welcome thank you so much or thank you for having me great so president trump has invoked executive privilege at the request of the attorney general to block house democrats access to robert muller's redacted report what does this mean. the law of executive privilege is very much ensemble the president nixon tried the executive privilege argument to keep the white house tapes away from the prosecutor the special prosecutor in the supreme court rejected that argument i doubt that the argument was succeed here executive privilege in this context is a made up les gold doctrine that is presume by the trump ministration to allow the president to withhold evidence with respect to an investigation of the president's own alleged crimes and that's

a non acceptable interpretation of an executive privilege doctrine if there were such a privilege and once again the courts are very. very reticent to allow assertion of executive privilege by the president of the united states in any context much less this one yeah so professor why did the attorney general want the president to assert executive privilege since from what i understand a lot of what the house should or shouldn't judiciary committee is asking for including possibly most importantly the grand jury information that is secret there was a court case last month that said it has to stay secret grand jury testimony other only for a criminal proceeding and congress congressional investigations are not judicial proceedings so why sort of this like you know doubling up with executive privilege over information that legally can't be released anyway. well first i don't think

this is necessarily what the attorney general wants this is what donald trump has told attorney general he wants which is to keep the redacted portions of the report away from congress and the attorney general is now telling the president i's that it's how he thinks he can best do that the other exceptions that allow the redactions such as the classified information is redacted the grand jury information very back to all the holes the president. cannot make a very good argument that congress shouldn't be able to see that information behind closed doors with respect to the grand jury and but many of those are you know that are precisely what democrats were being offered by the attorney general that you know small number of them could see if not necessarily grand jury testimony the classified information they could see that behind closed doors and take notes but that was rejected by the judiciary chairman mr now adler and from i understand he refuses to even look at it because he wants the whole enchilada. well the german

the judiciary committee wants to see the whole thing not just the classified information but the grand jury information as well i'm sure is would a look at behind closed doors but the grand jury information could be released to congress behind closed doors with the permission of the judge but what's how do they have to go to this is just a matter so you can't just make the demands of the yes you got to go to the federal judge and say you know there is some compelling interest here although that d.c. circuit appeals case would suggest they might not win. i think they are the judge with a lot of them say and i they have not made any effort to ask the judge and the attorney general has refused to go along with that the bottom line is president trump wants to keep this from congress as long as he possibly can the grand jury information of eventually would have to come out because a grand jury is not going to sit forever but they aren't going to the judge you've

seen leading democrats leading democrats or you know running for the twenty twenty primary primary and also certainly chairman adler calling the attorney general mr barr a liar and trying to villainize him do you think it's fair you think that is a fair assessment of mr barr. well that goes to the definition about what mr maher said about his relationship with robert muller and what robert mueller said to him about his four page letter to congress i think the four page letter was misleading to say that the four page letter was a lie is a bit of an overstatement but then apparently robert mueller weighed in on and sent another letter himself to. the general bar the letter that's now public and terry general barton not was not aware of that letter apparently when he testified in front of congress which is somewhat shocking this is not a good situation for terry general bar at all but once again if congress won't hate each the democrats are in

a very difficult situation because they can't go on the campaign trial and go on the campaign trail and say that there are high crimes and misdemeanors serious crimes in the trump ministration. and vote out articles of impeachment is one where they are and it's time to make up their minds and it's going to vote out articles of impeachment or just continue to investigate what are they doing to investigate they're going to run into this whether it's executive privilege arguments or whatever else that trump wants to use to stall and then that's the decision by congress to let the voters the saw. so professor do you think that holding attorney general bar in contempt of congress is fair and appropriate and i think at this juncture that they they out of the go that step would go to the courts and let the courts the side or whether attorney general barr has to turn this over it's time for the courts to step am so they took that old and what about anonymous but what

about congress finally finding him in contempt do you agree with doing that. i would agree with the finding and contempt but are trying to enforce a. no forced him to turn over the documents or to impose legal consequences on him for contempt of congress were to acquire a judge to sign off and i think it is time to start bringing in the judiciary here to decide these questions rather than having this back and forth between the house judiciary committee and the white house and the attorney general's office i do think it's time to go to the courts but once again the courts may not expedite this if there is an impeachment trial the democrats aren't willing to go ahead and vote out articles and basement this week that will be resolved in the courts but it may not be resolved very quickly right it could just get tangled up for years as far as we know professor painter thank you so much for sharing your time in your expertise we appreciate it thank you well the fight for the unredacted most report resonate

