ben rhodes knows this well, he was involved in helping to create it. this was a very specific mission that was to fight against isis with a very small number of elite u.s. special operations forces. they were working, they had captured and killed tens of thousands of isis fighters. and then abruptly, for reasons that maybe we'll know one day, president trump has this call with erdogan and he decides to let erdogan, let turkey invade and blow up the entire project. and now those special operations forces are being pulled out. president trump says, oh, some are going to stay behind and protect the oil so we get the oil. i don't think he has any idea of what these special operations forces do. they don't go around with buckets and pick up oil and fly them in helicopters back to the united states. they hunt down isis fighters. they do very specific missions. they look for hostages. that's what they've been doing here. president trump was trying to confuse the whole american people who think that the middle east is a big just giant war zone, sand and blood.

look at what ben rhodes just explained here. got nuclear weapons in turkey, so we got that going on with the country of turkey. you have got isis and isis prisoners now getting out because of this president's move. when he had troops on the border, a very limited number. and him making that decision rashly after the call from erdogan. you now have kurds that have been slaughtered. you have russia filling the void which, by the way, as nancy pelosi said today, "all roads lead to putin." every decision that he makes seems to help russia. when i think about the kurds i've met with when i've been to turkey and people, and i have been to jordan, other places, some of those kurdish fighters, when think about what those refugees from syria have gone through, i remember one of the women told me that what she had seen, what happened to people in her family, would make stones cry. it is a mess in syria, but the last thing you want to do is remove those limited troops and allow turkey to come in and slaughter our allies. that is the evil t

i wanted to get ben rhodes to talk about iran deal. they said there's a separation of powers issue and i dropped it. i didn't issue a subpoena, the difference is cummings and nadler will issue a subpoena, see, they don't comply. they don't care because court date will come after, they will create a narrative, you will hear nadler and cummings, we issued 250 subpoenas, they never responded. most of them are wholly bogus and the court would laugh them out of there, the reason nadler became chairman of judiciary committee he went before his colleagues on the democratic side of the aisle and said i'm better suited to pursue impeachment. come with me i will do impeachment and that's how he beat out bill and became chairman of the committee and that's what he's doing, abusing power. >> one last question for me and we will shift, we will end on a positive note like you do in the book, what looking forward to rei, in this in. >> i want to lay out all of the bad, you come and listened to the meeting and bummed out, it's not the feel-good meetin

talk about the iran deal and i invited ben rhodes to come testify before the oversight committee.r he was doing public speeches certainly he has time to do all the media and public speeches he can come talk to congress about this. they claimed executive privilege. they said a separation of powers issue and i dropped it. i didn't issue subpoena the difference now is cummings and nadler will issue subpoenas and say they don't comply. they know that if it goes to court they will never win but they don't care because that court date is going to come after the next election. they want to create a narrative, i guarantee you will hear nadler and cummings and the others say we issued 250 subpoenas they never responded. most of them are wholly bogus and a court would last them out of there. the reason jerry nadler became the chairman of the judiciary committee is because he went before his colleagues in the democratic side of the aisle and said i'm better suited to pursue impeachment. come with me. i'm given to impeachment. that's how he beat out phil loughran and became the chairman of th

it's all catching up to him. >> ben rhodes, a safe distance from the west wing, as far as he can get, in los angeles. thanks for joining us tonight. >> thanks, brian. >>> what rick wilson has to say about the republicans speaking out about trump's syria decision when we come back. these folks don't have time to go to the post office they use stamps.com all the services of the post office only cheaper get a 4-week trial plus postage and a digital scale go to stamps.com/tv and never go to the post office again. >>> close trump ally lindsey graham has been uncharacteristically critical of the president's decision to withdraw u.s. troops from syria. he told axios last week, quote, if i hear the president say one more time i made a campaign promise to get out of syria, i'm going to throw up, which somehow gets us to rick wilson, long-time florida man, long-time republican strategist, who is soon following up on his first book "everything trump touches dies" with a new work "running against the devil" due out in early 2020. good evening to you. how do you think lindsey graham is doing tonig

