Welcome to the lead. Im jake tapper. We start with the lead and brandnew cnn reporting that is undermining President Trumps justification for killing the general qassem soleimani, because two state Officials Say that they were not told that there were imminent threats to u. S. Embassies despite the president s claim. Today on twitter, the president said that the Fake News Media and the partners are working hard to determine if the future attack by soleimani was imminent or not, and to my team and i, the answer is a strong yes. But does it not matter, because of his horrible past. So, yes, soleimani was a vicious leader of an organization that the u. S. Government considers terrorists, and he had the blood of innocents on his hands, but whether or not these attacks, the strike against him and whether or not the attacks that we were told that he is planning is imminent, and whether these alleged plots are backed up by intelligence, it matter, because that is the reason that the American People were told that he is killed and a key part of the justification as to why the Trump Administration argued they had to act immediately and without consulting congress. Both President Trumps defense secretary mark esper and Robert Obrien were given chances to back up the president s claims that he made fridays fox news that he had plots to attack four embassies, and they were not able to. In fact, esper made it clear that there was no actual intelligence that there is to point to, but he was discussing his belief. I wont discuss intelligence, but what the president said is that he believed and he did not cite intelligence. He believed it probably could have been. And so today, President Trump is so aggressively trying to make the case retweeting this depiction of house leader nancy pelosi and Chuck Schumer standing in front of the rawny flag wearing islamic wear, and the Antidefamation League said it is unconscienceable that the president tweeted that. And then the president retweeted this afternoon by adding to the smear. I think that he is making it clear that the democrats have been parroting the iranian talking points and taking the side of terrorists and those out to kill the americans. Almost taking the side of terrorists. Cnns Kaitlan Collins is reporting from the white house that the president is lashing out and a majority of the American People are believing they are less safe after the strike for the iranian general. I think that honestly, we are arguing the semantics here. Reporter in the 11 days since the u. S. Launched a drone strike killing a top iranian commander, President Trump and his National Security aides have struggled to explain why now. Secretary pompeo, secretary esper and ambassador ryan and the president have always said that there was a imminent threat. Reporter mike pompeo said first that his attack was imminent and then raised eyebrows by saying that he didnt know when or where. Today, the president insisted it is imminent, and argued it doesnt matter, because of soleimanis horrible past, and despite a move that brought two nations to the brink of war, the intelligence has shifted repeatedly. What the president believes is that it could have been and he did not cite intelligence. Reporter after trump asserted without evidence that four embassies were in soleimanis sites, the secretary would not back up his claims with specific intelligence. I did not see one with regard to four embassies. Reporter and trump has said that a major attack was coming. But they cannot share the intelligence and even the classified briefings offered little detail. I will not offer the detail and give the playbook out to other side, but we were concerned with embassies throughout the cnn has learned that state officials were not aware of a threat to four diplomatic posts and were not alerted about an imminent strike. So President Trump is warning for the government not the kill protesters after they claimed to shoot down a civilian plane with 176 people on board. And now, there was a warning to all u. S. Embassies, but it was not specific and it did not warn of an imminent threat despite the secretary of state mike pompeo repeating today that he did believe that the threat was imminent. Kaitlan collins at the white house. We will discuss with the panel. Take a listen to the secretary of state mike pompeo discussing the planning behind the strike against soleimani. I want to lay this out in context of what we are doing, and there is a bigger strategy to this. He says that the bigger strategy is the strategy of deterrence. Obviously, initially, we were told that the attack was not about deterrence, but it was about soleimani was planning imminent attack. Can it be both . The explanation is kind of shifting by the hour and kind of doubleback on itself. I mean, look, the administration clearly from the outset has chosen an utterly different path that president obama has on iran and ripped up the nuclear deal and chosen to isolate iran and increase pressure on them. That is not what they said initially that this is an extension of. So, there is a cost, i think ti did not consider the public honest and trustworthy and when there is a crack in the story, Many Americans have been, and probably most americans are willing to accept the worst that they are not telling the truth and behaved in this entire episode that compounds the concerns. To you believe it is contradictory and it can be true, and