in the two thousand and twenty presidential race or will the voters just tune out the latest developments in an already two year ordeal let's talk about that with jen kearns she joins me right here in new york city jen is a g.o.p. strategist and former spokesperson for the california republican party jen welcome thank you so much thanks for having me. all right so the judiciary committee has voted out contempt charges against attorney general william barr what's your initial reaction. well you know it's unfortunate it came to this point i think that this was a maneuver that was clearly premature here i think that there was probably some room to work with the department of justice and the trumpet ministration on this if you look at sarah sanders statements as the press secretary today she clearly use the phrase very carefully she said this was a protective executive privilege invocation so this was sort of a premature advance protective move to call this executive privilege

i think there was some room to work with here with the d.o.j. i think they would have given a little bit but as you saw in that response from the d.o.j. to the committee today he said you know really regret that it got to this point so quickly and they thought the committee's move was premature to immediately go to that hostile place with that general bar but that is had the state of politics in washington d.c. today so this now goes to the house speaker nancy pelosi to decide if she wants to move forward and put this to a vote for the entire full house get that on the calendar either you know soon or later she said in washington on wednesday that she thinks that attorney general should be held in contempt so to me that's a signal that she plans to put this on the house floor how quickly do you think the american people are going to see this vote. why i think it will be very swift you know the democrats have made no bones about how they feel about the miller

conclusions and about attorney general barr but here's what's interesting their voter surprisingly are not with them on this i wrote a piece last week for the daily caller and which is very interesting the numbers of democrats and independents that are peeling away from this move toward impeachment this move as you said to dwell on the findings of the moeller report that the democrats and independents who will be voting in two thousand and twenty are just not that interested in fact the number that i thought was most interesting was the independent number has nearly flipped from where it was in the end of march about forty six percent of independents actually supported continuing to discuss impeachment in these other matters and that number has actually flipped now forty eight percent of independents are actually against it so gen nancy pelosi issued a warning to democrats that president trump is goading them into impeaching him do you believe that this is president trump strategy. well i don't know how how

familiar nancy pelosi is with the internal workings of dol trump's mind in fact i don't think any of us are no matter how close this line the fact i get to see it on twitter on a regular basis that this or that is true but look i don't think he's goading them into this i think that the president would very much like to move on from the mall or report i think the democrats were very clear two years ago when this first started they said that if anyone would be able to find a shred of russian collusion evidence it would be bob muller and it turned out he didn't find that so so i think president obama's ready to move on from this i think that's why you see him invoking executive privilege here i think the president's very interested in tackling some of the other problems that are facing america which just so happen to be some of his campaign promises that he still needs to check the box on before he i believe will get reelected in two thousand and twenty stay right with us there's going to be more politicking with john kearns right

after the break. there are. russian and. you know world's big partisan lawyers and conspiracy it's time to wait to dig deeper to hit the stories that mainstream media refuses to tell more than ever we need to be smart we need to stop slamming the door on the bad shouting past each other it's time for critical thinking it's time to fight for the middle for the true. the time is now for

watching closely watching the hawks. aeroflot russian airlines. during the great depression which i'm old enough to remember there was most of my family were unemployed working class there wasn't it was bed you know much worse objective listen today but there was an expectation of the things were going to get better. there was

a real sense of hopefulness there isn't today today's america was shaped by the ten principles of concentration of wealth and power. reduced democracy attack solo down to engineer elections manufacture consent and other prince holds according to no i'm chomsky one set of rules for the rich opposite set of rules for poor. that's what happens when you put power into the hands of a narrow sector of will switch will is dedicated to increasing power for itself just as you'd expect one of the most influential intellectuals of our time speaks about the modern civilization of america. welcome back to politicking i mean holmes sitting in for larry king i'm talking.

jen current's she's a g.o.p. strategist and former spokesperson for the california republican party polling indicates that joe biden has solidified his front runner status and the democratic field with huge gains since his announcement jan we are looking at double digit leads that joe biden has over his democratic rivals even including up to thirty two points in the hill newspaper poll i think c.n.n. had him ahead of me actually was harris that had him ahead by thirty points over bernie sanders do you think that joe biden the vice president's lead is going to stick or do you see that wiggling away. i do think it's going to stick and i think bernie sanders knew that and that's why you saw the the move to cast joe biden as creepy uncle joe i think that's why we saw the attack on joe biden the week that he was going to announce a few weeks ago because bernie sanders knew one thing if joe biden gets into this race bernie sanders gets pushed aside quite a bit so i think that that was very certain egypt there if joe biden has this

commanding lead over bernie sanders that suggests to me that in fact the democratic party isn't that interested in identity politics dianne feinstein she just threw her support behind joe biden instead of her colleague from california kemal harris because she said that her loyalties to biden go a lot for them. doesn't that mean that president excuse me vice president joe biden is a pretty formidable candidate possibly in front of a very unified democratic party in two thousand and twenty. yeah there's no doubt about it he is formidable and i think he will win the nomination quite easily he's certainly got the campaign staff and others who will help him get through the state conventions and the caucuses that he needs to but again going up against president you have president trump's approval of the economy is above fifty percent now it's about fifty three percent and that's going to be an awfully tough number to beat as

