devoted friends. outwardly happy, inwardly, who really knew. >> that's all for this edition of "dateline," i'm craig melvin, thanks for watching. hear ye, hear ye, hear ye. >> historic bat on capitol hill, the defense rests after presenting a sweeping case against president trump. >> is it too much fatigue to call witnesses and have a fair trial? >> the case for witnesses. new calls on that front as a pull out today gives us a sense of what the public actually

wants. >> what my people have to do is just be honest, just tell the truth. >> and truth or consequences, the president's legal team begins presenting its case in just hours. why it appears they may mostly talk about joe biden. >> get her out tomorrow. i don't care. get her out tomorrow. take her out. okay. do it. >> excellent. >> and the explosive new tape reveals the president urging the firing of the u.s. ambassador to ukraine. plus, what you didn't see behind the scenes, drawings of what senators did beyond the camera's view. good morning, welcome to msnbc special saturday impeachment trial coverage, live from capitol hill, i'm geoff bennett. >> and good morning, everybody, i'm yasmin vossoughian as well, and geoff, you have been covering this for who knows how long at this point, we have a lot to cover this morning, and i'm so happy to be anchoring alongside you to have the inside

knowledge of what we have been seeing on the senate floor take place. a lot to cover this morning, and we're going to start in washington with this historic moment. president trump's defense team getting ready to lay out its case, arguing he had a legal right to investigate the bidens and ukraine to root out corruption. democratic house managers wrapped up opening arguments last night ending with a sweeping presentation that walked through all of the critical evidence focussing on abuse of power and obstruction charges as well. congressman adam schiff delivering the closing statement with an emotional plea for senators to consider the history of this very moment. watch this. >> sometimes i think about how unforgiving history can be of our conduct. we can do a lifetime's work, draft the most wonderful legislation, help our constituents and yet we may be remembered for none of that. but for a single decision we may be remembered affecting the

course of our country. i believe this may be one of those moments. a moment we never thought we would see, a moment when our democracy was gravely threatened and not from without but from within. >> jerry nadler was much more pointed in his final remarks, insisting president trump must be removed from office. >> here's his testimony. >> we kept the leader. >> meanwhile, senate republicans ended the week the same way they started it, proclaiming they heard nothing new. >> basically true with everything that we've heard, it's been over and over and over again, repetition of the previous day's points, the hour previous points. >> there is not one new thing other than exaggeration, and you

do this in a vacuum, and you keep reepeating the same thing, you're not going to win this by time of possession. you got to start telling us what's different from what we've heard before. >> what the house managers have done is they made it pretty boring. i mean, it's like how many times have i seen the same words come out of ambassador sondland's mouth or fiona hill's mouth. >> in a bold moment from adam schiff, he referenced a cbs news report that president trump threatened gop senators to keep them loyal. >> cbs news reports last night that a trump confidant said that gop senators were warned vote against your president, vote against the president and your head will be on a pike. when we're talking about a president who would make himself a monarch, that whoever that was would use the terminology of a

penalty that was imposed by a monarch, a head on a pike. >> some republican senators said that they were insulted bid that comment, and they left kpcapito hill refuting the reporting. >> i was visibly upset with it. the whole room was visibly upset on that side, to say that's insulting and demeaning that we somehow live in fear and that the president has threatened all of us to put our head on a pike. >> nothing like going through three days of frustration and cap it with an insult on everybody. >> and as the debate over whether to call witnesses drags on, a new poll shows 66% of americans think new witnesses should be part of this trial. >> we have a team of reporters and analysts joining us to walk us through what is expected on this very first day of the trump testifies, and to examine the final day of the prosecution's case, we're going to get to them in a moment, but first, here's a look at what we're expecting to happen today as things get started. the senate trial will resume at 10:00 a.m. eastern.