i can understand the argument though we have not heard a cohesive argument made where it is we have intelligence about vague, a vague plot and soleimani is the head of the group that we considered terrorists, and we want to establish deterrence, and there is a way to do all of them, and have it be an argument, but we have not heard it. Right. And we dont know if it is legally justified, that congress would support it, and that would achieve the objectives that they want to achieve. This is telling you a lot about the power of secretary pompeo within the administration. I talked to a lot of the iran experts and former National Security experts and no one suggests that this is a good way of deterring iran, and no one, i have spoken to, ever, and they are suggesting that it is putting iran in a position to where they could retaliate in the future and we are now not fighting isis, and so it does not play out by National Security standards. And there are people, and i wanted to play for, you david, some sound from mike lee, a republican from utah who has been generally supportive of the president s agenda and in 2016, he has been more skeptical, but more supportive and he went to the briefing with the Administration Officials and he did not leave happy. Take a listen. You and i have sat through the movie before, and conflicting and changing information and intelligence juiced in order to justify certain actions, and how worried are you about the sbeg ri the of the of the integrity of the information we are told . I am worried. As a United States citizen and voter and i have learned not to take the federal governments word at face value. We were lied to about weapons of mass destruction in iraq, and lied to for a couple of decades of what is happening in afghanistan and lied to about a lot of things. I mean, you get that. Sure, i do. Listen, i had the privilege of talking to both chairman of the joint chiefs mark mill ther week miller this week, and the secretary of defense about senator lees comments, and they have had other conversation, and maybe he is in a different place. So i believe in healthy skepticism, and there should be a fullthroated debate in the congress about force, but in the instance and to push back on what jen is saying is that what has been happening with iran and our iranian policies for the past 40 years has not worked. Since ronald reagan, america has turned a blind eye when the irgc or iran or on of the proxies strikes out against america. This president in this action said no more, and it is not going to happen, so whether it is hezbollah or hamas or irbg, i hazard to say that if american blood is spilled, there is going to be more pushback. And so i would like to say that you are a paid republican spokesperson. And now, i wanted to say in a recent post, only 25 said that killing soleimani made them feel more safe, and 52 said less safe, and 22 saying not much of an effect. It does not, and quite often you will see the American People rally nog sting to the support president whether it is bush or obama, when it comes to that, and it is not here. And also in the quinnipiac poll that 65 said it is the right action and 45 said that they dont think it made the country safer. Right. So that is the issue thaw the administration is having, and that is why we have heard a variety of the answers from the Trump Administration and officials about why they took this action and recent reports today, and seven months ago, trump had potentially authorized this, and if he did authorize it as a revenge strike, it could raise some legal questions as well. And the cross tabs break heavily in the part san favor, and 97 of the republicans support the strike in the qpoll, and so it is very hyperpartisan. That is true, and in fact, a majority of the public does not want a war with iran, and a majority of the democrats and independents do not, and a majority of the republicans do. They are willing to follow and also in the qpoll, there is a alltime high support for the president in 42 . 42 should be celebrated . And a couple of quick points, that the most interesting part of the poll is that the trend of trumps overall job approval is low 40s. In historical range but not really rising despite the share of people going up who say they are approving of the economy and in the quinnipiac poll they say that 1 5 of the people who approval of the handling of the economy disapprove overall. And with remarkably good economic numbers. And 90 of the people who describe the economy good vote for the president , and it happened for obama and bush, and last trump was at 55 among the people who called the economy good or excellent against biden. When they it is a has no standing that is the tangible standings. You dont have to convince david. Coming up, we have more to talk about with the air force pilot who said that the briefing of iran intel was revealing, but did he hear the word imminent. And what senator warren is saying today, and how senator sanders is responding. There he is. Oh, wow. Youre doing, uh, youre doing really great with the twirling. Dad, if you want to talk, i have a break at 3 00. Okay, okay. Im going. Im gone. 