democratic strategist james carville used to say it's the economy stupid as long as you have the unemployment numbers going and humming along at the rates they are it's going to be a very tough challenge to be president trump and hold out isn't that i mean that's part of the you know what is kind of concerned republicans is that he gets these great approval numbers on the economy and there are great economic numbers you know under the trump administration that you know he can take credit for or will at least will take credit for but you're not seeing that translating into his personal approval which. is rarely cracked fifty percent even being polled by rasmussen reports which by the way was the most accurate pollster in two thousand and sixteen for the popular vote there's this gap here a gap in perception he's great on the economy but a lot of voters they don't like all this tweeting and they don't like a lot of the bullying do you think that this is a serious liability for president trump. no i don't because what we've seen is that people are willing to support his agenda even if they don't like his personal style

his brashness on twitter and look when people are at home and they have an extra thousand dollars or two thousand dollars in their pocket to put braces on their kids' teeth and to send their kids away to a science camp in the summer boy that goes an awfully long way they they start to forget about the style points that they don't like about president trump and look joe biden i think has been damaged in this skirmish with bernie sanders and others before he even came out of the gate in terms of style points and i think the attack on the inappropriate touching really hurt joe biden on style points that that's going to cost him. in a challenge against president whose track record has been pretty clear about his thoughts on women in past decades i think joe biden did well really have a credibility there that's a whole nother topic for another show which of the book none of us has maybe more liability on those issues. thank you so much for your time we really appreciate it

thanks amy turning now to international news including trump's tariff battle with china i'm joined by joel rubin he's a former member of the obama state department and currently president of the washington strategy group he joins me from washington d.c. joel joel thanks so much for joining us we appreciate it it's my pleasure thanks to me so joel in the u.s. china trade fight the u.s. trade representative's office has filed paperwork to formally raise tariffs from ten percent to twenty five percent on about two hundred billion dollars a year of chinese imports effective this friday twelve zero one am what is your reaction to this latest move well this is clearly caught the attention of the chinese and it's intended by the president to put pressure on china right now the eleventh hour of negotiations but it's a shocker. it really came out of left field seems as if in the president and his

top aides were saying that they were close to a deal so to have this come out implies that the president felt like he wasn't getting what he needed out of the chinese but this is the kind of move that can also have negative impacts here at home on our economy on the agricultural sector in particular if china retaliate so we're kind of on the precipice of another stage in the trade war but the administration you know they would argue that this comes out of the blue from the china side that they received this edited one hundred fifty page trade agreement a draft trade agreement was sent to them on friday that rolled back all of these things that china had agreed to do i mean the list is long we're talking about china saying that they're going to be against theft of us in an intellectual property force technology transfers competition policy access to financial services and so forth they thought they were getting some you know some leverage on this they thought they were making some progress but china took it all back and trump

said hey listen fine we're going to do these tariffs so would you where would you place the blame yeah i mean this is why you've seen the reaction from capitol hill and democrats it's actually been kind of supportive of the president chuck schumer the senate democratic leader told the president to stay tough hang tough essentially and so the negotiation and the back and forth clearly is not satisfying to the president there's a real need to fix the way that we engage with china and the rules of the road for intellectual property as you point out in other sectors of the economy my concern though is that in the negotiation why did it gets a valid point why is it that the chinese felt emboldened to pull back on previous commitments what all eyes are some of the regulation some of the special speculation and sort of answer that question we don't really know because the chinese. this government is pretty impenetrable but perhaps the trade negotiator

from the china side had gone too far when he took it back to his masters in beijing they said we're not agreeing to any of this and particularly because the us is asking demanding that these changes be made in chinese law that we're not going to do that just trust us standard do you think that china is going to look at these tariffs and blink. well i think the chinese and i was just there for two weeks in april and what we heard from many chinese that i engaged with was that the tariffs are having an effect so this approach and the president's move here maybe it's a little later than it should have been because quite frankly if the chinese felt that they could edit the document and even if the negotiator got ahead of his skis so to speak nonetheless they felt they could pull back maybe right now we're in a position where we have some leverage but we may have to go through another period of of pain to get there but certainly the negotiation with china for the last two decades across administrations has not been satisfying and the united states is in

