let's discuss with brian stelter, susan glasser, and former congressman charlie dent. good evening to all of you. charlie, i'm going to start with you. what do you think about how the leader of the country and the leader of your republican party spent his time this week? >> well, again, this is just simply inexplicable. i'm kind of old-fashioned, don. i always thought the words of the president were policy. that's not been the case with this administration. obviously he's certainly not the sharpest sharpie in the sharpie box based on what he has stated. i mean why can't the man simply own up to a mistake? he made a mistake when he mentioned alabama being in the path. he should move on, talk about his government's response to this hurricane, which from what i can tell has been fairly effective. but he's not doing that because this is always about him. it's always about him instead of the people who are in the hurricane's path unfortunately. and it's sad that we're talking about this because we should be talking about things like his trying to diversity military construc

this is executive director for justice democrats and cnn commentator, zander rojas, dahlia, and susan glasser. thank you all for being here. i'm fascinated by this daily coverage of this story. susan, this impeachment debate or maybe the lack of a debate is something that's confusing in washington, and i think, all across the country. >> confusing? i mean, that's right! i have no idea how to explain this. and you know, we're supposed to be following it. and so, brian, i think you really hit on something. we are having almost this medieval, ecclesiastical debate. it's confusing. democrats are defensive and divided about it. and have made the story into their own inability to understand how to counter trump. at the same time that trump clearly, i think he perceives a political benefit in talking about it, warning about impeachment. >> interesting. i think right-wing media does as well. as we see on fox all the time about impeachment, but doesn't actually live up to what's going on in the house of representatives. left-wing media pushing for impeachment, journalists in the middle trying to figur

joining us is susan glasser, the author of that piece. susan, you actually use math.is isn't just a hunch. this isn't just a feeling. some people have felt like is the president getting more -- >> some people feel meteorology is science. >> there's also that theory. but you actually looked at though president's twitter feed, his press conferences from two years ago in august and contrasted it with this past august. and what did you find? >> let's be clear. it's not advanced math, okay? in fact, actually, it's the crazy calculus of schoolyard insults is really the big difference. you know, i was surprised actually. a lot of people in august looked at some of the president's extreme tweeting and thought, you know, is he declining in some measurable way? and i wasn't really sure. then i looked at august of 2017 a very memorable month. remember this was the month of fire and fury against north korea. this was the month of charlottesville and good people on both sides. yet i think we've become so -- he was tweeting more than twice as much. in august of 2019 as he was in au

. >> susan glasser? >> congressman nadler has made it increasingly clear in recent months since the delivery of the mueller report he was going to be pursuing the issue what man usaid, it sets clear parameters around it. it doesn't lock the house chair or judiciary in, what it does is sets the terms and rules and conditions under which this investigation would proceed. so i don't think it's a final determination of political decision in how they're going to move but what it says is that they're going to keep that option open. i'm sure that it's going to make president trump furious because it means that, you know, there's no clearing of him despite his many, many efforts to claim complete and utter vilification. he wants to set a structure around impeachment, you're in effect making it a permanent political reality for the president even if democrats haven't resolved their own internal fight to move forward. >> follow up on that, brian, just this part of the proceedings will be the news. >> yes. absolute

garrett graff, jim baker, and susan glasser join us now. baker, legal significance to the subject matter let alone what we're learning about this memo having been secreted? >> yeah. so two things. one, chris, honestly it's just hard to look at those pictures for me. that was the day after jim comey was fired and then the president made all these disparaging statements about jim comey in that same meeting. >> to the russians. >> to the russians and on a perjury level, that was a very challenging time for us back at the fbi to say the least, right? okay. so backing up from that, look, the president has a solemn obligation to protect the country from foreign adversaries, from foreign enemies. and in the mueller report, what director mueller said -- i believe it was in his press conference. he said the russians had engaged in a concerted attack against the united states elections system, and it was done by military and intelligence elements of the russian intelligence and military services, right? and so, oh, my goodness, i mean the president i

