on larry king the articles of impeachment against donald trump bar and mitch mcconnell's hands right now and persian for the senate trial begins while the outcome seems like a foregone conclusion at this point questions remain about whether witnesses will be allowed to testify or not what impact might that make and will any of this affect the fall elections let's talk about that with political panel they are alex vogel former general counsel for the national republican senatorial committee he's in washington and in mountain view california zach friend who are for barack obama and john kerry's presidential campaign. ok what do you mean alex do you make shouldn't there be witnesses. couple of things to look from an institutional perspective the house was the one who was supposed to have witnesses they did create that record in the senators are supposed to serve as jurors you don't get to

retry your case just because you don't like it now that being said if this follows the president from the clinton impeachment which i think it well and i think that's a constructive way to proceed after both sides get to make their case in response the senate will likely have an opportunity to consider additional witnesses i don't think that's a foregone conclusion either way but i think the house made a decision from a timing perspective when they moved ahead with the information that they had. one of the consequences is you don't get to drag it out forever and say well we'd like more witnesses. zach what about the continuing townley more intelligence being obtained by the house committee this led those from trump's attorney rudy giuliani to the head of ukraine live upon this is all involved in this you think there's more to the it's i think that there is definitely

a lot more otherwise the president would have let some of his top advisors speak to the house i mean clearly if he had people that could help clear him he would have let him speak clearly i think that these are people that wouldn't be able to clear him and i think that one of what's interesting is that you know nancy pelosi held onto these articles for some time and i think that actually show that this was the right decision to make because as some of these senators went home over the christmas and holiday break they heard from their constituents you started to see as alex was noting as not being a foregone conclusion you started to see some cracks in that fire wall as you started to see some of these republicans saying that they be open to witnesses and i think with josh bolton or john bolton being willing to testify if the peanut i think that that realistically there will be some more people to come speak and information is coming out that doesn't look good for the president i don't think to your initial question though larry i still don't think they have 2 thirds of the votes though to change the ultimate outcome but i think that the american people get more information where they can make their own mind up in the. november.

once the rubble why deny witnesses and have not one trial would say. it's not a question of denying witnesses per se the house had a job to do here part of their job was to call those witnesses if they didn't call somebody or the house was not willing to wait for the courts to rule on the president's legitimate assertion of executive privilege and they decided they had to move ahead politically then they have to deal with those consequences if you don't get to turn the senate into the house i think it's worth also noting just because mr bolton is that he's prepared to testify have subpoenaed. that does not mean that the president will not exert executive privilege over his testimony remember mr bolton was the president's nason he was his national security adviser the idea that any president would not assert executive privilege over those conversations seems highly unlikely so i would not assume that mr bolton would

testify nor frankly what i assume that what he has to say is necessarily bad for the president zag using usually doesn't fly. i mean look i think it does alex you do have to admit though i mean it looks suspicious if nothing else i mean for it if anybody's been involved in any sort of criminal trial knows that you need as many witnesses as possible in a situation like this and the president blocked all of the key witnesses with firsthand knowledge from testifying and then said well look we don't have any 1st hand witnesses and therefore i'm innocent i mean clearly it wasn't a perfect phone call clearly as information has come up over time it's not made him look more innocent it's made him look more guilty and his actions aren't helping any of that i agree on the executive privilege component of whether he would exert it or not i do think though that i can't imagine that bolton's testimony would help the president kind of mention that anybody's testimony that would have firsthand knowledge of this would help the president because as information has come out it continually points to the fact that he was clearly trying to seek some sort of

political favor in this deal to influence the upcoming election and to your point about waiting for the courts to decide i mean it's a valid legal argument but from a substantive standpoint realistically they were trying to this is trying to influence an election in november we have no idea when the courts were going to rule to come almost 12 months to make an initial ruling so i think the democrats had to move forward in the timeline that they did it was an imperfect situation for everybody involved but let him testify and then the timeline would be irrelevant it's moving to small there is alledged did you watch the democratic debate i did it was a challenge to stay awake but i i i struggled through. he. what candidate do you worry about the most. run against strong i think it's less about who i would worry about the most if i was the trump campaign and more about the different dynamics within that primary at this point someone asked me this morning who was the winner of last night's debate i think the answer has to be joe

biden because he's still the front runner this morning in many ways with the exception of the bernie a list with warren dust up and post debate refusal to shake hands and barbs they've got going back and forth what joe biden really needed was a debate where nothing happened and frankly from his perspective he achieved that so i think that actually worked out fairly well for him that the challenge last night presented and i think the democrats are going to continue to face this is how do you run an effective primary and get people's attention while you're also in the middle of an impeachment process and not just for those senators who are will be in washington and not in iowa or new hampshire during that process but broadly from a message perspective i think that becomes very hard especially frankly if you're joe biden and whether or not you think hunter biden should be called to testify if there's witnesses or not the mere fact that that we're going to have this