that is when the white house will take center stage, and they have indicated a strong defense, focussing on joe and hunter biden as we heard from the president's defense team, jay sekulow. today's session is only expected to last about three hours. a sort of trailer as we're seeing it of coming attractions of the defense case since the president reportedly considers saturday morning television viewership quote death valley. >> yeah. let's go to garrett hague, my colleague on capitol hill. garrett has been working around the clock. first of all, it's good to see you, but set the scene for us this morning. how are you expecting the day to proceed? >> reporter: remember that the white house's lawyers here are essentially playing a prevent defense. they have republican senators who agree with them so far, who are not inclined to call witnesses, and who up to this point are certainly not inclined to convict this president. so the job for the republican or excuse me, for the white house attorneys here at this point is to not offend their audience, to make a strong case for someone who likes to watch a lot of saturday morning television and

that's the president of the united states who will no doubt be turning in to hear how his lawyers defend him and how he has called a perfect phone call, the preview we have gotten from white house lawyers is they will largely echo the remark, that the president's phone call was great and the actions around ukraine and the president did nothing wrong in that case, and it needs to be acquitted and handled quickly. adam schiff was pushing back on this, particularly on the last point, the idea that the trial needs to be handled expediently, there's no need to call witnesses, things could be dragged on too long. schiff argued this is too important to rush, too important for senators to let go of in the face of white house push back here in the face of the president's defense team. here's how he closed out his speech last night. take a listen. >> thomas payne wrote, those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must undergo the fatigue of supporting it. is it too much fatigue to call

witnesses and have a fair trial? are the blessings of freedom so meager that we will not endure the fatigue of a real trial with witnesses and documents? i implore you, give america a fair trial. give america a fair trial. she's worth it. >> reporter: so geoff and yasmin, you hear schiff trying to appeal to the higher angels, the higher callings of senators. i'm not fatigued, i know you all are not fatigued, the question is whether the senators will decide whether calling witnesses, which will be the key vote, tell them enough new they decide it's worth it. expect to hear from the president's attorneys how it wouldn't be worth it and how they need to shut down this impeachment.

guys. >> yeah, great points, garrett hague kicking us off this morning. stay with us, we want to introduce our panel, joining us is susan del percio, republican strategist and msnbc political analyst, hayes brown, world news editor and reporter with "buzz feed news." >> jonathan allen national political reporter with nbc news.com. and morgan, nbc legal analyst, glenn kesh ner a former federal prosecutor. glenn, i'm going to start with you on this one. before we look ahead to what we're going to be expecting today, there is a lot considering this is day one of the president's defense in all of this. i want to take a look back what we heard overnight, especially from the closing arguments of congressman adam schiff, the lead house manager. what was your take on it overall? >> so it almost goes without saying that adam schiff is a powerful advocate. 30 years of trying cases and arguing criminal appeals, i don't know that i've seen

anybody with a combination of sort of poise, understatement, power and relatability, which is really the big one, i think anybody could tune in and watch adam schiff and whether you're a high school dropout or scientist, everyone can kind of get what he's saying, and that is sort of a unique characteristic in an oral advocate, and i found one of his most powerful arguments to be that, you know, if we don't have an article ii of the articles of impeachment, article ii being just the complete obstruction of congress, a president and an administration saying you can't investigate us to see whether i committed an impeachable offense, we don't have an article ii, we will never again have an article i, which means there will be no such thing as impeachment moving forward. i thought that was a powerful argument that really should

resonate with anybody who cares to think about what's going on. >> yeah, and what about that, because adam schiff, it appeared to me had really three audiences, the 100 senators in front of him, the american public at home, and the four or five republican senators who we like to say matter. those folks if they are going to be flipped on the question of witnesses and evidence, those would be the folks who would join with the coalition of democrats to get them to the number, 51. do you think the republicans based on what they heard in the last few days, jonathan -- days, jonathan --zes your car insurance so you only pay for what you need. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ introducing ore-ida potato pay. where ore-ida golden crinkles are your crispy currency to pay for bites of this...

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. this is a determination by president trump that he wants to be all powerful, he does not have to respect the congress. he does not have to respect the representatives of the people. only his will goes. he is a dictator. this must not stand and that is why another reason he must be removed from office. >> welcome back to msnbc. i'm susan del percio, we're dealing with a little technical issue. stan in washington, d.c., hopefully we'll have yasmin and geoff back with us. in the meantime, i would like to

bring in editor at "buzzfeed" hayes browne. what are your take aways after last night's closing. >> after a long 24 hours, and three days, the house managers made the best case they can with the amount of evidence they were able to get from the white house and the testimony they had. i think that in their closing, they are making the point that, yes, we have all of this evidence that the president committed abuse of power, that the president has obstructed congress, not just the house but the senate now, and that in this appeal that adam schiff had to the various senators in the room to actually take up the mantle of a jury, to actually take up their job, and actually try and get the white house and executive branch writ large to turn over more evidence, was a compelling one. in his closing, adam schiff mentioned a cbs report that said the white house threatened republican senators. they seemed to take offense to that. given the president's history of bullying and con jajoling membef