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I dont recall being told that there were four embassieem i have not been able to ascertain the details of the imminence of the attack, and again, we were not provided that the other day, and we were given somewhat general statements. We are back with the politics lead and that is republican senator mike lee of utah acknowledging to me yesterday that in a classified briefing to congress, he never heard anyone mention a threat to four u. S. Embassies. President trump says that threat or the belief of the threat led him to order the strike to kill the top military general of iraq. And now, joining us is a former member who served in iraq, and congressman, thank you for joining us. You bet. First of all, no debate that soleimani was a bad guy and innocent blood on his hands, and i do want to talk about the intelligence though, and soleimani is targeting four u. S. Embassies is a specific claim, and when you were briefed last week, do you remember that . They did not go into a ton of specifics of where, but there were specific things about the dates and it seems that my friends have forgotten that when they came out. When i came out, i said that is about as detailed as i have heard in any briefing before and usually we learn nothing in large briefings with 400some people, but there were specific dates put out by a person in the room, and i wont go into more specific detail, but that was specific and the dates were nearterm. If you dont believe the details and you generically anybody who does not believe the intelligence. You have to believe that general milley was lying, and you have to believe that gina haspel and the director of the cia is not telling the truth, but i have to believe they are telling the truth. And skeptics, and that is what i do professional and we have heard from different cia directors and secretaries of defense and state different scl claims of intelligence that prove to be false. After years of war in iraq and afghanistan, it is healthy for the people to question this sort of thing, right . Yes, i agree, but when we are talking about a full massive invasion, that is one thing, but talking about the guy that Everybody Knows is bad, and everybody is seeing the history of 20 years and history of 20 years of escalating attacks and saw what happened in the last week that both targeted americans and targeted an embassy, and then we see that the man was actually in iraq. What was he in iraq for . He was not there to make peace. Trust me, he was there to coordinate again, and it is not a huge leap to understand that there is reason to believe that there were attacks on the horizon, and imminent depends on the day or the week, but we know the history and the future. Unless he found a different religion and all of the sudden wants to make peace with everything, then i think that it is easy to look at that and say we know what he was going to do. I asked defense secretary esper if he had specific claims of the iranians planning to target four u. S. Embassies and this is part of the response. What the president said with regard to the four embassies is what i believe as well. He said that he believed that they probably could have been targeting the embassies in the region. Are you uncomfortable at all with the president talking about his general beliefs as opposed to what the intelligence and evidence states . 5050. I mean, the president has a right to declassify whatever he wants. I like when stuff that can actually be potentially harmful is not put out and he has done a good job to not put that stuff out, but the one criticism that i will give to the white house in all of this happened is that after it happened there should have been a Better Communications plan, and Oval Office Address or the statement from the press secretary right when this happened would have set the table, and then we ended up learning more on twitter, and twitter can serve a purpose, but in that case, not really. So getting into the minutia of this is exactly frankly what my good friends on the other side of the aisle want to do, because the reality is that it is a good move. It is hard to defend and saying that soleimani should not have been attacked thinking of all of the americans that have died and attacked and syria and elsewhere, we did not target 200 Iranian Military that just wanted a paycheck for retaliation. We actually targeted the man who did it. And then by the way, iran escalated and expected a response which is why the air Defense Systems were up and why they shot down an airplane, and once again, donald trump didnt respond. President trump said today, it does not matter whether the attack by soleimani was imminent, because soleimani had a horrible past. I agree with you and the president that he had a horrible past and did a lot of horrible things and not just to the american soldiers, but to the iraqi people and the iranian people, and syrian people, and lebanon, and does it not matter, but it does matter if it is imminent, because that is how they are justifying the strike, and justifying not bringing you guys in congress into it all. Well, look, i think that if it is, first off on the congressional piece, this idea that they needed to come to congress to get permission to strike soleimani, i disagree. We cannot debate on the house of representatives whether to strike somebody, because when does that happen . If there is a weapon, we debate it with the gang of eight. Well, even if it is prior, fine. But they should have done that from the beginning, but what we are missing is that this guy is the mastermind and this is a proportional response to take out the guy responsible. What do