pointed out to me if you look over the history mitch mcconnell seems to always have a card up his sleeve that we don't know about, so we will see. >> all right. mike allen live in d.c. this morning, always a pleasure. we will be reading axios a.m. in just a little bit. you can sign up for that newsletter. >> that does it for us on this wednesday morning. i'm yasmin vossoughian alongside ayman mohyeldin. "morning joe" starts right now. you know you can't trust this president to do what's right for this country. >> you know what the right answer is for our country. >> you can trust he will do what's right for donald trump. >> you know what the right answer is for the american people. >> he will do it now. he's done it before. he will do it for the next several months. he will do it in the election if he is allowed to. >> what they are asking you to do is to throw out a successful president on the eve of an election with no basis and in

violation of the constitution. >> so the senators and all of us have now heard from the prosecution and from the defense, but the question hanging over the senate chamber, over mitch mcconnell's office and over all of washington is are we going to get to hear from the witnesses who can actually give us firsthand accounts of what happened? good morning and welcome to "morning joe." it's wednesday, january 29th. along with willie and me we have msnbc contributor mike barnicle, msnbc political analyst and former chairman of the republican national committee michael steele, white house reporter for the associated press jonathan lemire and nbc news correspondent heidi przybyla. mika will be back with us tomorrow. you know, before we start into all of this, jonathan lemire, i want to go to you first. you were hanging out by the jersey shore. >> yes. >> and a trump rally broke out and you have a t-shirt to prove

it. getting wild in wildwood. you were seen walking into 30 rock with that t-shirt this morning. what happened last night at the jersey shore? >> you can see that i've really done a lot of work on my tan. >> yes. >> and i will say in the wildwood crowd there there was a lot of discussion about the time share that barnicle was eyeing for this summer. people are ready for you there. i know there were a couple establishments on the water that he is no longer allowed to enter. >> true. >> but last night the president did have a rally in a sort of unlikely location. we were in deep blue new jersey. it was a thank you, if you will, for representative jeff drew who is the democratic congressman you recall who switched parties at the end of last year. this is his district. as part of that agreement the president said he would be happy to come to new jersey to hold a rally for him. it was a big crowd and pretty raucous, a relatively conservative part of the state, an area that doesn't see a

republican president very often. they were fired up. the president for his part actually sort of remained on message and sort of disciplined. again, we're grading on a curve here for donald trump when it comes to these rallies but he spent most of the time touting his own accomplishments certainly and stayed away from some of the controversy swirling around his white house. did he talk about the impeachment trial some, but he made no mention of john bolton. he made no discussion of a wish for witnesses or a hope that they don't appear and certainly that was what his white house wants, they do not want to hear from the former national security adviser, this he do not want to hear from some other administration officials who could further link the president to what happened in the ukraine. but that is, as you said, joe, that's the question hovering over everything these next couple days is whether or not the senators and just as importantly the american public will hear from those witnesses. the president has privately said, you know, he does not want that to happen, he does not want john bolton to testify in part because he claims that bolton is

now just a disgruntled former employee and can't be trusted. >> how interesting to see the image of the president of the united states embracing and hugging a former congressman who spent the first two or three years absolutely trashing him before having a last minute conversion to the republican party. but, you know, donald trump is comfortable around democrats and democratic congressmen, hugging them. i mean, gave money to hillary clinton eight separate times. gave money to anthony weiner, helped on his campaign, helped on elliott spitzer's campaign, helped on kamala harris's 2014 campaign. it's just what he does. so this is predictable. what's not predictable, willie, is that we actually come to a juncture in senate proceedings or house proceedings, really anything on capitol hill where you actually have a question

mark hanging over what's going to happen next. that's exactly what we're hearing now with mitch mcconnell, suggesting he doesn't have the votes. i'm skeptical that he doesn't have the votes. i think at the end of the day mitch will probably try to figure out how he gets it done. maybe he will stop speaking in russian to the caucus and start talking, you know, in english again, the king's english. but at the same time you do wonder, somebody like mitt romney gets -- maybe susan collins, maybe lisa murkowski, maybe one other and suddenly there's a possibility that we hear john bolton's testimony, a man who himself now finds himself in the middle of an ideological war. one senator "the new york times" reporting to called him one of his closest friends anywhere. >> yes. >> one of his closest friends. he's now saying, oh, he's just

got a dwrgrudge. that's why they say in washington if you want a friend, buy a dog. >> that was just a couple of weeks ago, by the way, it was one of his closest friends. as a guy from new jersey i love leading the show with the jersey shore and staying away from the stereotypical references, no snookie reference this morning. we appreciate that very much. let's talk about that scramble on capitol hill ahead of friday's expected vote on whether to subpoena witnesses at the senate impeachment trial. a republican aide tells nbc news senate majority leader mitch mcconnell told members in a closed-door meeting yesterday he had not yet secured the 51 votes needed to block witness testimony but that the situation is fluid. democrats need four republicans to break ranks and last night senator chuck schumer said he believes 10 to 12 republicans are at least open to voting for witnesses. right now, though, we count only three. >> how confident are you that

there are at least three other republican senators who would support hearing from witnesses? >> i can't begin to predict what other senators are going to do. i think each individual is going to make their own decision and i don't think they are all settled as a group or as individuals as to exactly how they're going to vote, but i'd like to hear from john bolton and i think the idea that's been expressed in the media about having each side be able to choose a witness or maybe more than one witness on a paired basis has some merit. >> it is very likely that i'm going to conclude that, yes, we do need to hear from witnesses. i for one believe that there's some gaps, some ambiguities that need to be cleared up and more information tends to be helpful when you're making such a weighty decision. >> another key republican, senator lisa murkowski told reporters, quote, mr. bolton probably would have some things that would be helpful for us. sources also telling the "wall

street journal" this morning the white house's concern that senators pat toomey of pennsylvania and rob portman of ohio might also vote for witnesses. colorado's cory gardner refused to comment saying it would violate his oath of impartiality. another vulnerable senator up for reelection in 2020, north carolina's thom tillis who says bolton's book has not affected his decision. tillis said, quote, i don't think we need witnesses. then here is the latest from senator lindsey graham. >> if people want witnesses, we're going to get a lot of witnesses, this idea of calling one and one makes zero sense to me. if we are going to open this up to additional inquiry, we're going to go down the road was it legitimate for the president to believe there was corruption and conflicts of interest on the bidens part in the ukraine, we will explore that and whether or not there's any credibility to the idea that the dnc may have been working with ukraine. >> what do the american people think about this? 75% of voters in a new

quinnipiac poll said witnesses should be allowed to testify in the president's impeachment trial. 75%. broken down by party that includes 49% of republicans, 75% of independents and 95% of democrats. 54% of americans in this poll agreed president trump abused his power regarding his actions in ukraine and 52% say trump obstructed congress regarding its investigation into those actions. so, joe, we have mitt romney, susan collins, perhaps lisa murkowski on board for the idea of witnesses. lamar alexander, pat toomey, rob portman in play. one other senator just to point out, ron johnson the republican from wisconsin who has been in lockstep with president trump recently said, yes, john bolton should tell his story in a media interview but not as a witness in our trial. >> of course that makes absolutely no sense. >> right. >> that's what we've come to expect from senator ron johnson. so, heidi, you've got not only

those senators saying there need to be more witnesses, you've got 75% of americans saying we need to hear more witnesses, including 49% of republicans. a majority, and yet another poll saying that donald trump abused the powers of his office. a majority saying donald trump obstructed the investigation into his own impeachment and yet we hear lindsey graham, the head of the senate judiciary committee, starting to talk about discredited conspiracy theories about ukraine. i find this very interesting because yesterday you couldn't get a straight answer from three congress people who kept going back to crowd strike and a ukrainian conspiracy theory that had been discredit months ago. >> yeah, joe, that was really stunning, i had a simple question which was what is the

corruption that president trump was policing from may when the department of defense certified those funds and said ukraine met all corruption standards and september when three days after congress started investigating him all of a sudden he released the aid. we went around in circles. it was an 11-minute exchange and frankly all of the other media who were there at that stake out joined in mimi in trying to get an answer. with he walked away from it having no other answer other than the president was tracking burisma and the bidens. to your previously well-placed skepticism about this, joe, despite those polls, mitch mcconnell made those comments that he didn't have the votes yet in the midst of a meeting where he was arm twisting people to get the votes. after that meeting our own leigh ann caldwell spoke with one of those senators, senator pat roberts who said he was, quote, feeling good about the fact that they probably did have the votes to stop the witnesses. so keep in mind that some

fundamental things have not changed here which are that a lot of those vulnerable republicans like thom tillis, martha mcsally, cory gardner have primary opponents waiting in the wings waiting to pounce. you really come back to that same small narrow group of three that we're watching and only two of them have looked like they're sure on this, which is collins and romney. murkowski did make those comments saying she was curious about what bolton had to say before that arm twisting meeting, after the arm twisting meeting we all chased her down to the bowels of the capitol and on to the train where she refused to comment. it's still very much unclear whether those votes are going to be there for the witnesses and even if they do get the votes for the witnesses, joe, keep in mind it could be a protracted process as there is a lot of ambiguity right now over what the president will do to try to block john bolton and that in the end there's almost no doubt here that the president would be

acquitted. >> you know, michael steele, when i was a very young boy growing up in the suburbs of atlanta i was in front of the tv set every morning while my mother was still sleeping and i would watch a show called "romper room" and there would be this magic ball that the host would look into and they would say i see johnny and i see sam and i see joey. i'm like, oh, my god, she sees me. of course, saying the most general names in the world. anyway, we can do this for republicans right now, you and me, we can look into the crystal ball and we can see the future. 75% of americans think that donald trump needs -- the impeachment trial needs more witnesses. a majority believe he abused the power of his office. a majority believe -- i mean, all of that said, all the polls say a majority of americans think this guy abused the powers of the offices and obstructed justice, obstructed the

investigation into his own impeachment trial. but we look in that crystal ball for cory gardner, for martha mcsally, for thom tillis, for everybody in these swing states, john bolton this information whether it comes out tightly confined in the senate trial or whether it just gets blown out all over the airwaves over the next two for three months, that information is going to come out, which is going to include a lot of incriminating information about donald trump, which is going to lead to more incriminating information about donald trump, which is going to lead to an avalanche of incriminating information about donald trump. this morning we are of course reading about attempts of donald trump to kill investigations into a corrupt turkish bank and possibly even into chinese banks -- not banks, but chinese

entities for his own personal financial reasons. >> well, i think -- >> so these people are trying to kill this investigation now. why don't we look into the crystal ball. how bad does this look for them the last week of the election when we know so much more then than we know now and they are the ones who voted to stop americans from learning the truth about donald trump? >> well, they're willing to take that risk, because, again, these are players who play a short game. they are not playing the long game into november. what their opponents who are going to be well financed, the democrats are already outpacing republicans in that regard at the congressional level and senatorial level, you have mcconnell and others already clinging the box on, hey, you need to get the fundraising going. that's number one. number two you have have a narrative problem in the fall when your opponents who are well-financed, again, are putting up ads that remind the

voters at a critical juncture where you could have asked for more witnesses, helped the country resolve this in a way that we now see all the facts and know all the facts you didn't. but they are more interested in the short game. you touched on a very important point, joe, and that is they're looking to they're seeing i have someone waiting on the wings that will pounce on me that donald trump could potentially support. when it comes to the question of corruption i think the president gives us all we need to know when he says to his folks, hey, why do we need this foreign corrupt practices act? why can't we bribe people? why can't american businesses bribe foreign governments to get what they want? so the narrative is set. and these guys are buying into the narrative of a man who has no regard for any of this stuff. >> former white house chief of staff john kelly says he believes john bolton's reported account of the ukraine saga should be heard. speaking to a crowd in florida on monday general kelly

commented on what bolton reportedly reveals in his forthcoming book, that president trump told bolton that releasing military aid to ukraine hinged on whether the country investigated the president's political rivals, including of course joe biden. according to the sarasota herald tribune kelly asserted this, quote, if john bolton says that in the book, i believe john bolton, adding, quote, every single time i was with him he always gave the president the unvarnished truth. the growing calls for bolton to testify at the impeachment trial kelly said this, i think if there are people that could contribute to this, either innocence or guilt, i think they should be heard. i think some of the conversations seem to me to be very inappropriate but i wasn't there. speaking to bolton's character the refired four star marine corps general added, quote, john is an honest guy. he is a man of integrity and great character. mike barnicle, remember in october when john kelly warned trump if he hired a yes man to be his chief of staff he would

be impeached. he was right about that. he believes john bolton should sit as a witness in this trial. >> who wouldn't go along with what general kelly said why he had? ? my problem with general kelly it's not a real problem and it doesn't matter, it's my problem, is general kelly, general mattis, you know, where are they? they know more than anybody that's testified, i think, probably before either -- before the impeachment committee. where are they? you know, this whole thing is coming down this week, i think, from what you hear, from talking to sitting united states senators to a conclusion that maybe by the end of this week the president of the united states will be acquitted in the united states senate. he will be acquitted by the end of this week. and, joe, you know, romper room is one thing, but there is a separate universe just as fictitious as romper room and it's called mitch mcconnell's united states senate. i believe from what i've been told that he does have the votes to end this thing and he wants to end this thing. so we could be going to iowa over the weekend with the president of the united states having been acquitted.