susan glasser, it's such an interesting look, such an interesting piece.ing on. >> thank you so much. >>> and president trump will get billions of dollars to help build his border wall, not from mexico but from military families who sacrifice every day for this country. you wouldn't accept an incomplete job any oe. why ac it from your allergy pills? flonase relieves your worst symptoms including nasal congestion, which most pills don't. flonase helps block 6 key inflammatory substances. most pills only block one. flonase. and you'll experience a whole new range of emotions like... of a travel site the relaxing feeling of knowing you're getting the best price. and the magic power of unlocking your room with your phone. i can read minds too. really? book at hilton.com and get the hilton price match guarantee. (door bell rings) it's ohey. this is amazing. with moderate to severe ulcerative colitis, are you okay? even when i was there, i never knew when my symptoms would keep us apart. so i talked to my doctor about humira. i learned humira can help get, and k

cnn chief political correspondent, dana bash and staff writer for "the new yorker," susan glasser. dana, democratic members i have talked to, have a meeting this afternoon. they say this meeting is critical. that's not an overstatement. >> no. >> what do you think the options are of what could be coming out of this meeting? >> there's several options. and before the big, full house democratic caucus meeting this afternoon, the speaker will meet with leadership throughout the day soon, with the chairs of key committees. so, the discussions that will lead to an answer to your question will be kind of developing throughout the day, if knowing nancy pelosi, as you and i both do, covering her for years, the options are made up in her head, about where she could go. one option we have been talking about is a potential select committee, to deal with all these questions. that would mean she would have to convince the committee chairman, who has been waiting for a long time to get the gavels, that they would have to give up power in order to do that. i also think that there is going to be s

scott bolden with us as well as analyst and staff writer for the new yorker, susan glasser. when you hear that the speaker is kregsly keeping the doincrear open, is that rhetoric or do you think they may be moving toward impeachment? >> it's a growing frustration for democrats. across the country, and i travel, too, quite a bit, what do you need to impeach a president? nancy pelosi is trying to protect the moderates because we got the majority in the house, but between this incident, between the obstruction of justice of the mueller report, between the refusal to allow people to testify and impress subpoenas, democrats are just generally frustrated. if the door is open, it's about time. something needs to be done. do your constitutional duty. stop worrying about the senate, stop worrying about the public. we have an election in 2020. it's not going to make that much difference, because in the eyes of the voters, he's only up for 40% approval. if you lay out the case not through investigations but by impeachment, no matter what the senate does, at least you will have done you

susan glasser is here. susan, hello to you. get your reaction to why general mattis says that he resigned from the trump administration. what do you think? >> well, look, i mean he was very clear. if you read the text of his letter although months ago, you know, he has this core belief that without acting with allies, as he said to christiane, and again and again and again, that the united states is not as safe in the world. and i think that he's made that at the foundation, the idea that i went to afghanistan after 9/11, and i was there with troops from all over the world, acting in a united way, and that this was something that fundamentally offended him about president trump's approach to the world. and yet, of course, he's not very willing, is he, to elaborate on it. >> well you heard christiane lay out all the times that, you know, someone in his position might have decided to leave before he did. she could have laid out a lot more, but she only had so much time in the show. i mean you've got the president talking about vl

news and our global affairs analyst susan glasser with "the new yorker." brittney, begin with you and like everyone to listen to this exchange "60 minutes" did a great piece on all of this last night. they sat down with house leadership. listen to what house minority leader kevin mccarthy had to say. >> president trump replies, i would like you to do us a favor, though. >> you just added another word? >> no. it's in the transcript. >> i would like you to do a favor, though. >> it's in the white house transcript. >> okay. of course that's the ukraine transcript of the july 25th call. though is a key word and it was in there, brittney. what does that show you, that the republican leadership in the house responded in that way? are they prepared for the battle ahead? >> well, i think it definitely says that the republican leadership is going to be towing the line with the president. we saw this, of course, around the military report that they were not going to be breaking from talking points, at least in the beginning because they might be afraid of the presid

