will accept any new evidence that's been obtained or made public since the impeachment investigation wrapped up in the house and the articles of impeachment were passed against the president. so no new evidence guarantee either. we'll have more on that in a moment as well. but what's surprising to me, maybe even shocking to me, is that this resolution explaining how the trial is going to go, it appears at least to me to not even allow that the evidence from the house impeachment investigation will be admitted

in the senate either, by which i mean they may not even consider the evidence that produced the articles of impeachment. they may not even consider as evidence the formal evidence as compiled by the house, just the stuff they're going to get from the house that is the results of their investigation that led to the articles of impeachment. i mean, we had known there were going to try to make a stink to block new evidence from being improved, but the existing evidence? they might not allow the existing evidence from the house? i mean, what they're laying out here, what the republicans in the senate are planning on is a trial potentially with no witnesses and no documentary, evidentiary record at all. so it will be, like, i don't know, charades? abstract arguments about the theory of the case, i guess, but you're not actually allowed to prove the case or document its existence in any way?

again, not a lawyer and this is how it appears to me. we will get expert advice in a moment. but as remarkable as that is in terms of what they don't necessarily plan on considering as part of this trial, the proposed time line is even more impressive in terms of what they're trying to do here. remember that the house impeachment managers, this group of democratic members of congress appointed by speaker pelosi, remember they function essentially as prosecutors in the senate trial. they're the ones who are supposed to lay out the case for the jury, the case against president trump. it is hard enough to imagine how they're going to do that if they're not allowed to refer to any evidence at all potentially. but mcconnell's resolution tonight also says that the full 24 hours that those prosecutors have been given to lay out their arguments to make their case against the president, those 24 hours of argument they're being given must be delivered over the course of no more than two actual days. so that means 24 hours in two

days, that's 12 hours a day for two days. remember that these proceedings don't start until the afternoon. they don't start until 1:00 p.m. at the earliest because chief justice john roberts, who's overseeing the senate trial, still has to do his day job over at the supreme court. he does that in the mornings. he can't be at the capitol until 1:00. that means the prosecutors are being given a full 24 hours in which to make their case, but they have to use those 24 hours over two days, and the clock doesn't start on each of those days until well into the afternoon. so they basically want to lay out the case against the president in this trial significantly after midnight likely on wednesday and thursday night with no guarantee that any evidence whatsoever can be cited by the prosecutors or referred to during the trial at all. and only after that, after the president's defense counsel is also allowed their midnight run, same deal, 24 hours over two days maximum not starting until

the afternoon, only after that amazing display will anybody will allowed to even bring up the question of whether there should be witnesses. but that apparently is the plan. for it to be sort of a dead of night, marathon, fact-free, testimony-free cram session designed to repel public interest. when the trial formally convenes tomorrow at 1:00 p.m. eastern once chief justice is done at the supreme court for the day, they are expected to take up this proposed resolution laying out mitch mcconnell's plans for the trial that will essentially be the first order of business. senator mcconnell has asserted he can pass this resolution with republican votes only and he appears happy to do so. that said, we expect that the democratic leader in the senate, chuck schumer, will also offer proposed amendments to the resolution. we shall see. but again, mitch mcconnell has been essentially crowing about the fact that he doesn't need or necessarily want any democratic votes for what he's doing and he

thinks he's got all his republicans in line. if you remember the clinton impeachment from 1999, or if you've studied knit school, you'll remember that this equivalent moment then on the eve of the first day of senate trial for president clinton, the equivalent of this was not passed on anything like a partisan party line vote. in 1999 the equivalent to this resolution we just got tonight was worked out on a fully bipartisan basis and was passed by the senate unanimously, a vote of 100-0. mitch mcconnell in contrast appears to be happy to do this vote with the republican votes alone for 2020. obviously we'll be watching closely tomorrow at 1:00 p.m. to see what happens to the democratic amendments and then to the resolution as a whole. as i said, we're going to have some expert advice in terms of assessing what this means we should expect in terms of the overall process. i would just point out just a

couple things before we get to that discussion, though. one of them is about the evidence. i mean, the headline tonight is yeah, they're not guaranteeing they want to hear any new evidence, they might not even accept the existing evidence from the house. but it is also worth noting that new evidence has not just been piling up since the articles of impeachment were passed in the house. new evidence -- i think it's fair to note here, is going to keep coming out throughout the trial, including on day one tomorrow. i mean, this is just one piece of it. look at this announcement from american oversight, one of the watchdog groups that brought a freedom of information act lawsuit against the presumption to pry loose documents about the ukraine scheme. look at the time line by which they are expecting court-ordered releases of documents from the trump administration about the ukraine scandal. today is january 20th. look. documents are expected tomorrow by court order on january 21st. tomorrow.