>> but, jonathan lemire, again, the president if he is acquitted and if these republicans actually obstruct the investigation and vote against transparency and vote against the truth getting out, they are going to be voting against the overwhelming majority of americans, again, in trump world you never think about tomorrow. in trump world there never are consequences. in mcsally world, oh, she's already seen there are consequences. you lose elections. cory gardner, he's seeing that, too. he's getting pounded right now in the polls. he's upside down. his favorability. joni ernst blath erred a couple days ago on television, said something really stupid, she used her outside voice when she should have kept her thoughts inside and revealed that

everything she is doing in this political conspiracy with donald trump where she's parroting every word that donald trump wants her to say proves that this whole exercise has been to slander joe biden, to attack joe biden. so i just wonder if these senators really have vensed themselves that they can shoot somebody on fifth avenue and get away with it. >> that's a long held build he have in trump world that the president doesn't try to win even a news cycle but rather a news moment. what's in front of him. there's never been a long term strategy here. he is president and to this point we expect him to survive this impeachment trial. there is a limit to the consequences that he is has paid but we don't know if that rule is applying to other republicans. it seems the public's interest in this trial, want tg to be fair, impartial, wanting there to be witnesses has grown as the trial has proceeded. i think there are certainly some

republicans who are nervous about that. yes, i think mitch mcconnell's play here remains to be seen. i think that certainly the key in this meeting yesterday is we do not have the votes to block witnesses currently is what he said to them. it could be a motivational tactic. there's still optimism among republican leadership that they will have these votes. if they don't have them in hand now they feel they will very soon. that this is going to come to a swift conclusion whether that is by saturday perhaps before mond saturday or on monday. john kelly his final conversation with the president if he said if you surround yourself with yes men you will be impeached. that certainly has borne out here. he has surrounded himself with yes men. the other thing that happened yesterday of note is the president unveiled his middle east peace plan, it already seems like it's relatively dead on arrival in the region but he praised secretary of state mike pompeo for his attitude toward that npr reporter when he was

belligerent to her and even swore at her off air and suggested that that was the kind of attitude he wanted. there are no consequences now. the president from his staff, there are no guardrails, the president has at advisers he wants and compliments them when they act like he does. >> the president at that unveiling of the peace plan yesterday gave secretary pompeo the award he was seeking in relating that reporter. a lot more ahead including andrea mitchell on that peace plan. and chris coons and joe manchin, very interesting choices in all of that they will be our guests. plus one of the impeachment prosecutors hakeem jeffries of new york will join our conversation when "morning joe" comes right back. >> all my friends had fun today. i see david is having a special day today and olivia joy had a special day yesterday. and so is reginald and edward john. d so is reginald and edwar john (whistling)

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i would back mickey mouse against this president. i shouldn't say it that way, but, look, this president is a genuine threat to our democracy and we've got some good candidates running and -- but this is just -- this is just the first gun that goes off, you know, we go from here to new hampshire and then to nevada and south carolina, places i'm winning, then we go to super tuesday. so i'm still feeling good. i mean, as long as, you know -- i don't think it's going to be settled here, but i think it could make a difference here. >> that's former vice president joe biden in iowa yesterday. we are now five days ahead of the vote there. down playing a bit iowa's importance in the 2020 race was the vice president. also yesterday biden was asked if he believes the democratic party would rally behind bernie sanders if the vermont senator is chosen as the presidential

nominee. >> i'm not going to make judgments now, but i just think that it depends upon how we treat one another between now and the time we have the nominee. >> joe, you mentioned joni ernst, the senator from iowa, a few minutes ago. he also talked about joni ernst and is using that as a tool on the campaign trial. to hear what she said this whole bit, this whole thing about ukraine was to get me because i'm the one they fear the most against donald trump. >> yeah, and some people are making light of what he said last night, making a big deal about what he said last night, but, mike barnicle, this is just the opening round, they haven't even taken the first votes yet. when i hear bernie says something about elizabeth, elizabeth says something about

somebody else. this is child's play. like i've got to say this is one of the most timid primary seasons i have ever seen in my adult life. so i guess people are trying to seize and trying to find controversy, where on the democratic side there really isn't that much controversy, it's been pretty straightforward. as joe biden said, we have to unite. whoever wins, i think you're going to see everybody unite behind him and that includes bernie. bernie will -- you know, unite behind bernie or bernie will certainly unite behind them but we haven't even thrown the first pitch this season so everybody just needs to relax. >> joe, you know, it's interesting candidates at this stage especially in iowa and new hampshire, they are sort of like reporters, you can out there, you go in the field and you circle around the prize, that's what the candidates are doing right now. i mean, the prize if you talk to

enough voters and i'm sure you know this, the prize is beating donald trump. it's not really medicare for all, it's not opioids, it's not, you know, reconstruction of this country and infrastructure spending. it's beating donald trump, the democrats, that's what the prize is right now and the candidates all of them biden, bernie, elizabeth, they are circling that trying to figure out exactly how hard they should hit that central theme. we're going to find out, you know, after iowa, after new hampshire we're going to know a lot more obviously and they all know that. >> you know, willie, we have often joked before between ourselves about how liberals in manhattan were stumbling around the day after george w. bush had been reelected. it was as if the zombie apocalypse had invaded the tri-state area. well, four years later by the time barack obama was running it

was obvious the democrats had only one thing in mind and that was winning. i think that's where we are again, you know, what, 2008 -- 12 years later. one of the reasons why democrats aren't really going after each other that hard and why they will unite us, the only thing that matters to democratic voters is stopping donald trump and any democrat between now and november that is seen to be unhelpful to that cause will be shunned from the party for years. >> it's right there in the polling, health care is important, the economy, jobs are important of course, but number one on the list of priorities for democrats is defeating donald trump. so if bernie sanders becomes the nominee and that could very well happen, there's no question that democrats are going to unite behind him because what's the alternative? michael steele, they may not like sitting right now if you are a biden or buttigieg voter you might not like elizabeth warren and bernie sanders's

policies, this he cost so much money, moving towards socialism, the rest of it, but on a ballot if bernie sanders is sitting next to donald trump and you believe that donald trump is an existential threat to this country which a lot of democrats do you are not staying home. >> you are not staying home and that's all very, very true, but there's still the other side of the coin and that is if it is a bernie sanders or an elizabeth warren, there is the rest of the country democrats also have to take into consideration. so you've got a very large independent vote. as a percentage it may be 7% or 8%, but that's a lot of votes and when you are looking at 78,000 votes in the last election, you have to ask yourself at some point, yes, these policies are important, but we're going to play them down and put out these candidates, but the voters necessarily are going to look and say something different. >> there's one wild card in here, now, too, it's a small one but it's on the table and it's mike bloomberg. >> yes. >> he is picking up a little bit

of residence in some of these states, especially southern new hampshire because he is all over the place. >> if joe biden loses in iowa and new hampshire he all of a sudden looks like a weak candidate and here comes mike bloomberg. >> i don't buy that. i think there is an oversell of iowa and new hampshire in this democratic primary because you've got players in there that no one seems to be accounting for. andrew yang, you've got amy klobuchar, they have voters and supporters, they may coalesce in iowa, it's a caucus it's not a primary, let's keep it real what we are talking about here. primary vote fins in new hampshire and then you are in south carolina which is a whole different battle ground when it comes to someone like joe biden. >> so let me ask you, michael steele, are you a skeptic on mike bloomberg? do you look at these polls and think there is a way forward for him? right now it's the great unknown. nobody has any idea whether this guy has a shot or not because

we've got to see how the pieces move on the board over the next month or so, but let's say you have bernie or elizabeth or buttigieg winning in iowa and then new hampshire you've got bernie winning and then joe winning in south carolina and suddenly the pieces are scattered all over the board. do you think there is a shot for mike bloomberg to if not win the nomination outright at least stop somebody else from getting the delegates needed in milwaukee? >> i do and i think that's a concern for -- a quiet concern but a concern nonetheless for a number of krths right now who are looking at what mike bloomberg has been able to do in 30 days, to go from 0 to 9%. when you get beyond this primary, this caucus this week and you start looking at the national numbers again, you are

going to see him in double digits. bloomberg has cut out a very interesting strategy, joe, that i don't think people should discount. yes, the money helps, but there's also something about the messaging that i think people are buying right now and it could be related to your point, willie, about joe biden, but nonetheless it puts him in play in a very interesting way on super tuesday because now you are talking about 16 states across the country, it is a mix and all he has to do is get 15% to start grabbing delegates and he is on his way to do that. >> all right. jonathan lemire. >> yeah, the bloomberg camp i have talked to a number of his top advisers in the last few days and they feel really good about where they are for a couple different levels. they are seeing the upward trajectory in the national polls, he's hitting 8, 9, even 10% i believe in one, they certainly are seeing the impact their spending spree is having on the president, bloomberg has definitely gotten under donald

trump's skin in the recent days. the trump campaign they are not quite sure what to do with this just yet, they are sort of -- no one really knows what to do with the magnitude of money that mike bloomberg could drop on this race. certainly the former mayor has irritated the president. she had an on and off again relationship back in new york and bloomberg significantly wealthier than trump and had a glide path into the elite new york society that always sort of shunned trump who hebld was a tabloid creation. the bloomberg team feels like their spending a working, they have a super bowl ad coming on sunday they are very proud of, they will unveil it right before the game, the president has his own ad that day as well. they are looking at the field there and in their estimation if bernie sanders comes out of iowa with a win and followed by another victory in new hampshire, they feel like that joe biden were he even to continue to win south carolina and i think all polling suggests in part because of his good support with african-american voters he will still do so, but if bernie wins the first two, maybe even the first three if he

takes nevada where the polling is less certain biden could win south carolina but emerge from it wounded and super tuesday is two days later. if biden were to lose the first two states he may have a fundraising problem between new hampshire and super tuesday. this he feel like the bloomberg they believe they would be willing to pounce, pick off some states or at least enough delegates to throw the race into upheaval. >> that's been the theory of the case from the beginning. you talk to people on the bloomberg campaign they say this is sort of playing out the way we hoped it would. we needed joe biden to be wounded and we have $2 billion to put on that bet. coming up on "morning joe" amid the debate over impeachment witnesses, why the white house may not want to pick a fight when it comes to the issue of executive privilege. we'll explain when we come right back. we'll explain when we come right back what's important to you. saving for ava's college. being able to retire on our terms.