impeachment process about ukraine virtually guarantees those issues get brought up and discussed in a way that is not ideal for him when he'd rather be shaking hands and talking about other subjects exactly what did you make of the debate and do you have a super candidate. it was unclear who won the debate except for what i did see was a direct break in the democratic party between candidates that see the path to the presidency through the industrial midwest meaning senator quote your marabou to judge and vice president biden are speaking to really bread and butter issues while senator warren and sanders and so that for a little less. tom styer are speaking to a different kind of base that i don't actually think would help win the presidency in 2020 with that said i agree with alex about it's very tough during the pietschmann situation to break through the noise i mean it's going to suck up all the media oxygen and really when you want a bread and butter discussion on tariffs and some of the other things that are hurting the states that will determine the election it's hard to break through on

that element i don't think though it hurts the vice president it didn't hurt him in fact his poll numbers went up during the impeachment trial that was focused on him in essence during the house and i think the same thing in the senate side because his message is look the president's afraid of me he's most afraid to run against me to the point that he was willing to call in foreign favors in this regard so i think that this will just highlight his electability argument which is what is number one argument and narrative has been alledged do you think the democratic party will come together or will that split just pave the way for trump's reelection well a couple of thoughts number one and lock in a large primary with a number of people in this is true in either party. primaries can be ugly frankly they can be uglier than battles between parties and some of that is to be expected that the reason that i think this divide is going to be harder to put back together this time is you're not only fighting over some policy issues in stylistic

issues this is now fairly fundamentally focused and whether you view it as people talking to only people in san francisco in new york and a few other places or whether they view the divide is generational that part is in intra partisan fight with elizabeth warren and bernie slugging it out to see who can be more progressive or more socialist then the generational fight that they're getting into with people to judge the moderate schism and divide you see between the vice president and senator clinton shar and others those get fundamentally harder to put back together so that if you. are let's say a bernie or elizabeth warren supporter at the end of the day if joe biden is the nominee can you square that and decide that you can support him i find it very unlikely the vice president. if he is the nominee would select either one of those 2 as vice president so you can't use those mechanisms i think it will be messy and

it will be challenging and if the last 24 hours were any indication what you saw between elizabeth warren and bernie sanders is likely to continue jagging you concerned that the 2 wings will not come together. i mean i'm concerned that what i saw occur in the last couple days between senator sanders and senator warren is like reliving 2016 over again i mean where you've got this strange inner party fight this totally unnecessary people sitting it out potentially arguably enough people sitting it out to actually impact the election and 2016 and again in 2020 i do think though that the number one thing that democratic primary in general election voters that have been polled want is somebody that can beat the president so do i think that the party will come together sure do i think there'll be the same level of grassroots enthusiasm because of some of these fights that are occurring on now that i don't know i think it fundamentally though if we're talking about 70000 votes in 3 states across the

midwest maybe it really doesn't ultimately matter but it would be nice to actually have a party that came together and recognize that the shades of the differences in the shades of blue between these candidates are very very very thin compared to the differences between any of these candidates in the current president out of states and so out hope that the party would come together for whoever the nominee ends up being what effect do you think this impeachment business will have on the election alex you know it's interesting i think a lot of democrats are very hopeful that even if they weren't able to actually mph and remove the president that it would dramatically alter his numbers my own belief . is that on balance it has probably netted politically favorable for the president in that it is substantially reenergized his base any time you're an incumbent your challenge is ok team we have to do this again and what this did was allow the president and his team to galvanize and reenergize that

support in a way that few other things could have and if you contrast that with the other side by day almost by definition the especially the highly motivated primary and activist voters in the democratic side they were all in for impeachment they were all in against the president regardless they can't get any more motivated you can't produce any more of those people in places where it's going to matter so i think impeachment will matter but frankly i think it's going to matter in a different way than speaker pelosi initially envisioned and frankly i think her decision to delay transmitting was a really big unforced error in this context she controlled completely how that was done and frankly by dragging it out to the point where even some people on her own party started to push back and she then had to capitulate showed the political nature of the process and undercut a lot of the arguments in terms of time and justification you know division for

impeachment and i think that will be additionally damaging alexander stay right there we'll be right back with more politicking after the break. you. there recently. russian airlines. you know world's big partisan movie lot and conspiracy it's time to wake up to dig deeper to hit the stories that made stream media refuses to tell more than ever we need to be smarter we need to stop

slamming the door on the path 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. teraflops russian airlines. join me every thursday on the alex salmond show and i'll be speaking to guest of