day one of the trial. documents from obm, the office of management and budget, which we learned broke the law when they withheld u.s. aid from ukraine on the president's orders. new omb documents about the ukraine scheme are due to be released tomorrow, and thereafter presumably when the trial is still going on, they're also expecting new document releases about the ukraine scheme from the energy department and the state department and on and on on a basically weekly basis. so if the senate decides they're just going to pretend that new evidence is not being revealed, is not being shown to the public, that's going to become more and more difficult each passing day as the trial coincides with new evidence being provided to the public by court order, new evidence that potentially she does not light on what the president did. while the republican-controlled senate pretends they don't know anything about it. don't talk to me, i'm pretending

it doesn't exist. so the not looking at evidence thing is remarkable on a few different levels, but it's going to continue to be remarkable and i think difficult and awkward and hard to explain to the public throughout each day of the trial if they really are going to try to wall themselves off from the evidence. also, on the point of witnesses, "washington post" is reporting tonight that the white house is so freaked out about john bolton, they're so freaked out about the prospect of john bolton testifying to the impeachment trial that even though they're trying to do everything they can to get the republican senate to block witnesses overall, even though they're going to try to make sure every republican senator toes the party line and doesn't vote for any individual witnesses, including john bolton, in bolton's case specifically, they're so worry about the prospect of him testifying, that they're also, according to the post tonight, considering a dooms day contingency plan. one option being discussed according to a senior administration official would be to move john bolton's testimony

to a classified setting because of national security concerns, ensuring that it is not public . that proposal discussed by senate republicans is seen as a final tool against bolton becoming an explosive figure in the trial. oh, so that's what classification procedures are for. so you can call something a national security concern that must be classified because it might show the potential to incriminate the president at trial. is that the national security you' you're worried about? that seems pretty desperate. forded for the record, the white house also appears to be freaked out about the prospect of senate testimony from lev parnas, who i was able to interview last week and who was a sort of right-hand man and fixer for the president's personal lawyer, rudy giuliani, throughout the ukraine scheme.

according to "the wall street journal," trump's team aims to block any attempt from house managers to include in the senate trial testimony from lev parnas. given the claims that mr. parnas has made about the president's alleged direct involvement and supervisory role in the ukraine scheme, including, according to mr. parnas, the president directly going vice president mike pence as a tool of pressure against the ukrainian government. because of all that and the certificatio assertions mr. parnas made public, you can understand why they don't want him to testify at the trial. the question is why the white house believes they have the power to block him from testifying. i mean, technically it's the senate that runs this trial under the guidance of the chief justice. the white house may not want lev parnas to testify, but in the end, it won't be their call either way, right? it will be the senate's call, even though the trump white house appears to believe they could block him?

here we go. i mean, it's starting. year four of the trump presidency, one year to go exactly until the next presidential inauguration, and day one of the president's trial. here we go. joining us now is neal katyal, former acting solicitor general under president obama. thank you for being here tonight. >> thank you. >> so i'm not a lawyer. i don't even purport to play one on television. as i just laid out what i understand is being -- >> i've seen dershowitz, don't worry about it. >> did i get things wrong by what's being explained by the senate majority leader. >> no, i think you got it exactly right despite not having a law degree. we're on the eve of one of the most important trials not just in our lifetimes but american history. and these rules have been dropped on us on the 11th hour. every one of my students who drops a paper at me in the 11th

hour, it's pretty shoddy. you used the phrase from a citizen's point of view, let's evaluate this. i think that's exactly right because i don't think this is about the republicans winning in these rules or the democrats losing. i think ultimately it's the american people who are profound victims if these are the rules are allowed to take place. what they'll do is force the trial to occur, parts of it at night when nobody's watching. the only things that happen at midnight a trash collection and the execution of prisoners. i mean, those are the kinds of things that happen. major government decisions and certainly government trials don't happen at that time but all these rules are united by the mcconnell rules announced tonight have the same basic theme, which is how do we hide as much information as possible from the american people, and that's the travesty of these rules. >> one thing that truly surprised me, i didn't know ally