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well, i think you have to for the sake of the office. i would love everybody to testify. i like mick to testify, i like mike pompeo to testify, i like rick perry to testify.

i want everybody, but there are things that you can't do from the standpoint of executive privilege. you have to maintain that. so we'll see where it all goes, but especially a national security adviser, you can't have him explaining all of your statements about national security concerning russia, china, north korea, everything. you just can't do that. >> let's see here, hey, which will yes, we will go down a checklist for a second here. let's see. i would like everyone to testify -- okay, that's a lie. i would like mick to testify. what do you think? that's a lie. that's a lie. i would like pompeo to testify. oh, that's definitely -- that's a lie, too. i would like john bolton. i would like everybody -- yeah, all lies. >> all of the above, yeah. >> i still go back torques again, one of the great insights on donald trump ever that when donald trump says he knows

everything about a topic, he knows nothing about a topic and when donald trump says he knows nothing about a topic, oh, he knows way too much about that topic. anyway, that was president trump on whether he would invoke executive privilege during the impeachment trial. let's bring in the founding editor and chief of just security, he is also professor of law at new york university school of law, ryan goodman, out with a new piece entitled "why the white house may not dare fight on executive privilege." it is a fascinating article, ryan. from your take on it if the president did invoke that authority, he could be setting up a defeat that might haunt him for the rest of his years in the white house. >> that's exactly right. and my co-author is andrew weissman former general counsel of the fbi. if the president knows a lot about executive privilege he should know that invoking it

could really boomerang in the way in which there is an exception to executive privilege which is if, in fact, the information it provides evidence of a crime and does the president of the united states really want a federal court opining as to whether or not the allegations in -- with respect to ukraine involve criminal activity, and that could obviously impact the impeachment if he is acquitted about i that time then still it could impact his political prospects. it could also impact, as we write, the southern district of new york that might be looking at mayor giuliani. if a federal court says, well, this actually is about criminal activity, it would only bolster the prosecutors there to look at co-conspirators. >> so talk about that phrase, if it could involve a crime. how much latitude does the court have in making that decision or does a court when given that standard do they look at it and

just say, if there is any possibility at all of criminal activity based on the facts before us, then we cannot rule that there is going to be this executive privilege invoked? >> so it's not a criminal trial, it's just about seeking information. so the standard is much lower than beyond a reasonable doubt. it's preponderance of the evidence. so let's say 51%. paul manafort can tell you all about this because it happened to him in the same court where he tried to invoke attorney/client privilege, the judge said to him are you sure you want to do that because if you vehicle it then i have to make a determination as to whether or not your communications might involve criminal activity. she issues this gigantic opinion detailing all of the criminal activities she has reached by a preponderance of the evidence. that's not what he wanted. >> heidi? >> heidi is with us and has a question. >> great article and i think you may be right that the republican strategy if it does come to witnesses may just be to try to discredit john bolton, pull him

in a closed-door deposition and give different accounts of what he said. john bolton is known to have taken copious notes and documented a lot of what happened during his time there. we know he has a book coming out. so what if he shows up with receipts? what if he shows up with evidence that what he says is true? can they exert executive privilege over that and just require that only his oral testimony stands? >> so they could try to exert executive privilege over both. it would be very hard for them to do it for one and not the other. one of the other exceptions to executive privilege is if the information is already in the public domain, so once he testifies about the very communications, interactions verbally, it's done. and, therefore, there would be no way to really block the notes. so much so there would be just like a very quick decision by any court. that's also the part of our argument that they would never want to really go to court in the first place. this isn't about some elongated court battle and litigation,

it's really deterring the white house from ever seeking this path. >> ryan, you say in your piece that the conversation on the telephone on july 25th between the president of the united states and president zelensky is not covered by national security privilege. donald trump is trying to make the case that it is. why do you say he's wrong? >> so he is wrong on a couple levels. first, there is this thing called waiver. once they released the transcript and talked about it that's already kind of game over for the conversation. >> right. >> and then on the other one is that congress is acting at the power -- very zenith of its power in impeachment and what folks who prefer executive privilege like to say is, oh, george washington said in our communications with foreign leaders there is executive privilege, but what they leave out is george washington said except for in impeachment. that's when you have to give that information over. there are multiple ways in which it's not going to really lift off. >> ryan, if john bolton were indeed called to testify, the thought is that the white house would then try to invoke

executive privilege, but the president has always -- he has already spoken publicly about john bolton. doesn't that waive privilege potentially? >> that's another way in which he could have waived executive privilege. there is some former federal prosecutors hong that his three-part tweet thread repudiating john bolton is a form of waiver because he's saying, no, john bolton says x, i'm saying y. about i him saying y it allows for john bolton to also speak as well. i wouldn't put as much emphasis in the tweet thread. to whatever degree the president has been talking about these sets of facts that's waived executive privilege. you can't say only i can talk about it in the public domain and others can't. once it is in the public square executive privilege is basically over. >> you wonder what his personal attorney, rudy giuliani, who is usually a stickler for the law is thinking about the president possibly waiving his privilege. professor of law at new york university school of law ryan goodman, thank you so much.

greatly appreciate you being here. still ahead, the trump administration's middle east peace plan appears to be a nonstarter for the palestinians. andrea mitchell joins us with her latest reporting on those developments coming up next on "morning joe." those developments coming up next on "morning joe." 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

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the deadly coronavirus continues to spread this morning. the number of known cases increased by nearly 25% just overnight. today china announced almost 6,000 cases of the virus have been recorded up from more than 4,500 on tuesday. china said 132 people have died from the virus, up from 106 on tuesday. however, the actual number of deaths is expected to be much higher due to a shortage of test kits that has made it difficult for health officials there to track the virus. so far 15 locations outside of china have recorded at least one

case of the coronavirus. last night a plane carrying 240 united states passengers who have evacuated from the hot zone wuhan landed in alaska where they have been examined. this morning all passengers have been approved to continue on now to california. also this morning british airways announced it suspended all chinese flights and yesterday the trump administration informed u.s. airline providers that it is considering doing the same. coming up, president trump's legal team has wrapped up its defense in the impeachment trial. now senate republicans are scrambling to block witness testimony. we will talk to one of the democratic prosecutors, congressman hakeem jeffries of new york who says john bolton must testify. we will also be joined by democratic senators chris coons and joe manchin. you're watching "morning joe." we will be right back with nbc's andrea mitchell. i'm your 70lb st. bernard puppy,

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you always want to be able to for your patients.f get them out of pain, get them out of pain fast. we have a new product out there: sensodyne rapid relief. if you use it on monday, by thursday, you'll be enjoying that chocolate ice cream again. they can start it, and 3 days later, i know that they're going to have the results they were looking for. martha mcsally, arizona rejected you in 2018 and you know why. you were too close to donald trump and you lost, badly. now you've gone full trump again. >> you are a liberal hack. i'm not talking to you. >> you knew arizona wanted the truth. we demanded witnesses and

evidence in the trial of donald trump. there's a reason your poll numbers are dropping fast and you are on your way to defeat. oh, that's right, martha, again. arizona has always produced mavericks, true independents, people like john mccain and barry goldwater, senators that served arizona, people of courage, toughness. they stood for what was right no matter the political risk and they are remembered as american heroes. and you, martha, you will be remembered as just another trump hack. if you're remembered at all. >> boy, that was the latest tough ad from the lincoln project. the group of conservatives led by rick wilson who are critical of donald trump and also critical of republican members of the congress who blindly and

obsequiously put -- well, put the values of their constituents second to that of donald trump's. it's very interesting, willie, while we were looking at that ad you couldn't help but be moved by the images of barry goldwater, of course, one of the great conservative icons of all time who was a guy that got in his car, drove down to the white house in 1974 and walked in and told richard nixon the truth, that it was time to leave the white house. that for the good of the country he needed to resign. what a contrast with martha mcsally who decides she's going to get on another corrupt president's good side by yelling at reporters who play it down the middle and actually get criticized by democrats and republicans alike.

>> yeah, implicit in that ad when they show barry goldwater is what you're doing, martha mcsally and others isn't serve conservism it's trumpism. implicit in that ad is you are not being an iconic class, you are going along with donald trump in a way that john mccain would not be going along with donald trump. obviously that moment in the halls of congress a couple weeks ago got her what she wanted, she put an ad up and fundraising and everything else because she called a reporter a liberal hack, she thought that was good for her reelection. it remains to be seen if voters in arizona agree. >> i doubt they will. actually, usually when something like that happens all it does is end up juicing the fundraising on both sides and usually the other side comes out on top. but we'll see what happens. welcome back to "morning joe," it's wednesday, january 29th. mika is under the weather today, but will be back tomorrow. we do have willie and msnbc

contributor mike barnicle. who else do you need? also former chairman of the republican national committee michael steele, white house reporter for the associated press jonathan lemire and joining the conversation host of "andrea mitchell reports," andrea mitchell. we also have the political reporter for the "washington post" robert costa, he's moderator of washington week on pbs. yesterday, willie, i sent mike barnicle what i thought to be the best ad about boston ever. >> isn't that great. >> do you see the -- >> hyundai. >> hyundai ad. it was absolutely incredible. man, so i sent it to barnicle, i go best ad ever. boston ad ever. he comes back, he sees that ad

and comes back with the aflac dunkin' donuts saturday night spoof. >> nothing captured massachusetts better than that. >> which by the way -- >> look it up, folks. >> both ads were run in the scarborough household last night and my kids were howling. very good recommendation, mike. really all of this chatter, this is willie, this is really a message to alex and dan and the rest of the crew. >> need to see it. >> we want to see those ads by the end of this segment. >> yes, impeachment is important, middle east peace plans are important, but nothing is as important as these boston ads. >> the image of kasie aflac in the dunkin' donuts holding the cigarette outside but still inside.

