Which is the euro as House Democrats move yet another step closer to impeaching donald trump does the u. S. President have any credible defense left ill ask one of his closest allies the conservative media mogul whos been dubbed the trump whisperer. I met the hot sun also on the show our back row baghdad is vicious leadership of ice came to an end when he was killed in a u. S. Raid last weekend so is this the beginning of the end for eisel or will the ultra violent groups survive its leaders demise thats our debate but 1st with a flurry of damning testimonies in an impeachment resolution clearing the house this week democrats in Congress Just turned up the pressure on donald trump is there any defense though of trumps now notorious phone call to the president of ukraine in which he asked him to dig up dirt on Joe Biden Chris ruddy is c. E. O. Of conservative news outlet news about and hes such a close friend of the president that hes become known as the trump whisperer he says the whole impeachment process is a giant diversion this weeks headliner from florida chris rock. Chris ruddy thank you for joining me on up front youre a close friend of donald trump you speak to him quite regularly how strong doing right now as he gets closer and closer to becoming only the 3rd u. S. President to be impeached judging from his twitter feed he seems to be cracking under the pressure. I dont see that at all i think that the president is a guy that likes to tell you what he thinks and how he feels and hes been tweeting quite a bit for several years now so i wouldnt read into any any new tweets that hes doing i think he likes this is a guy that likes to walk on fire he can walk on fire and not even feel that he thrives on battle he thrives on these political controversies hes wired differently than the most of us i always say i think we can you know theres a fire is definitely what is it really is a fire well you know most of us if we see a fire we flee from it if we see a fight we flee from it he wants to run to it he likes to address problems or tackle problems or or confront issues not the style that maybe you and i have but it works for him and its been very successful over a long period for him you say not to read much into his tweets just this week he tweeted about the impeachment hoax in capital letters which sounded very stable what was the last thing the president said to you about impeachment when you last spoke to him. Well i dont discuss what the president tells me in private conversations but i can tell you that we both agree that the impeachment was a political act that this was started because the democrats are a year away from election they really have no candidate they can defeat him theres only a year left they have no evidence of a criminal act here none but of course impeachment is not about loral criminality it is a political act to begin with and you say theres no candidate who can beat him all the polls show that all of the major Democratic Candidates would beat him in an election tomorrow back in september 2 days after the impeachment inquiry was announced you said quote i think nancy pelosi is the smartest person in washington right now you said quote youre not sure this white house is prepared for this and that trump is being dismissive of the whole process why why is he taking it seriously given youve also described this process as quote a mortal threat and grave danger to his presidency i cant speak for donald trump but i dont want to presume even though weve been friends for a long time i dont want to presume that im here today speaking on his behalf i can only speak on behalf of chris ruddy newsmax the company i represent and chris i really think hes not taking it seriously. Well i think he believes that the best way to deal with this is how hes dealt with other controversies to be very reactive and to comment and respond every time theres a criticism with him doing it and hes had quite a bit of success doing that in the behind i think its a mistake this is in this in this particular case you think its a mistake really from your comment right because it is sort of like before youve been alleged to have committed something now youre actually on trial you know theres an old saying that you should never be your own lawyer and that youd be a fool to be your own lawyer and i think theres a case here that and i think the president s gotten a lot of bad legal advice from from a number of people in fact if you look at this ukrainian thing a lot of it starts because his Legal Counsel at the time Rudy Giuliani told him to push this issue of corruption investigating the biden so it came from his lawyer. And i think that you know the president didnt dream this up himself and now were dealing with this is a Major Political controversy and now an impeachment issue let me just ask it is according to a poll this week only 7 percent of American Adults think its ok to ask a Foreign Government for help with a u. S. President ial campaign are you one of them chris reddy i believe that its inappropriate we should not be asking Foreign Governments to be involved in any Political Campaign or anything related to a Political Campaign so when donald trump doesnt do you think its inappropriate that he doesnt. Absolutely i disagree now i do believe that as the chief Law Enforcement officer in the nation he can make a request like that i also believe that its not a criminal act while i disagree with it and i think its inappropriate or not proper as some people have testified on i agree that its not proper and was a mistake but i dont think its a criminal act and i dont think its an impeachable you know how Alan Dershowitz a very famous liberal has said we dont impeach people for political since you know many winced and not many would dispute the dershowitz liberal label and hes been a trump defender on fox news for obama just kal come back to the impeachable vs criminal act in a moment just on the phone call the democrats are focusing their impeachment inquiry on this crucial july phone call between donald trump and the president of ukraine but was the call in which according to the white houses own call summary the ukrainian president asked for military aid and trump replied quote i would like you to do us a favor though and he then went on to ask ukrainian president to quote look into former Vice President joe biden and his son trump says that phone call was quote perfect do you think it was perfect. I dont think anything said in that call was criminal or impeachable i would disagree with the assessment that it was perfect what was wrong