aaron blake is back, senior political reporter for "the washington post." republican strategist and author of "everything trump touches dies," rick wilson. former aid to the george w. bush white house and state department elise jordan. and john heilemann. i want to start with you because there are now so many threads coming in, in the release of transcripts from the closed-door depositions which is what precedes these public hearings that we are going to see this week. but braided together they all tell the same story. >> they do. they do tell the same story. and i think they are telling a story that is really a story that we've known now for some weeks. it's not like any of these additional levels of detail are shocking or stunning, except in the largest sense they happened. but the picture's very clear now, and the layering of the evidence and the voices and who was in the room with whom and who heard what when is all an incredibly important part of building what seems like a rock solid case. you have used the analogy of brick by brick and i think the dem

and aaron blake joins us by satellite for the "post" right now.ake note of this that barr hasn't been shy about sticking his neck out for the president in the past. you'll remember the criticism he got following the mueller investigation for basically misframing the findings of robert mueller's report here. barr has been notably silent this time around and notably barr's own name was mentioned multiple times in that phone call. what do you make about the different circumstances and why this one is so different? >> well, i think that there is a real motivation for the justice department to stay out of this one to the extent that they can, knowing that they might need to be involved later on. even if you're bill barr and you really believe there was nothing wrong with that call, there is maybe nothing wrong with what the president or anybody else has done. the idea that you would come out at the front end and prejudge this i think is not exactly going to work in your favor. i think what's really interesting about that "new york times" story is the i

. >> joining me aaron blake senior political reporter for the "washington post."ke-aways from fiona hill's and alexander vindman's transcripts, let's talk about the take-aways, you list mick mulvaney as implicated in the quid pro quo. sondland has even more explaining to do and incoherent chain of command and sondland's removal and reason statement on a ukraine trip. so let's start with the first one on mick mulvaney's role. what are we learning about on that front? >> this is significant, because the new line of defense from trump allies is that while maybe there was a quid pro quo and we now have six witnesses testifying to that effect, that it didn't necessarily connect itself to the president, because he hasn't been involved in those discussions, according to the witnesses that we've seen. we saw gordon sondland in his clarified testimony saying he communicated that quid pro quo to ukrainian officials, not because he had heard it from the president, but because he had presumed it was the only credible explanation for the military aid being withheld. so the fac

thank you for your reporting and aaron blake for just remember that word "though." how they dropped that anyway. i want a favor from you, though. i think that's conditional. just guessing. coming up, who is going to take the fall for trump's ukraine shakedown? they'll try to blame somebody else. mr. i do it alone i don't have a team is now saying, what? me? could it be mick mulvaney the president's chief of staff who is at the center of the scandal? he is doing everything he can to even avoid testifying. plus nikki haley's stunning rel investigations in her book. she reveals rex tillerson and kelly as almost traders asking for her help to undermine president trump. >> it should have been go tell the president what your differences are and quit if you don't like what he's doing but to undermine a president is really a very dangerous thing. >> is she trying to set herself up to succeed trump? or even sooner succeed pence? hey allergy muddlers... achoo! ...do your sneezes turn heads? try zyrtec... ...it starts working hard at hour one... and works twice as hard when yo

aaron blake and jonathan swan. we are also joined by andrew weissmann.have been watching something so extraordinary. and i articulated this anxiety i have about staring at trees and missing the forest. but if you can just pull us back to the forest on what happened today. >> the main thing that happened is you have a witness who said there was a quid pro quo. he didn't link all of the pieces, but he linked enough of them that you could quibble with all sorts of ends and little pieces of it. but at the end of the day you have somebody who was appointed by the president saying that he was leveraging for his own personal benefit, an investigation into what he then understood was the bidens, not just burisma, but he now understands having looked at everything that this was an investigation into a political opponent. and as you just law in the last segment, he understands that's wrong and is something that the president was doing. >> if you had these facts on a governor, could you indict on these facts? >> absolutely. this is the kind of case you would bring.