you can't smoke inhere. i'm not smoking inside. >> the cracked cellphone, it's all too much. all right. >> i just remembered another line. you have to keep moving. >> you can't say it, though. >> hey, willie, you are talking about his morning routine. >> exactly. >> let me tell you something, willie, you are not going to have to remember that because we will play both of those by the end of this block. before we do that we've got a couple small items going on, the impeachment of an american president and a middle east peace plan. >> yeah. >> that was put out by the white house yesterday. let's start with bob costas -- bob skocosta. i'm having trouble talking this morning. what are you hearing about impeachment witnesses? mitch mcconnell saying he doesn't have the votes right now. we are all pretty skeptical. what are you hearing? >> that skepticism is rooted in

fact. at the senate yesterday it broke up pretty early on the president's legal team side and mitch mcconnell and the majority leader met with republican senators behind the scenes, i was there at the senate, and it was clear coming out of the room that mcconnell had a message for his members, he didn't have the votes yet to prevent witnesses from coming before this trial. at the same time he is not pushing for witnesses. so he's putting pressure on senator romney and others to find the votes, those 51 votes they need to get witnesses or else the majority leader is going to move pretty quickly in the coming days to end this trial. so it was a message to his members about what he wants and he talked about the risks in his eyes of having a witness fight because he said to them you can't just call bolton, it will lead to witness after witness after witness in his view. >> and a very important follow-up question, bob, have you seen the hyundai ad? >> i have not. i love boston so i don't know -- i've been at the senate too much, joe. what am i missing here? >> you'll see it in a few

minutes. so, bob, we heard -- interesting -- interesting, the reporting and i'm curious if it lined up with what you heard that you actually had martha mcsally who is going to be in the race of her political life this fall, cory gardner who is going to be in the political race for his life in colorado this fall and thom tillis all standing up and actually arguing against witnesses, arguing against transparency, arguing against what 75% of americans want. does that line up with your reporting? >> it does line up. the "washington post" and others have reported that many vulnerable republicans at this time instead of trying to move to a center, to try to seem like they're pushing for witnesses and going along with senator collins or senator romney, they are actually privately telling the majority leader we want this done and they want this trial over with. many republicans privately are pulling reporters aside and

saying they want to wrap this up before the state of the union because they do not see a political upside in calling witnesses or prolonging this discussion about president trump's conduct. they need his political capital in 2020. look at senator ernst standing at a microphone and criticizing vice president biden. look at senator rick scott of florida airing anti-biden ads. you have the entire republican party to willie's important point embracing trumpism at this critical moment just months before the election. >> it is fascinating. of course, rick scott has five years and can do what he wants to do to nail down that base in florida. it is fascinating, though, again, cory gardner and these others who are going to be facing political judgment this fall and likely -- more likely than not going to have these words used against them in a way that might help in a primary but will be pretty devastating in a swing state election. andrea mitchell, let's move from

impeachment to the middle east plan that the white house put out yesterday. it is a plan that i think it's fair to say knowing the big brzezinski who worked, of course, with president carter to put through the peace accords in '79 would be stunned by how one-sided this plan appears to be. in fact, the only thing, andrea, that i got, but please tell me if i'm wrong because you obviously know so much more about this than any of us, the only thing that seemed to come out of yesterday's press conference was a united states president nodding to a prime minister from israel that, hey, if you want to go ahead and suck up one-third of palestinian land that you've coveted since 1967, go ahead, we won't stop you. >> absolutely right. in fact, it's the end of the camp david accords and the end

of the oslo agreements going back decades because this is a whole new approach. now, i'm not saying that it wouldn't work under some theoretical assumption, but this is basically a real elect bibi, reelect donald trump play. it's not a peace plan, it's a political plan, it's a campaign document because basically what it says is bibi netanyahu has tried twice and failed twice in the last year alone, winning elections but in a tie where he was unable to create a government, was indicted now and is facing indictment and potential trial under indictment and you have a president under impeachment and we don't know the outcome of that. we know basically acquittal, but what is the political outcome. here they've got this peace, quote, plan which will appeal domestically in the u.s. to christian evangelicals, to conservative jewish donors, the sheldon adelson who is a major figure in israel as a publisher of a major newspaper there, but also obviously here in the states a huge donor and what

does it do? it takes about 30% more of the land, jewish settlements become incorporated nice real, the so-called palestinian state that they might get four years from now if they renounce violence and recognize israel has very little contiguous land so it's sort of speckled land masses but not contiguous. it's a gerrymandered plan, tunnels would connect west bank and the west bank is completely divided up, the jordan valley becomes israeli, there's nothing in it for the palestinians. the bet was with some arab support and with the palestinians so diminished in power they've lost all u.s. funding to palestinian refugees, they have lost their d.c. office, there hasn't been a meeting in years, there's no recognition at all of palestinian rights from this administration, they weren't participating, they were shut out of this.

so they would be, you know, overwhelmed. well, guess what happened, jordan rejected it outright, egypt and saudi arabia, jared kushner's big partners, mbs and all put out statements saying that palestinians have to negotiate, they have to be included. so they did not get the arab buy-in that they wanted and it's a nonstarter. >> yeah, and, mike barnicle, this would be the equivalent of the missouri moment for the japanese, signing a surrender document to mckarter after world war ii. this is a document that declares the israelis triumphant, declares the palestinians losers in this long running sort of grinding battle between the two. it is so one-sided that the only

hopes for this plan working out would be for the arab world to be so exhausted by the palestinian cause that they tell the white house, okay, do what you want to do, we won't get in the way, but that doesn't appear to be happening at least not yet. >> no, joe, from reading about it and from listening to people who know a lot more about it than we do like andrea, it's clear that yesterday's announcement was not a diplomatic announcement, it was a political campaign stop for two guys who are in the room, the president of the united states and bibi netanyahu. andrea, what happens going forward? the palestinians have four years to either be talked to or to participate in this or buy into part of it. what happens? what's the next step? >> they have not had strong leadership, either. they've been at fault and didn't have real diplomatic relations even under john kerry and obama because of all of the oppositions in the region, but right now it's hopeless for them

and i'm not sure if anything can happen but i think king abdullah in jordan is standing strong and without king abdullah the jordanian ambassador didn't even show up at this and they were all invited. so the signals from the sunni arab world is that despite the fact that the white house thought their joint opposition to iran would get the arab world to join in, you had buy-in a little bit from bahrain and oman but not from the major players. >> you know, jonathan lemire, we know that for a very long time jared kushner has been working on this and his theory of the case has always been to do it differently from past administrations. the palestinians who have at times been their own worst enemies, not only in negotiations but also in moving towards peace. jared concluded that they would exclude the palestinians and

they would work with america's sunni arab neighbors who had grown tired of bad governance by palestinian leaders and obs nance on certain points. jared thought that he could work with sunni arab states and actually strike different deals with them, thereby, i guess you could say, forcing the palestinians to come to the table and agree to a treaty that may not be in their best long-term interest, but, again, if you look at what we're hearing from arab nations other than right now the uae, there doesn't seem to be buy-in as andrea said from jordan, from egypt, from saudi arabia. what can you tell us? >> that's right. first of all, joe, the car commercial is great with the cameo from the boston lorts legend at the end which we won't spoil here. >> oh, yeah.

>> one of the president's inaugural balls he talked about how the middle east peace plan would be jared kushner's task and it would be so simple and kushner was the person who would get this done even though for decades no american president has been able to do so. the peace plan the unveiling was delayed and delayed further to the point where it became a running joke when is jared going to finally reveal this. we saw it yesterday and it doesn't seem like it's going to be going anywhere at all. the theory of the case is exactly right, the decision they made was to exclude palestinians from the process entirely, forcing them to sort of accept the terms dig at that timed to them. it's a very, very pro-israel document and to echo andrea's very sharp analysis here, it is as much of a peace plan, it's even more so a campaign plan for first of all trying to shore up prime minister benjamin netanyahu in israel but also president trump who gets to point to it as a foreign policy

if not accomplishment but some sort of marker that he like other presidents has unveiled a middle east peace plan but it's also about shoring up support at home from some of his most important pieces of his base, conservative american jews but also particularly evangelicals, the christian community who is pro israel who applauded when trump moved the american embassy to jerusalem, that he is taking time over and over has taken care to try to shore up the support there and, in fact, his very first campaign event of 2020 was not meant as a battle ground rally but rather it was an event back in miami at the first couple days of the month to an evangelical group in the wake of that damaging op-ed from in christianity today. this is something where he is really eyeing the political benefits of this plan even if it actually changes nothing in the region itself. >> yeah, you know, willie, if jared kushner wants to have the success that he had in mortgage of marshaling through the new nafta, in this arena i think

they're going to have to go back to the drawing board and come up with a plan that more arab states can buy into, or else it will be nothing more -- seen as nothing more than just a political excuse for netanyahu to strengthen his hold over the palestinian territories and also his hold over the israeli electorate. it also, of course, there was another winner in washington yesterday other than netanyahu and that was mike pompeo who the president patted on the back for insulting a reporter. >> what a moment, the president of the united states sitting next to the prime minister of israel announcing a peace plan in the middle east and taking a moment to praise secretary of state mike pompeo who, of course, last week after an interview with an npr reporter brought the reporter into his office, berated her according to the reporter, using expletives for asking about ukraine, dare she ask about ukraine and pulling out a map and saying point to ukraine.

people don't even know where ukraine is. she quickly did point to ukraine, she is a respected reporter. here is what president trump said about that yesterday. >> great secretary of state mike pompeo. that was very impressive, mike. that reporter couldn't have done too good a job on you yesterday. i think you did a good job on her, actually. that's good. thank you, mike. >> you did a good job on her. >> wow. >> andrea mitchell, you have obviously covered state departments for many years, you have butted heads with officials around the world. what's your reaction first to what mike pompeo did and then denying what they did and then the emails that came out that proved that she had clearance to ask about ukraine, she didn't need clearance but they did agree to it. what's your reaction to that and to the president giving him that pat on the back yesterday? >> with the, the state department correspondents association, i am a proud member

of, has been dismayed and outraged and issued a statement about it because there are a number of ramifications for this. first of all, the host and reporter very esteemed foreign policy expert mary louise kelly from npr. she has emails to show that she did in her previous negotiations say she was not just going to ask about iran, she had just interviewed zarif three weeks ago and had been coming from the region and had studied european history at oxford or cambridge, i'm not sure which, but this is a real expert and acknowledged veteran and she had said she was going to ask about ukraine. that was clearly in the emails in the kind of negotiations before the interview. so not only did she devote most of the interview to iran and a series of very smart questions about iran, but then asked repeatedly about the fact that he has not defended marie yovanovitch on ukraine, his

ambassador, which is an issue among the foreign service. it is a very big morale problem in the state department. she asked and he said i defend all of my people. she asked repeated will i give me an example where you defended ambassador yovanovitch and he could not answer that. and he then abruptly ended the interview. then she was called without her tape recorder into his private office and f bombs were exploding according to her account and then this unmarked map and she was told to pick out ukraine and clearly did. i mean, she has lived in europe and he then suggested without explicitly saying so in an official statement from his office he said that she ought to know where bangladesh is. southeast asia. >> whatever that means. >> any any case the ramifications for the president of the united states to praise his secretary for acting this way, for being so bullying and he has had a reputation for

bullying and it is hardly diplomatic, and then today at 6:00 this morning his plane took off for ukraine, finally this long awaited much delayed, repeatedly delayed trip to ukraine to meet with zelensky without the npr pool reporter, a different pool reporter from npr. he excluded a veteran, one of my veteran colleagues who has represented the state department for years and she was kicked off this trip in the last 48 hours because she comes from npr as punishment. there is a lot of outrage, the aclu and others, because the state department is supposed to represent freedom of the press around the world and that is not the case. >> so what does the state department say? you know people, you are as wired as anybody on the planet into the state department. what's their reaction to this? i mean, their first reaction was to lie that they had agreed that the reporter would not ask about ukraine, that wasn't true plainly based on the emails. >> right. >> what do they say now about kicking a reporter off the plane as punishment?