i want to bring in susan glasser, a staff writer at "the new yorker" and a cnn global afares analyst.hank you. >> is there any hope of a breakthrough when president trump and president rohuhani attend u.n. general assembly this week? >> just say the attack on the oil facility, whether it's proven to have been an iranian attack or not sh, seems to have really reduced the b possibility of an actual meeting between rouhani and trump, which was a real possibility up until then i believe, president trump had signalled he was interest ed in coming to the table with negotiations, but instead, iran appears to have chosen a course of really testing the trump administration and i think the result is that you're seeing some disagreements inside the trump administration go public over whether or not they should even talk with the iranian, so i don't think anybody is hopeful that peace is going to break out. >> this news that we just reported that iran's expected to release a british oil tanker in any way could that be seen as p an overture of some kind. >> absolutely, but it comes in the context

here to discuss susan glasser, ryan lizza and michael isikoff. good evening, one and all. i appreciate you joining us. michael, we're going to start with you. "the wall street journal" is saying the president pressured ukraine's president about eight times in that call. is this an abuse of power? >> if as reported, it's certainly an abuse of office. the president is using his office as president of the united states to pressure a foreign leader to give him ammunition against a political opponent. i mean, it's hard to find something, you know, quite as serious as that up to now. the question is, you know, it's the -- the ball game is that transcript of the phone call. we can have press reports of it, we can have former officials describing it, but until we actually see the wording in the transcript, i'm not sure that's what's needed to move the ball forward. so the question is how are we going to get the transcript? we can wait for someone in the intelligence community to leak it, we could let adam schiff go forward with his -- trying to get the complaint from the inspector

joining me now is clarissa ward and susan glasser.rce telling cnn that what happens with patients is that it prevents stupid moves. that's after the president's initial response of a locked and loaded comment. are cooler heads prevailing here? >> well, it's difficult to know because when we look at the tone and the rhetoric and the policy or lack thereof coming out of the white house there still isn't any sense that there's a clear consistent coherent strategy when it comes to dealing with iran. so wecopy hearing phrases like locked and loaded but then we see president trump has removed john bolton or he left of his own accord. we see that trump elected not to respond when the iranians shot down a drone back in june. so it does seem like they are sort of walking back some of the tougher rhetoric. but then the question becomes, okay, what is the strategy? how is it that the u.s. is in a situation where your worst-case scenario is a full on military conflagration that threaten tuesday consume the entire region and your best case scenari

but let's go now to the big picture with susan glasser, catherine rampell and max boot. max the author of "erosion of conservatism." this is the cnn reporting that the president's considering tapping mike pompeo to be the national security adviser while keeping him in place as secretary of state. good idea? susan, sorry. i'm looking at katherine. sorry about that. go on, susan. pardon me. >> nobody's tried this since hen henry kissinger, and there is a reason. the nature of the job is that it's impossible to be both the national security adviser and the secretary of state. it's i think a reminder of how difficult it has been and it has proven to be to find people who can successfully work with donald trump in the sensitive national security po mike pompeo is the last survivor, literally the last survivor of the president's original national security team. and as secretary of state he's proven he has in particular i think the key quality that is enabled him to survive, which is a determination to never, ever be caught out publicly disagreeing with the president, which of

here to discuss, susan glasser. ryan and michael isikoff. i'll start with you. the wall street journal is saying the president pressured ukraine president about eight times in the call. is this an abuse of power? >> if as reported, it certainly an abuse of office. the president is using his office as president of the united states to pressure a foreign leader to give him ammunition against the political opponent. it's hard to find something quite as serious as that up to now. the question is, it's the ball game is that transcript of the phone call. we can have press reports of it and former officials describe it. until we see the wording in the transcript, i'm not sure -- that's needed to move the ball forward. so the question is, how are we going to get the transcript? we can wait for somebody in the intelligence community to leak it. we can let adam schiff go forward with the trying to get that complaint from the inspector general. i'm not sure that schiff is going to be able to make it public. he's bound by intelligence community rules. that he all this would