. >>> aaron blake is a senior political reporter at "the washington post." he joins us now. aaron, good morning. nice to see you. >> good morning. >> let's talk impeachment if we can. this last week was the first time that americans saw the transcripts of the closed-door dp depositions, for these key witnesses, including a current national security official, who had no doubt -- he was on the call. he had no doubt that the president was engaged in a quid pro quo. as we look ahead next week for the first time, we're going to have public hearings. what are you looking forward to seeing over the course of next week? what will you be watching for? >> well, it will begin with a slog, rather than a bang. on wednesday, we have two successive hearings that will drag this out for a very long time in one day. first, with bill taylor, the top diplomat in ukraine. then, george kent, a top state department employee. i think they're going to set the stage here and talk about reservations that existed in a diplomatic community and in the top state department officials, about exactly what was

here is what aaron blake thinks on that topic, the winner is pete buttigieg, the number one winner fromt night positive a saying mayor pete has real momentum in the first contest in iowa where a des moines register cnn poll had him up 9 points last week. he seems likely to be the target of many rival attacks, his most tense back-and-forth was with tulsa gabbard. in theabbard listed losers column for last night's debate along with joe, aaron blake writing joe biden's shaky debate performances have not cost him thus far, but that does not change the fact they are almost unfailingly shaky. this was the second most tweeted about moment last night according to twitter's official staff. seesng about the rot she in the democratic party and her response attracted the attention of senator kamala harris. [video clip] >> our democratic party is not the party that is of, by, and for the people. it is a party that has continued to be influenced by the foreign party establishment in washington, represented by hillary clinton and other's foreign policy, the military-industrial complex and other greedy

this is from aaron blake in the washington post, president trump asked about nikki haley, mike pence is a great vice president, he is our man 100%. nikki will absolutely be involved and he went on to say nikki will be back in some form because she is great. this is also from aaron blake, president trump sang the first lady got worried about his health when she saw news reports raising questions about his will to revisit over the president saying she told to him, darling, darling, are you ok steve of fox and friends congratulating president trump the record stock isket and asked how he will strong for 2020. president trump responding by talking to you. these last two talking about foreign policy. president trump on his fox appearance saying al-baghdadi was the biggest terrorist of the last hundred years and his administration doesn't get enough credit for killing him. the quote says we defeated isis, took the caliphate, and we just took out al-baghdadi. if obama did it, it would be a two year story. with me, i got a day. not that it was -- it matters, but we defeated him. host: thank

. >> joining me now "washington post" senior political reporter aaron blake and rick tyler decided toe back with me, thank you, rick, rick, start with you, the former ambassador to the u.n., no secret that she did, in fact, oppose some of the president's policies. at times she certainly -- she told me she opposed certainly his tone occasionally. but now she's saying that tillerson and kelly tried to undermine the president and called it offensive. what do you make of the claims? what do you make of her timing? >> well, she's trying to sell a book. you know. but look. trying to surround a principal, a president in this case with people on staff to influence policy, i suppose you could put undermining with that but tillerson and the kelly had the best interest of the country when trying to influence the president in a better direction, to have better tone. when nikki haley said that they should have confronted him directly, we don't know they didn't. what did she confront the president about? she said she did but now that she's not under his spell or in his administration we don't hear

. >> joining me jeff bennett, jonathan la mere, "washington post" senior political reporter aaron blake and former deputy national security advisor nancy sodderberg. is there anything that sticks out to you in these early minutes? you literally have only had minutes to take a look at this. >> reporter: you spoke to ambassador bill taylor's unpeachabunpeac unimpeachable background. he also learn that he had exhaustive note taking processes. he kept contemporaneous notes of all the damning things about president trump's actions as it relates to this entire ukrainian gambit. one of the reasons he's such an important witness and why he's called first to give this testimony is because he's one of four witnesses who testified behind closed doors and spoke to the existence of a quid pro quo. our previous reporting and of course the transcript fills in the details of this is that taylor told investigators that the delivery of that nearly $400 million in military aid to ukraine and the offer of a white house meeting between president's trump and zelensky was entirely conditioned on ukrainian off

this is from aaron blake in the washington post, president trump asked about nikki haley, mike pences a great vice president, he is our man 100%. nikki will absolutely be involved and he went on to say nikki will be back in some form because she is great. this is also from aaron blake, president trump sang the first lady got worried about his health when she saw news reports raising questions about his will to revisit over the president saying she told to him, darling, darling, are you ok steve of fox and friends congratulating president trump the record stock isket and asked how he will strong for 2020. president trump responding by talking to you. these last two talking about foreign policy. president trump on his fox appearance saying al-baghdadi was the biggest terrorist of the last hundred years and his administration doesn't get enough credit for killing him. the quote says we defeated isis, took the caliphate, and we just took out al-baghdadi. if obama did it, it would be a two year story. with me, i got a day. not that it was -- it matters, but we defeated him. host: thank yo