u.s./mexico/canada agreement. >> we've kill add terrorist al baghdadi and soleimaniants our brave warriors lost a flawless precision strike that killed the world's number one terrorist. >> secured $738 billion to rebuild a military. >> we have fully rebuilt the united states military. >> more than 7 million jobs created since the election. >> since the election we have created 7 million new jobs. >> the legal board cross aring down 78% since may. >> we have reduced illegal border crossings seven straight months. >> the african-american, hispanic-american unemployment, asian-american unemployment ever recorded. >> unemployment rates have reached the lowest levels ever recorded. >> we passed, as manager jefferies will recall, bipartisan criminal justice reform, we passed criminal

justice reform. think of that. you know, think of this. >> my god. >> the shamelessness. it continues. >> it's move over rudy giuliani. president trump may have just found a new favorite lawyer. good morning, and welcome to "morning joe." it is friday, january 31st, and along with joe, willie and me we have donny deutsch, national political correspondent for nbc news and msnbc, and author of the book "the red and the blue." steve kornacki is with us and pulitzer prize winning columnist and associate editor of the "washington post" and msnbc political analyst eugene robinson joins us on this friday morning. wow. >> you know, really -- >> ooh -- >> i wrote yesterday about the confederacy of dunces working for donald trump's team. you saw yesterday he literally lifted the rally notes. this lawyer literally lifted the

rally notes, and read them in an impeachment trial with the chief justice of the united states supreme court right behind him. unbelievable. but you look at arguments made. alan dershowitz, if the president thinks it will help him get re-elected, think that's a pretty good thing, then it is constitutionally correct. dershowitz saying, i am the constitution. okay, whatever, spartacus. then i heard another argument walking through the house once again having a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and the argument was, we've already -- we've already given them 17 witnesses. >> right. >> like, what else do they want? well, that's like having a murder trial, and calling the pastry chef, and calling the dog trainer. we got the dog trainer. >> he didn't really see anything. >> he heard a gunshot but didn't see anything, and -- ah, the

certified polisher of doorknobs, they get that from, you know, the door polishing -- >> willie, you have one. >> yeah. we all do. we all do. got the rug cleaner, dog trainer, partridge in a pear tree but the person who actually is the murder, actually holding the bloody murder weapon, who is ready to testify, who wants to testify, and the republicans decided last night they didn't want to hear that person testify. now, listen. i'm fine with it, because the republicans have shamed themselves already. they're going to vote to acquit. this information's going come out anyway, in a far less controlled manner. so the truth will be known. it will be shouted from the mountaintops. it will just make the republicans look worse, but, my god, i think there were some

people who were actually hoping that -- >> the truth would see the light of day? >> a few spasms of character would break out during the trial. no luck. this trial will end as it began, with donald trump completely owning the republican party, and the character of just about every republican senator. >> you said president trump has a new favorite lawyer after listening to that sound bite probably has a new favorite senator. lamar alexander. republican of tennessee who late last night announced he will vote no to introduce in evidence. to your point, joe, what he did was bad, not impeachable. i've heard enough, he said. to your point said the witnesses are second hand. this isn't firsthand information. heard that during the first phase. here is the firsthand witness. the man in john bolton who called it a drug deal. here is the guy who said, go find lawyers, to everyone in that room at the white house. go talk to the lawyers.

this is bad. you need to protect yourself. here's the guy who could tell the full story from inside the room, and last night republicans haven't made it official yet, all but official, they don't want to hear from that witness, mika and the entire process could end by tonight. >> well, you know, we also have -- you know, the stupidity of a lot of, a lot of my friends. i'll say, still say friends, the stupidity of people on tv, the stupidity of people on radio, the stupidity of people online thinking that they're making convincing arguments saying, well, the house didn't do their jobs. >> right. >> we're not going to call john bolton because the house didn't do their jobs. thinking somehow that americans had the memory of the lead character in and memento and have to take polaroids to remember what happens five minutes ago and carry them around with them.

well, the fact is, bolton said he wasn't going to testify until the court ruling came out then bolton came out and said i will now testify. again, the arguments, the arguments, again, are just insulting to americans. suggesting that americans are really, mika, so stupid not to remember what happened a week or two ago. americans remember, and they will remember in november. >> well, as of right now it appears democrats will come up short of the four votes needed from senate republicans to compel new witness testimony. here's where the key swing votes stand. last night lamar alexander of tennessee confirmed he will vote against calling witnesses. we're going to get to a statement in a moment where he says it happened, but i don't care. lisa murkowski said she'll announce her decision this morning. leaving susan collins and mitt romney at the only republicans who have committed to voting for more witnesses, and documents.

if murkowski decides to join them and all other senators vote along party lines, the final tally will be 50 votes for new evidence, and 50 votes against. under any circumstances, the vice president could cast the tiebreaking vote. but because of the obvious conflict of interests it is the chief justice of the supreme court who presides over presidential impeachment trials, and those who have studied john roberts say he it unlikely to intervene. and more on senator lamar alexander's decision. in a statement released after last night's question and answer session, the senator wrote in part, this -- there is no need for more evidence to prove ukraine to investigate joe biden and his son hunter. he said this on television, october 3, 2019, and during his july 25, 2019 phone call with the president of ukraine. there is no need for more

evidence to conclude the president withheld united states aid at least in part to pressure ukraine to investigate the bidens. the house managers have proved this with what they call a mountain of overwhelming evidence. alexander then writes this -- it was inappropriate for the president to ask a foreign leader to investigate his political opponent and to withhold united states aid to encourage that investigation. when elected officials inappropriately interfere with such investigations, it undermines the principle of equal justice under the law. but the constitution does not give the senate the power to remove the president from office, and ban him from this year's ballot simply for actions that are inappropriate. the question then is not whether the president did it, but whether the united states senate or the american people should decide what to do about what he did. i believe that the constitution provides that the people should

make that decision in the presidential election that begins in iowa on monday. >> um, so, lamar alexander, determined that the president is guilty. >> hmm. >> of the charges. >> what a statement. >> admitted that the democrats, the house managers, proved their case with a mountain of evidence. said, i don't want anymore information. he said, i will vote to acquit. now, live, jon meacham and i talked for some time that you can make the argument that i think the president is guilty of the charges, but it's not an impeachable offense. the problem with lamar alexander's argument is, and the flaw that it is, that he actually makes a determination of the seriousness of what the president did, and he said it

was "simply inappropriate." >> hmm. >> well, he can't make that determination of whether it was simply inappropriate or not until he hears what the key witness has to say about the drug deal that went down inside the white house. >> exactly. >> so seems to me, if he's calling it simply "inappropriate," well, he actually needs all the evidence before him, before he makes that determination. doesn't he? >> yeah, of course he needs to know what donald trump said to john bolton. what other documentary evidence or notes john bolton might have as to what was really going on, as you know, you're a lawyer, you know, you get a witness on the stand who has firsthand knowledge, and you will learn more about the crime, and in this case, you will learn more that lamar alexander wants to

learn. he just doesn't want to know how much worse this was than we already know. remember the democrats did have to prove their case. yes, largely with secondhand witnesses, because the president kept primary witnesses from testifying, and weren't providing any documents, provided no documents at all. john bolton knows where the bodies are buried in this case, and republicans don't want to hear it. now, you know, am i surprised? no. i'm not surprised that it's working out this way, and what it does is make the election in november that much more important. i mean, it's not just important that donald trump be defeated. it's important that the republican party, which is a decadent party, a trumpist party, not the republican party that you joined years ago, and

as you recall even from five years ago. >> no, it's not. >> it's not the republican party that we knew, and it just needs to be -- it needs to be removed from positions of authority and power. >> by the way, i'm glad you said that, because a lot of people are saying, oh, this is the republican party. this is what the republican party's always been. no, no it's not. i mean, you look at the record deficits, record debt. when i was there we balanced the budget four years in a row. we did a lot of good things that we promised to do. the deficits, the debt, the reckless spending, the radicalism. i mean,s it is -- it has reached a fevered pitch under donald trump. there's nothing about this party, willie that is what it once was. you know, this was actually the party with the former chairman of the judiciary committee chuck grassley that actually talked about the importance of

whistle-blowers. the importance to drain the swamp by having whistle-blowers in the federal government be able to come forward and call out corruption in the federal government and be protected. last night rand paul just like so many other republican senators showed just how cynical they were and just how little they care about draining the swamp. by trying to get justice -- chief justice roberts to read the name of the whistle-blower. a whistle-blower, by the way, whose account has been more than confirmed by the facts that have rolled out over the past several months. rand paul is willing to go in and undermine one of the key provisions, reform of the federal government and drain the swamp in washington, d.c., just because he wants donald trump to invite him on a golf game and

spend more time with donald trump. same with the other republicans. it is -- this is just absolutely incredible that they are going out of their way to show how little they care about cleaning up corruption in their own country, and how little they care about the political norms, the cultural norms, the constitutional norms that they allow donald trump to shatter every single day. >> and to his credit, justice roberts, chief justice roberts would not read that question on the senate floor, although senator rand paul made it public later on line. brick in nbc's garrett haake to discuss this. gene robinson said i don't think a lot of people are surprised that lamar alexander voted no on this. perhaps a hope he was an old vestige that would stand for something on his way out the door as he's retiring.

the pro shay howard baker, what did he know and when did he know it about the watergate question. lamar alexander a no, close ally of mitch mcconnell. >> we don't yet know for sure that lisa murkowski, who's the other sort of open figure in this will vote for witnesses or not. she and alexander met last night around dinnertime just off the floor privately. just the two of them. what we know they talked about this question, both their offices say they didn't coordinate what their answer will be. murkowski we'll hear from this morning. working backwards. lamar alexander's statement condemned what the president did here. tilted his, tipped his hands to managers say the evidence is what it was and the president had didn't someone inappropriate but not impeachable and continuing further thought it would be bad for the republic and studies the history of this including on the senate floor last night reading the very slim

volume impeachment that has essays from jon meacham and peter baker and others about the historical edge peachments we've been going through. i've been watching him throughout the course of the week handwriting and editing this statement over the last couple of days that i now think is the statement released last night. he asked a couple of questions or his name attached to a couple of questions. he was clearly talking to mitch mcconnell on and off throughout the course of the night. this was clearly a tough decision for him, but getting to this point of saying, house managers essentially have proved what they can prove without john bolton. he just doesn't think it's enough. you have to wonder if maybe that's where lisa murkowski ends up on this as well. >> so, donny, i said people shouldn't be surprised and here's why i say that. a month ago mitch mcconnell was on television saying we will have total kword coordination we white house. there is no chance the president will be removed from office.