i invited ben rhodes to come testify before the oversight committee.s in the new yorker, he was doing public speeches, certainly he has time to do all the media and public speeches he can come talk to congress about it. added an issue subpoena, the difference now is cummings and nadler will issue subpoenas saying, they don't comply. but they know if it goes to court they will never win because they don't care because the court date is going to come after the next election. they want to create a narrative, i guarantee you will hear nadler and cummings saying we issued 250 subpoenas they never responded. most of them are wholly bogus. " would left them out. the reason jerry nadler became the chairman of the judiciary committee is he wet before his colleagues on the democratic side of the aisle and said i'm better suited to pursue impeachment. come with me i'm going to do impeachment. that's how he beat out loughran and became the chairman of the committee. this is what he's doing he's abusing his power. >> one last question for me then will shift and end

it's all catching up to him. >> ben rhodes, a safe distance from the west wing, as far as he can get, in los angeles. thanks for joining us tonight. >> thanks, brian. >>> what rick wilson has to say about the republicans speaking out about trump's syria decision when we come back. s syria decisn when we come back. we're reporters from the new york times. this melting pot of impacted species. everywhere is going to get touched by climate change. they're america's biopharmaceutical researchers. pursuing life-changing cures in a country that fosters innovation here, they find breakthroughs... like a way to fight cancer by arming a patient's own t-cells... because it's not just about the next breakthrough... it's all the ones after that. i'm working to make each day a little sweeter. adp simplifies hr, benefits, and payroll for magnolia bakery, so employees like sarah can achieve what they're working for. you get more than yourfree shipping.ir, you get everything you need for your home at a great price, the way it works best for you, i'll take that. wait honey, no. when you want it. you g

evelyn farkas, ben rhodes, thank you for joining us, enlightening us.en we come back, michael cohen -- yes, that michael cohen, the fixer, is reportedly cooperating now with the manhattan district attorney and he is a central figure in an investigation that is closing in on donald trump's personal tax returns, his corporate tax returns and possibly other business practices. former federal prosecutor will join us next. i have moderate to severe pnow, there's skyrizi. ♪ things are getting clearer, yeah i feel free ♪ ♪ to bare my skin ♪ yeah that's all me. ♪ nothing and me go hand in hand ♪ ♪ nothing on my skin ♪ that's my new plan. ♪ nothing is everything. keep your skin clearer with skyrizi. 3 out of 4 people achieved 90% clearer skin at 4 months. of those, nearly 9 out of 10 sustained it through 1 year. and skyrizi is 4 doses a year, after 2 starter doses. ♪ i see nothing in a different way ♪ ♪ and it's my moment so i just gotta say ♪ ♪ nothing is everything skyrizi may increase your risk of infections and lower your ability to fight them. before treatm

evelyn farkas, ben rhodes, thank you for joining us, enlightening us.yes, that michael cohen, the fixer, is reportedly cooperating now with the manhattan district attorney and he is a central figure in an investigation that is closing in on donald trump's personal tax returns, his corporate tax returns and possibly other business practices. former federal prosecutor will join us next. prosecutor will join us next saturdays happen. pain happens. aleve it. aleve is proven better on pain than tylenol. when pain happens, aleve it. all day strong. performance comes in lots of flavors. ♪ (dramatic orchestra) there's the amped-up, over-tuned, feeding-frenzy-of sheet-metal-kind. and then there's performance that just leaves you feeling better as a result. that's the kind lincoln's about. ♪ bleech! aww! awww! ♪ it's the easiest because it's the cheesiest. kraft for the win win. you wanna see something thatamazing?ing. go to hilton instead of a travel site and you'll experience a whole new range of emotions like... the relaxing feeling of knowing you're getting t

nothing more than to say their piece in front of congress rather than go down with this ship. >> ben rhodes former deputy national security adviser under president obama. ben, i really appreciate you making time to be here tonight. thanks for your time. >> thanks, rachel. >>> miles of news ahead, piles of news ahead. senator chris murphy will be joining us tonight, lots to ask him. also i'll show you the part of my day that made me laugh out loud to the point of giddiness, i was very grateful. i'll share it with you, coming up next. stay with us. ♪ (dramatic orchestra) performance comes in lots of flavors. there's the amped-up, over-tuned, feeding-frenzy-of sheet-metal-kind. and then there's performance that just leaves you feeling better as a result. that's the kind lincoln's about. ♪ i had no idea that my grandfatherfe changing moment for me. was a federal judge in guatemala. he was an advocate for the people... a voice for the voiceless. bring your family history to life like never before. get started for free at ancestry.com -excuse me. uh... do you mind...being a mo-tour? -what could b