>> there is so much anger about this, the michelle is michelle kettle man, everyone who listens to npr knows she has traveled around the world for 20 years with secretaries of state. i have never seen anything quite like that. i've been there since warren christopher in 1994 and covered republican and democratic secretaries and i have to tell you over the weekend because they were all in town for the alfalfa club i saw and spoke to a number of former secretaries, republicans, who are really appalled at this. so whatever virtues mike pompeo might have, his proximity to the president, the fact that he is trying to restaff the state department, this is a real -- former cia director, first in his class at west point, a lot of pluses, but this is inexplicable. >> i think the key thing, though, in one sense it really isn't inexplicable from trump's perspective because what pompeo did was the trumpian thing to

do. as we saw, you know, the platitudes and attaboy from the president after the fact. and that is at the end of the day it is not about our relationships with the rest of the world, it's about our relationship with donald trump. >> you please the boss. >> you please the boss, do you that, you get the attaboy, you get the shout out at the presser and all is good. if that had turned out differently it would have been a very different outcome for mike pompeo relative to this president. >> let me ask you, bob costa, about mike pompeo. give us some background on the guy. i talked to him during the transition, talked to him actually before he went to talk to donald trump about possibly working in the administration and my read on pompeo and what i had been told by other people who worked with him in congress was that he was independent-minded. that the whip operation wouldn't go to him because the guy would

vote his mind and couldn't be pushed around by party leaders. i actually saw that as a good sign, i also saw his background as a good sign, sort of his pedigree from west point and harvard, thinking that this guy would stand on his own two feet and yet many people, including myself, think the guy has shamed himself time and time again, he is a sycophant and he's become more trumpian. trump has influenced him instead of west point reachiteaching influencing donald trump. what can you tell us politically, what are the political motivations of mike pompeo? why do we see this aberrant behavior coming from him time and time again? >> i covered secretary of state pompeo when he was a member of the house of representatives and it's clear when you talk to house republicans who know him well that they say, yes,

president trump has brought him in, but secretary pompeo has not necessarily changed. sometimes you hear cabinet officials have totally changed their personalities when they enter this administration. secretary pompeo you don't hear that. he has always been self-assured to say the least and he is someone who came into this administration looking to build an enormous footprint of power. he's not just secretary of state, he is that in name, but he runs all american foreign policy along with president trump. he's more powerful than the secretary of defense in the eyes of most officials inside of this white house and other top cabinet members. and he is someone who has always seen his view of the world and his way of operating as the way and if you are in his way he will knock you down and he had that reputation in the house where he wasn't going to just go along with leadership to be a good team player, he was always looking ahead to something bigger, whether it was the white house or foggy bottom. >> okay. well, we will see how that turns out for him.

thank you so much, bob costa. willie geist now to the most important part of not only this segment but the entire show, let's first show the hyundai ad. roll it. >> look at this guy. >> hey, rachel, how are you. >> hey, good, how are. >> you he's not getting that car in there. >> no, sir. >> look at these two troublemaker sneers hey, johnny, how are you. >> lincoln car, is that new? >> it's a so he nat at that, let me back it. >> you're not fitting your car in there. >> top being a smarty pants. >> look whose got smart park. >> hit the clicker, par parks it set of. >> how about do remember chester. >> parked it. >> the garden. >> parked it. >> saugus. >> the harbor. >> are you kidding me, i parked it and unmarked it. >> you unmarked it. >> game changer. >> that so he nat at that ain't got no driver. >> that's all right he's got smart park. >> you can't park there. >> he's got smart park.

>> whoa. >> wicked smart. >> this is a ghost car. >> a better way to park, only available on the all new so he nat at that with remote smashing parkness. >> sorry about that your bigness. >> did you guys know he lived there? >> i had no idea. >> how smarty pants. how great was that ad. >> i have to go get a hyundai so he nat at that based on that alone. >> you have three there, all from the boston area. john krasinski from newton, rachel dratch from lexington and chris evans from sudden berry. >> overemphasis on park. >> they went too deep. >> not kasie aflac, but they're close. >> let's have kasie. >> your hyundai, the first place you have to go in boston is dunkin' know nuts. >> deck the halls with bowls of doughnuts. >> all i want for christmas is a

dunkin' peppermint dunkin' chino. >> i can order and pay on my smartphone so my coffee is waiting for me when i walk in. >> i [ bleep ] love dunkin'. what are you talk being? >> where else can i get breakfast and the perfect stocking stuffer. >> real customers, kid, that's me i'm like the mayor of dunkin'. this is the face of dunning inn doughnuts. >> you can't smoke in here. >> i'm not smoking in here. >> it's coming in from the crack of the window. >> i have an extra large, take a big dump, that's kind of the routine. >> this do you wish bag will move when i'm ready. >> when dunkin' rewards app there's even more reason to celebrate the season. >> yo, free coffee, i got the big one. i got a free coffee right there. >> a little show and tell dunkin' nuts. show that. >> 'tis the season for holiday drinks -- >> never mind that. hey, interview my buddy dooey for the movie. tell them your favorite

doughnut. >> i don't want to be in here. >> tell them how you like the vanilla nut taps. >> what? >> the vanilla nut taps. >> cut your nails for god's sake. >> oh, yeah, go outside. >> best part of my day is when i'm at dunkin'. do you think that's sad? >> yes, very. >> real customers now the holidays run on dunkin'. >> go back to starbucks. >> and that's the way it is. >> willie, how many times have you said that to me, cut your nails for god's sake. it's a classic. >> affleck's finest work for my money. >> no doubt about it. we will be right back with more hard hitting news on "morning joe." joe. (whistling)

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let's bring in editor at large he is ra klein. he is host of the aptly named podcast the esra klein show and author of the new book "why we're polarized." ezra, thank you for being with us, we greatly appreciate it. i want to start before we talk about your book i want to start with a jonathan chate column i read and was actually surprised by a lot of what i read in there about bernie sanders and just get your reaction. we haven't talked about it yet this morning. jonathan said this about bernie, saying democrats would be crazy to pick him because of policy reasons, but he goes compounding

those vulnerabilities is a long history of radical association. sanders campaigned for the socialist workers party and praised communist regimes. vintage video of bernie palg around with soviet communists will make for an almost insultingly easy way for republicans to communicate the idea that his plans to expand the government are radical. so much -- and, jonathan chates' column caught me off guard. >> i read john's column. one place where i half agree and half disagree. john's argument is that sanders has a high electability down side, it is possible that when republicans put $5 billion into defining him as a dangerous socialist it will work, he will lose 4 points in the polls ver just a generic democrat. i think the other side is it is possible he has a high electoral upside, he where brings in

voters who don't normally vote. there was this controversy over joe rogan endorsing him. people who are not normally democrats. i like bernie sanders because he doesn't seem to like democrats. you can see that running in both directions. after the past couple years i have become a little more jaundiced about people's predictions about electability. the other thing -- >> yeah. >> we all have. >> i think that there is a democratic belief that the way he will get attacked is a lot of complicated ads about things he did in the '70s, like the international social workers world party or whatever. that's very hard to explain in an ad. i think the attack on bernie sanders is just going to be billions of dollars about tax increases. it's going to be hard for him to deny. the question of how you rate bernie sanders electability is how effective you think a huge ad campaign about 90 -- however many trillion dollars of tax increases are embedded in his

agenda will be and i've heard different arguments about that. >> he also said he would be the most polarizing figure to win a party's nomination. idealogically at least since barry goldwater in 1964. perhaps that's -- >> i think that's wrong. >> other than maybe donald trump. but even if it were correct it seems to me your argument would suggest that in the polarized political world that we live in where there really isn't sort of this -- this unity, this wide middle that many american voters share, a polarized candidate as donald trump proved four years ago actually may not be a political kiss of death. >> and certainly can win. the one place i disagree with john on that in terms of whether or not he would be the most polarizing question is it happens on a lot of dim mentions, there's polarization of ideology and i think chate is right having a democratic socialist versus donald trump

would be an idealogically polarized election. there are identity dimensions. bernie sanders is an older white man, he is able to make his ideology seem a little bit more balanced by having some, i guess, best way to put it is cultural markers that make him seem moderate in the code of american politics and that code we can talk about why it exists the way it does. that's sort of always been the bernie sanders play, by being outside the party system, by having this common sense cranky demeanor, seems like your uncle if you are a white guy from brooklyn that it helps him balance out the ideological side of it. >> ezra, let's talk about the book "why we're polarized." obviously a huge question. but first let's talk about how polarized we actually are because i think it's tempting for a lot of people to sit here every day and watch what's happening and say we are more polarized than we have ever been which cuts the civil war and

1968 into an interesting context. who you polarized are we actually now. >> less than the civil war but 1968 is the good note of comparison it helps us get a better definition of polarization. polarization is not bitter, it's not anger, it's not even always a bad thing. ape 68 the civil rights movement, women's rights movement, the anti-car movement, kids getting killed at kent state, these are not things that are heavily polarized by party. anti-war sentiment is not polarized by party. the civil rights act passes with more republicans voting for it than democrats. what happens after the '60s is the can you please tour point, all these things begin polarizing about i party on top of their divisions in life. democratic party becomes more diverse, republican party is heavily christian, democratic party becomes liberal, republican party becomes conservative. you have a layering of the disagreements in american life

on top of political party which can increase their combustibility but because of the way our political system works you get a high level of bipartisan consensus it makes it very hard to govern in the american context. >> are we as polarized as it feels like we are? >> i think so. depends on how you feel on it. >> i think most people feel polari polarized, there are two teams fighting in this country. >> and there fundamentally are. one of the things about polarization you have way less cross ticket voting, states are reliable in who they vote for. over and over again it's easy for people to make a choice and fewer undecided voters. think about bill clinton versus george h.w. bush, that was a much harder election to know which side of it you might be on than donald trump versus, say, bernie sanders. you don't need to know a lot about politics to know which of those two people you agree with. >> ezra, stay with us for a minute. we want to take a pause in

talking about your book and we will get back to it, but right now we have a member of the senate foreign relations committee and also the judiciary committees, democratic senator chris coons of delaware, he is backing joe biden for president because of the committees that you were on we obviously want to talk to you about impeachment and also the middle east peace process. let's talk first about impeachment. and talk about the possibility of additional witnesses. are there still talks going on between republicans and democrats about the idea of trading witnesses? is there a possibility of democrats getting a few and republicans getting a few as lindsey graham suggested yesterday? >> joe, there are some conversations going on because pressure continues to mount on the senate and on my republican colleagues in particular to allow additional witnesses. i heard a lot of concern from colleagues about how long this might take because president trump's lawyers are threatening

to go to court. i will remind you they never actually asserted executive privilege in any of this process so far and since the constitution gives to the senate uniquely the power to try and an impeachment i think there are a few critical cases and witnesses here such as john bolton where i think we could make an argument that the president has waived privilege, that frankly you can't use executive privilege to conceal misconduct and given his current status and willingness to testify that we could resolve whether or not he can come in as a witness very quickly. there's also documents and other potential witnesses that aren't being talked as much about publicly but that i think are directly relevant. the two aides, a senior individual at omb, an aide to mick mulvaney who actually carried out the directive to put a hold on ukrainian aid. the notes from former ambassador taylor who took copious notes of his conversations. these documents, emails, notes,

will either confirm or not confirm the detailed case that was laid out by the house managers. that's the sort of evidence and witnesses we should be finding a bipartisan resolution to, get them in quickly, review them and consider them and reach a conclusion. >> senator, andrea mitchell here. i wanted to ask you about the middle east peace plan which some see as a political reelection plan for netanyahu and president trump. given the fact just to play devil's advocate that nothing has worked for decades, is there a play here or is it impossible to do something by excluding the palestinians from the equation? >> look, andrea, it's very difficult to imagine a path towards a two-state solution where the representatives of the hoped for new state aren't even at the table and have immediately denounced the plan. president trump as you know ran as an unconventional candidate and when he decided to do something no previous president has done, to go meet with kim jong-un the dictator of north

korea, i was willing to say, let's see if this works. ultimately president trump's efforts to denuclearization the korean peninsula have failed and his handshake photo op summits with kim jong-un haven't produced significant progress. my concern here in the middle east is the same, that this is more of a photo op and a press announcement than it is a credible balanced plan that both parties really could embrace. i continue to support a two-state solution and i think all of us should be supporting robust diplomatic efforts to try to get the palestinians to the table and real negotiations under way. >> senator, it's jonathan lemire. i want to read to you something first, the president just in the last few minutes tweeted about john bolton, the possibility of him being a witness he says he questions his judgment, many more mistakes in judgment, i fired him because if i listened to him we would, quote, be in world war 6 by now so we would have skipped a couple or perhaps a constant tate of war. i want to get your first reeks

to that, what the president is saying about bolton and his character. the debate on witnesses as it continues we're moving into another phase of the impeachment trial about questions. could you preview what that will be like and what are you hoping to learn? >> today we will spend eight hours asking questions likely alternating between democrats and republicans and where we will hopefully get answers, fairly concise answers from both the house managers and the president's advocates. i think this is a critical opportunity for the american people to hear sort of refining questions that try to sharpen some of the points the house managers made or try to give the president some opportunity to make a real argument through his advocates. so i think today and tomorrow which is the questioning period is critical to this impeachment trial. >> all right. thank you so much, senator chris coons. we greatly appreciate it. willie geist, thank god that donald trump helped us avoid

world war 6. world war 5 was enough with all the rationing of margarine and the number of hours or children could play fortnite. i don't think we could have handled yet another world war. ? why don't we go back to the book. by the way, jonathan lemire, help us out here. why does a president -- like world war 6, explain -- explain it to us. what exactly -- >> good luck, jonathan. >> -- were world wars 5, 4 and 3? i can't go back to the book until we clear this up. >> asking me to interpret what the president meant is always a tough proposition. i think he's trying to suggest if he had kept john bolton on and, remember, bolton was only dismissed a few months ago. >> right. >> we would have had four more world wars since then. this would have been a constant state of frequent and accelerated conflict so i guess the president is suggesting that we should be grateful for his judgment in dismissing john bolton from his post as national security adviser.