with it but its his assessment and hes allowed to make his assess in your view what was wrong i per my view on this is and its always been the same i believe that you should never investigate someone loiss an evidence of a crime thats the due process legal system we operate under i believe it was very wrong and unjustified for there be a 2 year political investigation of the president on russia because an allegation was made i said it at the time that this was an allegation in search of a crime and thats not the way the system should work the president was victimized by this now he is saying hey they went investigated me why cant i investigate them when i think there is something fishy going on in the ukraine but what do you think i dont know any evidence im just asking what do you think was wrong with a call you say wasnt perfect what was wrong with it i think i think that joe bidens name should have never been raised in the call why. Because hes a political opponent of the president hes running for office whats wrong with no evidence and as i said as i said theres no evidence that the bidens committed a crime its unusual that his son would be running on the border been of gas coming out a lot of famous people have family members on board including you would have to like start investing youd still have to start investigating half the congress. So my view on the president is this is a guy thats done an a plus job running the economy of the domestic side hes done a fantastic job on Foreign Policy in a lot of areas i think the report card is is yet to be completed but its very good ok but just about to call just come out to the call i appreciate youre admire his record on other issues just on the call well you say what you say because it plays into Everything Else yes but bill clinton had a very good other domestic record in many ways didnt stop people in peace he did let me just ask you to him from being a quick on that being calculated whether you commit a crime or not is irrelevant to the impeachment process but in terms of it being an Impeachable Offense a high crime or misdemeanor well well tell you it is because bill tell you that the u. S. Ambassador to ukraine said last week contest to be the congress he thought it was totally inappropriate to tie the 2 things together he said it was crazy to make us military dependent on the president ial campaign the National Security councils colonel alexander vinda said this week in what many describe as damning testimony he thought it was inappropriate how is that not an Impeachable Offense when his own people are saying that they thought this was the wrong thing to do to use the power of the presidency to help your own personal president ial campaign if thats not impeachable what is colonel vin min said that he felt the president did not act properly he never said that he acted illegally or criminally not a bottle going to die hard to jump in here we agree we dont know what i was trying to get away with you on a lot of the crime im sorry to break this to impeachment has nothing to do with your being a criminal a felt kind of makes that earlier in the year and the competitions very clear that it does not require a criminal offense to be impeached in fact gerald ford once said a high crime and misdemeanor is. Whatever the house defines it as you know i hate to break the news to you but the ultimate jurors are the American Public and they expect i believe and then the whole of the house of representatives is voting theres there is if you go across the country theres not broad based support for this impeachment more americans than not gris supported moving him from office just in a factual basis and then supports the argument that is but lets go back to colonel vin yes he said that it was he never said the president committed crime embassador taylor never spoke to the president hes saying that he was told by other officials who is a quid pro quo the president has denied that he ever withheld the aid in demand for this now i get you bill taylor is saying that he heard from other people that said the president may have wanted this or not thats for congress to investigate thats for the legal authorities to investigate. And i do think that would be very serious if that happen the president has said he did not require just to be clear lets be clear chris for your perspective you believe that unless the president s committed a crime broken federal law he cannot be impeached thats your view. I believe that that should be the standard and that is that the standard that was in the standard in the case of bill clinton or andrew jumps in the previous letter to the president is a lot of things. I think its wonderful many that youre researching what the Founding Fathers have said but the constitution and the laws about based on what what people today say it is ok and how the representative who decided i crimes and misdemeanors if president obama in 2012 had asked ukrainians to find dirt on mitt romney or a romney child in exchange for u. S. Military aid do you think the republicans were being ok with that they wouldnt even Peter Brock Obama seriously i dont know if they would have impeach him its a really big hypothetical but what if i dont want to go we know they got off to Hillary Clinton im being well see one of them talking about teaching Hillary Clinton for benghazi one of the things that the trump people in the president have alleged is that obama and his Administration Officials essentially asked the ukraine to find dirt on the president s Campaign Manager and to drop some of those bombshells in the middle of the election and thats now we dont know if that happened or not but they fell a ledge that to have happened and that he also is alleged that he was spied on by the Obama Administration or potentially foreign intelligence agencies i dont know if a lot of our spying he lied about the topping of phones that was a lie from the president s own Justice Department so there was no evidence of his why is being tapped as you know. Well again i havent investigated all of it on the military public the department of justice says there was no topping of his phones that was a lie thats why hes never repeated it since that tweet in 2017 where he made that claim well again you should ask the white house about that i dont need to the department of justice just said that there was no topping of the phones of fighters. Have them on the show great ok but you were just making a claim im just correcting you it is not correct to say that. I said that the president alleged that he was spied on and Campaign