we see as result . A lot of friends out here saying that it is the beginning of world war iii and iran do a facesaving response and failed response of what they felt was air defense which tragically took 170 lives and today, we see that it did not unite the iranians, and now you have people on the iranian street angry at their government, and i hope that people are watching that. Yeah, we are certainly bringing that to them, and showing it to them. I hope that you are right that, thats it, but the iranians have a way of waiting a month and doing something that cannot be tied to them. And they have done it for 20 years, and this is first time we have struck back. Republican congressman adam kinsington, thank you. Yes. And now, this week, nancy pelosi is to hand over the articles of impeachment, and some democrats are going crazy eefr her si over her silence, and we will discuss that next. Its red lobsters new threecourse shrimp feast for 14. 99. Choose soup or salad. One of seven delicious entrees like new hawaiianstyle garlic shrimp. And, get a sweet dessert. Three courses. One amazing price. So come in today. Quitting smoking is freaking hard. St, like quitting every monday hard. Quitting feels so big. So, try making it smaller. And youll be surprised at how easily starting small. Can lead to something big. Start stopping with nicorette remember, you have out the hilton app. Can the hilton app help us win . Hey, heywere all winners with the hilton price match guarantee, alright . Man, you guys are adorable alright, lets go find your coach, come on book with the hilton app. Expect better. Expect hilton. burke weve seen almost everything, so we know how to cover almost anything. Even a gold medal grizzly. sports announcer what an unlikely field in this final heat. Hang on. Youre about to see history in the making. burke not exactly a skinny dipper, but we covered it. At farmers, we know a thing or two because weve seen a thing or two. We are farmers. Bumpadum, bumbumbumbum vo visit farmersdotcom and get a quote today. Thats why Xfinity Mobile lets you design your own data. You can share 1, 3, or 10 gigs of data between lines, mix in lines of unlimited, and switch it up at any time. All with millions of secure wifi hotspots and the best lte everywhere else. Its a different kind of wireless network, designed to save you money. Switch and save up to 400 a year on your wireless bill. And save even more when you say bring my own phone into your voice remote. Thats simple, easy, awesome. Click, call or visit a store today. In our politics lead today, House Speaker nancy pelosi is on the verge of delivering the impeachment articles to the senate. Cnn is learning that even the Democratic House members vying to be house impeachment managers for the senate trial are completely in the dark as to who is going to be ultimately picked. One house aide says as they wait, everyone is going crazy and as sarah murray is reporting that we have heard from Senate MajorityMitch Mcconnell about the next steps of the Senate Impeachment trial. Reporter after nearly a month of sitting on the articles of impeachment, House Speaker nancy pelosi is ready to take the next step, almost. Tomorrow, pelosi is going to meet with the caucus of when to vote for the house impeachment managers a vote coming tomorrow afternoon or wednesday. We will determine in the meeting of when we send them over, but i have always said that i would send them over, so there should not be any mystery to that. Reporter after the impeachment managers are made, the house can formally transmit to the senate where a trial can begin after procedural steps take place, but it is a mystery of who the impeachment managers are going to be even to the lawmakers jockeying for the job. That is the speakers decision. I cannot comment on any of this, because i have zero information. Reporter and it is unclear of when the senate trial is going to begin and what is it going to look like and what they will have. And there are senators who are misgivings about a trial that is a charade. Reporter security adviser john bolton to testify in the senate has added another wrinkle over the witness, and prompting the white house to adjust plans for defense of the president. Over the weekend, pelosi took aim at Senate Majority leader Mitch Mcconnell for resolution to dismiss two articles against President Trump. Dismissing is a coverup. Dismissing is a coverup. If they want to go that route, then, again, the senators who are thinking of now voting for witnesses or not, they will have to be accountable for not having a fair trial. Reporter at the white house, the president expressed the support for the outright dismissal on twitter and trumps attorneys are laying out the main arguments in trump es bri. And now, while the president counsel will be representing the president including jay sekulow, trump is asking who will represent him on television, and making it clear that he expects the House Republicans to hit the air waves on his behalf. Mitch mcconnell is firing back today in a statement to nancy pelosi saying that i am glad that the speaker finally realized that she never had any leverage to dictate the senate procedure. As for the senate trial, this is not set in stone, but it could begin as early as next week, and trumps allies are vying for it to be completely over by february 4th which is the state of the union. Jake. Thank you, sarah murray. And now, Bernie Sanders aides deny it, but he said that Elizabeth Warren, a woman, cannot win the presidency. I will lit that sit there for a moment. I always dreamed of teaching kids and having kids of my own. I didnt realize that having kids would be the hard part. So we planned to start ivf treatments. Now im ready for someone to call me mom. At Northwestern Mutual, our version of Financial Planning helps you live your dreams today. Find a Northwestern Mutual advisor at nm dot com. I need all the breaks, that i can get. Helps you live your dreams today. At liberty butchumal cut. Liberty biberty cut. Well dub it. Liberty mutual customizes your Car Insurance so you only pay for what you need. Only pay for what you need. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Breaking news in the 2020 lead. We are learning new details of what was allegedly said in the 2018 dinner between senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Sanders told warren that a woman could not win the presidency according to four sources and two of whom spoke with warren after the dinner. Sanders adamantly and on the record denies the claims and calling them quote ludacris, and as m. J. Lever reports this is the latest string of the flairups of the progressive candidates despite making a pack in the same dinner to not go after each other on the campaign trail. Lets bring out my friend, Bernie Sanders. Reporter in december of 2018, senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren ready to launch their president ial campaigns, and the two friends knew they could be competing for the democratic nomination in 2020 when they met privately at warrens washington, d. C. , apartment. The pair believed that tearing each other down could hurt the Progressive Movement and agree to avoid attacking one another, and warren telling sanders she would be a strong candidate to beat President Trump by making a case about the economy and earning broad support among women, but still sanders said that he did not believe that a woman could win. According to four sources and two that warren spoke to directly and two others familiar with the meeting, and sanders saying that is ludicrous, and he says three weeks before the iowa caucus and a year after the private conversation, staff who were not in the room are lying about what happened. Do i believe that a woman can win in 2020, of course. After all, Hillary Clinton beat donald trump by 3 million votes in 2016, and the details of the conversation surfacing amid revelations first reported by politico that volunteers for the Sanders Campaign were given talking points criticizing warren and suggesting that the supporters are elitists. We have differences on the issue, but nobody is going to be attacking elizabeth. And warren said that she was disappointed that volunteers were sent out to trash her, and now her campaign is fundraising off of the support. We need somebody who is going to excite every single part of the Democratic Party and someone that every democrat can believe in. I hope bernie reconsiders and turns his campaign in a different direction. Reporter with three weeks to the Iowa Caucuses, the Sanders Campaign is going on offense and launching attacks against joe biden, and the Senior Campaign adviser for sanders released a record of bidens war record and it is appalling after 18 years, joe biden still refuses to admit that he was dead wrong on the iraq war. And Sanders National cochair knninknee nia turner says th plaque voters have been to side with voters to deter our progress. And the next time we expect to see Elizabeth Warren is on the debate stage where she is one podium away from Bernie Sanders. Jake . Interesting to hear what she has to say. Tha thank you for the report. First, do you believe that sanders said something to Elizabeth Warren along the lines that a woman could not win . It is hard to envision a meeting between the two of them and him saying, oh, you are running . Well, a woman cant win. But, i think that a lot of women in Democratic Party do believe that Bernie Sanders is not for the woman to be at the top of the ticket, because they are burned by 2016 and the feeling that he was not on board with Hillary Clinton and he could not endorse early and he did not come on board and he did not encourage the supporters to get behind her and there is a lot of the bad juju with them. He does not want a womant tap of the ticket, because he wants to be in the top of ticket. And m. J. And the print article notes that, correctly, that sanders has criticized what he calls the identity politics, and all politics is divided into a horizontal line of class when the evidence of the last 30 years is that americans are dividing more along culture than class, and this is downplaying the diversity of any sort versus having anyone in his mind that is a warrior for the working class. By the way, his specific criticism of Elizabeth Warren at least from the canvas is essentially true. She is a candidate whose support is predominantly trending towards the wealthy upper educated whites. And with the quinnipiac poll out earlier, but the other new poll out today, it is most of her support is from the educated white class, but from the ideological basis, they are competing for the same voter from the coalition edge, and she has allowed him to rise without challenging him. And david, you would think that this pact, that no one disputes they made, you think it is