quote/unquote. this thing was baked from the beginning. in the question of witnesses, some thought maybe a few republicans, lamar alexander chief among them who might say we should at least give the appearance of a fair trial and let john bolton sit in front of us. >> i'd love the republicans to look at the "new york times" and bring up the obituary segment. in an obituary laid where they stood with, for or against nixon. became part of their legacy. every single one of those legislators in their obituary, legacy, did you stand up do the right thing or go down with nin nixon? number one these republicans have to live with. and also to be encouraged by, one of the reasons in 2018 in midterms the democrat swept, there was such a kind of residue of frustration, of anger, with the way that trial was set up. you could look at two pieces of

research both in terms of pew and the apcop poll saying pew poll 80% of republicans think they're going to win and only 43% of democrats do. at the same time, in the ap poll, republicans, only 43 -- 44% anxious about the upcoming election. where 66% of democrats. all of that says to me that coming out of this there's going to be such buildup anger, anxiety, frustration, versus maybe a sense of false, you know, comfort with the cat that ate the canary on the republican side, i think come election time this really flies back in the face of the republicans. >> you know, donny, i don't know how much we learned from that poll. i've always said democrats to be far more anxious people, overall, about their politics. you're, of course, the exception to that rule. but that, of course, is because you have men running around in red vests getting snow off the

sidewalks on your upper east side mansion. but, you know, so i had a friend call me. pass this by you. a friend called me yesterday who is a big democratic contributor. and he said, what's best for the democrats in the long run? is it to get this information out now? or for republicans to vote it down and shoot themselves in the political foot? i said, that's not even, it's not even a close call. because we -- what do we know? all of this information's going to come out. everything john bolton said is going to come out. the white house -- the president thinks that classified information is what the president calls classified information. yeah. it's -- courts are going to intervene and bolton's going to be able to get his book out. the information's going to get out. we also know that after that information gets out, other people are going to come forward and the american people are going to have a complete view of

just how ugly this drug deal was by the time november rolls around. and just how guilty the president of the united states was, and just how much he put his own personal interests ahead of the interests of america's national security. and every one of these republicans are going to be held accountable for them obstructing justice, obstructing a fair hearing by obstructing the calling of additional witnesses, like john bolton, who knows exactly what happened. they will be the people who will be seen wigging this trial, and it's just going to hurt them. like i said, there's nothing magic about us finding out this week. about what john bolton knows, in a senate impeachment trial where there are certain rules to actually constrain what he says. far more damaging to republicans, when all of this

comes flooding out, in the coming weeks and months, and they will be stuck with this vote forever, donny, as they go down to defeat in the fall and, yes, you were right. as their obituary and all obituaries are one day written. >> it's interesting, joe. there's an advertising phrase or term that says that the voter or consumer is not a consumer, it's your next door neighbor. your mother, your friend. your banker, your teacher. people aren't stupid and americans aren't stupid. they see what going on, and the roosters will come back is it the roosters, the hens? what happens when -- rueoosterso bear or whatever that saying is. working back from oh pitcharies, this will stain republicans, shame on all of them. >> so farmer -- tell farmer donny, to come home to roost. >> yeah, really. >> chickens come home to roost.

>> right, donny. >> donny, sometimes will say, like you know what? the if a rare's already out of the barn. it is what it is. that's not -- he doesn't quite get it, the anchor from georgia i grew up with. >> not a lot of chickens in the upper east side. >> no, no. >> garrett, talk about what happens. there is an open question of a 50-50 tie. talk of chief justice roberts' potential role in that. if the vote comes out just on this witness question 50-50, if murkowski votes the way she may, what there's? >> think of 50-50 more like a draw in soccer than a tie anywhere else. a draw just ends in a draw. the people who are looking for a win don't get what they want. so in this case, vote to get to 51 on witnesses, if it's 50-50, it's just a failure. the constitution is silent on whether or not justice roberts can break a draw here. but you have to think that someone who's been sitting and

trying to call this straight on both sides isn't going to suddenly insert himself here at the end. so assume 50-50 happens and it just, that's just a defeat. that means no witnesses. that sets up the end of what we know in terms of the rules of impeachment. what you could have then is anything from a break to decide to go into closed deliberations. come back later. or you could have republicans say, we know we've got the votes. let's end this thing right now. and to try to move very quickly to wrap up the trial. that causes some questions that democrats will have to answer. if you know you're going to lose and your only choice is how and when do you lose? what do you do? try to draw this out and have the final vote be at midnight or 2:00 in the morning? try to draw it out and have it be on saturday you get one day of headlines saying, republicans don't want a fair trial? what do you do if you're the democrats if you know and you will know after the vote which way the trial is going? how much of a fight do you want to put up in that moment? that's something we'll probably find out very late tonight.

>> we've heard from republicans senators like john barrasso want it over tonight. we want the final vote tonight and impeachment is over when we wake up tomorrow morning. steve kornacki is with us today. by the way, three days away from iowa. >> there we go. whew! >> how does this place if it does at all into that vote? obviously talked many times about the senators who vhave ha to sit there in washington, and open for pete buttigieg and joe biden. does impeachment play in iowa? >> in the polling and reports from folks out there on the ground saying this is not something iowa democratic voters are talking about or asking voters about. certainly asking the candidates about, can you beat donald trump? how are you going to beat donald trump? first and foremost on their minds. of course, we had sort of a sense going into this trial that oh, wow, all of these senators in washington will be at that disadvantage because they're not out there. but in the couple weeks this has been going on, the candidate who's been moving most in iowa

has been in that senate chamber. bernie sanders. >> right. joy, what's your sense how important impeachment will be not just in iowa, moving into new hampshire, into south carolina? if this ends this weekend, for example, do candidates completely turn the corner on it? >> oh, yeah. no doubt about it'sit's very interesting. i had a talk with adam schiff right in the middle of the mueller investigation, and i said, how much to voters in your district care about the mueller investigation? he goes, no, no, no, no. he said, you don't understand -- my voters care about health care. they care about wages. they care about -- he understood that in the middle of the mueller investigation. he understands the same thing now. it's like i tell some of my friends. this is not -- this is not being done because it's going to move voters. this is being done because there's some people who actually believe that they're kov tor

conservetors of the constitution. something happened yesterday that's going to have a far bigger impact in the election this coming fall, if the trend lines continue, because it undermines everything that donald trump has said from day one about the success of his presidency. it also undermines -- i've got to say and complained about this a lot. how the media just blindly follows him and just eats up everything he says about the economy. yesterday we found out that gdp growth last year, the year after his massive tax cuts to multi-national corporations staggered at a 2.3% rate. look at that. the slowest since 2016.

2.3%. i mean, under lbj it went up 5.3%. kennedy, 4.3%. clinton, 3.9%. reagan, 3.5%. jimmy carter, 3.3%. he is well below in his administration, well below, the post-world war ii average. this is not an economy that's roaring along, and i get so sick and tired of people in the media letting his people go, this is the strongest economy ever. not even close. jimmy carter's economy, over four years, much stronger. than this economy. the economy grew faster year to year then. grew faster year to year, much more, under bill clinton. go all the way back. so that's actually -- you talk about the proof being in the pudding. donald trump's a bunch of hot air when they talks about how

great this economy is going, because our gdp is staggering along at a 2.3% growth rate. that is well below the post-world war ii average and, again, the guy mocks jimmy carter, he mocks, you know, lbj. he mocks all of these other presidents who actually have done much, much better than he has with the largest tax cut, i think, multi-national corporations could ever beg for. >> and steve rattner showed us many, many times in this charts, a recovery that began more than a decade ago with president obama. so the entire theory of the case, steve, for donald trump here and we heard it at the rally again last night is, you've got to re-elect me to keep this thing humming along. unemployment low, consumer confidence up, forget impeachment, put that aside, doesn't want you to worry about that. keep this train on the tracks. going to talk about the economy all wait through. >> look at polling, that's what

the public thinks, the public the perception. high marks now. think the economy is going well and traditionally any president with the public viewing the economy that way will try to run on it. i think the interesting thing with trump, talked about this plenty, obviously, his approval rating. standing in polls against democrats has not tracked with the public sense of the economy. if you took trump's approval rating out of this and said president x is running with voters thinking this about the economy, you'd say president x is well positioned to win re-election. with trump a dicier proposition right now, talk much more about this straight ahead. mika. not la long ago president trump suggested could climb to 6%. instead growing at the slowest pace, we just said, since 2016. we will talk to the man lounging in the blue room. >> lounging. >> who ram the white house messaging team. that man, get him a martini. anthony scaramucci joins the conversation, also with a message for john bolton. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back.

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i think we can go to four, five, maybe even six percent ultimately. each percentage point is two and a half trillion dollars. we are back. we're really going to start to rock. we need this as our final push, and you're going to see some numbers that are great. >> that was president trump a little over two years ago promising record economic growth. now for the reality. the "new york times" is reporting after reviewing the government's latest economic score card, there is new evidence showing that the economy is growing, but at a frustratingly slow pace. according to preliminary data, released by the commerce department, the gross domestic product, which measures the value of goods and services produced inside the u.s. grew at

2.1% annual rate between october and december. the same as the previous three months. the report also shows that as for 2019 as a whole, the economy turned in a weaker annual showing than it did in the previous two years. year over year growth slowed to 2.3% in 2019, down from 2.5% the previous year. as for the promise of record economic growth, history proves otherwise. trump's gdp growth in 2019 crept along as 2.3%, behind both bill clinton and jimmy carter. at the same point in their administrations. >> yeah. wow. hold on. let's look at that. look how bad -- >> slower. just limping along. >> -- donald trump's economy s. joining us now former white house director of communications. >> okay. well, do we have to take that down? let's bring in anthony sta

scaramucci. obsessed by this chart, put that back up. all you hear and all we hear, repeat what donald trump says about the economy. greatest economy ever, strongest economy ever. something barack obama would never talk about how strong the economy was on the rebound. inherited the great recession. times gdp at 5.5% through a lot of times in the 3% despite the fact we were recovering from a great recession. but look at jimmy carter in '79. this was supposed to be the year of malaise. the year of malaise, and during jimmy carter's so-called year of malaise, he was doing -- his economy doing a lot better than donald trump. so why is it that there's such a disconnect between, not only donald trump's reality, but also the talking points that the press rekerg tates with

thinking twice. >> the aga aggregate comes from the public. those wages stagnated. he picked up on bottom wage earners, slight growth primarily due to elimbation of illegal immigration at the border. 85% down and reduction there. the big message for people. the modern monetary theory the federal reserve is propping up right now, their entrance into the repo market, is helping people with assets. we know about interest rates, the financial, they're the physical gravity of financial assets. as they go lower, people that own those assets get richer, but the middle class and the lower middle class struggle. they can never catch up, and

this is what's causing the specter of nationalism, the specter of anger in the society, and the bad news for all of us is that the president represents that anger he's an aftta afterv. he's done nothing policy wise to help those people. their anger is intensifying actually and he's going to try to play that into the november election. >> donny -- you know, donny, thumb in eye or not, certainly not in my eye. it's in the eye of -- >> i'm talking the people with money and the media is basically the people he's trying to hammer. >> no. i understand that, but -- but i'm doing fine. it's the working class people who are getting screwed. it's the working class people, donny, who are paying more in taxes than amazon. it's the working class people who pay more than the largest

multi-national corporations on the planet. it's the working class people who are paying more in taxes than the richest of -- not the 1%. the .0001%. donald trump said after he passed this tax cut for multi-national corporations and billionaires, he went to mar-a-lago. he bragged to all the billionaires and millionaires sitting at that table, and he said, i just made you all a lot of money today. and he was right. he made the titans of industry, he made multi-national corporations, he made them the richest people on the planet, made them a lot of money. working class people, small business entrepreneurs, struggling corporations, not so much. >> joe, it's interesting. the message for democrats to sum it up is, donald trump's economy is not your economy. you almost use the fact that all of his kind of crowing about the stock market this and stock

market that, and contrast with the real facts of the average american and the middle class and you have to make a distinction. anthony, you've, you and i talked about this a lot. between donald trump's economy and your economy. piss people off with how well that small portion is doing. >> yeah. i think we have to simplify the argument. they're not caring that much about ukraine. they're caring about their pocketbooks and caring about directionally where their children are going to go. growing up in a blue collar family, we were aspirational, joe. an aspirational working class feel. those same families today are desperational. i think you want to beat donald trump got to go out and explain, listen, yes, he's talking to you but hasn't provided any policy solutions to help you or your children. >> by the way, anthony, the policy solutions are not policy solutions that you could see coming from the british labor party. this is just me talking right now. i mean, democrats saying, we're going to take away health

insurance plans that you negotiated with your unions for. we're going to let the federal government, a bureaucrat decide who you take your child to when he or she is sick at 11:00 at night mowho your pediatrician's going to be ain't the answer either. democrats sitting around scratching their head? what? why are we doing so poor against this guy with economy weaker than jimmy carter? because you're saying you're going to basically do what british labor party said they were going to do before they got so roundly rejected. that's just the reality. get mad at me on twitter. i won't be looking at it today, folks. i'm just telling you, if you want to beat donald trump, stop with the socialist schemes! >> you have jeremy and jenny corbin on our side. that's elizabeth warren and bernie sanders. >> exactly. >> hopeful he we don't go in that direction because we got to beat this guy.

