And while it is not unimaginable there might be some sort of drama or some sort of gamesmanship about the scheduling of the state of the union at a time like this particularly given the house of representatives led by nancy pelosi just formally recommended to the senate that the senate should remove President Trump from office and make him no longer president. I mean you might imagine that the state of the union and its scheduling could be a source of controversy at a time like this, at a fraught moment like this. In fact, actually seems to have gone off without a hitch. Nancy pelosi sent this brief letter to the white house today inviting President Trump to deliver his state of the union on february 4th. And what do you know, no muss, no fuss, the white house responded immediately, yes, the president will accept. Ding. Now, theres still the possibility that that means the president will be delivering his state of the Union Address in the middle of his Senate Impeachment trial. We dont know. The uncertainty around the logistics of the Senate Impeachment trial is one of the most interesting things going on in the news right now and will continue to be over the holidays. Were going to have more on that to come. But whether or not the state of the Union Address is in the middle of the impeachment trial or not which again remains to be seen, thats all still very much up and down, theres no doubt that it that that state of the union will definitely be the day after the Iowa Caucuses. The beginning of february this year is going to go super bowl sunday on february 2nd, then the next day iowa caucus, monday, february 3rd. Then the next day, state of the union, tuesday february 4th. Super bowl sunday, Iowa Caucuses, state of the union, three days in a row. And recognizing that now tonight i find myself simultaneously tempted to write those things in my calendar for 2020, and also i am simultaneously reluctant to write anything on my calender for any time in the future because i do think its still worth being humble about how things are going to go in u. S. Politics in particular. In the wake of the impeachment of President Trump this week i have realized now that i have basically four main outstanding questions in terms of what happens next and how this impeachment drama is all going to resolve. Got it winnowed down to about four questions now. The first one is about the impeachment trial and what the senate process is going to be like now that the senate has to take up their part of the constitutional responsibility of impeachment, which is to hold a trial at which u. S. Senators will decide if this president should be removed from office. This question of how the Senate Impeachment trial should be run is very much an open question. Everybody i think agrees that the senate does have to hold a trial. Its not optional. But beyond that what that means, well, the fight over that is on. And it looks like it may very well extend through any holiday break. There were bipartisan rules that were unanimously agreed to for the last Senate Impeachment trial which was president bill clintons impeachment in the 1990s, rules that allowed for witnesses and documents and a certain number of hours of debate. The vote to adopt those rules in the u. S. Senate for the clinton impeachment was 1000 because the democrats and republicans worked it out together. Those rules for how the senate trial was conducted, that was sort of the least controversial part of the whole bill clinton impeachment. Thats not what its going to be like this time. Senator Mitch Mcconnell is not yet conceding that there should be any testimony, any witnesses, any factual review of documents or evidence whatsoever in this thing that he nevertheless wants to call a trial. So far his refusal to engage with the democrats in terms of whether there might be any sort of bipartisan agreement about process for this trial, i mean at that point thats why we dont know when the senate is even going to receive the articles of impeachment from nancy pelosi and the house. I mean, House Democrats and Speaker Pelosi are saying theyre going to wait until mcconnell announces the senate rules for this trial before they send over the articles and announce their impeachment managers who will act as prosecutors in that trial. The top democrat in the senate, Chuck Schumer here last night on this program said he and his fellow democrats in the senate really believe they can get a handful of republican senators to side with them and against Mitch Mcconnell to form a majority that will vote in the senate for more typical impeachment trial rules that look more like how the senate proceeded in bill clintons case. So nancy pelosi and the democrats in the house are really in the seat. They can hold onto the articles of impeachment as long as they want. Theres no time limit on that in the constitution. President trump is impeached and he remains impeached. He basically refused to engage in the Senate Impeachment process excuse me, in the house impeachment process, and so he hasnt mounted a defense in this process yet. He has said he wants to mount a defense in the senate. If he wants to do so theres going to have to be some sort of trial. Senate democrats are active ly cowering their republican colleagues to agree to bipartisan this is all an open question. In terms of a white house role in this, theres conflicting reporting and now lots of speculation about what the president and what the white house more broadly might really want from the senate. Might they actually want witnesses and documents and a real trial where trump gets to mount his defense . Or would they prefer some sort of miniaturized process where Mitch Mcconnell essentially accepts the articles of impeachment and then makes the whole thing go away with a swift gavel and no discussion . All right, so this is very, very much open. We sort of knew this was going to be an interesting question at the time the house passed the articles of impeachment. We didnt know it would still be a very open question two days after the impeachment. Thats for me the very pressing first set of questions that weve got. We dont know when itll be resolved. We know its being fought out now. Revelations, breakthroughs, announcement could pop at any time which means none of us get to turn off our phones when we go home this weekend. We all have to watch the news. Its a comfort and sort of annoying at christmas time, i know. But thats where we are. Thats question one. Now theres question two. Its about the substance of the allegations against President Trump, the substance of the articles of impeachment against him that were just passed in the