joining us now is ben rhodes, former deputy national security adviser under president obama. mr.rhodes, thank you for making time to be here tonight, i really appreciate it. >> thanks, rachel. >> you're obviously a much better subject matter expert on these things than i am, let me ask you if anything i summed up today seems wrong or if you would put a different cast on it. >> i think that's right, rachel, essentially the trump administration is trying to dictate the terms of a solution that would be very much to putin's liking. yes, there has been a framework in place for some time for there to be a resolution that could involve snap elections in regions in ukraine that have been invaded by russia. the context here matters. the context is you have the president of the united states, president trump, would does not care at all about ukraine's sovereignty and does not care that ukraine is part of a broader strategy by putin to interfere in western democracies, interfere in their politics, most acutely in ukraine where they've had troops on the ground backing these separatist advis

and i started -- i invited ben rhodes to come testify before the oversight committee. he was in the new yorker, he was doing public speeches. well, certainly if he has time to do all the media and public speeches, he can come talk to congress about this. oh, no, no, no. they claimed executive privilege. they said there's a separation of powers issue, and i dropped it. i didn't issue a subpoena. the difference now is cummings and nadler will issue subpoenas and say, see? they don't comply. but they know if it goes to court, they will never win but they don't care because that court date's going to come after the next election. they want to create a narrative -- i guarantee you're going to hear them say we issued 250 subpoenas, they never responded. most of them are wholly bogus and a court which laughs them out of there. the reason jerry madler -- nadler became the chairman of the judiciary committee is because he went to his colleagues and said i'm better suited to do impeachment. come with me, i'm going to do impeachment. and that's how he beat out zoe lofgren, and he

they're interested a big one didn't they dress one of them a big one they have dressed one of them ben rhodes in the short time that we have left let's look ahead to the next presidential election next year. what kind of democratic party do you think is going to be capable of beating donald trump with his massive following is dominance of the airwaves is dominance of social media which proved so devastating in the last presidential election what kind of democratic vote is going to be able to i think contrast with the current but the massive following is 40 percent he is the most unpopular us president to run for reelection in my life he sets the news agenda 30 years or 3 then doesn't they dominate that it takes a look at what. they've got to live with the world as it is or the democratic party just routed down from republican party guy from the scene we won 40 seats in the house yeah and won by the largest popular vote margin in the history of a midterm election the largest democratic victory in the house since watergate. voters in the european parliament elections have shaken out the contine

and gentlemen welcome the host, tommy >> ladies and gentlemen welcome the host, tommy viator and ben rhodes. ♪ ♪ >> hello again. thank you for having us back. without further ado, we will welcome the senior senator from colorado, michael bennet. (applause) ♪ ♪ >> senator, thank you. >> there are 85 students here from colorado college. (applause) more than any other delegation in the place. (applause) >> thank you for joining. we are thrilled to have you. just kidding. we think that is stupid as well. (laughs) >> this place ran a lot better when you are here. (applause) >> thank you. now we have a podcast. we're asking everybody a version of this question. open to the idea of conditioning aid with israel. curious where you land on whether or not you can consider withholding aid as leverage. >> probably not where those guys landed. i would want to know and have a strong understanding of what the effect would be on the politics and israel. would it strengthen the position of israel, whose actions we are objecting to? when you have lived as i have with mitch mcconnell, i often said i would neve

ben rhodes, deputy national security adviser under president obama. george mason law university jeffrey offer. ben, first, what does all this mean, what the president said last night? >> it means we're selling out our closest allies. the turning point in the campaign was in 2014. you will recall there was a battle of kabani. we started flowing weapons into the kurds. they're the ones who fought on the ground with u.s. air support all the way to raqqah. thousands of kurds were killed to root out isis. we also carefully put advisers to help them but it's a trip wire to prevent the turkeys from coming in and potentially massacring the kurds. what donald trump has done is against the counsel of his entire administration, this entire campaign we put together, he has sold these people out just because one authoritarian leader called him up and said he wanted a fare. st a horrific way to make foreign policy. >> you were a republican staffer on that foreign relations committee. the gop senators are opposing the move. mitch mcconnell, lindsey graham, mitt romne

i spoke to form er senior obama national security official ben rhodes. turkish, kurdish issues. they say they have no idea what the president is talking about, that this is a deal that gives turkey what it won't wants. so again, the president is trying to tout some historic achievement that no one else sees as such. >> not angel that the curds are happy, erdogan is happy, but all of civilization. how many falsehoods have you counted in the past week? >> well, the previous week, the week ending sunday, it was 129. that's the most he's made in the 14 weeks i fact checked at cnn and what's interesting is that the subjects have changed. it used to be about immigration and the economy. now it's focused on syria and ukraine and whistleblower. he said more than 20 times in just two weeks that the highly accurate whistle bloer was highly inaccurate. this is up and down kinds of dishonesty. >> then with regard to the no quid pro quo, no quid pro quo, which is what we heard from trump and so many other officials and then of course you saw mick mulvaney and he was