>> all right. so -- speaking of british -- joining us now from london, washington anchor forebecome kr world news america, katty kay and u.s. national editor at the finance times ed loos. it is brexit day in europe and at 11:00 p.j. lonm. london time p.m. eastern the united kingdom officially leaves the european union. >> and excited katty kay decided to celebrate brexit day by wearing her brexit jacket made completely of 100% british sway. >> i love that. awesome. >> same with ed loos's tie and everything, all very british. so -- >> and spanish velvet, but, anyway, there we go. >> oh. >> your fashion sense as ever, impeccable, joe. >> i'm going to borrow that. >> how do i say la-de-da in spanish? maybe it's la-de-da.

katty kay, spanish what? >> spanish velvet. great with the blonde hair. >> got it. >> so -- they've been talking about this for a long time. i mean, you go back decades. >> you think? >> there have been people, talking about, of course, britain standing alone. britain by itself. it's finally going to happen. what's the mood? what's the mood, not only in the prime minister's office but across the business and political center of great britain in london? >> look, i mean, you're right. ever since we joined 47 years ago having the debate should we be as closely tied to europe or should we be less closely tied to europe? i think the mood is a country that is just phenomenally divided, joe. reminds me so much what we see back home in the u.s. of two sides who cannot agree, who have become increasingly polarized. in american under trump, here

over the question of brexit. the overwhelming need for the country is whether after this day, when it actually happens at midnight tonight, can brits come back together again? it keeps meeking may wonder. after trump and all of these divisions, can americans come back together again? what is it about politics at the moment that makes people so bitterly divided? there's a lot of uncertainty. right? we just don't know what happens. although we leave technically tonight we still have to negotiate the relationship. businesses hoping for clarity but even the government, 10 downing street warning, look, pain in the short term nep say for long term gain. and brits will have to see. the overwhelming thing is the issue of division of country that's been torn apart by this, people so angry with each other. the language so angry. and the priority now has to be to get people to come together. >> so ed loos, we've heard for some time about the negative

side of brexit. why don't you sketch out for us a best-case scenario for brexit and the after effects? >> well, boris johnson, promised not to talk too much about brexit. today is -- called brexit day, but he said now let's move on to other subjects, and the subjects he wants to talk about are the kinds of things that donald trump promised, and that anthony scaramucci talked about him having promised, infrastructure, spending, investigating in worker training, boosting the national health service which is very popular, and redirecting resources. britain's a very centralized country to the north of england. in fact, he's going to hold a cabinet meeting in sunderland where that japanese missile plant is today. as a sort of symbolic, you know, new era, where we're no longer a

london centric country. we're going to address the needs of the left behind. so the best case scenario is that he means what he says, and that this isn't just sort of symbolic rhetoric, and that britain then over the next year -- because actual brexit doesn't happen until the end of 2020. this is just the sort of technical withdrawal. but britain sticks to all the eu rules for another year while they negotiate the post-brexit relationship. so the hope that is that he doesn't negotiate a deal in the next year that means really dramatic split from europe, which is britain's largest market which is the source of most of its prosperity. >> katty -- >> next to the -- the former london bureau chief of the "washington post," gene robinson has a question for katty. >> all right. a question for katty and my question is, are people talking about the question of whether

the united kingdom remains unit united? as you know, scotland vote the heavily to remain in the european union. what's the mood around that question? could there be another scottish referendum? and are people talking than? >> yes. so the end of last year they had the general election here in the uk and the scottish national party did well in scotland. and that has increased calls in scotland for a second referendum pup think the country had had enough referendums. no, we like them clearly. they may want another one in scotland on the idea of independence. some polls suggest if there was another referendum on independence in scotland now, actually you could get an independent scotland that would leave england, wales, and northern ireland, but also there are questions about whether northern ireland eventually because of brexit, northern ireland also voted to stay in the european union.

could that end up part of the republic? in which case we would end up potentially as england and wales. remember the conservative party boris johnson's party, unionist party. their priority should be, is to try and keep the union together, but we're in this very uncertain moment. i mean, politics in the u.s. is uncertain at the moment. politics here is really uncertain, and we could end up a much, we could end up a fractured united kingdom. >> so anthony, talk about a piece you wrote back to domestic matters here. it's up right now in the "washington post" headline. hey, john bolton, welcome to life under the bus, from donald trump, a place you've spent a little time as well. >> yeah. i've got the "beetle juice" tire tracks to prove it on my back. >> you interviewed yesterday general kelly, former chief of staff to the president. john kelly was quoted saying a couple days ago down in florida, i believe john bolton. came out and said we should hear from everybody.

of course, there should be witnesses in an impeachment trial. what did he tell you yesterday? >> he was obviously very consistent with his other public remarks, but i think that he would agree with this statement that it is a black mark on the gop senate that they made that decision. so how we use that in november hopefully get the right advertising around it and the right campaign message around it, but i think that the critical thing is that anybody that has honor or integrity, anybody that served in the american military and fought for the freedom of that document is really upset today. so i think one of the big things that's happened willie, members of congress, many no longer served in military don't have that tie to the civic virtue of that, we need people like general kel around others to speak out more. in john bolton's case when i bra basically write in the article, the president, three stages working with the president. lindsey graham start thaed that don't like the president. now fake liking the president will eventually -- >> it's love.

it's mad love. >> it's fake. look at the jonathan swan interview as axios. you can see the frustration in senator graham's face. you go from disliking him, trying to like him and everybody gets to stage three eventually where they recognize he's nuts. not somebody that can manage a process. someone literally destroying the executive branch and its ability to operate in terms of the functions of the cabinet level. in john bolton's case, i think he's frozen a deer in the headlights. a couple attacks by the president, one and a half times a super bowl audience in his social media thing and people they get intimidated by it. the real issue. speak truth to power that is the cure for trump employment syndrome. hopefully more people will do that. >> hmm. >> got to speak the truth. admit you were wrong about supporting him and go forward trying to build a coalition and create an off ramp for people. >> the message. >> and impact from any of this tweets. no impact from this tweets.

>> tell the senators that, joe. tell the senators that. >> i have. it's a tweet. it's a tweet! like, the president can tweet all he wants to tweet. you as a senator, or you as a member of congress have the ability to hold town hall meetings and go in to a high school english class and stand there in front of 30, 40, 50, 60 people, maybe it's a, in the gym and it's 100 or 200 people and you have the opportunity to explain yourself. go out. you know? and -- and be with them. and they'll understand. they'll get it. i -- you know, i did that when i had to explain why a lot of these people's hero newt gingrich, we were running him out of town n. that he wasn't fiscally conservative. pushing ban on economic principle it's we were champio s championing and it was time for him to leave.

wasn't popular. i went to town hall meeting. okay. no. we understand. thanks for telling us. ed loos, remarkable, republicans since donald trump have gotten on the national stage, not one of them have really tried that. nos one of them have challenged this bully. not one understand that he is a bully, and that his tweets at the end of the day will just bounce off of them if they take it directly to their voters. >> yeah. it's -- each time this happens, alexander being most recent, i am deeply shocked and depressed about the future of the republic. what is it about lamar alexander's retirement that he is worried about that in voting to have john bolton and others as witnesses would ruin? it's very, very hard to get inside the head of that person. i will say one thing, though,

just sort of linking back to the earlier conversation about today being brexit day. there is this strange affinity between the timings of the degeneration of our respective democracies, and today's brexit day. today is also the day most likely where the senate will vote for the first time in its history to conclude an impeachment trial without calling a single witness. and thereby giving a green light to a president that he can do what he likes without consequence, that executive authority is unchecked by congress, by the first branch of government. i find it sort of strangely eerie that our journeys, mutual journeys of magical thinking as democracies tend to coincide on these dates, as they are today. >> well, and lamar alexander can celebrate his legacy of ending

his career by saying the president did something terrible, but we don't care. >> and actually -- the president did something terrible and we're not going to do a thing about it. in fact, we don't want to even know all the facts. please. see no evil, hear no evil, say no evil. no witnesses. certainly not the witness that was there at the center of the drug deal, and warned everybody else to stop the drug deal from going on. that's lamar alexander's legacy. unlike will hurd who made this bizarre sort of change, i guess he wants to work in washington in the future? i'm not sure why will hurd made that dramatic change as he moved towards retirement, but lamar alexander, like, he's not going to be spending the next 30 years in washington as a lobbyist. he doesn't have to worry about clients. it's just -- it just makes no sense. >> the president behaved in an

unpatriotic way and we don't care. thanks, lamar. and bernie sanders and former preside former vice president joe biden tied in a poll. "wall street journal" poll out this morning. sanders 27% up six points since last month while biden sits at 26% down two. both sit within the poll's over four-point margin of error. senator elizabeth warren follows with 15% down three. former new york mayor michael bloomberg at 9% and former mayor pete buttigieg falls two points to 7%. senator amy klobuchar remains at 5%. >> keep this up a second. steve kornacki, big headlines, of course, national poll, yes, but pretty soon the election is going national and bernie sanders up six points since december and michael bloomberg up five points since december. bloomberg and yet another poll in fourth place as the voting is

about to begin. >> yeah. i think you said it there. significance of the national poll is we're talking what's the iowa effect? what's the new hampshire effect? this is how candidates of positioned to capitalize on that. potentially the fallout for them if they don't do well. for sanders, again, this is not the first national poll in the last week that has put him in the lead. we have now had a couple of them. the momentum clearly in his favor nationally. seen it in iowa as well. what is behind that? a couple grooms looking inside the numbers sanders is doing better than before. number one african-americans. black vote. talk about that all the time. sanders losing decisively to biden among black voters. 52% to 28%. that's six point higher than 2016 among black voters in a one-on-one contest with hillary clinton. remember, black voters being overwhelmingly for clinton in 2016. the difference in her margin nationally. sanders, a more crowded field

running six points better among black voters could be key. his campaign strategy, try to win iowa, new hampshire and nevada, competitive now and hope to build black support in south carolina. for him encouraging sign there's and again the other key thing here continues to be a massive, gaping divide on age in our poll the youngest voters 18 to 34, got biden in single digits. sanders well over 40%. go to the other end of the age spectrum. 65-plus, the complete opposite picture. again, look to the iowa caucuses monday night, look who is likely to show up who might be motivated for this ming. college students, younger voters, activists. sanders demographic potentially. >> yeah. we shall see and, of course, elizabeth warren's slide continues. at 15%. michael bloomberg actually within striking distance of reaching her. what do you see in the numbers

that explains elizabeth warren's continued slide? >> it's interesting, too. asked the second choice question in the poll. if not your first choice who's your second choice? elizabeth warren leads that one. i think some indication there we always talk about, no a perfect overlap but there's is looverla between warren and sanders. see warn going down in polls you see sanders moving up. clearly something at work. a longer-term slide with warren going back to the fall but something potentially a little sharper in the last week or two. certainly you could discuss if it's fallout from that episode with the accusations about the private conversation between sanders and warren. >> of course, get 15%, you have to get that, candidate has to get 15% or else you caucus for somebody else. in this poll who stands to gain the most from that? we know bernie sanders is going to be above 15%. so those second-place votes for elizabeth warren aren't going to matter for the most part, because bernie's going to be

around in the second round. who benefits the most from let's say if klobuchar doesn't make it, if the other candidates don't make it, is it biden? or buttigieg? >> this is interesting now. i think the second choice thinking is changing potentially in iowa now. obviously, the candidate now looks like, most positioned to do well without hitting the threshold. that 15% in a lot of precincts across the state looks like amy klobuchar. a lot of thinking in the demographics back this up that biden would stand to benefit probably more than anybody else if klobuchar is not making the thresholds. however, i say there has been a longer-term slide for elizabeth warren and maybe a sharper one in the last week or two. if warren in precincts away from college towns, away from towns with higher populations, rural areas if warren is not making thresholds there you see a scenario sanders benefits from

that. by the way, andrew yang, 5%, 6%, 7% something like that. missing the threshold, might see benefit to sanders tr that. >> steve kornacki. anthony scaramucci, katty kay, ed loos and gene robinson. thank you all for being with us this morning. coming up, president trump has repeatedly claim head doesn't know lev parnas. the indicted associate of rudy giuliani. but a new recording is once again calling that into question. nbc's josh letterman joins us with that new reporting ahead on "morning joe." back in one minute. li you'res so late. i do not speed. and that's saving me cash with drivewise. my son, he did say that you were the safe option. and that's the nicest thing you ever said to me. so get allstate. stop bossing. where good drivers save 40% for avoiding mayhem, like me. this is my son's favorite color, you should try it.