Officials allege there was but a probe i did not say whether it would be repeated of the problem with donald trump if he makes it out of the repeated what the president has a letter saying its true or not im not a green fine im saying be sure that its. Let me ask you this you say the trump makes allegations is the problem here if he makes so many false claims especially in defending himself he said that these bastards and people testifying in congress he said that there never trumpets and by the way he called never trump a human scum and he says that to bill taylor is a never trump a colonel alexander is a never trouble theres 0 evidence for that claim how could he have never trumper if you look truly work in the administration. I do not know what the president knows about those individuals but what i know and what ive read about them are their exam proly exemplary Public Officials that have dedicated their life for service to america im not going to criticize them i do know pete people that know ambassador taylor they say hes a man of great integrity but theyre not in the room for that im going to word but theyre not never told that i wanted out of that and im not aware of what the president but i have no evidence that theyre so its a filter job motivated by anything by the so its a full i have no evidence to accuse them of anything improper so i presume that you would think so chris we agree you have no evidence i have no theres nobody has any evidence when you make a claim against someone without any evidence thats called a false would trump being never trouble about any evidence again i dont know. Again youve got to ask the president these questions because i dont know what he knows and why hes making the allegation but from what i know i think that theyre upstanding Public Servants and they saw something they didnt think was right but as far as youre aware that there are inevitably. Again i havent investigated but i havent seen anything that we dont know if its i mean come on this is a very old defense anytime someone says anything you dont have to have an investigation if i say today youre a democrat and you say youre not i can say well i dont know they havent seen any evidence thats not how it works the burden is on me making the accusation to support my accusation from doesnt do that he falsely smears anyone he doesnt like a scum as never trump has a deep state thats wrong you can say that you dont speak for trump why do you say thats. Actually i dont think he ever called them but he called never trumpeting the no chris he will never let your scum and not call them never trump and so that by definition hes calling the hey i told you that i dont agree with everything the president does or says when i told you that i disagree with this particular characterization based on the information i know and i said if you really want to know call the white house asked that my mother their representative form a trump chief of staff john kelly said a few days ago that he told the. Before he quit the white house last year that if trump hired a yes man as his next chief of staff hed end up getting impeached which is exactly whats happening now of course but what does it say about this president that so many people around him speak about him and to him as if hes a child that he needs handholding needs boundaries we need saving from himself you know hes been named the toddler in chief well ive always found in my conversations with him i could be quite frank and he does take constructive criticism i dont work for him im not there at the white house so im not privy to the ongoing i have been told by people through a number of years that people give him a lot of feedback and disagreements privately hes very open to that privately i think what he disagrees is where hes has someone on his staff that they publicly disagree i think any leader would have a problem with that but i think hes he people forget he ultimately decides all of these things even if he even im sure john kelly gave him a lot of constructive criticism and the president decided many times against that advice i do think that the president is well served when he has advice and feedback i think congress has a vital role to play with but any but it doesnt it doesnt have to have a feed by his press secretary Stephanie Gresham said john kelly was quote totally on equipped to handle the genius of our great president this is chairman kevin stuff hes surrounded by sycophants i hope youre not one of them well. Im a friend of his i support him i think hes doing a great job but i also will have disagreements with him and ill let a member of the press and i will share those concerns both privately and publicly chris ruddy thanks for joining me on outfront. Glad to be here. After losing all of its territory and most of its fighters i sill is now also lost its leader so is the death of abu bakr or baghdad in the final blow although we can group manage to survive and continue to pursue its murderous and to prize to discuss this im joined by 2 experts in the field Jessica Stern a Research Professor at Boston University and coauthor of isis the state of terror and the house side of the director of the center for Global Policy and coauthor of ice is inside the army of terror thank you both for joining me in the arena donald trump announced by daddys death on sunday in his usual way he boasted about it and he claimed that he had taken down someone bigger even than asama been large and you said afterward didnt operate for the New York Times that trouble might be right even if its for the wrong reasons for once he might have a point why well because operationally can enough but. It can be more destructive far more destructive than the killing of Osama Bin Laden because remember when the same blood was kaluta than live in those 10 years after 911 he was already kind of far removed from there was going into pakistan in a compound exactly far removed from the day to day reality of that but he wasnt as his killer was not as destructive as the killing of today youre saying but he was controlling i sort of data there was a man who was commanding the organization very closely he was meeting with his commanders and shape in the direction of the organization jessica you also wrote a New York Times op ed this week and you said that while you recognize the importance of baghdad you to eisele you said quote just how the leaders and even jihadi groups come and go the u. S. General in charge of Central Command seems to agree with you he said this week we dont see a bloodless future because unfortunately this