. >> i caught up with ben rhodes. >> good to see you, how are you?former white house speechwriter, one of president obama's closest advisers on foreign policy. >> they are the kind of 2.0 version of a terrorist threat, we don't need to hijack a plane to terrify people in new york, we can uss something horrific in iraq or syria, put that on social media, they'll see it and they'll be terrified. >> isis leaders weren't just terrifying the outside world, they were also spreading fear among their own believers. >> you thought that this was going to be an islamic utopia, you said. >> yeah. >> what was it like when you got there? >> dystopia. >> dystopia? >> yeah. just all sorts of crazy. >> you see madness in their eyes. >> hey, america. >> just started to execute people for things which even in islamic law you would not be executed for. i remember the, you know, images of young teenagers being executed because he ate during ramadan. these are not capital offenses in islamic law. but to them everything became a capital offense, because they were a death c

first of all, according to ben rhodes, susan rice, the deputy national security adviser, president trump never tried to call or communicate with kim jong-un, just factually wrong. >> i challenge the white house to show their data and counter the denial here that these 11 attempted calls were made. again, what we're seeing is the president aligning himself with the wrong people and in the process, allowing himself to be manipulated. whale we're all focused on russia and ukraine, rest assured, north korea is playing this president. they continue reportedly to develop a unique submarine capability, to deliver the ability to fire missiles from that submarine. they continue to test missiles and some kind of secret agreement has been worked out between trump and north korea that as long as you don't embarrass me, as long as you don't outwardly show development in your nuclear program, all will be well. that's what appears to be happening here. the president, again, being manipulated and by the wrong people. >> frank figliuzzi, thank you so much. >>> and coming up, critical mass as republicans

>> yeah, susan rice and ben rhodes both tweeted to say this was absolute nonsense, that obama never wantedwith kim, obama never called kim. this is all made up. obama practiced a doctrine of what they called strategic patience, which was essentially ignoring north korea while they practiced belligerent behavior. there's no evidence of this in the slightest. >> daniel dale, thanks for fact checking the president. >> coming up, one of the president's old favorites from the 2016 campaign comes back to bite him at gave five of the world series in washington. >> crowd chanting "lock him up." >> what this scene says about the national pastime in the age of donald j. trump. my mom washes the dishes... ...before she puts them in the dishwasher. so what does the dishwasher do? cascade platinum does the work for you, prewashing and removing stuck-on foods, the first time. wow, that's clean! cascade platinum. when you're looking for answers, it's good to have help. because the right information, at the right time, may make all the difference. at humana, we know that's especially true when you're look

and i started -- i invited ben rhodes to come testify before the oversight committee. he was in the new yorker, he was doing public speeches. certainly, he has time to do all the media and public speeches, he can come talk to congress about this. oh, no, no, no, no. they called the executive privilege. they said there's a separation of powers issue, and i dropped it. i didn't issue a subpoena. the difference now is cummings and nadler will issue a subpoena. see? they don't comply. but they know that if it goes to court, they will never win. but they don't care because that court date's going to come after the next election. they want to create a narrative, i guarantee you you're going to hear mad areler and cummings say we issued 250 subpoenas. they never responded. most of them are wholly bogus, and a court would just laugh them out of there. the reason jerry nadler became the chairman of the judiciary committee is he went before his colleagues on the democratic side of the aisle and said i'm better suited to pursue impeachment. come with me, i'm going to do impeachme

congressman, jeff mason, reuters white house correspondent, and ben rhodes. what do they tell you about the workings of u.s. foreign policy apparatus, you give us some dirt, you give us a meeting at the white house, you get your arms to fight the russians. >> chris, it's important to understand what we're seeing here is not just the corruption of the ukrainian government by president trump pressuring the ukrainian government to dig up dirt on his opponents, we are seeing in the text messages the corruption of the national security making off the u.s. government, the state department. normally what you have is the u.s. white house setting priorities for u.s. interests not the president's personal political interests and then american diplomats implementing that policy. this is not how american foreign policy works. you're not supposed to have diplomats who work for the american people on taxpayer dimes essentially leveraging the foreign relations of the united states to get a country to get re-elected. and what you see here are all the important instruments we