[mayhem] you always drive like an old lady? [tina] you're an old lady. apps except work.rywhere... why is that? is it because people love filling out forms? maybe they like checking with their supervisor to see how much vacation time they have. or sending corporate their expense reports. i'll let you in on a little secret. they don't. by empowering employees to manage their own tasks, paycom frees you to focus on the business of business. to learn more, visit paycom.com president trump didn't ask president zelensky specifically for an investigation or an investigation into vice president biden or his son hunter. i mean, there's a lot of loose talk and sort of shorthand reference to it that way. >> mr. president what exactly

did you hope zelensky would do about the bidens after your phone call? >> well i would think that if they were honest about it, they'd start a major investigation into the bidens. it's a very simple answer. they should investigate the bidens. [ laughter ] welcome back to "morning joe." >> he does it right in front of cameras! the chinese need to investigate the bidens, and then, of course, you know, marco rubio and others go, he was just joking. and then they say, were you joking, three days later. he goes, no. the chinese, they really should investigate the bidens. he's doing it in plain sight. he's asking china to interfere in america's elections in plain sight, and lamar alexander doesn't care. nobody in the republican party, except maybe mitt romney cares, but, of course, mitt was mocked

in 2012 for saying that russia was now our top geopolitical foe. mocked then. he was alone then. mitt romney alone now, again, as all other republicans are perfectly fine just blindly following over the cliff a commander in chief asking chine 2345 and ukraine to interfere with american democracy. >> something that polls show americans think is wrong. perhaps unpatriotic. definitely not the way we celebrate american values. with joe, willie and me we have donny deutsch, msnbc contributor mike barnicle. politics in journalist professor and morgan state university politics editor at "the root" add msnbc political contributor jason johnson is with us. republican strategist and msnbc political analyst susan del percio. chief white house correspondent for the "new york times" peter baker and in des moines, iowa, msnbc national affairs analyst

co-host of showtime's "the circus" and editor-in-chief of "the recount" john heilemann is with us. >> and lamar alexander was reading your book yesterday and influenced him to say, yes, the president committed crimes. yes, the president did terrible things but i'm not going to do anything about it. i've got to read that book. it must be very persuasive. >> wow. >> if you read that book, the parallel you will see actually is with the clinton case. that's the interesting thing. up until now, what we saw 21 years ago was democrats were able to say that clinton did wrong. we just don't think it's impeachable or worth removing him from office because the president himself admitted he had done wrong. he didn't admit he commit at crime but admitted the affair and that he lied to the american people about it. there was room for democrats to say, this is not right. but we don't think it rises to the level of a high crime and misdemeanor which is what lama d alexander is doing. president trump wouldn't allow

this. president trump insisted he did nothing wrong, the phone call perfect and made republicans pick all-in or not. lamar alexander saying no, there is a middle ground. the middle ground is not remove him from office but not saying i exonerate him on what he did. it was inappropriate and he shouldn't do it. may not be satisfying, of course to people who think president trump should be removed from office, but it's a different place for republicans. interesting to see if any others take that same approach later today when we start hearing final arguments. >> yeah. you know, peter, i was talking about the book you co-wrote with jon meacham and other people, but also, of course, you wrote about bill clinton's impeachment. you'll remember very well what i remember, and that is, that while we are sitting here going, wait a second. how are republicans doing this? how are they acting so maked y nakedly -- i remember the conscience of the senate.

daniel patrick moynihan making a declaration, if the president of the united states has committed perjury and not telling the truth, then he needs to leave office, and i will vote impeachment. well, of course, the conscious of the senate found out that he did, in fact, commit perjury, and was in fact lying to the american people. and just, i guess, i don't know why, the pressures of the senate, the pressures of the republicans led him in the same direction that lamar alexander went last night. >> we're in even more of a tribal era than back then. >> yep. >> you can make legitimate arguments on that point and now, that and now. basically say that perjury about a private sexual affair is not what framers had in mind. people today saying no crime alleged against president trump. this is not what framers had in mind. basically what you see, of course, is the two tribes turning to their national camps. it's us versus them. shirts versus skins.

with us or against it. the only question to this point, the suspense, do one or two republicans go for acquittal or conviction? a straight party line vote likely. something close to it. that does suggest that we are in a place now where impeachment basically will never work as long as the system as as polarized as you see it today. you need two-thirds of a vote, whichever president, which are party you're talking about to buy into the idea he or she did something wrong and it doesn't seem to happen anymore. >> i've said this before and will say it again. obviously, i think donald trump getting foreign leaders to try to interfere in american democracy is much worse. >> yeah, on a much greater scale than a president lying about sex during his sexual harassment lawsuit, even though that was bad enough for the united states supreme court and, of course, the supreme court of arkansas,

disbarred bill clinton, but at the same time, the comparisons, mika, when you look at the gravity of the charges, don't even compare. >> well, let's read senator lamar alexander's statement, which basically says he did something terrible. we don't care. there's no need for more evidence to prove that the president asked ukraine to investigate joe biden and his son hunter. he said this on television, on october 3rd, 2019. and during his july 25th, 2019 telephone call. with the president of ukraine. alexander goes on, there's no need for more evidence to conclude that the president withheld united states aid at least in part to pressure ukraine to investigate the bidens. there's no question he did it. the house managers have proved this with what they call a mountain of overwhelming evidence. alexander then writes -- it was inappropriate for the president to ask a foreign leader to investigate his political opponent, and to

withhold united states aid, hundreds of millions are dollars, to encourage that investigation. >> by the way in a country that was being attacked. >> by russia. >> invaded by russia. >> when elected officials inappropriately interfere with such investigations, it undermines the principle of equal justice under the law. but the constitution does not give the senate the power to remove the president from office and ban him from this year's ballot simply for actions that are inappropriate. the question then is not whether the president did it. but whether the united states senate or the american people should decide what to do about what he did. i believe the constitution provides that the people should make that decision in the presidential election that begins in iowa on monday. you know, i find this to be reprehensible. by the way, inappropriate is not the right word for shaking down a foreign leader to perhaps creating hundreds of victims, dead ukrainians, for dirt on a

political rival. that's inappropriate? no. it's unpatriotic. it's not how we conduct ourselves and he should be removed from office, if you're thinking under the auspices of what it means to be an american citizen. good god. >> and also the commander -- you've got the commander in chief. the commander in chief -- >> pathetic statement. >> -- willie, not only asking the ukrainians then going public asking the chinese, the communist chinese to interfere in american democracy, and for lamar alexander to dismiss that as "simply inappropriate," of course, it is preposterous. if john bolton, the person who was a witness to all of this had come forward, lamar alexander would have, and the rest of the senate, and the rest of the country, would have a far better grasp on the gravity of, of just how bad the president's actions were, but that will never

happen, because he ducked and ran. >> and it's important to say, again, no one was asking at this point for senator alexander or any other senator to vote to convict the president of the united states. the question before the senate right now is, will you vote to allow an open and fair trial? will you allow documents, witnesses, evidence, in the senate trial? >> that's right. >> that was the question. he's leaped ahead and said it's not our job to convict the president. no one was asking him yet to convict the president. mike bashic'll, first line, there is no need for more evidence to prove something that's already been proven. so he's saying the house proved that the president of the united states did that. >> my god. >> but his argument somehow, and this is a guy in the senate for a long time, is that it's not our job to convict the president. it should be up to the voters. >> yeah. willie you know, when you step back and look at the entire landscape of what's occurred in the senate over the past few weeks and you think about it for just a second, you come to the

conclusion that whenever the vote occurs, whether tonight or tomorrow, whenever it occurs, this is a defining moment for the history of this republic, and i don't think a lot of people and certainly in the senate, i don't think they've thought about that enough and the defining moment is this. they have rewritten the constitution in effect to the point where now there's a clause in the constitution that says, the personal and political interests of this president or any president in the future can be defined as being in the national interest. >> and that's the explicit argument, joe, that alan dershowitz made roundly balked but now will it be codified today with this vote? >> you got to love it. alan dershowitz says it. and then denies he says it. it is -- it is a wonderful crystallizing moment, and the era of donald j. trump in

washington, d.c. where people act as if what they said cannot be replayed back on videotape. >> yeah. >> does alan dershowitz think we're in the 16th century and there's not any recording of what's going on here? i mean, even then people would have scribbled it down. >> this is now going to be codified, joe. codifyed by their vote. >> well, depends. depends. it depends what happens in november. it depends on if, you know, what richard nixon did, actually he left office, but we still remember, mike, you and i, at least, still remember watching the election returns in november of 1974. the republican party was crushed. they were demolished. it was -- it was an overwhelming rejection of all that richard nixon had done and all that republicans had done to cover up for him. and so we're going to have to see in november.

that's, i mean, history will pass that judgment after we see what happens in the fall. i am curious, though, john heilemann, out in iowa. we're going to get to iowa in a second, but i'm curious. i talked about will hurd before not, not -- passing about solution on him, because i certainly don't have that power to pass political abosolution o anybody. will hurd will probably want to work in washington, d.c. in the future. he trimmed his sails, played it safe, suddenly became very unwill hurd-like as this impeachment was going through there. okay, a younger guy. making calculations i would never make in a million years but that's how washington works. lamar alexander, though. he's moving towards retirement. what does lamar alexander have to lose in simply doing the right thing and voting for a

fair and open trial? what does lamar alexander have to lose by voting to bring forward the one man who knows more about this drug deal than anybody else other than donald trump himself? and knows, has specific firsthand information about donald trump pushing this drug deal, and the others who were swept into this drug deal and who said simultaneously of it happening. contemporaneously, go talk to the lawyers. this meeting's breaking up. go talk to the lawyers. basically saying, this is illegal. report this. i'm not going to be a part of this drug deal. what does donald trump have on lamar alexander? to have lamar alexander say, no. i will not vote for a fair and open trial with witnesses? i mean i think i know the answer to that question. he doesn't have anything on lamar alexander.