capela what to expect overall but i was surprised to see what appears to be no commitment to even review the evidence collected by the house when they conducted their investigation of this scandal and when they passed the articles of impeachment. it made me wonder, if they're not committing at the outset to accept that evidence from the house, the way they did in the with clinton impeachment, doesn't that open up senator mcconnell cherry pick specific pieces of evidence. so when ambassador gordon sondland got a call from the president, they accept that, but then they wouldn't accept as evidence the part when gordon sondland said he didn't believe the president on that phone call and he believes there was a quid pro quo. >> my degree says that's exactly

right. what happened into the clinton rules, the evidence from the house was admitted to the senate. here this allows a case-by-case adjudication of all the evidence that was already generated in the house. remember, these are trump's own administration people. it's not like these are, you know, people, you know, wide-eyed, people who are anti-trump people or something like that from outside the government. these are very respected folks and there was a process there. and look, i understand that there are a bunch of people, republicans, who say trump did nothing wrong and so on. that's exactly what trials are all about. get that evidence admitted, have some new evidence if you have any that ex-cuculpates or pointo trump being innocent. what they're doing is saying let's try to have a really fast trial all at midnight, no witnesses or documents and maybe we'll just get it through the american people that way. >> let me ask you one last thing and feel free to not answer this

if it makes you uncomfortable. if you were advising the senate democrats tonight, looking at what's been proposed by mitch mcconnell in terms of how he wants to run this thing, and you know the political dynamics at work here as well as the law. is there anything that you would advise them to do to try to make sure this trial is as fair as possible and as complete as possible given that mitch mcconnell is proposing as a framework? >> yes, two things. one, the republicans are claiming these are the same rules as clinton. they're not for exactly the reasons you identified. so just hit control f, call up the document and the rules, hit control f and swap trump for clinton, play by those rules. that's number one. and number two, there is a difference between clinton and here. remember in clinton there were already a bunch of witnesses that came before an in earlier stages. investigation. here trump gagged them all. and mcconnell, i think, and the senate republicans have shown they want to hide the truth from the american people.

at that point i think the democrats have one really good option left. it's the one our founders gave them in the constitution, which is the chief justice presides over the impeachment proceedings. under the existing rules, rule 7 and 16, i think it's the chief justice's call as to whether witnesses should testify. john bolton said he wants to testify. this is the president's own guy, the national security adviser. let him testify. mick mulvaney is the president's chief of staff. if what the president did is so beautiful and perfect, let's hear from him and trump himself. if he's afraid to come and testify, that tells you all you need to know about whether that call was perfect and beautiful. >> neal katyal, former acting solicitor general, thank you so much for being here on the eve of the trial. thanks for being here. we've got much more ahead tonight on the eve of president trump's impeachment trial. there is a very important new book that is going to be a huge best seller that comes out tomorrow.

with lots of previously unreported news about the trump administration and specifically the behavior of the president. we're going to be speaking with those authorize tonight. i got an excerpt from that book coming up. stay with us. ♪the beat goes on entresto is a heart failure pill that helped keep people alive and out of the hospital. don't take entresto if pregnant; it can cause harm or death to an unborn baby. ♪la-di-la-di-di don't take entresto with an ace inhibitor or aliskiren, or if you've had angioedema with an ace or arb. the most serious side effects are angioedema, low blood pressure, kidney problems, or high blood potassium. ask your doctor about entresto. ♪the beat goes on yeah! >> man: what's my my truck...is my livelihood. so when my windshield cracked... the experts at safelite autoglass came right to me. >> tech: hi, i'm adrian. >> man: thanks for coming. ...with service i could trust. right, girl? >> singers: ♪ safelite repair, safelite replace. ♪ you spend less and get way more., so you can bring your vision to lif.