the world of politics sports business i'm show business i'll see you then. backlog coming to politicking continuing our conversation with our political panel they are alex volvo former chief counsel for the democrat or republican national committee he is in washington and in mountain view california is friend who worked for barack obama and john kerry's presidential campaigns as spokesman and strategist. ok as zack what do you make of the bloomberg story he he could spend up to a $1000000000.00 he said that if yeah it doesn't get the nomination he'll give it to his ever running to as he wants to be trump do you fear a blowout which he was. i don't think he's got any chance to win the nomination i wish he'd spend the money on organizing other democratic races and maybe buying fox

news so that he could actually have an impact on the national media landscape that way but i'll say that it's interesting both he and tom star if you look at their media ads for example in the reno market and las vegas media market alone they've bought more ads than bernie sanders has bought across the entire country so they're they're flooding airwaves in a way that nobody's ever seen before including in california which has an early primary this year in very expensive media markets it's been enough to give them 4 or 5 points i mean and i think that some of those the numbers we're seeing than the 10 to 12 range for some of them just are real he's got a lot of organizers on the streets but i just don't see people supporting the democratic base someone who was a republican recently who doesn't really excite the base that much who doesn't really have much of a resume hasn't really been through the processes and up there on the debate stage so i just don't think along at the end of the day bloomberg one of being the nominee definitely won't be a v.p. nominee either so we'll see where it plays out for him. how alex do you see the

bloomberg onslaught so i agree completely with zach that that mayor bloomberg is not going to be the democratic nominee what is most interesting to me is he has said publicly and much has been made of the fact that he thinks he should be the nominee but if he's not all that really matters to him is beating donald trump that's only interesting because the mayor has now run a lot of ads and i've seen a lot of those that had been none of them talk about the president they talk about how great mike bloomberg is so if your goal is to try and beat the president talking about how great mike bloomberg is might make mike bloomberg feel good but isn't going to do anything to support democrats who want to beat the president so i think that's an issue frankly from bill. an air versus billionaire perspective mr stier is frankly been more true to that evos in terms of at least taking on the

president as opposed to just highlighting his own resume so at this point i think this is more of an ego play and as to the question of whether or not if he goes through this exercise whether mayor bloomberg can then just hand that over to whoever the nominee is i think election law may have something to say about that but again i think he's spending what for him even for him is a lot of money and effort that's not going not going to be terribly effective either for his candidacy or because i think he's fundamentally off message with most of the democratic party for the ultimate nominee. early and he could be a brokered convention do you buy that. 100 percent i see in a very realistic path i would say probably maybe a one in 3 or one in 4 chance that we have a plurality but not a majority and we have a brokered convention is kind of an interesting thing because in 2016 you may

remember the sanders campaign was openly against superdelegates and tried to minimize their role and ironically one of the deals that they worked out is on a 2nd ballot the superdelegates would have a much larger role so i think that if he's the person in the lead he's going to have a tough time actually getting the nomination based on the rules that he set up but i think that what my hope is is that if we don't have a majority we have somebody with a clear minority of the votes that really sets apart so that there's a clear front runner even if they don't have enough delegates to clinch but you're going to see a nasty fight at the convention because it was it was something else in 2016 as it was between clinton and sanders in the supporters especially in the sandra side that aren't even democratic party members really except for just a vote in this election they have no party loyalty or connection of the party so to try and broker a group between maybe a more traditional candidate whoever that may be and somebody who isn't is going to be quite the experience to see who will come over the top but a new one for the history books and we've got some pretty good presidents that came out a brokered convention so maybe at the end of the day it's better for the country alison

zagg thanks so much good time today we'll be calling on the end quite a bit. thank fiery thank for after 20 months the united states and china have come to trade agreement will start there with jol rubens former deputy assistant secretaries stayed in the obama administration currently president of the washington strategy group he joins us from the nation's capital oh was we don't have all the details what your early need on this strayed agree in the discharged they going to buy $200000000000.00 and u.s. goods ag well larry 15 good is that guaranteed you know we're sure hope so because there's been a lot of pain in the last couple of years from to tariff war that president trump is a been engaged him with china and so those their commitments now they're signed or on paper and if china does a live up to that that will be a a good relief for our farmers but the problem here and the way it's being interpreted in washington across party lines is that it's just

a pause it's not really a structural shift in our trading relationship with china so a key issues related to intellectual property and particular have not been interest and it's not quite clear when that will take place if china doesn't spend the money what happens. but if they don't purchase at least the way it's been described today by the president by his team there won't be a new negotiation and i'll this will have been for naught and that's that's the big lurking question is a lot of suffering by our farms in particular prices increased consumer prices that is and so what with the benefit from it now if there are these purchases and we get back to a steady state with china that at least calms the nerves but the demands from the business community about greater structural access protection of our intellectual property as we discussed these are things that really need to be ironed out and