so my question to you is this -- why would lamar alexander say, yes, he's guilty. as charged. but it was just "inappropriate" without getting all the information about donald trump? the commander in chief asking foreign powers to interfere in american democracy? >> i think that it's fair to say, joe, that the statement that alexander put out last night i think comes close to offering now what i think should be, like, the defining example of abdication of responsibility. i don't really know how you it see it any other way. to answer your question directly. i think we thought two things about lamar alexander throughout this process. one, people like to call him an institutionalist. in a sense he is. come back to that. the other thing we know about him he's a longtime very deep, very loyal mitch mcconnell ally, and as with so many other things in the united states senate these days including its decline

and fall, i would say, we could lay a lot of this responsibility to mitch mcconnell. in this case i don't think it's about lamar alexander wanting a job as a lobbyist or donald trump having something on him. i think in the end lamar alexander decided to bow to his personal long-standing political and personal loyalty to mcconnell, and that's i think the only way to explain it, and the two thing ice sa said in th middle there. throughout our lifetimes and long before our lifetimes people referred to the senate as the world's greatest deliberative body. now i don't know how you can witness what's happened here over the last two weeks and about to happen over the course of the next x number of hours and not come to conclusion the senate is no longer that. doesn't meet that standard. a combination of a clown show and a whore house by some

extent. right now i think mike's right. it's obviously a really important moment in american history but i think is "the" absolute low point in the history of the united states senate. this is no longer a body that can be depended on to function in the ways it was imagined to function by the founders and framers. it's abdicated its responsibility and lay that at mitch mcconnell's feet. >>y the thing, again, as somebody who served in congress, i can't imagine putting a friendship with, or loyalty to a colleague above loyalty to the country? >> all right. there you go. >> i can't imagine putting loyalty to mitch mcconnell above loyalty to the constitution. he has admitted, donald trump is

guilty. guilty of what the house managers presented in their quote as he said, mountain of evidence. that he did what america's intel agencies said was the greatest threat to the united states of america. tried to get a foreign country, in this place ukraine instead of russia, to interfere in u.s. elections. the growing -- the greatest concern that our intel agencies have about the threat to this country. and mika, though, lamar alexander, this doesn't happen in a vacuum. lamar alexander sat on the senator floor and herd alan dershowitz say that a president can do anything he wants to do, basically. if he thinks it will get him re-elected. >> great. >> that's -- that is actually

that is the official strongman doctrine of stalin, hitler. let's bring it to a modern times. putin, orbin, whatever it takes to win, i'm justified the end, the end justifies the means and all all tape so alan dershowitz can lie all he wants. >> but lamar alexander isn't lying's he's saying he did it, and i think what makes lamar alexander's statement especially pathetic is that he's saying he did it. he shook down a foreign leader for dirt on a political rival. >> whose country is being invaded by russia. >> he allowed for the deaths of ukrainians, our friends. he served in the interest of russia, our rival, and he did this for himself, for his own personal political gain. and lamar alexander is saying, yes. he did that, and it was

inappropriate. really? inappropriate? and by the way, he's saying that the senate can't do this? really? what is an impeachment 3r0 proceeding for but to invest gays corruption, but to call it out, but to perhaps take measures that might need to be taken to protect our country, to protect our national security. which this president literally put in danger. >> how about just calling -- >> by shaking down -- >> how about, mika, how about, mika, why can't he call a single witness? as willie said before, mika, it's not like people expected him to pass judgment on donald trump's guilt or innocence last night. it was just on whether we had a fair and open trial with a witness who was there, and he couldn't even do that. >> good luck with that stained legacy. susan del percio, what does this mean for the future and the legacy of the republican party as a whole? >> it's going to be defining. final result for the republican

party will be if donald trump is re-elect 234d november or not. following up on what heilemann talked about senate being a revered deliberative body. another role is playing at this point in time in the age of trump. trump has been able to go after our pillars of democracy, attacking a free press, obstructing justice, religious bans, and somehow the courts have held us together as a nation. and a lot of ways right now, the senate is our judicial system. is the thing holding us together as a country and now we are telling the nation that we don't believe in free trials. so we -- and open trials. we don't have witnesses or documents, and earlier in the show you mentioned the senators obituaries. i think more of, what are they going to tell their grandchildren when they google them and say, oh, granny, poppa, why do you share donald trump's

values? why do you believe in these things? i thought you took an oath to do something better? you shared these values of, with donald trump? that's how they're going to be defined and that's actually also how the elections are going to go in november. it is going to be for all of those senators in a tough re-election, you shared donald trump's values, and you are forever linked to that. >> on the one hand, jason, as we said earlier we're not totally surprised by this. right? mitch mcconnell came into this saying we're going to acquit the president. bottom line, whatever that means. john bolton could have been a problem for that. damning evidence, couldn't afford to bring him in front. but in the case of lamar alexander, you know, this is, we talked about the republican party now as the party of donald trump, and the first litmus test is how loyal are you to donald trump. but lamar alexander is an old establishment republican. governor and been in the senate a long time, retiring. how do you explain his vote? again i'll say it. not to convict the president of

the unite. i don't think most people would expect him to do that, unless john bolton had something that drove him there, but even to allow witnesses? when you watched this, how do you explain it? >> because they don't care. they've never cared. none of them care what donald trump does. none of them care what the voters think. none of them care what justice is. they just want to stay in power. it's that simple. and this -- look, this goes back to when we were kids learning checks and balances. supreme court looks after congress, congress looks after -- >> these only work when there are branches of government. not rivalries of parties. the founders hated the party system, because they knew things like this would eventually happen. i'm not surprised by lamar alexander or mitch mcconnell. loyal to their own party and power than to the constitution and all of us including them, because be clear. donald trump is not a loyal guy. when he turns on them, and

employs these same tactics against the republicans he doesn't feel are loyal enough to him they will see the consequences what they've allowed to happen tomorrow. >> and in a statement, in the hands of voters now. not for us to decide. let voters decide it in november. if you're running a democratic candidate's campaign, what do you do with it? >> running a democratic campaign going back to health care and economy and a rigged system. i'm not making it about lamar alexander or impeachment. talking about a rigged system above the law. they want to take your health care away it's not your economy. one thing to be frightened about is god forbid donald trump wins again. basically, they have given him a doctrine you are above the law. there isn't anything you can't do. be very afraid. >> you know, willie, part of the issue here is, there will be a vote tonight or tomorrow and

given the nach eveture the way culture is today, people and the country will move on with their lives. next week will be whatever it is on monday. >> iowa monday. >> super bowl sunday. >> but there are four words that all begin with c that are component factors in what is happened in the senate over a long period of time on vivid display the past couple of weeks on tv. it's conscious, character, courage and country. the first three have been missing among an entire political party. it's incredible. an entire political party. conscious, character, courage. the character and courage and conscious to stand up and say, no. any president, this president or any president, cannot self-define his personal political interests and call them the national interests. >> when they voted today they may say exactly that.

yes, in fact, that is, okay for a president to do that. so john heilemann, 72 hours i way from voting in iowa, caucuses there. you've been there on the ground. your sense where we are? a new national poll, nbc poll obviously gives a snapshot where the race may be headed down the road. what about iowa on the ground? >> you know, it's another sign, willie, that national polling is in ways echoing what we're seeing in the sense bernie sanders is on the rise. i think it's the one clear takeaway from now, a month of polling nationally, in iowa, in new hampshire, in california, other places, bernie sanders has the big mo they used to say, george walker bush once called it and focusing minds. it's focusing minds among moderate democrats and increa increasingly people in iowa thinking about not just the defining question of the election which has been for a while, who can stop donald trump? increasingly moderate voters in iowa asking who can stop donald

trump and stop bernie sanders? so you have, that is one fact. i think that's the only thing we know here. and the other thing is that we had donald trump here last night in iowa, and as part of that we talked about this a little yesterday. previewed it. joe biden who made a very, a very clear distinct bid to do a closing argument speech yesterday morning in des moines that went straight at donald trump. biden's doing it for a while in different ways but not with quite this degree of clarity and focus. making a very clear contrast argument in the morning, not that far from where i'm sitting now to basically say, this is what the stakes of the election are. he was totally trump focused. not talking about his other democratic rivals and saying basically, this is what a general election would look like. if you like the look here, what i'm saying about donald trump. criticizing trump on policy, on character andpitching a high stakes.

what would this mean for the country if donald trump is re-elect re-elected? biden laying it out on the line. kind of an angry speech, certainly defining speech but set the tone for his campaign. i don't know what will happen on monday. not the right guy to take on trump even if right about the stakes. that's what bepeople in iowa ar thinking about. the donald trump question and increasingly about the bernie sanders question. >> yeah. and so who knows how this is going to turn out. in iowa. if joe biden does well, i think you're going to have a lot of people looking back to the president obsessing, and being scared of joe biden. joni ernst is stepping in basically admitting that, the whole thing was about joe biden. trying to stop joe biden. the obsession with joe biden from democrats politically is a dream come true for any

challenger candidate. so we'll see if, in fact, he does end up helping joe biden. peter baker, though, every time i hear of an insurgent campaign from the left in iowa, you and i and everybody else that was in iowa in 2004 can't help but think of the orange hats. and that is, when howard dean was predicted, everybody predicting howard dean was going to pull away with it, there was no question. the only question who would finish in second place? and the establishment actually candidate john kerry shocked everybody. won iowa, and headed on to the election. so the question is, is this going to be 2004 or something different? >> yeah. a great question. we fetishize iowa. something romantic about the idea people who want the most powerful job in the world roaming around the country side trying to connect with people. something invigorating about

that in sense of a democracy but doesn't necessarily mean that's who the nominee will be's seen time and again the winner of iowa or new hampshire seems to have the great momentum, seems to be rolling towards a nomination only to falter. that will be the big test of whoever comes out on monday. does that necessarily take us to a larger outcome or in fact, just the one-off at this point? this is a really interesting moment for us, joe. we're talking about today. what's happening in the next few days, though, about our system and our society, we're having the -- trifle the president united states likely to end with an acquittal today or tomorrow. got brexit by end of day. britain pulling out of the european union. we've got a caucus on monday that may validate bernie sanders at least temporarily. and shows you sort of the fraying of the old order all in these next 72 hours in a way. >> it's remarkable.

just remarkable, a remarkable time as you said. just over the next three days. thanks so much for being with us, peter baker. john heilemann, thank you. look forward to seeing you on monday. jason, ask you the same -- yeah. see ya monday. >> looking forward to it. >> ask you the same question i asked peter baker. what's your feeling about what's happening on the ground with bernie sanders? is it possible we're looking at 2004 all over again? that he is the howard dean of 2020 and that the establishment candidate wins? or is birney a league of his own? >> bernie's in a league of his own. yells all the time like howard dean but never has gotten in trouble. he's going to be fine. bernie sanders, much as his people don't like this comparison looks more like donald trump than howard dean. lots of republicans didn't think someone lube donald trump could come it and win election. that's what bernie sanders is doing now. the question moderates are

thinking about, not just moderates, those that support joe biden, if bernie sanders ends up being democratic nominee maybe more competitive in wisconsin, or in ohio, but do we turn virginia into a purple state? do we turn delaware into a competitive state? what will be lost if you have bernie sanders at top of the ticket? that's what i think everyone's going to think about on this second round. he is an exciting candidate. he's a dynamic candidate, but can he actually go head-to-headky donald truhead- with donald trump. >> he can't, period. >> we won't know until after monday. >> jason, thank you. coming up, strong words from senator chris murphy ahead of today's vote for witnesses. he said it's simple, really. the most relevant evidence is withheld it's not a trial nor an acquittal. it's a cover-up. if this is what happens, murphy says, the senate will be

disgraced. >> something in worse. it's a show trial. >> yeah. >> it's a show trial. >> the connecticut democrat will join us next on "morning joe." we made usaa insurance for members like martin. an air force veteran made of doing what's right, not what's easy. so when a hailstorm hit, usaa reached out before he could even inspect the damage. that's how you do it right. usaa insurance is made just the way martin's family needs it - with hassle-free claims, he got paid before his neighbor even got started. because doing right by our members, that's what's right. usaa. what you're made of, we're made for. usaa