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august 2018. president trump has just announced he's going to strip the security clearance from former cia director john brennan. well, here is part of the response to that in detail that we have never known before this. quote, too many professionals in the national security community, this extraordinary action crossed a red line. among those shocked was william mcraven, former commander of the joint special operations command and had led the 2011 raid on a pakistani compound that killed osama bin laden, the al qaeda terrorist master mind of 9/11. he considered bren an trusted friend in that unique mission. now mcraven was enjoying his semi requiremenenvironmental, w heard the news he was revoking brennen's security clearance. the next day, august 16th, mcraven has plans to go fly

fishing in a beautiful river valley, but felt an urge to speak out in his defense. mc% raven has no wireless connection, so email was not an option. he asked the house if he could use the land line at his home. first he gathered his thoughts and scribd a few phrases on a piece of paper. as a child growing up in san antonio, he was in the fifth grade class as karen, a distinguished political correspondent for "the washington post" and had recently moved to the opinion section as a columnist. mcraven figured he would give her an on the record quote. she was heading to a doctor's appointment when the admiral dialed. she didn't recognize the colorado number, so she let the call go to voicemail. not sure when he could call her back, mcraven decided to speak aloud into the voicemail message saying what he would tell trump directly if he had the chance. here was what i've come up with,

he said, do whatever you want to with it, karen. then he dictated his vent verbatim. john brennan, whose clearance you revoked on wednesday is one of the finest public servants known. fewer have done as much as to protect our country. his honest and character have never been in question, except by those who don't know him. therefore, i would consider it if you would revoke my security clearance as well so i can add my name to the list of men and women who have spoken up against your presidency. like most americans, i had hoped that when you became president, you would rise to the occasion and become the leader this great nation needs. a good leader tries to embody the best qualities of his organization, sets the example for others to follow, always puts it the welfare of others before him or herself. your leadership has shown little of these qualities. you have embarrassed us in the eyes of our children, and worst of all, divided us as a nation.

if you think for a moment your mccarthy-era tactics will express the voices of criticism, you are sadly mistaken. the criticism will continue until you become the leader we prayed you would be. readi waiting in the representation area to see her doctor, she played the mystery caller's voicemail. she was stunned by what she heard. she called mcraven back but only talked briefly because he was finally heading out to go fish. she told him she felt sure the post would publish some of his reaction. mcraven said he would be you have to pocket for a while but he trusted she would handle it. as she sat in the waiting room, she felt certain more than a few quotes. he called him a national embarrassment and a poor role model for america's children. she consulted with her editors and they agreed they should publish his speech word for

word. her essay went viral and drew notice deep in the bowels of the national security appear tra at us. many working rungs below had been silently disgusted. they took private reading mcraven's words, finally somebody revered, a bold faced name claimed no more. before trump, this government aide had always felt the presidency had a kind of magic. but not anymore. she said, quote, he ruined that magic, the disdain he shows for our country's foundation and its principles, the disregard he still he has for right and wrong, your fist clenches, your teeth grate, the hair goes up. i swore to the constitution. i didn't swear an oath to this jackass. this aide saw trump's move

against brennen as one of the first moves of undercutting america's system of government. quote, if he wanted to, how far could he push this, the aide asked. look back. did people in the 1930s in germany know when the government started to turn on them? most americans are more worried about who's going to win on "america's got talent" and what the traffic is going to be like on i-95. they aren't watching this closely. i like to believe trump is too self-engrossed, too incompetent and disorganized to get us us to 1930. but he has moved the bar. and another president that comes after him can move it a little farther. the time is coming. our nation will be tested. every nation is. rome fell, remember. he is opening up vulnerabilities for this to happen. that is my fear. that is from "a very stable genius: donald j. trump's testing of america" written by philip rucker and carol leonnig who are both pulitzer prize

winning writers from "the washington post." this books comes out tomorrow. and i have to say, the number of scoops and previously unreported behind-the-scenes details here is really remarkable. just as an example, they go from that story i just excerpted there to what happened later on that same week when on the same day the president's personal lawyer, michael cohen pled guilty, and the campaign chairman paul manafort paul manafort was convicted of employment felonies. on that same day, president trump nevertheless spent the day calling japan trying to get the japanese prime minister to unemployment him for the nobel prize, the same day cohen pled guilty and manafort was convicted. now, of course philip rucker and carol leonnig's book is being published tomorrow. they couldn't have known it's the first day of president trump's impeachment trial. i will say one of the only defenses the white house and republicans have mounted against the factual record against the

record was that president trump maybe wasn't pressuring ukraine to help himself political or hurt his rival. one of the arguments the white house and republicans in congress have advanced is that the president was only pressuring ukraine because he's just very concerned about foreign corruption, that really bothers him. one of the other things that philip rucker and carol leonnig document for the first time in this book is that president trump explicitly proposed and tried to get rid of the u.s. law that bans americans from paying bribes to foreign officials in foreign countries. i mean, for a president very concerned about foreign corruption, that's a strange thing to have a president literally try to legalize american participation in foreign corruption. but for that reporting to be published on the day he's going on trial. carol leonnig and philip rucker join us live here on set next. stay with us. et next. stay with us ♪