congress, i don't know why they can be surprised that the president pushed and the white house pushed them to actually have no witnesses, no new documents and that there would be repercussions if they actually acted against him. >> yeah, i mean, i heard that too, and one of my take aways is that was really meant for the public. adam schiff used that report to sway public opinion, because as it was mentioned earlier, we basically are seeing an appeal to the senators in the room and the public at large to really gain momentum for that argument of witnesses and documents. we know that there's about five or six senators in play, republican senators that may make that fight. what do you think the chances are of that happening, and will they -- will today's opening statements and next two days of testimony maybe damper that chance of happening? >> here's the thing, i think that we have been looking at three key republicans so far, mitt romney of utah, lisa murkowski of alaska, susan

collins of maine, the last two seemed to be offended by schiff's statement, moving forward, i can see them continuing to want the witnesses they suggested they were after. as far as the fourth and fifth votes, lamar alexander of tennessee, cory gardner of colorado being the fourth and fifth votes. i think that right now, the president's defense team has one of the easiest jobs in washington, they already have the jury behind them. they just have to not trip up so far. they have to make sure in their defense they actually make not just a case that this is a procedural problem, the house rushed the case, that they don't have enough evidence, they need to put forward a positive defense of the president as well. they put forward a substantiative defense of the president and that's something senator ted cruz has told the president's defense team. they have to make sure they don't trip over their own feet in trying to appease their client, the president. because we all know that the president has insisted that he's done nothing wrong with ukraine,

that his call was perfect, and anything to the contrary is seen as a betrayal, so i think that the defense team has to rye and walk that line between keeping the president happy but not going so far down the rabbit hole as to alienate those key republicans we were just talking about. >> thank you, hayes. we're going to take a break now. we have washington back online. when we come back. e come back. copd makes it hard to breathe

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. welcome back, everybody. we had a bit of a technical difficulty. it seems as if geoff unplugged something. so we lost power for a moment. i joke. that's actually not what happened, and we're trying to figure out what happened, but we are back up and running and a pretty important day in washington, d.c. as the republicans are beginning their defense aamidst the impeachment in the senate. let's pick up jonathan allen on where you were and when everything got cut off. that is the seat change, the four or five republicans we have been watching through the last three days and if there could be a change from them. your take on that as you were speaking earlier. >> the republicans that were

being targeted by democrats are getting farther away from the likelihood of voting for witnesses and certainly from voting against the president. but at the same time, i think democratic prosecutors are speaking more to the nation and asking the public basically to stand up for the country. that's what adam schiff is making his appeal to, i think that's what the other prosecutors are making their appeal to. i think what they're saying is that the republicans here aren't going to stand up to the president, the public is going to have to stand up to the president and the republican senators and house members who didn't, and i think if you pull back one of the things you hear in these charges and in the prosecution that's going on here is something very different in this impeachment, the charges against president trump are so different in scale and sort of seriousness, graveness than what you saw in the andrew johnson impeachment trial and what you saw in the bill clinton impeachment trial. you're talking about the foreign interference of another country into our elections. i mean, this is so different, and goes so to the heart of the

sanctity of the republican, the democracy, and they are making that appeal to the country, to the public, i think that's what you have heard over the last couple of days increasingly from these prosecutors. >> and morgan, i also heard democrats try to prepare the political arena for after this trial ends in the event that president trump is acquitted. setting up the argument that, yes, he was acquitted but it's only because the trial was rigged. did you hear that as well? >> yes, that's something we've heard even, you know, we have heard this pretty consistently from democrats ahead of the trial with that appeal to get witnesses saying that it would be a rigged trial if there weren't witnesses. so you know, if those witnesses aren't brought, which is the expectation that they won't be, that's going to be the continuing argument from democrats that they try to rush this process through and that it was slanted towards the president. >> glenn, there was this moment last night where adam schiff in his closing statement, the last time we heard from him last night where he referenced the