>> all right. deciphering of donald trump's tweets as always, willie, brought to you by hyundai. >> the hyundai so he nat at that. >> exactly, the hyundai so he nat at that. mike, do you have a question for ezra? >> 1968 was raised in talking about polarization, there was polarization in 1968, a particularly epically violent year. do you think it's different today in the sense that what exists today in terms of polarization did not really exist in 1968? i'm talking about the cultural/gio graphic aspect of polarization. that today it's possible to live 35 to 40 miles outside cambridge, massachusetts, outside, san francisco, california, outside washington, d.c., all tech-heavy places and feel completely excluded from the now of it. >> yeah, there's been a huge rise in geographic polarization as you were saying. one thing is that for much of the 20th century where you lived

how dense that place was it didn't do almost anything to predict who you voted for. at this point there is not a city, this number is from memory, theres not a city denser than 900 keep per square mile that votes republican in the country. as you go up the density scale things become much lower, down become more redder. there is this way in which we are much better at sorting, living among people we think like for a bunch of reasons. theres a number that i always think about after the 2018 election democrats represented i think it's 78% of all whole foods locations but only 27% of all cracker barrel locations. so there's a lot mapped on to where we live. some of those things are politics, but some of them are other things. not like whole foods is deciding where to go based on how you vote. >> how then does a candidate like donald trump now president trump take advantage of this

polarization? is it the combination of cultural and political confluences that sort of drive this? and what does that say about what we should expect going into this fall's election regardless of who is on the democratic side? you know, you are going to have a different dynamic whether it's elizabeth warren and sanders versus donald trump and -- i mean biden or buttigieg. how does that figure into this whole idea of polarization? >> yeah, a key thing that has happened over the last 30, 40, 50 years is you have this mapping of different sort of demographic groups on to the parties. one of the things donald trump understood about that and he understood it inside the obama era, remember, he was on fox news promoting birther conspiracy theories. he understood that one of the key axios of conflict is about how you felt about an america that was getting browner, becoming more heavily foreign born. donald trump came into the republican party and into the republican primary at a time when republicans said they were going to start moderating on some of these issues and he says absolutely not. that we what we really want to

do is accelerate the level of conflict around them and that didn't get him a majority but it got him an intense enough part of the minority that it was able to bring him to power. the way he uses it is very adroitly is he has a have had s our key points of cultural conflicts and recognizes if he can roll grenades into them, he can control the conversation and deprive politicians of oxygen and set the terms of the debate in trying to pit his side against the other side. >> how does that end? we stay polarized and live in this trump yan world of stupidi stupidity when it comes to how we communicate? >> and doesn't social media, cable news and everything we all do and the bifurcations of that, but social media and the data mining whether it's coming from a campaign, domestically or from

a foreign intervention in creating more polarization and exploiting the polarization that exists? >> social media is an accelerant. one thing the runup to -- of polarization starts before social media. there is a fair amount of the fox news effect and a lot of the people most polarized are older americans. they're not the ones most on social media. but you can't be on social media for five minutes and not see it's polarizing and what it demands of people. constructing our political participation with anything that creates a positive or negative emotion is going to create a political culture bias toward the loudest most polarizing voices. you can't escape that. >> no doubt about it. the book is "why we're polarized". thank you so much. and willie, following up on on dr andrea's point, the rise of talk

radio as a major force in the early 19 90s which was followed by the rise of cable news channels that were more ideological followed by the rise of websites that were more ideological, followed by the rise of social media, much more ideological. suddenly it became a cottage industry to pick out supporters on the far left, supporters on the far right, supporters that you could microtarget. and still be very successful. there's no doubt andrea's onto an important point. you can go back to starting in the early 1990s this hyperpartisan ship. so much of it has to do with targeted media whether it's on the radio or cable news or the internet. >> and now even with platforms that aren't expressley partisan,

facebook can provide a platform for someone to push a message or push a president into the white house. this is a really important book at an point time. it explains it well. thank you for being here. still ahead on "morning joe," we'll talk to a democratic senator. when joe manchin joins our conversation. he and at least two other democrats are considering a vote to acquit president trump in the impeachment trial. we'll ask him about that when we come back. come back. searching for a way to help stop your cold sore?

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what would you do if you got to sit where i'm sitting? >> i'd tackle key issues like climate change and gun safety and income inequality. which would mean rising taxes on billionaires. >> wait. i'm going to have to pay more in

taxes? >> no. i said billionaires. >> the comedy stylings of mike moombe bloomberg. the question and answer phase of the impeachment trial is underway today. we'll talk to senator joe manchin and hakeem jeffries. "morning joe" is back in two minutes. back in two minutes. ♪ don't get mad, put those years to work with e*trade. the best of pressure cooking and air frying now in one pot, and with tendercrisp technology,

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president on the eve of an election with no basis and in vit vital of the constitution. >> so the senators and all of us from now heard from the prosecution and the defense. but the question hanging over the senate chamber over mitch mcconnell's office and all of washington is are we going to get to hear from the witnesses who can actually give us firsthand accounts of what happened. welcome to "morning joe." we have mike barnicle, political analyst and former chairman of the republican national committee, michael steele, white house reporter for the associated press, jonathan lamere, and heidi przybyla. mika will be with us tomorrow. jonathan, i want to go to you first. you were hanging out by the jersey shore, and a trump rally

broke out, and you have a t shirt to prove it. getting wild in wildwood. you were seen walking into 30 rock with that t shirt this morning. what happened last night at the jersey shore? >> you could see that i've really done a lot of work on my tan, and in the wildwood crowd there was a lot of discussion about the timeshare barnicle is eyeing for the summer. people are ready for you there. i mean, i know there's a couple places on the water he's no longer allowed to enter. last night the president had a rally in deep blue new jersey. it was a thank you, if you will, for jeff drew, the democratic congressman you recall who switched parties at the end of last year. this is his district. it's part of that agreement. the president said he'd be happy to come to new jersey and hold a rally. it was a big crowd.

a they were fired up. the president for his part actually sort of remained on message and disciplined. we're grading on a curve for donald trump when it comes to rallies, but he spent most of the time touting his accomplishments. certainly and stayed away from some of the controversies swirling around his white house. he did talk about the impeachment trial some. but he made no mention of john bolton. no discussion of a wish for witnesses or a hope they don't appear and certainly that was what his white house wants. they don't want to hear from the foreign national security adviser or from some other administration officials who could further link the president to what happened in the ukraine, but that is, as you said, the question hovering over everything is whether or not senators and just as importantly the american public will hear from those witnesses. the president has privately said he does not want that to happen. he does not want john bolton to

testify in part because he claims that bolton is now just a disgruntled former employee and can't be trusted. >> yeah. how interesting to see the image of the president of the united states embracing and hugging a former congressman who spent the first two or three years absolutely trashing him before having a last-minute conversion to the republican party. but, you know, donald trump is comfortable around democrats and democratic congressmen, hugging them. i mean, gave money to hillary clinton eight separate times. gave money to anthony weiner. helped on his campaign. helped on elliot spitzer's campaign. it's what he does. it's what he does. so this is predictable. what's not predictable, willie, is that we actually come to a juncture in senate or house

proceedings, really anything on capitol hill, where you have a question mark hanging over what's going to happen next. that's exactly what we're hearing now with mitch mcconnell suggesting he doesn't have the votes. i'm skeptical that he doesn't have the votes. i think at the end of the day, mitch will probably try to figure out how he gets it done. maybe he'll stop speaking in russian to the caucus and start talking in english again. the king's english, but at the same time you do wonder somebody like mitt romney gets maybe susan collins, maybe lisa murkowski, maybe one other, and suddenly there's a possibility that we hear john bolton's testimony. a man who himself now minds himself in the middle of an ied lonl cal war, and one senator, "the new york times" reporting who called him one of his

closest friends anywhere. >> yes. >> one of his closest friends. he's now saying he's just got a grudge. that's why they say, willie, in washington if you want a friend, buy a dog. >> yeah. that was just a couple weeks ago, by the way. it was one of his closest friends and now not so much. as a guy from new jersey i love leading the show with the jersey shore and staying away from the shook can i references. we appreciate that. let's talk about the scramble on friday about whether to subpoena witnesses. a republican aid tells nbc news, mitch mcconnell told members in a closed door meeting yesterday he had not yet secured the 51 votes needed to block witness testimony, but that the situation is fluid. democrats need four republicans to break ranks and last night senator chuck schumer said he believes 10 to 12 republicans are at least open to voting for witnesses. right now, though, we count only

three. >> how confident are you that there are at least three other republican senators who would support hearing from witnesss? >> i can't begin to predict what other senators are going to do. i think each individual is going to make their own decision. i don't think they're all settled as a group or as to individuals, but i'd like to hear from john bolton and i think the idea that's been express the in the media about having each side be able to choose a witness or maybe more than one witness on a paired basis has some merit. >> it is very likely that i'm going to conclude that yes, we do need to hear from witnesses. i, for one, believe that there's some gaps, some ambiguities that need to be cleared up, and more information tends to be helpful when you're making such a weighty decision. >> another key republican, senator lisa murkowski said, quote, mr. bolton probably would

have some things that would be helpful for us. sources telling the wall street journal the white house is concerned that senators pat toomey of pennsylvania and rob portman might also vote for witnesses. cory gardener refused to comment saying it would violate his vote of impartiality. thom tillis said bolton's book has not affected his decision. he said, quote, i don't think we need witnesses. and then here's the latest from senator lindsey graham. >> if people want witnesses, we're going to get a lot of witnesses. this idea of calling one and one makes zero sense. if we're going to open this up to additional inquiry, we're going to go down the road was it legitimate for the president to believe there was corruption on the part of the bidens in the ukraine, we'll explore that and whether the dnc may have been working with ukraine.