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he won't be acquitted. you can't be acquitted without a trial and you can't have a trial without documentation and things like that. i hope the senators if it comes to a tie or a question of hearing testimony or receiving documents would leave it up to the chief justice of the supreme court. >> joining us now a member of the senate foreign relations committee democrat chris murphy of connecticut, and i'd like to start off by asking you a bit about what speaker pelosi was just saying. so no witnesses. no trial. we can all give our opinion what

we think about the sad state of our democracy right now, but what's next? >> well, i mean, this is going to be an enormous stain on the united states senate, if today goes as expected. >> i get that. yep. >> there's also rumors we may not even have deliberations. we may not go behind closed doors and talk to each other about the consequences of what we've heard. a trial with no witnesses, with no deliberations. that isn't a trial. i think speaker pelosi is right. then this can't be a real acquittal. of course, we're going it find out what john bolton said. the fact is, senate republicans can't cover this up forever. we're going to find out exactly what donald trump said to john bolton, find out eventually the scope of this corruption. and then it's going to be too late, because the trial will be over and we'll be in the middle of a re-election campaign in which the president will be potentially empowered, potentially green lighted to do more of the kind of corruption that he engaged in with ukraine. >> senator, willie geist.

good to see you this morning. a table full of political experts explaining by lamar alexander and others will vote today the way they will vote, but i'm interested in your view from the inside of the united states senator. why someone like let's take senator alexander as an example, someone who's retiring, kind of an institutionalist, a guy there a long time, conventional republican, establishment republican, why would he vote, again, not to convict the president, but even to allow evidence and witnesses? >> well, i think these republicans are putting themselves before the country. and they know that if john bolton's testimony comes out before they render a verdict, if the american public get to see the former national security advisers talking about the scope of president trump's direction, his personal direction of this corruption, it makes it really hard for them to vote to acquit. so they are trying to make the acquittal vote on them as easy as possible.

i don't think, though, they get away with it. i think, frankly, a lot of folks out there, even trump supporters will be pretty pissed when they hear this evidence, when the book comes out, and the president has already been cleared. so i'm so disappointed in my republican colleagues, because this has just become a show trial, and it does have consequences for the future of the senate. i don't know why there would be any serious impeachment trial in the future after this precedent is set. >> mike, i would say one more time. polling on whether or not the american public believes there should be eford and witnesses allowed. not vote to convict ranges between 70% and 80% of the country. so republicans have taken a 20% or 30% position on this. >> sure. people know. people lead ordinary lives, sometimes called for jury duty and know what a jury is all about. you know? up or down. what are the facts? let's listen to the witnesses. not the case in the united states senate. senator, you seem to be a thoughtful guy.

you're an articulate guy way good education. i don't know exactly how long you thought about running for public office locally in connecticut. certainly the united states senate, but if you could or would, please, take a couple of minutes to tell us what you thought of the united states senate growing up going to school, and what you think of the united states senate today. >> so i was born in the middle of watergate, and so my entire political consciousness comes in the aftermath of that crisis, and so in that respect i grow up cynical about politicians. because i've seen the worst. that is happening literally at the very beginning of my childhood. but i also watched the united states congress react to that crisis. right? i learned about it. i heard my parents talk about it, and i ran for this institution, because i thought that the congress of the united states, and particularly the united states senate, was built to be a check on an executive

who had gotten out of control with abuse of power. and so i got to tell you. i mean, i've never been sadder than i am today, because i grew up believing that this place, that i spent all of this time and energy running for, was the place that made sure american democracy wasn't taken for granted, and now we are not only refusing to do that job, but we are empowering a president who is no doubt going to take our action, potentially today, and engage in more of the corruption that he is accused of, and it just makes me so sad as an american. >> senator, i think a lot of other people went to the senate thinking the same things you did, and now we are so divided as a country that the house is always been a very divided place, but the senate is something special. and my question is, do you think they will be able to continue to work in bipartisan ways they

have in the past? or is this riff very personal and something that is really, because it's so important and it's our national security at risk, our constitution, it's everything that we are as a country, does this put a permanent rift, do you believe, between the members of the senate? >> i think this is the most serious breach of our oath of office that i've seen here. so i don't think that things are going to go back to normal on monday. at the same time, we're going to have to find a way to work together. i think about ukraine. right? ukraine is still at risk of being overrun by russia. the president's not going to protect ukraine, and so it's up to the senate to do that. so, you know, i've got to find way to reach back out to muy republican colleagues and build policy with ukraine. it's going to are hard but it's necessary. i mean, ultimate that's our job to move past these moments.

it's just going to be a lot harder this time. >> oye. senator chris murphy, thank you very much for coming on the show this morning. >> thanks. and coming up, a new recording obtained by nbc news appears to show president trump and indicted giuliani soeshs as lp l.j. together at mar-a-lago, even though the president likes to say he doesn't know him. that new report is next on "morning joe." - [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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the drip of damaging material in lev parnas continues. the attorney for rudy giuliani's indicted client released video showing parnas and business partner igor fruman mingling with president trump and other officials at an april 2018 donor event. the recording appears to have been take bein fruman who was indicted along with parnas on campaign finance charges last year seems to show rnc chair worman ronna mcdaniel greeting fruman at the event.

>> hey! how are ya? hi. good to see you. oh, so glad you're here. yeah. hi. yeah. we met hi, how are you? >> i'm glad you're here. >> yeah, hi. we've met before, yeah, yeah, how are things? good, good. i'm glad you're here. have you been to mar-a-lago before? >> yeah. >> yeah. okay, well, then forget it. >> huh. nice to meet you again. >> good to have you back. >> rnna. >> the encounter suggests a level of familiarity with fruman who, with parnas, donated more than $600,000 to 26 candidates, all republicans in 2016 and 2018. nbc news has not confirmed the

authenticity of the video or whether it's been edited. in a statement, the rnc spokesperson says on a given day, the chair woman greets hundreds if those thousands of people at events across the country. this is nothing more than that. it just shows that she was excited to see them at mar-a-lago. >> an indicted guy who is coconspiritor in what -- >> joining us now, josh letterman along with state attorney for palm beach county dave aaronberg. josh, first we'll start with you and get a sense of this meeting at mar-a-lago and these videos that seem to support that. there's a relationship, clearly. >> yeah. the president's assertion that he doesn't know lev parnas and igor fruman continue, second video of a ten-day stretch showing him with the president. trump has referred to fruman and

parnas as a conman and as a groupie. if that's the case, they were a conman and a groupie with a pretty significant level of access to the top echelon of the republican party, including not only the president, but folks like pete sessions and the gop chair woman seeming to recognize these guys and reference having known them previously. and this is just a fresh reminder, mika, that even as the senate seems poised to equip the president, this drip, drip, drip, is going to continue after this from folks like both the former national security adviser john bolton, but folks like parnas. >> boy, i'll tell you what, they have a lot of pictures together. they've been in a lot of meetings together. >> they seem to happy to see them. >> they are happy. >> and she's very welcoming. >> so good to see you again. so dave aaronburg, you are the state attorney for palm beach

county. was it illegal wiretapping for parnas to record fruman and parnas to record this conversation? >> joe, florida is a two-party consent state when it comes to wiretapping. to take advantage of that protection, you need to have a reasonable expectation of privacy. you've got to take affirmative measures to protect your conversation such as d drag the person into a separate room and close the door behinder ow was it in a group situation when you have less protection. might tell romney made a gaffe, there is a secret recording by the bartender. the bartender was not charged because mitt romney did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in that setting.

when you saw everyone taking pictures, it sort of stops the expectation of privacy here. >> you can tell that lev parnas and igor were recording all the time. this is only the second video that we've seen and i don't know if it's strategic, but we're seeing a gaffe from the attorneys putting these out. is there more? i think we've established that donald trump knows lev and knows igor. we've seen that in the meetings. he was on that first tape. is there more that's going to come out? it is the bombshell with trump

saying get her out, but all indications are there is more evidence, more recording that parnas has and has potentially turned over to the house that shows the extent of the relationship between himself and the president. >> you know, dave erinberg, for decades, richard nixon has been scorned for saying the laws about the president says it is. allen dershowitz took a different position this week. saying whatever the leader thinks will get him elected, it's constitutional. that is what is your reaction to such a spurious and dangerous

argument being made on the floor of the united states senate and then him lying about it and him being caught in that lie about this dangerous, dangerous argument? >> he was my criminal law professor ten years ago. he is a criminal defense lawyer. if he had made those arguments in a courtroom, prosecutors would have jumped up, objected, and the judge would have told the jury to disregard everything he had just heard. you have to wonder what conduct would ever reach the level of impeachable conduct. lie background sex, but only if

you're a democrat. >> this argument that was made would justify killing, you could kill somebody? and this argument, take it to the extremes like he would if he was a law professor. if you thought killing somebody would help you get re-elected and you think getting re-elected is the best argument for the country, allen dershwitz's argument is it is in the best interest of the constitution. >> thank you both for being on this morning. and still ahead, we'll tell you where things stand ahead of today's key vote of whether to allow witnesses at the key impeachment trial.

his you story and allen lickman joins us ahead. we're back in two minutes. n joins us ahead we're back in two minutes. breathe freely fast, with vicks sinex. my congestion's gone. i can breathe again! ahhhh i can breathe again! ughh.. vicks sinex, breathe on

the president's approval rating while we were sitting here in the middle of the proceedings have hit an all-time high. >> i hit my highest poll numbers since i got elected. >> we replaced nafta with the historic mca. >> yesterday, we replaced the nafta disaster with the incredible, brand new, u.s.-mexico-canada agreement. >> we've killed a terrorist al bagdad i and soleimani. >> our brave warriors launched a precision strike that killed the world's number one terrorist. we have fully rebuilt the united states military. >> and more than 7 million jobs created since the election. >> since the election, we have created 7 million new jobs.

>> tillegal border crossinger ae down since may. >> the african-american unemployment, the hispanic american unemployment, the asian american unemployment has the lowest rate ever recorded. >> after can american, hispanic american, and asian american unemployment rates have reached the lowest levels ever recorded. >> we passed, as manager jeffries will really, bipartisan criminal justice reform. >> we passed criminal justice reform. think of that. >> think of this. >> my god. >> the shamelessness, it continues. >> it's move over, rudy giuliani, president trump may have just found a new favorite lawyer. it is friday, january 31st. we have donnie deutsch, steve

kornacki and eugene robinson joins us on this friday morning. >> you know, willy, i wrote yesterday about the confederacy of dunces's team, he literally lifted the rally note. this lawyer literally lifted the rally notes and read them in an impeachment trial with the chief justice of the united states supreme court. right behind him. it was unbelievable. the arguments, allen dershwitz, if the president thinks it will help him get re-elected, it is constitutionally -- dershowitz says i am the constitution.