cbs story, that we have no confirmation of, i want to be clear about that, with regards to the president saying or republicans saying, if you don't vote for this president basically your head will be on a pike. and adam schiff referenced that in his closing statements last night, and there was sort of color from the floor that we got, that you had lisa murkowski, and susan collins saying that's not true, and lisa murkowski was not happy with the statement made by adam schiff, and she said at one point, you had me until then and then you lost me. and then when chuck schumer was confronted about that moment, he said, well, the republicans are always looking for adiversion, you walk any republican up here, and ask them if they can debate the facts that schiff presented and they're not going to be able to debate that. what did you make of that moment? >> you know, two observations about that, first of all, given the gravity, the seriousness of what we are all going through right now, i do think everyone

needs to be careful, to carefully vet whatever it is they're going to say. first of all, is it a surprise that the president might say something like that, no, it's not exactly out of character for him to sort of try to interfere with, you know, what the jurors, what the republicans might do by way of vote. but, you know when we're in court arguing things, we want to be sure that what we argue is factual, is accurate, and is not unduly prejudice or inflammatory. >> you don't necessarily think it was the right move on behalf of schiff to cite that news piece. >> if i'm a prosecutor, i'm only going to say what i know i can prove and what i know is accurate, so i think schiff could have left that out. >> hayes brown, are you still with us?

i'm not hearing him. okay, so hayes, you are with us. >> yes. >> one of the things i wanted you to help us understand is the delay that adding witnesses to this trial would create. so lisa murkowski, as yasmin noted, is on the fence, let's say about this issue of witnesses but one of the reasons why she's inclined to vote against it, she says is because if you add witnesses to this process, it delays it, and if the witnesses aren't going to make a difference, if it's not going to be the thing that gets the 20 republicans to join with the democrats and there's no point in delaying the trial. talk about the rules and how adding witnesses would affect the nuts and bolts of the trial. >> as of the rules that they passed on tuesday with all republican votes, then they've decided to put off the decision on witnesses until sometime next week, after the opening statements of both the prosecution and the defense and time for written questions from

senators to both sides. then they'll have four hours to debate, and then they will finally vote on whether they want witnesses or documents to come forward. now, the white house has threatened that they're going to cite executive privilege on pretty much any witness that they call forward, including, especially including john bolton, former national security adviser but the argument from the house managers is that, well, we wanted to get this process out of the way early, so in case there was any sort of hangup, any sort of tieup that we could move this quickly. they argue that because we have the chief justice sitting and we wanted him to be able to rule on admissibility and on who should be a witness and what things should be admitted as evidence, we think this will move much faster than it would through the courts otherwise. republicans didn't exactly bite when adam schiff and other house managers made that argument. personally, i think that they should go for it. the claims of executive immunity that the president and white house have put forward have not been tested in court. they are likely to fail.

there are several course cases moving through right now that are in the stage of appeal, including the don mcgahn case where the courts have said, yes, you have to testify when the house calls you forward. so i think that if they do actually move forward on witnesses, my personal opinion is that those witnesses will show up to court. john bolton will show up to the senate trial. mick mulvaney will show up to the trial. especially if he comes after bolton. >> we've heard from john bolton saying that he will definitely show up. >> under certain circumstances. >> but susan del percio, let me ask you this, without witnesses this trial is on track to wrap next saturday potentially, as early as that. if this trial ends with no witnesses, should house democrats then subpoena mick mulvaney and john bolton and just have a trial, just for the good of the -- >> for the optics of the country. >> the optics of it and just get on the record what these two men have to say. >> yeah, there's nothing

preventing the house from going back and continuing their investigations and following through with all of those subpoenas. so they can do this even if everything does wrap up. but there's just one point i would like to make that is we have jay sekulow offering, giving his opening today as he said, his coming attractions. there's one big difference between what's happening today and what happened to the white house team when the house made their arguments a couple of days ago is that the democrats are going to have 48 hours to respond. we have been seeing back-to-back coverage with very little time for a message to come out. we're going to get this preview today. if the democrats want to make a message for witnesses, they have to go full tilt for the next 48 hours because that's the only win they're going to have, and dismantle whatever jay sekulow says today in the president's defense over that period of time. >> susan, let's stick with this for a moment because when geoff

talks about this idea of a delay and if this is part of the calculus that people like lisa murkowski and susan collins are making, there's the idea of a fair trial and the optics of that. if you talk to any person on the street about what's happening in washington, d.c., when i talk to individuals, they say doesn't a fair trial include witnesses. at what point in a trial that we see on national television anywhere do we not necessarily see witnesses. is this part, susan, from your understanding or what you're hearing, part of the calculus at all being considered when you are someone like lisa murkowski, mitt romney, susan collins. >> it absolutely is. i mean, this is all about what they have to go back to their constituents with, and say we are doing your work. we are doing the people's work, which means we are responsible for having a fair trial, for getting witnesses and documents. that's what the public expects, even if you only know enough law from law and order, you know that's what's supposed to happen. so i think that is a very big calculus, and the other thing that i think these senators have