>> what do the american people think of this. 75% said witnesses should be able to testify in the president's impeachment trial. broken down by party, that includes 49 % of republicans, 75% of independents, and 95% of democrats. meanwhile, 54% of americans in this poll agreed president trump abused his power regarding his actions in ukraine, and 52% say trump obstructed congress into the investigation into the actions. mitt romney, susan collins, perhaps murkowski on board for the idea of witnesses. he mar alexander, pat toomey, raun johnson the republican from wisconsin said yes, john bolton should tell his story in a media interview but not as a witness in our trial. >> well, of course that makes absolutely no sense, but that's what we've come to expect from

senator ron johnson. hi hei heidi, you have 75% of american saying we need to hear more witnesses including 49% of republicans, a majority, in another poll saying donald trump abused the power of his office. a majority saying donald trump obstructed the investigation into his own impeachment. and yet, we hear lindsey graham, the head of the senate judiciary committee starting to talk about discredited conspiracy theories about ukraine. i find this interesting. because yesterday you couldn't get a straight answer from three congress people who kept going back to crowd strike and a ukrainian conspiracy theory that had been discorreredited months. >> that was stunning.

i had a simple question which was what is the corruption that president trump was policing from may when the department of defense certified those funds and said ukraine met all corruption standards, and september when three days after congress started investigating him, all of a sudden he released the aid. we went around in circles. it was an 11 minute exchange, and frankly, all the other media who were there at that stakeout joined in with me in trying to get an answer. we walked away from it having no other answer other than that the president was tracking burisma and the bidens. and to your previously well placed septembkepticism, mitch mcconnell made the comments he didn't have the votes in a meet where he was arm twisting people to get the votes. after that meeting, we spoke with down of the senators, pat roberts, who said he was, quote,

feeling good about the fact that they probably did have the votes to stop the witnesses. keep in mind some things haven't changed. a lot of those vulnerable republicans like have primary opponents waiting in the wings, waiting to pounce. you really come back to the same small narrow group of three that we're watching. and only two of them have -- look like they're sure on this, collins and romney. murkowski did make the comments saying she was curious about what bolton had to say before the arm twisting meeting. after the arm twisting meeting we chased her down to the bowls of the capitol and down to the train where she refused to comment. it's unclear whether the votes are going to be there for the witnesses and even if they do get the votes for the witnesses, keep in mind it could be a protracted process. there's a lot of ambiguity over what the president will do to try to block john bolton and that in the end, there's almost

no doubt here that the president would be acquitted. >> still ahead on "morning joe," in the words of president trump's former chief of staff, i believe john bolton. retired general john kelly is weighing in on the impeachment trial and the potential for bolton to testify. more on that when "morning joe" comes back. oe" comes back - [spokeswoman] meet the ninja foodi pressure cooker, the best of pressure cooking and air frying now in one pot, and with tendercrisp technology, you can cook foods that are crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside. the ninja foodi pressure cooker, the pressure cooker that crisps.

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former white house chief of staff john kelly says he believes john bolton's reported account of the ukraine saga should be heard. he reported on what bolton reported. that president trump told bolton that releasing aid to ukraine hinged on whether they inve

investigates his political prooifls. kelly asserted this. if john bolton says that in the book, i believe john bolton. adding, quote, every single time i was with him, he always gave the president the unvarnished truth. amid the growing calls for bolton to testify, kelly said this. i think if there are people that could contribute to this either innocence or guilt, i think they should be heard. i think some of the conversations seem to me to be very inappropriate, but i wasn't there. speaking to bolton's character, he added, quote, john's an honest guy. he's a man of integrity and great character. mike barnicle, remember when bolton -- he was right. he believes john bolton should sit as a witness at this trial. >> and who wouldn't go along with what general kelly said yesterday. my problem with general kelly doesn't matter. that's my problem. general kelly, general mattis,

where are they? they know more than anybody that's testified i think probably before either -- before the impeachment committee. where are they? and this whole thing is coming down this week. i think from what you hear, from talking to sitting united states senators to a conclusion that maybe by the end of this week the president of the united states will be acquitted in the united states senate. he'll be acquitted by the end of this week, and joe, you know, romper room is one thing, but there's a separate space called mitch mcconnell's united states senate. i believe from what i've been told that he does have the votes to end this thing, and he wants to end this thing, so we could be going to iowa over the weekend with the president of the united states having been acquitted. >> well, and jonathan, again, the president, if he is acquitted, and if these republicans actually obstruct the investigation and vote against transparency and against

the truth getting out, they're going to be voting against the overwhelming majority of americans, again, in trump world, you never think about tomorrow. in trump world, there never are consequences. in mcsally world, oh, she's already seeing there are consequences. you lose elections. cory gardener? he's seeing that, too. he's getting pounded right now in the polls. he's upside down. his favorables. joni ernst blathered a couple days ago on television, said something really stupid. she used her outside voice when she should have kept her thoughts inside and revealed that everything that she is doing in this political conspiracy with donald trump where she's parroting every word donald trump wants her to say, she's proves that this whole exercise has been to slander joe biden. to attack joe biden.

so i wonder if these senators from con vined themselves that they can shoot somebody on fifth avenue and get away with it. >> it's a long held belief in trump world that the president doesn't try to win eve an news cycle but a news moment. there's never been a long-term strategy. he is president. and to this point we expect him to survive this impeachment trial. there's a limit to the consequences that he has paid. but your point is right. we don't know if that rule is going to apply to other republicans and the polling is trending against them. it seems the public's interest in this trial wanting it to be fair, wanting it to be impartial and wanting there to be websi s witnesses as only grown. i think there are some republicans who are nervous about that. yes, i think mitch mcconnell's play here remains to be seen. i think the key in this meeting was we do not have the votes to block witnesses currently is what he said. it could be a motivational

tactic. there's a lot of optimism in republican leadership that they will have the votes. even if they don't have them in hand now, they will soon. they feel this is going to -- there won't be witnesses. this is going to come to a swift conclusion, whether that's by saturday before iowa or maybe on monday, ahead of the state of the union the next day, and to further on the john kelly point, he was his final conversation with the president while he was departing as chief of staff where he said if you surround yourself with yes men, you will be impeached. that has borne out, and he has surrounded himself with yes men. and the other thing yesterday was the president unveiled his middle east peace plan. it seems like it's relatively dead on arrival in the region. but he praised mike pompeo for his attitude toward the npr reporter when he was belligerent to her and swore at her off air and suggested that was the kind of attitude he wanted. the president has the advisers he wants and compliments them

when they act like he does. hakeem jeffries is standing by. he's serving as one of the impeachment prosecutors in the president's trial. he joins us straight ahead along with senator and impeachment trial juror, joe manchin of west virginia. "morning joe" is coming right back. right back do you have concerns about mild memory loss related to aging? prevagen is the number one pharmacist-recommended memory support brand. you can find it in the vitamin aisle in stores everywhere. prevagen. healthier brain. better life. americans come to lendingtree.com to compare and

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he never said to me i've got a problem with what you're doing in ukraine. never once. never winked. never sent me a little note. that's classic back stabber. so i feel i got a slump character here. >> that's president trump's personal attorney rudy giuliani talking moments ago about john bolton. let's bring in host of casey dc and member of the democratic senator joe manchin of west virginia. joe, how you doing? >> how are y'all in.

>> well, we're always great when you're here. >> i enjoy being with you. >> you know, we talked after sandy hook about gun legislation as far as doing things that 95% of americans wanted with enhanced background checks. how are things moving forward on that front? i know you and senator tombothe working on it. >> working with the white house trying to do everything in a respectful manner. we were having people much further than i was or pat toomey was. he wanted common gun sense. commercial background checks makes sense. we thought we had 90% of the public behind us and we thought we had the white house moving in the right direction. it came off the rails. i hope to get it back on after the trial is over. i can't speak to the specifics if the white house will take it up now. it looks like they're doubling

down on so many things. i think it's the right thing to do. >> i don't get it, joe. you know, we both grew up let's face it, in gun cultures. you in west virginia, me in northwest florida in mississippi, alabama, georgia. and man, all the people that i grew up with, all the nra members that i know, man, all of them who go hunting take their five, six-year-old kids hunting with them when hunting season starting up, every single one of them, again, man, we want background checks in fact let's have more background checks. and they say the same thing. it may be unpopular with some people. some people on the far, far right, but they go i don't need a military weapon to kill a deer. and so -- >> here's the thing. >> that's why they are with the

majority of americans on that, too. >> here's the thing, joe. back in the obama administration him not being a gun advocate because he was not a gun person. he didn't grow up in the culture you and i did. he didn't come across somebody who has the same passions that we have for what we use our guns for, hunting, sports shooting, all the things we enjoy. so they thought well, hey, if you give them that, they'll take more. they can't say that with trump, why they're stone walling now, i have no idea. if you go into a crowd crowd, wherever you are, raise your hands if you own a gun. most everybody in the room will raise their hand. >> yep. >> how many of you had to have a background check? raise your hands if you had a background check. most everybody. don't you think that makes common gun sense, that the person that you don't know that goes to a gun show for what reason, what purpose, what background, don't you think it makes common sense? not too hard.

>> it makes -- it's really not too hard, and let's hope that the president, let's hope members of congress will start listening to 90% of americans and stop listening to three or four lobbyists in washington d.c. who have proven themselves to be extraordinarily corrupt with members' dues, nra member's dues. another issue that the majority of americans agree on, joe, has to do with witnesses in the current impeachment proceedings. 75% of americans in the latest poll say they want witnesses. that's consistent with just about every other poll that we have seen. overwhelming majority of americans say let's -- you know what? we want the facts. let's be transparent and figure out what happened from people like john bolton who were there. >> yeah. well, joe, here's the thing. and i've said this.

i thought both the defense and the prosecution which is the house managers and the president's defense counsel. they have both done admirable jobs. they were well prepared. we listened to it. it gave you a lot of thought back and forth. the accusation came coming back that the house did not do due diligence. one of my questions is going to be if you all have been so eloquent and saying the house did not do and go through the due process of subpoenas and getting witnesses and on and on, even though with don mcgahn and the amount of time, they didn't go through the process, and now the house, the defense is asking us as a senate that we should hurry it up now. don't do it. don't call witnesses. we have an obligation and a responsibility to have a thorough trial. how do you have a trial without witnesses and evidence that would be to the charges that are brought against the president of the united states? and he said that he wanted witnesses, too, to clear his

name. he ought to have the right to have a fair trial in the senate. that's what we're trying to do. >> senator, good to see you. 75% of the country agrees with what you said. they want to see witnesses in the trial. it doesn't mean they want to vote to convict the president, but they want to hear the evidence. i think that's your position. john cornyn talked to bob costa a couple minutes ago and said my sense is we will get to the place where we will not have witnesses. is that your sense too, it will only take four, only four republicans to switch over and vote with democrats to allow witnesses. what's your sense of where the whip count is right now? >> willie, it depends on what part of the day. two days ago the morning that john bolton's transcript came out and then things kind of got a lot of chatter. we hear chatter all the time, the same as you hear chatter, i thought things were moving in the right direction. i thought we had at least three and the possibility of getting two or more. that would have been five or

more. i always felt that was very doable. and i thought we were right on track. i said that makes sense. i don't know how anybody goes home and says i thought i heard enough. wait a minute. the most important thing we've ever done as a public official and joe will tell you this. nothing rises to the level of should we remove a president and nobody wants to be in that position. and let me say this. i cannot believe the hypocrisy, and i mean on both sides, democrats and republicans. you heard the closing arguments from the defense. the closing was showing the clips 20 years ago from the prosecution or from the house managers of what position they took 20 years and where they are today. you heard dershowitz, starr, and schumer and mcconnell. people are confused. did they think the brilliance of our framers over 230 years ago left that much wiggle room in that you could change your position every ten or 20 year?

people are confused. this is tough, but the bottom line is we cannot leave this place and allow our foreign policy to be basically transmitted to our allies by a rogue proxy such as rudy giuliani or anybody else on behalf of the president or on behalf of me as a senator or anybody. we've got to stop some things that are wrong, and we can fix a lot of things out of this process. >> what's your view of the idea that's been floated out there in some circles in the senate of a one for one trade for witnesses. some say it's a sucker's deal. bolton for hunter biden. i think adam schiff this is not a fantasy football draft. we're not going back and forth with witnesses. we want to talk to relevant witnesses. would you be open to a one for one deal? >> let my say i believe -- i've never been on jury duty. never been called in my life on jury duty. all of a sudden i'm sitting in

the most prestigious juror in the world. and on that i said someone's got to be a referee here. there's only one person i definitely think there has to be witnesses. who the witnesses are, i would say had to be pertinent to the charges brought against the president. anybody that has pertinent information has to be considered as a witness. and if it gets out of hand who is calling what, who is playing politics, who is doing it constitutionally, then there has to be -- there's only one john roberts as chief justice. they voted that down. we should vote again if we come to an impasse because they want to play political games and not looking at what's relevant to the case, but willie, i think someone has to ask the question. is this a constitutional trial or a political trial? >> is hunter biden a relevant witness, senator? >> you know, i think so. i really do. i don't have a problem there, because this is why we are where we are. now, i think that he could clear

himself. of what i know and what i've heard, but being afraid to put anybody that might have pertinent information is wrong no matter if you're a democrat or republican, and not go home and say well, i protected one. no. if it's relevant, it should be there. >> kasie hunt has a question for you. >> yeah, i know. kasie. >> i tried to catch you yesterday. >> this is mama kasie. >> it's nice to see you, sir. >> you too. >> i followed up on willie's question. if, in fact, we get to the point where witnesses are being allowed, would you vote to call hunter biden as a witness in. >> if the judge or whoever rules that it's pertinent, absolutely. i want witnesses. i want people to tell me what you know. you're asking me to make the most important decision i've ever made in a critical arena i'm in or as an individual, and i want to hear everything i can. i want to make sure that the decision -- >> has your phone rang jyet?