whatever, spartacus. then i heard another argument yesterday and the argument was, we have already given them 17 witnesses. that is like having a murder trial and calling the pastry chef and the dog trainer. >> he heard the gunshot, but didn't say anything. the certified polisher of doorknobs, they get that from, you know, the door polishing -- yeah. we all do. you have the person who saw the murder. who has been holding the bloody

murder weapon who wants to testify and the republicans decided last night they didn't want to hear that person testify. now, listen, i'm fine with it. because the republicans have shamed themselves already. they're going to vote to acquit. this information is going to come out, anyway, in a far less controlled manner. the truth will be known. it will make the republicans look worse. but my god, i think there were some people who were hoping that -- >> the light of day. >> the character would break out during the trial. this trial will end with donald trump completely owning the republican party and the character of just about every republican senator. >> president trump has a new favorite lawyer after listen to go that sound bite, he probably has a new favorite senator now and that's lamar alexander who

late last night announced he will vote no to introduce new evidence, no witnesses in his case, joe. to your point, i think what he did was bad, i don't think it was impeachable, but to your point, they've said the witnesses are second hand. we heard that during the house face of this process. here is the firsthand witness. here is the man in john bolton who called it a drug deal. here is the guy who said go find lawyers to everyone who is in that room at the white house. go talk to the lawyers. this is bad. you need to protect yourself. here is the guy who can tell the full story from inside the room and last night republicans haven't made it official yet, all but official that they don't want to hear from that witness, mika. and the entire process could end by tonight. >> well, we also have -- you know, the stupidity of a lot of my friends -- and i'll still say

friends, the stupidity of people on tv, the stupidity of people on radio, the stupidity of people online thinking that they're making convincing arguments saying, well, the house didn't do their jobs. we're not going to call john bolton because the house didn't do their jobs. thinking somehow that americans had the memory of the lead character in memento and they have to take polaroids to remember what happened five minutes ago and carry them around with them. the fact is, bolton had said he wasn't going the testify until there was a court ruling. the court ruling came out and then bolton said, okay, i will now testify. and it's just -- again, the arguments, again, they're just insulting to americans. suggesting that americans are really, mika, so stupid not to remember what happened a week or two ago. americans remember and they will remember in november. >> as of right now, it appears

democrats will come up short of the four votes needed from senate republicans to compel new witness testimony. here is where the key swing votes stand. last night, lamar alexander of tennessee confirmed he will vote against calling witnesses. we're going to get to a statement in a moment where he says it happened. but i don't care. lisa murkowski will announce her decision this morning. if murkowski decides to join them and all other senators vote along party lines, the final tally will be 50 votes for new evidence and 50 votes against. under any circumstances, the vice president will have the tiebreaking vote. but because of the obvious conflict of interest, it is the chief justice of the supreme court who presides over presidential impeachment trials. and those who studied john

robbers say he is unlikely to intervene. and more on senator lamar alexander's decision. in a statement released last night, the senator wrote in part this, there is no need for evidence to prove that the president asked ukraine to investigate joe biden and hunter biden. he said in after a telephone call with the president of ukraine. there is no need for more evidence to conclude that the president withheld united states aid, at least in part, to pressure ukraine to investigate the bidens. the house managers have proved this. he then wrote this, it was inappropriate to ask a foreign leadtory investigate his political opponent and to withhold united states aid to encourage that investigation.

when elected officials inappropriately interfere with such investigations, it undermine tess principal of equal justice under the law. but the constitution does not give the senate the power to remove the president from office and ban him from this year's actions simply for anxiouses that are inappropriate. the question then is not weather the president did it, but whether the united states senate or the american people should decide what to do about what he did. i believe that the constitution provides that the people should make that decision in the presidential election, that begins in iowa on monday. >> so, eugene robinson, lamar alexander determined the president is guilty of the charges. admitted that the democrats, the house managers proved their case with a mountain of evidence. you said i don't want any more

information. he said i will vote to acquit. now, listen, jon meacham and i talked for some time that you can make the argument that i think the president is guilty of the charges. >> he actually makes a determination of the seriousness of that and he said it was, quote, simply inappropriate. he can't make that determination of whether it was simply inappropriate or not until he hears what the key witness has to say about the drug deal that went down inside the white house. so it seems to me that if he's calling it simply, quote, inappropriate, well, he actually needs all the evidence before

him before he makes that determination, doesn't he? >> yeah, of course he needs to know what donald trump said to john bolton, what other documentary evidence or notes john bolton might have as to what was really going on, as you know, your lawyer, you know, you get a witness on the stand who has firsthand knowledge and you will learn more about the crime. the democrats did have to prove their case. yes, largely with secondhand witnesses because the president kept primary witnesses from testifying. and or from providing any documents, providing no documents at all. john bolton know where the

bodies are buried in this case and republicans don't want to hear it. am i surprise? no, i'm not surprised that it's working out this way. what it does is make the election in november that much more important. it's important that the republican party, which is not the republican party that you joined years ago and that i recall from five years ago. it's not the republican party that we knew. it needs to be removed from positions of authority and power. >> still ahead on "morning joe," we'll go to capitol hill for a play by play of how yesterday's developments came to be. garrett has that in a preview of what to expect today next on "morning joe." to expect today n

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garrett, good morning. i don't think people are surprised that alexander is going to vote no on this. how does this go down? susan collins, yes on evidence and witnesses. lamar alexander, a no, obviously a close ally of mitch mcconnell. >> well, we don't yet know for sure that lisa murkowski, the other open figure in this will

vote for witnesses or not. she and alexander met last night around dinnertime just off the floor privately, just the two of them. while we know they talked about this question, both of their offices say they didn't coordinate what their answers will be. murkowski we'll hear from this morning. lamar alexander's statement last night did condemn what the president did here. he tipped his hand to manager saying that their evidence what it was, that the president had done something inappropriate, but not impeachable and that by continuing this further, he thought this would be bad for the republic. he's been studying the history of this including on the senate floor last night, reading the slim volume of impeachment that has essays about the historical impeachments that we've been going through. and i've been watching him throughout the course of the week handwriting and editing this statement in a note pad over the last couple of days that i now think is the statement that he released last night.

he asked a couple of questions or his name was attached to a couple of questions. he was clearly talking to mitch mcconnell throughout the night. this was clearly a tough position for him. >> here was the line, quote, there is no chance the president will be removed from offices. on the question of witnesses, i think some people thought maybe there will be a few republicans, lamar alexander who will say we should at leeftd give the fair appearance of a trial and let john bolton sit in front of us.

>> every politician involved in watergate, it became part of their legacy. every single one of their legislators, their legacy was did you stand up and do the right thing or did you go down with nixon? that's something they have to live with. something the democrats can be encouraged by, one of the reasons 2018 in the midterms, the democrats swept, there was such a residue of frustration, of anger with the way that trial was set up. in the pugh research, it says 80% of republicans right now think they're going to win and only 43% of democrats do. at the same time, in the ap poll, republicans, there is only 44% of them that are anxious about the upcoming election where 66% of democrats.

so all that says to me is that coming out of this, there is going the be such built up anger, anxiety, frustration versus maybe a sense of fault or comfort that i think come election time that this really flies back in the face of the republicans. >> well, you know, donnie, i don't know how much we learned from that poll. i've always found democrats to be far more anxious people overall about their politics. you're, of course, the exception to that rule and that is because you have men running around in red vests getting snow on the upper east side mansion. but, you know, so i had a friend call me. i want to pass this by you. a friend called me yesterday who is a big democratic contributor. and he said, what is best for the democrats in the long run? is it to get this information out now or for republicans to vote it down and shoot

themselves in the political foot? i said that is not even -- it's not even a close call. because what do we know? all of this information is going to come out. everything john bolton said is going to come out. the president thinks that classified information is what the president calls classified information, yeah, of course they're going to intervene and bolton is going to be able to get his book out. the information is going to get out. we also know that after that information gets out, the american people are going to have a complete view of just how ugly this drul drug deal was by the time november rolls around and just how guilty the president of the united states was and just how much he put his own personal interests ahead of the interests of america's national security.

and every wunl of theone of the republicans are going to be held accountable by obstructing the calling of additional witnesses like john bolton who knows exactly what happened. they will be the people who will be seen -- this trial and it's just going hurt them. like i said, there's nothing magic about us finding out this week about what john bolton knows in a senate impeachment trial where there's certain rules that will constrain what he says. far more damaging for republicans when all of this comes flooding out in the coming weeks and months and they will be stuck with this vote forever, donnie, as they go down to defeat in the fall and, yes, you are right, as their obituary and all our obituaries are one day written. >> joe, you know what is interesting. there's an advertising kind of

phrase or term that says the voter is not a consumer, it's a mother, a neighbor, your next door neighbor. people aren't stupid. the roosters will come back. is it the roosters or the hen, the roosters to bear or whatever that expression is. once again, working back from their obituaries, this toxicity will stain republicans. shame on all of them. >> so farmer -- tell farmer donnie what the expression is. >> i don't know it. i'm with donnie here. >> donnie sometimes will say like, you know what? the ferrari is already out of the barn. it is what it is. he doesn't quite get the -- sglb it's okay, donnie. >> the henning booth is closinged. >> not a lot of chickens on the upper east side. so garrett knows.

there is this open question of a 50/50 tie. there's been talk of chief justice roberts' potential roll in that if the vote comes out just on this witness question, 50-50, if murkowski votes the way she may, what happens from there? >> so i think we should think of 50/50 as more like a draw in soccer than a tie anywhere else. a draw just ends in a draw. and the people who are looking for a win don't get what they want. so in this case, if it's 50/50, it's just a failure and the constitution is silent on whether or not justice roberts can break a draw here. but you have to think that someone who has been sitting and trying to call this straight on both sides isn't going to suddenly insert himself here at the end. so let's assume 50/50 happens and it just -- that's just a defeat. that means no witnesses. that sets up the end of what we know in terms of the rules of impeachment. so what you could have then is anything from a break to decide to go into closed deliberations, come back later, or you could

have republicans say we know we've got the votes, let's end this thing right now. and to try to move very quickly to wrap up the trial. that causes some questions that democrats are going to have to answer. if you know you're going the lose and your choice is how and when do you lose, do you try to draw this out and have the final vote be at 2:00 in the morning, do you draw it out and have the vote be on saturday? you will note after that vote which way this trial is going. how much of a fight do you want to put up in that moment? that's something we're going to find out very late tonight. >> we've heard from republican senators like john barasso, they want this over tonight. and impeachment is over when we cake up tomorr wake up tomorrow morning. coming up, the case for a safer america. our next guest says there was a clear way to protect the country. repeal the second amendment.

professor allen lichtman joins us with that bold argument next on "morning joe." ment next on "morning joe. [happy birthday music]

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hunter biden was paid $83,000 a month, no experience in oil, no experience in ukraine, doesn't speak the language, and we clearly know that he had a fancy job description. he attended one or two board meetings. hunter biden stays on that board for three years. three years. then we hear the video of joe biden bragging about firing the prosecutor linking it to aid and then we have the six-minute phone call. >> if we are serious about why we are here, and i have no reason to doubt that we are, if we are serious about speaking the truth because the truth matters, looking at the bidens, no matter how many times we called their names, we have no

evidence to point to the fact that either biden has anything at all to tell us about the president shaking down a foreign power to help him cheat in the next election. >> many noticed that house prosecutor val demmings repeatedly looked right in the direction of white house lawyer pam bondi yesterday, rebutting bondy's answer about the bidens. over the past year, the number of americans who think president trump should be impeached and removed from office has increased. according to a survey by the democracy fund voters group, as of december 2019, 50% said they believed trump should be impeached and removed. that is up six points since around the same time last year.