ideology is going to be out there is this a case of an ideology being more important than the man or even the organization itself. I think so i mean i do think that the killing of bug was in fact very significant he was there really truly evil man and he killed so many people in such a gruesome brutal way but nonetheless there is there there are many groups they keep splitting they keep merging and it is an ideology that has been going on for quite some time and apparently. Will continue for some time and you said this week that if the u. S. And its allies fail to put pressure on eisel now there was quote a risk of still quickly seizing on this vacuum in syria and iraq are you trying to say that donald trump should be sending more troops to syria in iraq rather than pulling troops out he should be intensifying the military effort against this group in favor of american troops stay in and syria the whole debate about whether american troops there were no not should not start now when the americans decided to intervene on behalf of whoever in iraq and syria to fight this organization that the end goal should have been. After the defeat of this organization and you stay there until you make sure that is holy to be defeated properly defeated and instead of 100 over these areas to the likes of so and so forth you make sure we see your this situation in 2 pieces jessica how many of the Socio Economic factors the sectarian divisions that allowed eisel to flourish in places like iraq and how much of those factors are still around today i mean we have in iraq right now protests against the government massive corruption Security Forces shooting people dead in the streets how worried are you that the conditions are still ripe for another eisel for eisel 2. 013. 0 i dont want to define it. I think they are right i think you know we know that some of the risk factors for terrorism include lots of young men who are unemployed or underemployed sectarian tension sectarian conflict sectarian war and yes we we see that used to work in Government Back in the day if you were advising donald trump today what would you be telling him to do. Im im im not sure were going to be able to defeat this movement but i do think though that we do need to be very careful about how we leave we yes maybe we need to leave over time we cannot solve all these problems clearly we often make them worse but if we leave in a precipitous way leaving our allies whom weve worked with very closely who are dependent on us completely vulnerable that strikes me as a grave error just like you just mentioned the rather depressing point there in policy the she doesnt think a group like this or the ideology at least underpinning the group can ever be defeated. I think the main problem today is the conflicts jihadism an excuse thrive in 2 things conflicts or terror in islam and the region the problem with the is the will always go after the disease of sort of the symptoms and we have the disease of the disease is all the same the disease isnt just conflict its the ideology its radical islam to quote the president of United States where do you stumble not to be ideology comes after if you are fighting someone like the regime of bashar assad or someone like bashar assad then jihadism provides a way for recruitment to die hard justification after the fight exact out of fights as well before you would say the dealing with the diseases dealing with the conflicts in the region precisely which which have it just it would you share that view i do actually im very much of the view that ideology is often a a branding device more then then it is there something emerging its not the reason for the problem its the it is the branding for our fate that has much more to do with with the underlying. Sectarian tensions and authoritarian regimes what im suggesting however that i dont believe the us can defeat this problem or fix this problem i. Its quite clear that we. We often make things worse and i saw this week announced a new leader a replacement for baghdad who theyre calling the new emir brahimi. What do you think his Life Expectancy is looking like right now well the source for we dont know anything about this the his nickname or the court doesnt really narrow things down very small number of people nor the people at the top of the helm of isis who selected him i dont think anybody within or below them would know the iraq is probably would take some time to know who he is and thats when you start to trace them down and how worried should people at home be that in the wake of baghdad these death is it going to hurt the group and they get undermined and they kind of lose more all or is there a sense of were going to take revenge attacks weve lost our territory lost our leader were going to mount attacks in paris talk or new delhi or washington d. C. I think most certainly they will try to wage a campaign of revenge his decapitation is not the end of fall for isis obviously they were going as nation has been there before twice actually a very critical time 20062010. And they survived the other think with announcement this week of the who the new emir and his spokesperson seems like they handle the transition very well and it really depends on the organization itself and whether the americans can go after these leaders more and more and keep the pressure but im not no well leave it there jessica has an outsider thank you both for joining me in the arena thats our show up front will be back next week. They say to really know someone you must walk a mile in their shoes aljazeera shares personal journeys of people following their chosen path quickness on aljazeera. The boy when the news breaks. 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The 1st hand glimpse of the challenges faced by journalists is the donald trump we are fighting the fake fake phony the enemy of the people through the eyes of a veteran White House Correspondent what do you base your legs only caesar down the press is not after trying this after the were not the enemy of the people we are the people usa current Battle Ground truth is it anyway on. Protesters across lebanon start to block the roads once again putting further pressure on the government. Everyone on come out son summary of what the world news from aljazeera the opposition leaders in pakistan away up their next move after deadline for Prime Minister imran khan to step aside and come and gone also a Public Health emergency indias toxic air force and schools to close on flights to be canceled. And were looking at how rising inflation and corruption in zimbabwe mean