you know, one thing i felt that first of all you had in the last hour you had susan glasser on talkingthis incredible piece she did dissecting the number of the tweets he sent in august and why it is more significant and higher numbers and more aggressive and controversial than he has before. i can tell you just from my reporting that one of the reasons, certainly it's probably not the only reason but one of the reasons is because of the economy, guys. he's heading into re-election and he saw the same numbers we all saw. now, i guess it was last week. now public polling, i tell you they saw it in private as well that people are less confident in the economy. the so-called right track, wrong track number on how the kma is going is now under water. more people disapprove than approve on the economy is in general and he's handling it, and that is he understands very, very bad. and i'm told that is one of the reasons to quote a source, has been on a warpath for the past month. >> the jobs report comes out in a moment. but if it's not, he can't fix it with a sharpie. he can't cross out the

and joining us from washington, staff writer for the new yorker and cnn global affairs analyst susan glasser. my 2-year-old learned how to do a thumbs up. let's talk about rules of thumb for covering the impeachment inquiry, trump is going to get uglier. you were kind of the victim this week. the president lashing out at your husband, peter baker, saying baker shouldn't be allowed to write for the "new york times" from him and he called you out saying you're an even bigger trump hater than your husband? what's your reaction and how does it feel like to be called out by the president? >> i was sorry he didn't use my name which people pointed out is what president trump did when he attacked john legend and his wife chrissie teigen. the anonymous wives club, i guess. look, the bottom line is president trump as you see not only from this tweet but for many of the tweets, he is feeling very, very sorry for himself. he's projecting not an atmosphere of resolute calm in the face of this kind of incredible challenge to his presidency but almost a panicky throw anything up and see what sticks. this m

susan glasser in "the new yorker," she writes, the most interesting moments in washington is when the conventional wisdom is shifting and not everyone knows it yet, or when old certainty is being shredded and nothing has emerged to replace it. monday morning the political world was pretty sure donald trump would not be impeached by the house of representatives and he would enter the 2020 race and win re-election for what forecasters see as inevitable. instead, over a remarkable day and a half, a new reality emerged. donald trump appears to have gotten himself impeached. trump now seems all but certain to face not only an impeachment investigation but an actual impeachment vote in the house. whatever it turns out to be, the impeachment will turn into a new scandal very much of his own making. that last part there, very much of his own making, tim o'brien, this ultimately does lead to an impeachment vote. you had two and a half years of this president with the shadow of russia, of mueller, of that probe over his head. and it appeared that when that report was issued and mueller testifie

susan glasser used the math. she went back and looked at the tweets that malign someone, that insults somebody, that uses nasty names. since just two years ago, august of 2017 versus august of 2019, it's, like, tripled. so there's that metric. what metric are you using? >> do you really have to look at the metrics? can everybody just stop? i mane, here's what just happened. okay? we spent two and a half years where we're hypernormalizing gaslighting and lying. we have so much respect for that office and the nature of the presidency that we now have somebody who's obviously not well in the presidency and now we're trying to hypernormalize what he's doing. let's take a look back. i'm not his therapist. i don't need to be. what i need to be is a responsible citizen and take a look at the situation and say, okay. this is intolerable at this point. what are we going to do about this collectively? so as we're socializing the idea, alisyn, it is mainstreaming now and there are responsible republicans that are going to c