41% disagree. down six points. since 2018, there's been a 10% increase in pro impeachment attitudes among all americans broken down by party, it includes 3% of republicans, 12% of independents and 15% of democrats. whereas those who are against trump's impeachment only increased 2% to 6% for each party respectively. for more on these new numbers, let's bring in robert griffin. the group in partnership with ucla nation scape is out with new surveys every week until the election. let's start there, robert. why the change? >> so i think the big thing that we've seen around this was really almost the announcement of the impeachment. there was a big shift right after that happened. i think it's been pretty stable since then. i think to encounter some of the

narratives, people think that, really, no one shifted their mind, that we've had a country where everybody is stable and everything in american politics doesn't move. we have the data to show because we've been tracking the same people over time, we know about 13% of americans actually have changed their mind about this issue. >> so is it safe to say that there's a growing number of americans that think the president did something wrong? >> yeah, absolutely. so just these numbers alone suggest that. what i think these numbers also suggest is that there are more who are concerned about some of the other behaviors that trump has been engaged in. so, i mean, you know, in one thing we see is the intense with which people hold this has increased. there's that raw number that you mentioned, up six points. but it's also the case that more americans definitely think you should be impeached at this point. >> so, robert, the 13% that you mentioned who have increased their opinion of whether the

president should be impeached or not, do you get any sense from the underlying questions in your polls, if you have asked underlying questions, how disappointed and what direction they might go now in terms of being disappointed if it was going be the outcome of this? >> so we don't have a great sense of how the american public thinks this is going to go. but, you know, given recent he events, i think people are still concerned. poll after poll shows just about 50% of americans thinking this is something that should happen. >> well, not only should it happen, but in any of the numbers in any of the polls that you've done thus far, do you get a sense of americans being aware of the phrase, the chief executive of this country. >> so i think it's not

participating with the congressional investigation, actually just the act of urging the president of ukraine to do this. there's strong majorities of americans who think these things did happen, right? so about two-thirds think both of those things did happen. the issue is that a smaller percentage think that it's serious, if it did happen. so it's sort of i think a sign of how strange some of the battleground has become over the impeachment, that these things that we've normally thought of as pretty normal in american politics have suddenly become accepted and said, well, sure, it happened, but it's actually not that serious. >> all right. rob griffin, thank you very much for that analysis. we want to turn now to distinguished professor of history at american university. allen lichtman, the author of the 2017 book "the case for impeachment, an argument for impeaching donald trump" and his new book is entitled "repeal the second amendment," the case for a safer america.

we'll get to that in a second. but professor, we'll start with your, i guess, warning to democrats that they want to win in 2020, they have to impeach the president. we're here, but there's going to be a slapback, most definitely, in the next 24 hours by the senate. so where do things go from here? >> well, merely because the president is acquitted by the senate does not mean that he is not going to pay a political price for impeachment. the great majority of americans think that, indeed, he did something wrong. and all the evidence that has come out that the republicans want to suppress since the impeachment vote is all incriminating and a lot more is going to come out in the future, particularly john bolton's book. it is astonishing to me that lamar alexander should say, well, we think the president did do something wrong, but the

voters should decide and yet he wants to block the full information that would help the voters make a rational and informed decision. >> robert, susan delpercio. we have pretty much known it's been a foregone conclusion that the senate would not convict, they would not get the 67 votes ne n necessary. but when we take just the slice of hearing from witnesses, can you explain how important that is and how that will go down historically that this is the pivotal moment where we kind of fell apart as a nation? >> i agree with that completely. hearing from witnesses is not a side issue. it's a critical issue. it's one thing to hear the lawyers argue add nauseam. it's quite another thing to see a live witness sitting in the box, giving his testimony, being cross-examined. look at the difference between

reading a play as a script and actually seeing a play performed in front of your eyes. it makes all the difference in the world. lamar alexander says this isn't impeachable. how do we know when we haven't heard the whole story yet? >> i would ask you to reach back in your mind and give us your take on allen dershowitz's version of the constitution, that any president, if he believes it to be in the national interest and in his own interest, he can do it. >> it is the most chilling version i've ever heard. it is supported by no authority, no injury additional decisions and runs counter to the intention of the framers. you know, dershowitz, in his testimony, pivots on a quote from morris which says impeachment should be narrowly defined, but he didn't tell you

that more jis goes on to say that he changed his mind on the debates and he now has a prod view of impeachment including abuses of power and corrupting the mansion. under the dershowitz theory, as long as you don't commit an indictable crime, you can do anything you want. a president can give our nuclear secrets to the russians and the chinese in return for the help in the election. he could order his department of justice under his executive authority to investigate all thigs politichis political opponents, journalists, maybe me and all of you and dershwitz has said a president can order investigations of anyone he wants. this whole thing began with vladimir putin and the russian's intervention in 2016. it ends with dershowitz in effect turning america into a version of russia and our president into a virtual clone

of vladimir putin. it couldn't be more chilling. >> it's staggering. >> i want to get to your book, repeal the second amendment, a case for a safer america. it seems like that would be rather divisive. talk about the premise. >> not at all. the nra says because of our second amendment, we should be, in essence, the safest country of pure democracies, which don't have a second amendment and have all of these gun control laws. the opposite is true. compared to our closest peer nations, an american per capita is 20 times more likely to be murdered by gunfire than a resident of our other peer democracies. that is not 20%, that is 20 times. we have lived comfortably for

over 200 years with a second amendment that was interpreted for collective defense through a well regulated militia. it was then hijacked by the nra after the revolt in cincinnati that brought in a new militant leadership to distort it, to guarantee a virtually unlimited right to keep and bear private arms. and that has stymied the gun control movement. it's achieved nothing in the last quarter century. it's time for a game change. and to, really, stimulate and spark the grassroots into a movement that justice john paul stevens, the late justice, wrote in 2018 is really the only direction to make america a much safer country. you know, the current strategy of the gun control movement is simply a loser. their idea is we support the second amendment but.

that inspires absolutely no one. >> so if you want to explore this more, read "repeal the second amendment, a case for a safer america." alan lichtman, thank you for being back on the show. it's always great to have you. >> anytime. can up neup next, tom broka iowa well. he joins us next on "morning joe." well. he joins us next on "morning joe.

just three days until the

iowa caucuses. iowa had recently become the first contest of the calendar and carter, nationally unknown back then, saw that doing well there the could propel him to the front of the pack. he went all out and it worked. and iowa has been a big deal ever since. nbc news senior correspondent tom brokaw tells us how jimmy carter and iowa put each other on the political map. >> the president of the united states. >> january 19th, 1976, gard ford gives his state of the union address. that same night, the man who would beat him, jimmy carter, becomes the democratic front-runner thanks to the iowa caucus. it was a victory more than a year in the making. >> i'd like to announce that i am a candidate for president. >> carter announced just fours months after richard nixon's resignation. he was governor of georgia, but nationally unknown.

>> don't forget me now. >> the guy the from -- >> georgia. that's right. >> we need some help, don't we? >> we do. >> you're a southerner, governor carter. do you believe the voters from the united states of america are ready to accept a southerner as a serious presidential candidate? >> i think so. >> carter was a long shot in a crowded field of better known candidates. even his own modern was skeptical. he said i'm going to run for president. i said president of what? and he said president of the united states. and i laughed. >> but carter was fiercely determined and he had a plan. >> i'd like to describe to you very quickly the campaign from my vice president. we decided a long time ago that we would go all out, all over the nation to win. governor jimmy carter. >> hope you'll help me next year. >> i intend to win. i do not intend to lose. >> whenever he wants anything, he goes for it. >> and a key to carter's plan was doing well in iowa.

>> we go in lincoln to january to iowa. >> caucuses are not critical for republican candidates, but for democrats, iowa will be a small measure of who stands where. the iowa caucus had never gotten much attention before, but it was the first contest on the calendar. and a good showing could generate real momentum. carter was the first to capitalize on that. >> i've been out here nine times and my wife has been here several times. >> he built the best organization in the state. >> volunteer working on jimmy carter's campaign for president. >> i just want to shake hands, please. >> and found ways to connect with iowa voters. >> i grew up on a farm. my father was a farmer. >> carter began to catch on in iowa and the national press took notice. >> this time, we have a lot of good journalists here today. >> that was part of the fight, as well. fist the "new york times," then "the washington post." then the television networks. starting with nbc correspondent judy woodruff who had covered

carter as a local reporter in atlanta. >> i talked and my bosses at nbc into letting me do a profile of him in the fall of 1975, a few months before the first caucuses in iowa. than 150,000 miles, been to 43 states, made over 500 speeches. all in pursuit of the nomination of the democratic party. iowans are politically active and aware. i went to iowa, followed him a few days in october, that fall. >> when i compared myself with other candidates, i don't see anyone that can beat me. i work harder, i have a better family organization, more volunteers. i planned more carefully. have a total commitment to the campaign. >> and watched him just make people melt in front of him. he had this effect on people. >> i appreciate your confidence in me. i'll try to make you proud of me, whatever i do. >> there was something connecting. >> i want in this government the same you want, to have a nation

once again with a government that's as good and honest and decent and fair and competent and compassionate, as filled with love as are the american people. >> i'm -- someone that started out on his own, he has come a long way. >> with a strong message and good press, carter moved up in polls. >> not long ago very few people gave jimmy carter much of a chance. people are taking him more seriously. >> eight days before the caucus, more national exposure as carter appeared with fellow candidates on "meet the press." >> i want to be tested, i want the american people to know my character, my strengths and weaknesses, stance on the issues, i am willing to go all out. >> i am running for president, i need y'all's help, okay? >> if i don't come in first in iowa, it will be my fault. >> when the big night came, the

caucus was so unfamiliar, they mistakenly called it a primary. but when results were in, it was clear carter had done it. >> former georgia governor jimmy carter did extremely well. >> coming in behind uncommitted but well ahead of everyone else. >> clearly jimmy carter was the winner in iowa. he scored much better than most of us predicted that he would do. >> what the candidates were after was a boost, some momentum to carry him ahead. a big boost is what he got here. >> carter had become the frontrunner. he went on to win new hampshire and nearly every primary after that. he won the nomination, then the election. and became our 39th president. >> mr. speaker, the president of the united states. and it all began with iowa. >> and tom brokaw joins us now.

tom, thank you for that trip back in time. wow. that brought back so many memories. it was really touching to hear jimmy carter, candidate jimmy carter talking about what he thought this country needed in a leader, especially during this time. but you've been in iowa. what does the race look like right now? >> mika, having been out there, it is a much different world now than it was then. iowa was an amateur starter if you will, test to the presidency. now as you know it is very corporate. jimmy carter was perfect for iowa, the dna, he had been a farmer, small town guy. we were just coming out of richard nixon and he was trying to find his feet as president, if ever a perfect opening for jimmy carter, it was there. now it is all big money, planes, trains, automobiles, lots of staff, a lot of different places, it is a different world now. >> different world, you're right, watching that piece, it

was a different world. at the start of that piece, tom, gerald ford being introduced as president of the united states, what are your thoughts today on how ford's presidency began with people like hugh scott, barry goldwater going to the white house, telling the incumbent richard nixon it was time to go. senators of character and courage then, and the united states senate literally today. what are your thoughts about the differences? >> well, the other differences, i was covering the white house at the time, i would go to the hill and talk to republican senators, they were not beating their chest saying we'll defend him to the end of our life. they would say there's a lot of things i need to know yet, they were in judgment even then of richard nixon, weren't just throwing themselves on his side, they were reasonable, they were talking to each other. now it is stunning for me to see no doubt whatsoever on the republican side among the senators, no questions have been raised, even lamar alexander has kind of a condition statement,

but he is not going to break, he is going to stay there with them. i don't know what that bodes for the future, not just for republicans but democrats as well. we'll see. >> it is great to see judy woodruff's incredible reporting in your piece. before you go, tom, i understand you're going to jim lehrer's memorial service today. maybe some final thoughts on his legacy. >> well, he was maybe the most popular reporter in washington, even though he would often beat the hell out of us that were members of the establishment, we weren't doing what they were doing on his side of the aisle. at the same time, he had such integrity, a former marine. he could recite the bus lines of his father's bus line in kansas on a moment's notice. he was a great man. he reminds us of the importance of having a kind of nonpartisan if you will arbiter in the washington press corp.

he wouldn't vote. i thought that was going too far. he thought it was a conflict of interest for a journalist to do that. i don't know anybody in washington more popular than jim was. i was just at his 65th birthday not long ago, small evening, he was in great form. news that he died overnight came as something really hard for me to deal with. >> i can understand completely. tom brokaw, thank you so much for joining us for that amazing report as well out of iowa. thank you. we'll see you at java joe's in des moines monday. we look forward to joining you from iowa. going back to where it all started at java joe's. that does it for us. chuck todd, ari melber, chris matthews lead msnbc special coverage of president trump's impeachment trial after this final quick break. hment trial as final quick break. ed with liber. only pay for what you need with liberty mutual. con liberty mutual solo pagas lo que necesitas. only pay for what you need...

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today, the senate prepares to vote on witnesses. >> even if everything you allege is true, even if john bolton would say it is true, that is not an impeachable offense. >> the truth is staring us in the eyes. we know why they don't want john bolton to testify. >> lawmakers can vote on impeachment as soon as tonight. >> they want to know about your ballots, poison our democracy, and overthrow the entire system of government. >> this is a crucial moment in the impeachment trial of