to be worried about, every day including in the last 24 hours, we get more and more news about what happened with the president, when did he start talking about ukraine, when was he concerned about we have a lev parnas tape that's come out. these things the senators have to be worried about. we don't know what we don't know, and i think no matter what happens, we're going to continue to learn more until the election. >> yeah, well, later this morning, in fact, in what, just 3 1/2 hours, trump's lawyers are set to begin their opening arguments, making the case to acquit the president, and mor dp beg -- morgan, the both of us were at the press conference at the senate subway basement, yesterday, in fact, with jay sekulow, and he's going to talk about the steele dossier, the bidens, he basically is going to turn the senate trial into the kind of inquisition to the bidens that president trump wanted ukraine to do. >> can i say one thing before

you answer that jay sekulow mentioned the democrats opened the door to talk about biden when they mentioned him in their three days of prosecution. do we actually believe in the fact that they didn't necessarily have a plan to talk about joe and hunter biden before all of this, though jay sekulow did say, hey, they opened the door to it because they even brought up the biden issue. >> i think there was always an expectation that on some level they would probably bring up the bidens, i mean, i went through that legal brief they issued on monday, mentions the bidens, talks about trump having a legitimate reason to raise the bidens, as well as the debunked theory about the 2016 election interference, on the call. there's that expectation. of course we're looking at the level to which they will, certainly his remarks mentioned it will be a lot of steele dossier, the bidens and of course they're playing to their audience, which is trump, and he was very happy with their performance, it seemed, on tuesday, which was a lot of, you know, fierce defense attacks on

democrats, and i think that they're going to try to play into a lot of that. >> without engaging in the facts of the case, apparently. >> and lindsey graham has hinted strongly that republicans plan to subpoena the bidens outside of this process. >> yeah. >> later on this year. sometime before the election, so in all of this discussion of witnesses, lindsey graham that has said he thinks the bidens should be part of the discussion, just not part of this trial. and if you're democrats, looking at trying to get witnesses to come to capitol hill, and they were talking about some exchange of witnesses, your fear has got to be or your concern has got to be that sometime in october or september, joe biden and hunter biden are going to be faced with the question of subpoenas coming from capitol hill and they may have less of a defense certainly hunter biden would have less of a defense, and then vice president biden would have to decide whether or president obama would have to decide whether they try to claim some sort of executive privilege. >> yeah. >> i want you to weigh in on

what we can expect here from the president's defense going forward. what we know about this defense team is these are tv savvy individuals. these are guys that go on fox news over and over again and know how to give really good sound bytes that can resonate with the president's base. we have seen that over and over again the last few days from the likes of jay sekulow. are you expecting the same type of defense going forward over the next three days, and do you expect them to even use the full 24 that they have been given. it doesn't necessarily seem like they are going to, considering the fact that this is just a three-hour sort of intro we're going to be seeing today. >> hard to see how they're going to fill all the time allotted to them with nothing but distractions, and we keep talking about this being a trial. let's face it, this is not a trial, right, because at a trial, the jurors are not also the judges. at a trial, the jurors can't overrule the presiding judge in the case if he makes a ruling they don't like, so maybe we should stop calling this a

trial. it's a proceeding. it's a hearing. and the goal is to make it a fair hearing, to make it a full hearing. so my thinking has evolved because originally i would say, look, there has to be witnesses and documents and evidence if it's going to be a fair proceeding. but ordinarily, you only call relevant witnesses. and the bidens are not relevant witnesses. but you know what, if we see -- >> do you think that was a mistake by the democrats to even bring out the story line of the bidens, to even address it in their three days of prosecution? because they made it more relevant? >> i think you have to address it because you know the democrats -- i mean the republicans are going to address it, so you have to get out in front of it and try to frame the issue of the bidens because if you're silent, you're entirely ceding the biden argument to whatever republicans say it's going to be. >> when they talk about we're going to subpoena the bidens,

they're not serious about it. if they were, they would have done it. the truth is republicans don't want any witnesses, they want this trial to be as fast and forgettable as humanly possible. they want it over and done with certainly in time for the super bowl so president trump can have his traditional. >> we're going to keep this conversation going, a lot more to cover as you can see, and we're going to keep everything online. we're not going anywhere. geoff is going to make sure he doesn't unplug anything going forward. coming up, the new explosive tape where the president urging the firing of u.s. ambassador to ukraine, next. ukraine, next. 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! my a1c is under 7! (announcer) and you may lose weight. adults who took ozempic® lost on average up to 12 pounds. i lost almost 12 pounds! oh!