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ahem. in the spring of 2017, as aides gathered in the oval office to brief upcoming meetings, they made a passing reference to some government foreign officials under scrutiny for corruption for taking bribes. trump perked up at the mention of bribes and got rather angle tatted. he then told rex tillerson he wanted him to get rid of the foreign corrupt practices act.

it is unfair that american companies aren't allowed to pay bribes. we're going to change that. looking at rex tillerson, trump said i need you to get rid of that law, as if the secretary of state had an ability to change congress. he then found his words. mr. president, he said, i'm not the guy to do that. in a somber schoolhouse rock episode, tillerson said congress would have to be involved in an such repeal of the law. trump didn't miss a pete. he was unmoved by tillerson's explanation and turned instead to steven miller, the white house's senior policy adviser who had long before proved that he could be relied upon to dutifully execute almost all the president's wishes. stephen, i want you to draft an executive order and repeal that law. evidently still unaware or unconvinced that he alone did not have the power to repeal the foreign corrupt practices act.

remarkable timing, right? for philip rucker and carol leonnig's new book, including that reporting to be released tomorrow on the actual day the president is going on trial in the united states senate for his own alleged shakedown of a foreign leader. the defense to which is he was trying to kibosh foreign corruption and that's all he meant. carol leonnig and philip rucker are pulitzer prize-winning reporters at "the washington post." the new book is called "a very stable genius: donald j. trump's testing of america." carol, philip, congratulations. >> thank you. >> good to have you here. >> thank you very much, rachel. >> the president appears to be quite enraged at both of you and with the reporting in the book. has he taken substantive issue with what you have reported or is he just insulting you? >> he's largely saying that we're low-profile, low-rate reporters. it's part of fake news he has to battle with all the time. and of course, as you know, phil

and i both put a ton of vetting and rigorous reporting into this book and we're confident that it's accurate and we stand by it. >> there's no factual rebuttal you feel you have to contend with, it's his anger? >> it's his reaction to the book title. we don't know what motivates him but we know what motivated more than 200 trump administration officials and other advisers to the president who spoke to us, some of them for the first time. >> three years of reporting, more than 200 sources. some sources speak to you for the first time. tell me about the range of motivation for these sources. obviously with that many people, there's a lot of human stories behind what they're doing. some of what people told you, though, stuck with me, having read 400 pages of the book, i'm still stuck with stuff said on page 5. a senior national security official told us i've served the man for two years. i think he's a long-term and immediate danger to the country. another senior administration official said the guy is

completely crazy. the story of trump: a president with horrible instincts and a senior level cabinet member playing whac-a-mole. it sticks with me. people are telling you very grave fire alarm kind of things. >> absolutely. it stunned us too. as reporters for "the washington post," phil and i were in the business of getting this information and putting it in the newspaper. but at the time, a lot of these people wouldn't come forward and speak. and you asked the perfect question about motivation. there's a range of motivations, but one of them was people wanted history to be accurate. there are a lot of national security people here who don't talk to reporters as a part of their business. but they wanted this truth to be told about their experience with donald trump. there were others who came to us and didn't want to give their names, obviously. there are a lot of anonymous sources in this book. and they were afraid of the treatment and the belittlement the president has shown he's capable of on twitter to

retaliate against anybody who speaks the truth. >> that was part of long excerpt i read a few minutes ago. part of reason i wanted to tell that is because i feel like it's not faded into the background, it's become part of context of this administration that people have spoken out against the president or who have spoken truth to power in a way that has proved detrimental to him, they have had their careers destroyed and personally targeted and they have found themselves feeling like they're in physical danger from the president's supporters. over the course of the three years it took you to write this, has that had a chilling effect in terms of people willing to talk with or without their names attached to the comments? >> it certainly has, that's why you don't see officials talking on the road in newspaper stories. they're not coming on tv or talking to a lot of reporters except for the ones they trust, and it's because the president is so fixated on perpetuating his own power, on brandishing his own self-image, establishing