they haven't been so if china doesn't purchase the goods that they've committed to then we really don't have leverage to get back into those other deeper more structural conversations in other areas are we closer toward. an incident certainly were on the path to it it's not as if this is been a straight line stressful relationship though it goes in fits and starts but in the last half year we've seen an increasing number of physical incidents with iran be it the iranian backed attack of the saudi oil fields where we nearly bombs in response to variety of attacks in iraq by shia militias backed by iran against american forces and now of course the killing the assassination of custom cilla money nothing indicates that that path has been changed since the recent fighting

so we have to be very very eyes wide open that more can happen do you think killing someone who is a mistake. maybe there is a tactical justification for it from an american military perspective but it's a real strategic blunder in that it's not as if the i or g.c. the revolutionary guard corps that he led suddenly has been dismantled it's still there number 2 came in his lieutenant is now the leader of it he became a full hero inside of iran and so the united states we didn't really achieve a strategic deterrent victory there and now the secretary of state pompei a said deterrence has been restored but that's something that we heard back in june after we withheld against the strikes and and laid down some tough rhetoric that's something we heard when we bomb syria a couple of years ago after a chemical strike and then chemical weapons were used again so it's going to take

a more robust comprehensive policy to change the direction of this relationship assassinating one leader like this has isolated us as well and i do want to mention that it's put us on our heels and our variety of our military objectives in the region including the fight against isis where paradoxically we in iran had a lot of overlap in both of us were fighting against isis and now we took off the field the general who was was leading that fight so it's just it doesn't seem like it was an and i do want to make it doesn't seem like it was done as an imminent threat response it was done more to send a message and that's very dangerous frankly would we be better off out of middle east. bring the troops back and have it to themselves and while still protecting israel. we have we have to have. an approach to the region where it's not our military that's our face to the region and that's been the real the

real weakness for the united states in the region is that we have a military posture and we have not invested enough in our diplomacy and in our our systems in our trade and in our advocacy for democracy and human rights and we've not done so multilaterally with partners who will be there with us thick and thin we're in many ways we're on our own right now in the middle east and we're engaging in military activities without partners so yes we should find a way to draw down our posture in the middle east our military posture in particular we really need to get to that point but we have to do it where we have a plan for the day after and that means engaging with the other assets of american power that means using our diplomacy effectively that means our alliances effectively and that means being in the region with a different approach than just a military one and right now we're tied down militarily and that's not

a good place for us leave as the other countries that have left the. money have left well we're the only ones that have officially left but now the europeans have decided to take a harder line on iran due to iran's restarting of its nuclear program was in that agreement wargame it was working it was verifiably working and it makes no sense still to me to this day to watch how the president chose to break up an agreement that constrained the most dangerous aspect of iran which is its nuclear know how and to do so in a way that kept our alliance is strong we have a lot of issues to deal with with iran. clearly their treatment of their own people in addition to their treatment of their neighbors and their ballistic missile activities but we could have gotten it goes without undermining the deal and we've seen it's worth making this we've seen an unraveling of the relationship between us

and our partners viz a viz iran and what to do about them since we exited the nuclear deal as well joel as always thanks for your time thanks larry and thank you audience for joining me on this edition of politicking remember you can join the conversation on my facebook page or tweet me at kings things don't forget to use the politicking hash tag and that's all for this edition of politicking. aeroflot russian headlights. you know world of big partisan

movies lot and conspiracy it's time to wake up to dig deeper to hit the stories that made stream media refuses to tell more than ever we need to be smarter 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 truth the time is now for watching closely watching the hawks.

aeroflot russian headlights. you are no offense but you no longer a young woman in fact you are one of the last living survivors of the nazi ellis asked am aware of it. leverage it. all you like. and you can never forget i know auschwitz was the only light to be inhaled those who would never believe it want to go to as a copy of the course for 30 years and know to be very bad at all seems so logical for by your side to make it right when i get out on the farm saw you i'm going to take my song to the next place and hope for the bless my heart hurts.

was. not. tried a mocks the 75th anniversary of the soviet union's liberation of warsaw from nazi germany thousands were sent to death camps along the lines in the cities that suffered years of occupation during the 2nd 12. pentagon reacts to accusations that washington has routinely line to about america's longest war made by the top u.s. official overseeing afghanistan's reconstruction. and to rob brown's its former partners that washington's puppets off to germany confirmed it caved in to trump's threat to impose tariffs on european states if they don't quit the 2015 nuclear deal.