silly . It is insane. They are running for the presidency of the United States, and by definition, this is full contact sports. If you are not going to attack one another, you should not be running, because they are going to have to face the attacker in chief in the fall. And no democrat has really put their, you know, confronted sanders about the scope and cost of his agenda. No one has really done that. And laura, sanders is also going to go after biden for voting in 2002 and the unauthorized force, and backer john kerry who also voted for the war in iraq came out the defend the vote saying that sanders is distorting bidens record and he did not vote for war and he voted for leverage, but listen to what candidate and then senator barack obama made of that argument when then Hillary Clinton was attempting to cast that 2002 iraq war as something else. This is what obama had to say. Senator clinton has tried, i believe to rewrite history. She voted for a resolution called and i quote a resolution to authorize the use of United States armed forces against iraq. Now she is saying that she was not really voting for war. Tough for biden to go against not just sanders but obama on that argument . No, it is going to be definitely difficult for him and something they expect that sanders is going to be bringing up in tomorrow nights debate and he is very much seeing biden as someone to take down, because they are consistently the two at the top of the polls. I dont expect him and warren to go at each other tomorrow night and he wants to laser in on biden which we have been seeing consistently in his leadup to iowa. Not because of to pact, but because she is nowhere in the polls. Well, sh shg, she is in the. And Clintons Campaign determined that sanders would not get big enough to win, so you dont challenge him, because you dont want to alienate the hard core supporters who are rallying behind him, but in the end, the reasonable and unusually high number of sanders voters voted third party anyway and we are seeing the same sort of calculation. And some of them voted for trump. And the same calculation from the democrats, and saying, well, we dont go after bernie, because he is not going to win in the end and we dont want to alienate his voters, but if he is winning iowa, it is not inconceivable that he is the nominee, and sooner or later, somebody has to draw the distinctions. And the dynamic that we dont know, and the effort to explain the iraq war did not work. It did not work for Hillary Clinton or john kerry who i was working for at the time, but the fatigue of the iraq war and the anger about it now the same as eight years ago and 12 years ago . I dont know that if we know the answer to that at this point in time. And you dont want to miss the final democratic president ial debate tomorrow night at 9 00 p. M. Eastern. Coming up next, we will ask one president ial candidate about what Bernie Sanders allegedly said to senator warren and how that is going to affect the campaign trail and more. Stay with us. Everything your trip needs, for everyone you love. Expedia. For everyone you love. If your glasses arent so will we. No we wont. Use your 2020 Vision Insurance on your first pair and get 50 off a second pair. Visionworks. See the difference. And now the 2020 lead, and believe it or not, we are three weeks away from the Iowa Caucuses and four Democratic Senators running for president are stuck in washington instead of the campaign trail with the impeachment trial of President Trump starting as early as this week or next. The campaigns are weighing the impact that this might have on the voters from these crucial early states. One of the senators balancing work in the senate and the president ial race is senator Michael Bennet of colorado on the Senate Intelligence committee. Sce senator, thank you for joining us. Your colleague corey booker dropped out of the race and partly because of the impeachment trial, and you said that being pulled from New Hampshire would be disruptive to your campaign and at what point would it be debilitating . Well, we will have to see. I love corey booker and i remember the day he walked into the senate for the first time. I had known him when i was a School Superintendent and he was a mayor and i was smiling ear to ear and that is how i felt when he got into the president ial race and i am sorry to hear him leave it, because his voice is an important one and we will have to see how the next couple of weeks go, because we have to walk and chew gum at the same time. Im in the middle of a 50town hall commitment that i intend to finish in New Hampshire and fulfill the Constitutional Responsibilities that each of us have in washington as well. So the other reason that booker said that he is not running is because he did not see a path forward for the campaign, and here is the blunt question, you wont be on the debate stage on iowa tomorrow, and you have not been invited to the last four debates, and do you have a path . I think that i do have a path. In part, jake, because the people are more undecided today than they have been in the entire course of the race. New hampshire is 33 of the voters are decided and less decided today than six weeks ago or a year ago and the field is smaller and narrower, and so i am not saying that i have an easy path, but i do think that there is a path. I have built my campaign to last until people would start voting, and i will