loyalty, not to the country, but to himself. loyalty to himself throughout the federal government, those have been the main themes of this presidency according to the people who worked for him who talked to us for this book, and it's one of the reasons why we've seen this chilling effect in fact government. >> i would also put, again, just from reading the book, maybe even a starker cast on it. it feels like revenge has become a number one -- a top-tier priority, that even when the destruction of a critic isn't going to be of additional benefit to the president, somebody's life getting worse, somebody's career shortened isn't going to cause him benefit. it would appear there's an affirmtive value placed on the idea of revenge and making an example. is that fair? >> i feel like phil and i are journalists. we can't get inside someone's head and tell you what donald trump's motivations are, but the one thing we can tell you is what the more than 200 people

told us, a large portion of them at least, which is that the perpetuation of his power and his ego, the perpetuation of a glorious self-image is paramount to donald trump. so everything he does is about making sure he looks good and that it is often the first thing on the order of business in the white house above a lot of national security interests, above a lot of the just basic interests of what's best for the country. >> i want to take a quick break. when we come back we'll have to talk about the grand conspiracy here, the way that you guys arranged for the impeachment trial to start on the day the book was published. obviously, i'm kidding. but the timing is remarkable. i want to talk about what when we come back. philip rucker and carol leonnig, they are the authorize of "a very stable genius" which comes out tomorrow. stay with us. vo: droughts. floods.

hurricanes. tornadoes. donald trump is making it worse. trump:"all of this with the global warming. a lot of it's a hoax." vo: mike bloomberg knows the science and understands the challenge, he's led an effort that has shut down half the nation's dirty polluting coal plants so far. as president, a plan for 80% clean energy by 2028 - cutting carbon emissions and creating millions of clean energy jobs. mike will get it done. i'm mike bloomberg and i approve this message.

we're back once again with carol leg and philip rucker from

"the washington post," both pulitzer prize winners, authors of "a very stable genius: donald j. trump's testing of america," which is out tomorrow. there's a number of instances in the book, some of which had intention already about the president demonstrated ignorance about important and embarrassing things, not knowing that china borders india and then suggesting as much to the indian prime minister, for example. not understanding the basics of the pearl harbor attack, like the very basics of the pearl harbor attack and other things that are hard to imagine from anybody in national life, let alone the presidency. but i want to ask about something that is maybe a little more specific and related to the impeachment. you do document that the president was trying to get rid of the foreign corrupt practices act. that's the law passed in 1977 which says americans can't bribe foreign officials in order to get stuff done. when he suggested that to a room full of people, including rex

tillerson and stephen miller, why is that not surfacing until now? who sat on that for a couple years until you guys could publish it now? i mean, i'm not asking for your source, but that's a remarkable thing for nobody to have said anything about. >> one of the amazing things about this reporting, rachel, is from my perspective, we were working our tails off as reporters at the post and people started to basically crack, if you will, when they knew we were going to be digging deep into some of these scenes and also when they knew it was going to be a tome for history and they wanted to share this. there are a lot of flies on the wall and a lot of people briefed after the fact. you know, we don't want to identify any sources, but there were people who were afraid to tell us and ultimately did. >> the title is a quote of the president, calling himself a very stable genius. it's also a feat of irony because the portray you portray

of the president is neither genius or stable. i wonder with all the sources you talked to, at one point you thought you might get president trump to do an interview. >> he agreed to initially. >> and then withdrew on what grounds? >> he initially agreed early in the reporting to do an interview with us and then as we were finishing the project, we kept trying to get it scheduled and we're told through his aides that he decided not to talk to us. he didn't want to share his memories of these events. we wish we could have included his perspective but he didn't offer that to us. >> when you were seeking his comment and white house comment on all these vignettes that you describe, did you ever get effectively exculpatory evidence about the president's stability or genius? was there anybody who works closely with him and is in a position to know a more reassuring portrait? >> absolutely. a lot of people we interviewed give donald trump immense credit. we do in the book as well.