and you know, susan glasser says in the new yorker piece, he will go to tweeting. >> sure. >> one of fascinating statistics she has in the recall is that the number of tweets that he has done this august compared to a year earlier w k radically higher. all day long he is preoccupied with whether or not he is treated with respect. >> the tweets are potato chips. comfort food. the stakes are too high. i end on the final question what happens when people get where they think they want to go. we will use you as a sounding board on some of these matters. you knew eloy jimenez. he claimed he wanted to be president. he campaigned hard. do you think he is less happy being president than earlier in his life? >> he is the least introspective man that ever lived. you are asking does he check in with his emotions. he lives inside his emotions. they consume him. his ability to reflect is so minimal. is he happy, no. i suspect that he is in a state of agitation almost all of the time. that is what i was saying earlier wasn't the case in 1988. he was fine. nobody was going after him. he made a fake

susan glasser wrote a great piece in "the new yorker" using the numbers than he has before in the month i'm told, one, probably not all of the reasons but one of the big reasons is the economy. because he knows full well how much re-election is riding on the economy and how much he has been, from the perspective of his campaign, not talking enough but as much as he has talked about it as the reason to re-elect him. the numbers are showing very big warning signs. having said that, the irony is that the more he talks about sharpies and alabama, the less he talks about all the positives on the economy and allows his economies to talk about it. >> and the democrats jumped on the jobs numbers to attack the president. you have not seen nancy pelosi, steny hoyer, the democratic leaders in the house go after the president the way they did today. they are clearly seeing the signs of weakness that they believe could help them in the coming election, something that you'll see in the coming weeks. >> a lower number gave them that political opening. it's dangerous to go month to month. i think your

. >> we indeed did a dramatic reading from that piece by the promising young journalist susan glasser on this broadcast and with were happy to do it. hey, kim, i want to quote to you a guy we showed on the broadcast last night. we'll quote him tonight. this is the former aide to john boehner michael steele, the other michael steele, for constant viewers of this broadcast. "the state of the economy is the single biggest factor in determining whether the president is re-elected. and right now it feels like they are riding, you'll forgive the language, a rubber ducky into alligator-infested waters," said michael steele, former top aide to republican house speaker john boehner. does this match up, kim, with what people pull you aside and say? >> yes. it absolutely does. i mean, the economy is something that this president should be very worried about, very concerned about. we have seen from his poll numbers, especially from the folks who are his core supporters, his base, the folks he likes to play to and please, that just about everything else including sharpiegate, isn't going to make m

susan glasser in "the new yorker," she believe impeachment now close to inevitable. she writes, the most interesting moments in washington are when the conventional wisdom is shifting or when an old certainty has been shredded and nothing has emerged to replace it. as of monday morning, the political world was pretty sure that donald trump wa not be peopled by the democratic house of representatives and that he would enter the 2020 campaign and race to win re-election before the economy betrayed him with a recession that forecasters increasingly see as inevitable. instead over a remarkable day and a half, a new reality emerged. donald trump appears to have got himself impeached. trump now seems all but certain to face an impeachment investigation but an actual impeachment vote in the house. whenever it happens and whatever the specifics of the indictment turn out to be, the impeachment vote will have been triggered by a new scandal very much of his own making. that last part there, very much of his own making, this ultimately does lead to an impeachment vote. you hav

susan glasser of "the new yorker" tweeted tonight, does anybody remember sharpiegate? we do.s ago the president tried to change the weather forecast. and that got us to thinking about his first full day in office when this president, indeed, tried to change the weather. let's remember together. >> it was almost raining. the rain should have scared them away, but god looked down and we said we're not going to let it rain on your speech. in fact, when i first started, i said, oh, no. first line, i got hit by a couple of drops. and i said, oh, this is -- this is too bad, but we'll go right through it. but the truth is that it stopped immediately. it was amazing and then it became really sunny. then i walked off and it poured right after i left. it poured. >> tim o'brien, you've written the guy's life story. what have we learned? >> what we have learned is that donald trump is so counterfactual and in his own sort of reality bubble that he's willing and constantly denying the very thing that's right in front of him. and the reason he does it is in part because i think he's remors