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get way more. shop everything home at wayfair.com welcome back, everybody. potential new evidence released overnight. abc news publishing what it says is a portion of a recording that appears to be president trump talking about removing the now former ambassador to ukraine, marie yovanovitch. >> according to the abc report, the president was apparently speaking at a small gathering that included lev parnas and igor fruman, two former business associates of president trump's personal lawyer rudy giuliani who have since been indicted in the southern district of new

york. the recording is reportedly made by fruman. take a listen. >> the biggest problem there, i think where we need to start is we got to get rid of the ambassador. she's still left over from the clinton administration she's basically walking around telling everybody, wait, he's going to get impeached. just wait. it's incredible. >> get rid of her. get her out tomorrow. >> now parnas's attorney played a portion of what appears to be a copy of the same audio to msnbc's rachel maddow last night, and producers off camera during a commercial break. here's what he told maddow in a subsequent interview. >> a one hour 24 minute recording of that event. it is a dinner in the trump hotel, the private townhouse of president trump is there, mr. parnas is there. obviously mr. fruman is there, and about 40 minutes into the recording, the subject of the

ambassador comes up. >> why does the subject of the ambassador come up in this context? >> interestingly enough, president trump raises the question, what's with ukraine, how's ukraine and up to that point, talking about liquid natural gas, lng, and the need to kind of find a way to get lng into europe as well, and at some point, lev parnas is speaking to the president about the people of ukraine, and he raises the subject, the trouble is the ambassador. >> lev says to the president -- >> yes. >> and nbc news has not heard the entire audio recording. we are working on obtaining it. we should note nbc news does not know if the audio published by abc has been edited at all. important to note that as well. here's what the president said in a new interview. >> were you relying on lev parnas to get rid of your ambassador. >> no, but i have a lot of people, and he's something that i guess based on pictures that i see goes to fundraisers, but i'm

not a man of that ambassador. >> were you telling parnas to get rid of her. you have a state department. >> i wouldn't have said that, i probably would have said rudy or somebody. >> joining you are panel now, nbc news heidi przybyla, thank you for joining us on this. this is quite a development overnight with regards to this recording that was released. i want your take on this recording overall, and also what's interesting to note is the fact that this president has over and over said that he doesn't even know who lev parnas is. this is kind of the hanger-onner as he said repeatedly. >> the president says that about a lot of people. >> and in fact, not only has he been in numerous pictures with lev parnas, he is in this recording speaking directly to lev parnas, and saying get rid of marie yovanovitch. >> yasmin, what is the number one complaint we heard from republicans last night, we have nothing new and we have heard nothing new. that is exactly the point here. you need to vote if you want to

learn something new, and this is evidence, further evidence that there's a lot new out there to learn. this is the president directly on tape, if authenticated, doing exactly what he said he didn't do, which is to call he didn't do, which is to call for the firing of this ambassador. which is really part of the heart of this entire case. so two things here. number one, this proves that more is, and will, come out. and, number two, all roads lead back to trump. this is entirely consistent with everything else that has come out that the president has attempted to block. for instance, that omb e-mail where it was said that the president directly -- clear orders from the president -- to continue to hold the money. so this is part of what that new evidence would be. now, do i think that these republican senators, who have been saying we're hearing nothing new, this is a snoozer, that this is going to change their minds? no, i don't. but it does lead to the case and bolster the case that they need

to vote to hear more evidence. because it's out there. >> and joining us again is hayes brown, world news editor and reporter with "buzzfeed news" and host of the impeachment today podcast. susan del percio. here in d.c. is jonathan alan, national political reporter with nbc news.com. and glenn kershner also joins us at the desk. we know now, based on this tape, that president trump knew about the importance of aid to ukraine. way back in 2018. this is well before the spring of '19 where democrats, based on all the evidence they've amassed, say that the pressure campaign began. so the fact that president trump knew back in 2018 why the aid to ukraine was so important and why marie yovanovitch, it appears, was an obstacle in terms of allowing that pressure campaign to move forward. what does that then do then to