we're not trying to mock him with this title, by the way. it's his word choice his definition of himself and we want to stress test his definition of himself. but there is a small subset of people who say this guy is a master at messaging. i watched him connect with working white working-class people elated to see him fighting for them, who see him as their champion. >> in terms of the sum total of this work, the fact that this is about to hit the public, on the same day the president's impeachment trial is starting, what's your sense at this point of what the president's mind-set is? and how well equipped he is both personally and in terms of his advisers to deal with this? >> the president's twitter's feed shows he feels under siege. he feels this is a scarlet letter against him having been impeached, only the third in

history. and he feels this is unfair, that is democrats are doing something they have no right to be doing. he does not acknowledge that he did anything wrong in that call with ukraine and withholding th witch hunt much as he saw the russia investigation for two years as a political witch hunt. and he's just digging in and trying to fight back. >> given that sense, that diagnosis about him what's wrong with the situation, what did you learn in your reporting how he should act under pressure in these four days that are likely going to present evidence as bad as he thinks they are. >> what we show in the book phil and i found source after source. he said this is presidency of one. there's this own guy who thinks he's his own best lawyer, own best general, own best communicator in chief. and i think in the halls of the west wing but as well at

mar-a-lago at some table when he's in a room with his aides he's the person barking out the orders. he says we're going after every single person that questions me and tries to share something i find embarrassing. >> congratulations on this book. i'm sorry about the problem you've had to deal with from the president himself. you don't deserve it. we'll be right back. stay with us. e it we'll be right back. stay with us are you tired of clean clothes that just don't smell clean? what if your clothes could stay fresh for weeks? now they can! downy unstopables in-wash scent boosters keep your laundry smelling fresh way longer than detergent alone. pour a cap of downy unstopables into your washing machine before each load and enjoy fresher smelling laundry for up to 12-weeks.

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did ambassador sondland say who his agreement on this white house meeting was with? >> let's say he said he had an agreement with chief of staff mulvaney in return for investigations this meeting would get scheduled. >> and was he specific at that point later about the investigations he was referring to? >> he said the investigation's in berrurisma. >> after both meetings after you spoke to him and relayed what hee he said what did ambassador bolton say you? >> specific instructions where i had to go to john eisenberg to basically say you tell eisenberg ambassador bolton told me i am not part of this whatever drug deal that mulvaney and sondland are cooking up. >> fiona hill, former top russia official on the national security counsel giving explosive testimony in the impeachment inquiry in november. testifying she was essentially witness to the quid pro quo at

the center of the scandal for which president trump's now been impeached in the house. that testimony put former national security advisor john bolton at the top of democrats' wish list for witnesses in the senate trial for president trump. fiona hill interacted with all the players at the center of the ukraine scandal. she was there for all the meetings at the center of the scandal. because of her position, top russian official at the whoulit house just put her at the center of the drama, she ended up being at the center of the inquiry. here's something to wash for now. when fiona hill left her job last summer she was replaced in that job by tim morrison, seen here also giving critical testimony in the impeachment inquiry. tim morrison lasted less than four months at that job. he quit literally the night before he gave his first closed door impeachment testimony. he walked into that deposition and announced, surprise, he had resigned from the white house the previous night. well, after that in november that job, the top russia job on

the national security council at the white house, went to a new guy. mr. peak had been at the state department before moving over to the white house. he has been in this job less than three months after morrison was there for less than four months. but on friday this weekend he was reportedly escorted off the white house grounds according to bloomberg news. axios was first to report and nbc has confirmed he was put on administrative leave. he was expected to travel with president trump to davos this week but not anymore, not after getting frog marched off the white house grounds. we don't have details yet as to what this is all about but this job of all jobs, right? this is the top russia post at the white house, it is now vacant for the third time in less than a year since fiona hill left. watch this space. it's passed its prologue. we'll find out soon enough what

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get a good nights sleep, you guys. your country needs you and we don't know how long this is going to go on. special coverage of the president's impeachment trial in the united states senate starts tomorrow here on msnbc at 9:00 a.m. eastern with coverage hosted by chuck todd. ari melber will take over coverage. and starting at 11:00 a.m. eastern we will be rolling special coverage over the course of the day hosted by brian williams and nicolle wallace. and they will hold onto it threw the duration of day one. we know it's going to start with a fight of how the trial is going to be conducted. deep breath, everybody. here we go. now it's time for "last word" with lawrence o'donnell. >> you said the coverage would be over the course of the day. apparently over the course of the day and the night according to mitch mcconnell's rules that he put out tonight that he's hoping the senate adopts,hi