try to earn it the way that john mccain and jimmy carters and others and gary hart put one foot in front of the other and did town hall after town hall after town hall in New Hampshire and it worked. We will see what happens. Michael bloomberg is saying that the democrats only focusing on New Hampshire and iowa are at risk of the defeat in 2016, and that you should be concentrating on the battleground states. Does he have a good point . Well, we have to do both. We have to get to the battlegrounds that happen after the primary states. But it is interesting to see how serious the voters in iowa and New Hampshire are taking the responsibility, and what they are trying to figure out is what candidate is going to beat donald trump, and the minds are not made up and unpersuaded that the leading candidates cannot beat donald trump, and that is why i have stayed in the race. What about Julian Castros argument that iowa and New Hampshire while lovely states are so homogeneous and so white they are not representative of the United States or the Democratic Party and they should not have such important roles in deciding who the Democratic Party nominee should be . Well, i cannot argue that the states are not homogeneous and my hope is over time is that a greater diversity of people are in the states that we go to next. I am worried about that from the standpoint of the way that social media is dominating the campaigns, too. I wanted to make sure that also reflects the demographics of the country. I feel sometimes like we are running two different primaries here. One is the primaries of the living and breathing human beings that are trying to do their best and hope their best for the country, and the other is that very demanding social media that is driving people to make all kinds of, i think, false promises to the American People about what can be achieved, and that could lead us to lose to donald trump and im deeply worried about it. You are on the Senate Intelligence committee, and President Trump said it is his belief that general soleimani is planning attacks on four u. S. Embassies and secretary of defense mark esper told me it is also his belief and the president was quick to say it is his belief and not the intelligence, and do you have any concerns about a member of the Senate IntelligenceCommittee Member is that this is backed up by something other than raw intelligence and this idea that it is his belief that led to the strike. I am deeply worried about it, and every american should be. The job of the american commander in chief is to keep americans safe at home and abroad, and he is failing the test. He is disregarded intelligence in this case, and he has disregarded the intelligence of the last three years of north koreas continued effort to build a nuclear, you know, to expand the Nuclear Capabilities and ignored the Intelligence Community when it comes to what russia did with our election in 2016 and what they continue to do. It is very dangerous the have a president who disregards intelligence like that. I doubt very much that we have ever had a democratic or a republican president who has disregarded intelligence the way this president has. Senator Michael Bennet of colorado, thank you for your time. Thank you, jake. And coming up, reporting that could further undermine the president s justification for taking out the top iranian general when he did. Stay with us. When crabe stronger. Strong, with new nicorette coated ice mint. Layered with flavor. Its the first and only coated nicotine lozenge. For an amazing taste. That outlasts your craving. New nicorette ice mint. And my lack of impulse control, is about to become your problem. Ahh no, come on. I saw you eating poop earlier. Hey my focus is on the road, and thats saving me cash with drivewise. Whos the dummy now . Whoof whoof so get allstate where good drivers save 40 for avoiding mayhem, like me. Sorry hes a baby remember, you have out the hilton app. Can the hilton app help us win . Hey, heywere all winners with the hilton price match guarantee, alright . Man, you guys are adorable alright, lets go find your coach, come on book with the hilton app. Expect better. Expect hilton. When intelligence is replaced by beliefs. The lead starts right now. If iranian attack on embassies was imminent, it is news to some who needed to know at the state department. The brandnew cnn reporting that throws more doubt on President Trumps claim on friday. By the end of the week, the president could be on trial in the senate, and democrats are looking for nancy pelosi to hand over the articles of impeachment. And also, the Justice Department is saying that a Saudi National who opened fire at a military base and killed innocent americans was a terrorist, and will the president continue to dance around criticism of the saudi regime . This is cnn breaking news. Good afternoon, im jake tapper and you are watching a super sized edition of the lead because wolf blitzer is in iowa preparing for the debate tomorrow. And President Trump claiming moments ago that his administration has been consistent in the claims about the nature and the imminence of the threat posed from iran. But, neither defense secretary mark esper or National SecurityRobert Obrien could sunday back with the evidence of the president s stated belief that the four american embassies were targets of soleimani and in fact, secretary esper told me this. He said that he believe