the -- to the case that -- that we -- that we -- as we currently know it? >> well, it does a few things. one, to heidi's point, more evidence comes out, the more the senators have to be, especially republican senators, have to be concerned about what else may come out. also, happen to think the trump defense team must be also very nervous wondering what else they don't know about. but what comes to mind knowing the timing of this tape in april 2018 is let's not forget rudy giuliani and other people were looking to do a lot of business in the ukraine. so this is, maybe, where they started to take the steps to remove yovanovitch because she was getting in the way of them going through, maybe, some deals that could have been a little questionable. or she was putting a kabaibosh from her point of view. it seems to me this was more of a lobbying effort on a business deal than anything else at this point in time in 2018. >> glenn, the fact that president trump says he didn't

know lev parnas, didn't know igor fruman, and now the tape suggests that he actually did. what does that suggest in terms of consciousness of guilt? >> that the president is full of consciousness of guilt. think about this. what we just heard was it sounded like lev parnas briefing the president of the united states about an ambassador and badmouthing her with an obvious goal there. all the president had to do, if he had really lost confidence in ambassador yovanovitch, was call the secretary of state. say, i've lost confidence, i'd like her recalled and i'd like to name a new ambassador. rather than talking to shady characters, like lev and igor, and whoever else was assembled at that -- that meeting. this makes absolutely no sense. the other thing that really troubled me, jeff, is when we heard lev's attorney tell raichl last night and we've been trying

to work with the southern district of new york to provide this information that's obviously credible. we've got tapes. and they don't want to meet with us. why? because if lev parnas cooperates, who could he reach out and touch as a cooperating witness? certainly, rudy giuliani and the president of the united states. is bill barr putting a stop to that? that's dangerous. >> jonathan alan, you heard glenn there say shady characters when referring to lev parnas and igor fruman. did it at all sound as if lev parnas, in that recording, was in a way bating the president? >> i mean, there is an hour and 24 minute tape. you have to wonder the prominence of that tape. why that tape was made in the first place. you know, typically you don't record your conversations with the president of the united states. >> yeah. why would you be sitting down recording the conversation? >> so it's a reasonable question as to why lev parnas has a tape, if he's the person who originally made it, what the rest of that tape is. we get just snippets. but to hear the president of the

united states saying take her out, get rid of her. the things that are on that tape. not i think she should be fired by the people, as glenn was pointing out, who work for me at the state department. but he's talking to these two ukrainian-american guys, and rudy giuliani, who's been traveling to ukraine, and saying basically get rid of her in a nonspecific way. i mean, that is some scary stuff. this is the stuff, as glenn could tell you, the stuff of mob trials that you hear on tape. it's very chilling. >> but -- but my -- my -- my thing here with all of this, glenn, let's get back to basics. how does this change the calculus within the senate impeachment trial, a? and why would republicans want to vote to see more evidence considering the fact that it could further implicate the president after hearing this recording with this conversation with lev parnas? >> yeah. when i hear the complaint from the republicans, which seems to

be all they have, that there's nothing new here. and it's repetitive and we've heard it all before. you know, there is -- there is new information, dramatic information, coming out every day. i mean, how often do we have an audio recording of the president proving, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he not only knows lev parnas. but he's giving direction based on information lev parnas is providing to the president. i mean, this is something that, if we don't hear about it and they rush to an acquittal of the president of the united states, this ain't over. we're going to hear more and more and more. and -- and the votes that anybody takes right now will be undercut by additional evidence. >> that's what they have to worry about. these senate republicans in tough races in november have to worry about what comes out between january and november. because there are going to be hell of accountable for the things. >> when i heard this recording last night, i thought to myself

there's tapes. and you can't help but think back to nixon when you hear of tapes. >> and it suggests there could be more. >> yeah. much more to come, everybody. coming up, grab the map. npr reporter says a single question outraged the secretary of state mike pompeo so much that he tested her knowledge of the world. spoiler alert. she actually passed. we'll be right back. ♪ when we see you enter through our doors. we don't see who you're against, or for. whether tomorrow will be light or dark. all we see in you, is a spark. we see your kindness and humanity. the strength of each community. the more we look the more we find the sparks that make america shine. ♪

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