-israel relationship, the israeli-palestinian conflict, be lucky to have with us again ben rhodes and tommy vitor. very few people can claim to have done as much as tommy and to advance a progressive policy y first foreign and to ensure that this presidential primary campaign discussion of s global affairs. so please join me in now in welcoming them to the stage. >> hello, again. doing?verybody gala tonight. you guys are warriors. why without further ado, don't we welcome our first candidate of the day to the stage, mayor pete buttigieg. senator ♪ >> welcome. mayor buttigieg: thank you. foreign ve a major policy plan back in june. i think you were the first to policy vision. and in that speech you said, if prime minister netanyahu makes promise to annex would nk settlements he know that american taxpayers bill.help foot the [applause] see, that was a well-received line in your speech. unpack that a little bit? ow would you ensure u.s. taxpayer dollars won't be used to fund annexation? mayor buttigieg: it begins by basis of our the relationship with israel is not strategic alliance tha

up with me this morning is ben rhodes, an msnbc contributor. call with nancy pelosi yesterday. adriana, laura from "the new york times" editorial board, rena shaw and with us from washington this morning is eli, a white house report rer for the los angeles times. let me try here a little bit. summarize if you can what the messaging is here house leadership. i don't know how explicitly you can or want to talk about that phone call but, there were two big questions i had. one was how does leadership respond from these calls from republicans saying have a vote on this. have a vote, let's quiet these criticisms. should it be centered on ukraine or open to all the news items. >> what did they say in what did you hear on the call? >> i'm not going to divulge any insights, but clearly this is like someone that's being investigated asking the investigator to have a role in the rules of the game or you you're going to be. like going to a da saying wait a minute, you're goiinvestigating? you should do it this way. obviously not. the constitution is very

you write about meetings you had with ben rhodes yesterday.is as you did through information and trying to cut that campaign off at the knees. this was a complicated and complex effort. and here we see the president going against that. we see again this crisis being created that we so easily could have forced. >> it is a tremendously comp it qaaed thing and we could see hit all day and i know you don't want to do. . >> i would love to if we had the time. >> -- and talk about it. isis was a threat. it was a threat to the region. even a threat here. how do we marshall our forces to eradicate them? there was the problem with syria. ben and i probably wouldn't completely agree with how we dealt with it. but we could just focus on syria -- i mean isis. the problem with the president making this reckless decision -- he's not aware -- he's never been aware that countries have interest. erdogan is not just himself. he is representing a country. he doesn't get the fact that people have these goals. that turkey wants to set is up this territory there, g

and gentlemen welcome the host, tommy >> ladies and gentlemen welcome the host, tommy viator and ben rhodes

and it led him to a foreign policy apparatus where it was the president and ben rhodes and sometimesitting around making decisions. the interagency process did not function. george w. bush goes into iraq and never asks a man who ran the first war in iraq, collin powell, whether he should go into it or not. when asked why he didn't ask collin powell about whether he should invite iraq the second time, george w. bush's answer, well, i knew what he was going to say. we have been paying, we have been pairing for the arrogance of commanders and chiefs in foreign policy now for 19 years. and it continues. >> but think there's a difference between -- >> of course there's a difference. hold on a second. thank you. i just want to make sure that all of our friends in tweetland understand i am not putting them altogether. i'm just simply saying, there has been this attitude over the past 19 years from the past three presidents that they know better than the experts. and we have paid a price for it. but go ahead, you're right. there's a huge difference between donald trump and any of the 44 pres

. >> ladies and gentlemen welcome and ben, tommy viator rhodes. ♪ >> hello again.having us back. ado,ut further

there is a fascinating passage in a book by ben rhodes, mr. president would you like toe display more footage of osama bin laden's body, his burial, et cetera, and trump turned to him and said, and we are not going to spike the football. used that exact phrase. so in this case, you have more of that taking credit, spiking the football, and it may come back to hurt us but in all an operation where we had incredible support. >> mike barnicle, you want to follow up on that. >> and off of what david said, inevitably, joe, there is going to be an autopsy, journalistic, forensic autopsy of this event over the weekend and find out a lot more details about it. one of the details we're going to find out about is the president's usage of language to describe how al-baghdadi died, crying, wimpering, running, dying like a dog. yesterday in speaking with two people, both with combat experience in the pentagon, the idea that he could hear this, or that someone told him this, given the chaos and the noise and confusion of a close quarters firefight, that cle