>> chuck and i have -- >> that's not the line, necessarily. >> i'm sure. you know me. i'm west virginia. i'm joe from west virginia. and chuck's my friend. i get along with everybody. all the republicans. i don't have anybody i don't like. i try to work with all of them, but i've got to go home and look west virginia in the eye and say this is why i did it. if i don't have an answer and i can't explain it, i can't vote for it. and i have no problem at all. >> senator, quickly, are you thinking about splitting these impeachment articles and potentially voting to acquit the president on the obstruction of congress charge? >> i have not made a decision. i take my oath seriously. i have not made a decision yet. i think the questions -- these two days, i have a question. i want to ask somebody have you ever been in a trial when you weren't able to call witnesses? that's one simple question i want to ask. there's pertinent evidence, and

so until i see these two days, eight hours today and tomorrow, i'll be closer to a decision then. >> all right. senator joe manchin from west virginia, thank you so much for being with us. say hi to your brother for us. >> okay. i'll do it. thank you so much. and brother nick. >> brother nick. exactly. all right. thank you so much. let's bring the chairman of the house democratic congress, hakeem jeffries of new york. he's one of the prosecutors trying the impeachment case against president trump. thanks so much for being with us, congressman. i'm curious what your take is on developments over the past 24, 48 hours on information about john bolton that's coming out in his upcoming baing book and als renewed questions about possibly calling him as a witness. where do we stand right now? >> thank you for having me on, joe. we have laid out a devastating

case that president trump corruptly abused his power by pressuring a foreign government to target joe biden, an american citizen, solely for the political gain. the president tried to cheat and solicit foreign interference in the 2020 election. nothing that the defense has articulated over the last few days has contradicted that central allegation in our impeachment case. with respect to john bolton, the question that i think most americans are asking and they have an answer which is that if you're going to have a fair trial, and the senators all took an oath of impartiality to weigh all the evidence and then make the best decision possible, then we need relevant witnesses. and who is more relevant in this particular instance than john bolton who had a direct conversation with president trump about president trump's desire to exchange phony political investigations into

his rival for the release of 391 million in military aid. >> congressman, it's willie geist. as we talk about relevant witnesses, i think you were probably listening along. your reaction to joe manchin saying hunter biden is a relevant witness. do you see him that way? >> well, it's my view that hunter biden is not a relevant witness, but i have great respect for joe manchin and all the senators on both sides of the aisle. ultimately, they will make this decision in terms of the witnesses that should be called although as senator manchin indicated, i believe john roberts should be the ultimate arbiter and referee in terms of deciding relevant. at the heart of the case, again, relates to why did donald trump withhold the military aid? why did he withhold the white house meeting that president zelensky sought?

we believe it was to put the pressure on a vulnerable ukraine in order to target a political rival and solicit foreign interference. if the defense disagrees with that central proposition, then the witnesses who should be called should be able to speak to that particular issue. hunter biden cannot. >> so congressman, would you be surprised, not disappointed, not angry. would you be surprised if by the end of this weekend or monday at the latest that mitch mcconnell who runs and dominates the united states senate has completed this bag job that there are no witnesses, and that there's a vote for acquittal of the president of the united states that passes by monday noon? >> well, i can say i would be disappointed and i think the majority of the american people who want to see witnesses and want us to do everything possible to arrive at the truth would be disappointed as well,

because what president trump has done here in our sincere belief is to try and cheat in the 2020 election. then he got caught. and then president trump worked hard to cover it up. >> but would you be surprised? >> well, i'm not going to characterize the behavior of any other senators on both sides of the aisle at this particular point, because they are sitting as a trial court, and i think that would be inappropriate, but i would be very disappointed. >> congressman, it's jonathan lamire, the impeachment trial moves into a new phase, and it's the question session. walk us through how this is going to work, and what sort of points you'll try to get across today. >> well, it's our understanding that there will be up to eight hours of questions evenly divided between both the senators on the republican side

and republicans on the democratic side. all questions will go through the chief justice. it will give us an opportunity as house managers to rebut some of the falsehoods articulated by the defense and to answer any of the precise questions the senators may have about the case that we presented. one of the things that i think needs to be elevated as it relates to july 25th phone call, for instance is if the president's defenders think it was perfect, why was rudy giuliani mentioned? not once, not twice, but three times. and president trump directed president zelensky to follow up with him as part of the shakedown scheme. we haven't heard a real answer about that. that's one of the questions that i expect to be asked as well as some of the other holes that can be poked into the defense that was articulated over the last few days. >> congressman, michael steele here. you created an iconic moment in

your quoting of biggie when you said if you know, if you don't know now, you know. and what struck me about that moment was not so much your conversation in that chamber, but a communication to the broader audience, the american people. what's your assessment having put on your trial and having made the case that the american people get what the house managers have been trying to tell them, and do they now know in your estimation what they should know as we go into this last phase of the trial? >> michael, i appreciate that question. i think that what the american people do know is that in america no one is above the law. not even the president of the united states. and the reason why we're at this moment is because of his corrupt abuse of power, and there should be some measure of accountability. and ultimately, the senators

will make that decision, but we also believe that we have an obligation to make the case to the american people that there should be some accountability. you know, that was a spontaneous utterance as it relates to quoting the late, great christopher wallace, but one of the other observations that i think has been particularly important, i mentioned that george washington and his farewell address to the nation said that the constitution is sacredly obligatory upon all. that means everyone. that means the president of the united states of america, and we've done our best to communicate that position to the american people. >> all right. congressman and impeachment manager hakeem jeffries. thank you so much. it's always great having you here. >> thank you. all right, now you heard kasie hunt ask senator joe manchin if his phone was blowing up over his assertion on "morning joe" that he'd be willing to call hunter biden as

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witness, senator? >> you know, i think so. i really do. >> that was just a couple of minutes ago. democratic senator joe manchin of west virginia saying hunter biden is a relevant witness. kasie hunt, let me ask you for more on your reporting because that followed a question i asked him about this idea of a one for one trades that democrats get john bolton as a witness and republicans get hunter biden as a witness. we were talking about joe biden was the senator of a state that went for trump in 2016 by 42 points so he has to walk a line here. >> yes, more than any other state in the country.

that was a great question, willie. and joe manchin has done this before. this does break the dam of messaging on the democratic side that hunter biden or joe biden for that matter shouldn't be part of the conversation. my real question here, actually, is how is this going to impact the republican deliberations here. because you have to understand, i was listening to joe earlier in the program. my sense is he's right and our reporting says he's right that mitch mcconnell has more control over this situation than some of the headlines late last night suggested. yes, he acknowledged that right now there are still enough undecided republicans that they're not sure how this is going to break. but you have to understand that there's more than two factions inside the republican conference, and they're at odds. and one of the factions is conservatives like think about josh holly from missouri, ted cruz has been willing to say this in front of microphones.

people who are staunch and aggressive defenders of the president and who want to call hunter biden, bring him into the conversation. i think what joe manchin said is some juice for them as they try to think about what to do here. it's the opposite of what the republicans that are up in 2020 want to do, because calling hunter biden is a huge risk for them in so many ways. i think at the end of the day, mitch mcconnell cares most about making sure he stays majority leader, not minority leader and he comes down on the side of the 2020ers. let's bring in former senior adviser for the oversight government and reform committee, curt bardella. it's interesting. i look at these republicans who are touted in certain pro-trump magazines as the future of the republican party. this ends all very badly for donald trump, i suspect, and he will even be more shunned by

conservative act vivists than george w. bush is, who was absolutely praised not so long ago. i just wonder, is mitt romney actually the same guy who said in 2012 that russia was america's number one geopolitical foe and was mocked by barack obama. is mitt romney once again ahead of the game by saying, let's have a fair trial? let's have witnesses. let's learn the truth about this drug deal. >> well, i think, joe, that mitt romney probably agrees with a lot of things that you've been saying in that he realizes when we get to the post-trump era, whether it's the end of this year or sometime after that, someone is going to have to be there in the republican party to pick up the pieces if they continue down the course for an electoral shellacking that will make what happened in 2018 look

like peanuts. so i think mitt romney is making himself a de facto leader that will lead them out of this trump era. what we'll see in the next couple days they'll use every ounce of their time to muddy the waters and turn this proceeding into what they did to hillary clinton in the benghazi proceeding and the 2016 election. this is going to be a time where facts don't matter, where truth doesn't matter. where expert testimony and the law on the constitution doesn't matter. they believe their only chance of surviving, their only chance for trump to win in 2020 is to make this a knife fight, a street fight and muddy the waters. >> michael steel here. that's the short game and that gets us through march, spring. what do you suspect is the longer game when you factor in the potential drop of other information and facts that sort

of prove the point that, yeah, something not really good happened here? how do you suspect republicans pivot off of that in, you know, summer, late -- early fall? and what do democrats do after this short game loss of having no witnesses and an acquittal? >> it's interesting. we've seen this week what can happen when new information is air dropped into the proceeding, but we can also see how quickly republicans try to move away from that. how john bolton within 48 hours has gone from conservative hero and icon to persona non grata and anti-trumper. i think whoever comes forward, the source of that new information is what they'll do any time information comes out after impeachment, they'll say it's political, about the 2020 election not the truth. this person is trying to sell books, advance an interest, get on tv. it seems to be something they've

tried over and over again for anybody who dares speak out against the president, whether it's former advisers like steve bannon, guys who went to jail like paul manafort, now it's john bolton. the answer is either a, the president doesn't know the guy or b, this guy is an anti-trumper, he's not loyal, don't listen to him. >> thank you very much. also read about the fearlessness of kobe bryant, a piece written by curt. that does it for us this morning. chuck todd, ari melber and chris matthews lead the special coverage of the impeachment trial after this final, quick break. k break. pay for what you need. what do you think? i don't see it. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪

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>> announcer: today, a new phase of the impeachment trial begins. >> you are being asked to remove an elected -- duly elected president of the united states. >> announcer: senators will ask questions. >> i can't anticipate everything we're going to be asked but we can anticipate a lot of it. >> with the key question on witnesses still unanswered. >> i think it could be close. >> it's a critical moment in the impeachment trial of donald trump.