a position now where we're looking at china growing its economy in many ways through the benefit of taking american technology and ideas and that has to stop so hopefully deal residents position here stealing and it's deep it's problematic and it harms our competitiveness we need to have a relationship with china though that ultimately is strong it's for our security it's for economic prosperity in the long run same for the chinese but hopefully the president is integrating this threat with a negotiation that will bear fruit hopefully it's not isolated hopefully it's not coming a little bit too late you know as you mentioned to me before we got on air this has been a huge week for international news what's going on all around the world a lot of it driven by you know decisions happening on six hundred sixty hundred pennsylvania so on wednesday the iranian president hassan rouhani he said that iran will reduce its commitments to the iran nuclear iran nuclear deal but will not

fully withdraw his giving his sixty days for these signatories to the deal which now no longer includes the united states to get with the program what is the significance of this. this is the first time that we have seen iran actually pool way from the iran nuclear deal and it's the one year anniversary of the american withdrawal so we the united states we broke it we left the deal and we've put sanctions back on to iran and really caused their economy to hit a major freefall in particular on an oil exports but now by the iranians doing this they risk losing their allies which is the europeans on this question pushing the europeans to the american side so and so far as europeans have not been reacting well to the iranian announcement they're saying oh there you go down this road you're going to get more sanctions from us exactly because the french the british and the germans have been telling iran don't do anything rash the americans have left but stay in the deal will work with you and the iranians are essentially

saying it's not being good enough and they have a point it hasn't been good enough from their perspective but this approach does risk completely breaking the deal and that's very dangerous i wrote a piece just today an axis talking about the guardrails we have to remember that the agreement that we engaged in the negotiations of engaging with the wrong on nuclear program was all about preventing a war and preventing an iranian nuclear bomb putting some guardrails on this relationship which is so difficult and has been a problem for several decades when we take those guardrails off there's not much holding back further escalation into dangerous territory well but let me ask you about that tool because you know a lot of people look at the situation and the fact that iran has never admitted not even to this day that their nuclear program had any military goals or applications which right most observers say is not true how do you trust this regime to you know stick to their commitments we just saw on wednesday that other signatories to the

deal only have sixty days otherwise they're going to start ramping up back up which i thought was interesting because they say it's not for the military but they are threatening they'll do it for i guess pretty. zuma billy the military right the they want to get back into nuclear brinksmanship to try to do essentially a redo of the negotiation but it's not really to go to your question it's not really about trust it's about verification and the international atomic energy agency the american intelligence community have verified that iran has been complying with this nuclear deal so the question isn't about whether or not they're living up to the deal nor whether or not they've been honest in the past because we do have an accounting of what they've done through our sources such is the intelligence sources and that's that's the hard cold reality we're not going to get a perfect situation where iran nuclear scientists are gone all the material is gone they commits a piece today that's not what's on the table but what has been on the table and what was during that negotiation was to prevent their ability to break out

immediately and quickly and to build a nuclear weapon that could really in danger to the middle east that's now been taken away but by these moves we could be slippery sliding back into that position how michael isn't right back to you joe i was kind of way more worried and frankly started. their expertise to me. thank you joel and thank you everyone for joining me on this edition of politicking also many thanks to larry king for letting me sit in his chair today remember we love hearing from you out there in the audience join the conversation on larry's facebook page and as always you can share your thoughts on twitter by tweeting at king's things and using the politicking hash tag i also invite you to join me on twitter at real amy holmes well that's all for this edition of politicking.

aeroflot russian and lights. in a world of big partisan movies a lot of things and conspiracy it's time to wake up to dig deeper to hit the stories that mainstream media refuses to tell more than ever we need to be smarter we need to stop slamming the door on the bats and shouting past each other it's time for critical thinking it's time to fight for the middle for the truth the time is now for watching closely watching the hawks.

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in twenty forty you know bloody revolution to to crush the demonstrations going from being relatively peaceful political protests. to be creasing the violent revolution is always spontaneous or is it your style or here i mean your list book video through me in the new bill is that i'm new school in need of the former ukrainian president recalls the events of twenty fourteen. those who took part in it invested over five billion dollars to assist ukraine in these and other goals that will ensure a secure and prosperous and democratic. after the previous stage of my career was over everyone wondered what i was going to do next about different clubs on one hand it is logical to go from fields where everything is familiar on the other i wanted a new challenge and

a fresh perspective i'm used to surprising people and i saw why not if you think. i'm going to talk about football not the or else you can think i was going to go. by the way ways of the slide here. france pushes ahead with further arms sales to saudi arabia despite the frenzy of growing backlash over claims its weapons are being used by riyadh to target civilians in yemen. won't you are you more to you would it be why do we continue to support countries that exhibit disrespectful international behavior why do we continue to fuel the war i have no problems with saying that these weapons are made to kill. fleeting art gallery in london covers up to paintings that provokes complaints from muslim visitors and allegations of blasphemy reaction to that ahead. if what we are

going to do with the.