house. The house has made clear even though they passed those articles of impeachment against the president , their investigation is ongoing. For example, weve got the Intelligence Committee chasing Vice President mike pences office about a piece of classified evidence that apparently pertains to mike pences own communications with the Ukrainian Government during the time period thats at the center of the scuterutiny in th scheme. Theres also, of course, still open sourced journalistic reporting thats happening on the core issue at the heart of the impeachment scandal including the Washington Post reporting last night that white house officials believe President Trump may have been advised directly by russian president Vladimir Putin on this Conspiracy TheoryPresident Trump has been pushing that it was ukraine that interfered in the 2016 election and not russia. President trump reportedly told at least one senior white house official that he believed the Conspiracy Theory about ukraine because, quote, putin told me. And thats just coming out now. So thats like the second big question following this impeachment wednesday night. What happens to salient new information and new evidence that turns up in this scandal . How will that information get aired . Is it just aired to the public and it affects Public Opinion . Is the senate going to have any way to process any new Important Information and evidence that crops up between now and whatever trial theyre going to put on for President Trump . Does the prospect of additional news Additional Information and evidence affect these discussions and this fight about what the process will be in the senate as they manage this part of their impeachment . So number one, hows the Senate Impeachment going to be run . Number two, what happens to additional evidence in the impeachment scandal . The third question about what happens next in the impeachment process has to do with the president himself. And this is not very comfortable territory for me i will admit. I dont pay a lot of attention to the president s, you know, apparent frame of mind. I dont pay that much attention to his statements, and therefore im not sort of, like, tracking his perceived wellbeing. I know a lot of people do that. Its just not my bag. That said, he hasnt seemed particularly even keeled or in control even for him in the lead up to this weeks impeachment. Itd be stressful for anybody. But given his history of behavior as president , one of the outstanding and potentially important questions now that hes been impeached is how he personally might react to this punishment, to being held accountable for this behavior. Thats not something thats happened a lot in his life. Do we know how he reacts to adversity like this . Last night i interviewed barbara res. She worked for years at the trump organization. She has a lot of personal experience working alongside President Trump in his real estate business before he ever got involved if had politics. I wanted to ask her if based on all the years she spent working with mr. Trump and all the different circumstances shes seen him in, can she give us any advice . Is there anything that we the country should watch out for in terms of how he might react being in trouble, how he might react to an accountability moment like this. And her advice on that front was kind of a show stopper. I mean, ill tell you from my own purposes at that point i kind of thought the interview was going to go on, but when she said that the only thing i could think to do was to say good night, lets go to commercial, i have to think about this. Heres what she told me. Is there anything you would say to people who have never dealt with him personally but the country is all sort of dealing with him personally right now in terms of what to expect or how to mitigate any negative consequences in terms of how he might act out in response. The days for mitigation seem to be gone, but i will say he will once he gets through this and he probably will he will exact revenge on a lot of people, a lot of people. Former executive Vice President at the trump organization. He will exact revenge. He will exact revenge on a lot of people. I was like okay, good night. I have to think about that. I mean, that seems like a potential consequence of impeachment that we should start thinking about. We should at least be talking about, wondering about, starting to make plans for how the president might behave in the circumstances. But then heres my last question about impeachment and what happens next. Throughout the debate over whether or not to impeach trump in the house, democrats argued consistently that while it is unusual to bring impeachment proceedings against a president in his first term, right, a year away from him facing the voters at first potential reelection, democrats argued there is good reason to do that in this case because of what they are impeaching him for, right . What about foreign interference in 2020 . What they caught him doing was trying to corrupt the next election. No, not just inviting but trying to extort and force foreign interference in that next election on his behalf. Democrats said because of that thats got to be kind of the propulsive force for why this impeachment has to happen now, why it has to happen quickly, why we cant just wait for the next election, because this is about the next election. We need to act now to head off the damage that he got caught trying to cause the next president ial election in the United States. And i dont know if that argument was more persuasive than any other argument, but the democrats did impeach him. He is now impeached. Unless the senate convicts him and votes to remove him from office, though, he will still be in office, and he will still be the republican partys candidate in the next president ial election. Having invited and even tried to extort and force foreign intervention in that next election to help him win. And so how does that dynamic change now . I mean, do we know if impeaching him over him trying to get ukraine involved in the next election on his side, do we know if that impeachment is going oo have any impact on the threat of foreign intervention in the next election on his side or any side . To me those are the four main outstanding questions following the impeachment of President Trump last week. Hows that senate trial going to be run, whats going to happen if theres any new important evidence, whats trump going to do whats his next move and also what about this question of foreign interference . On that last point we have some news tonight. And for this news lets turn to mr. Banana. I said mr. Banana. Go ahead. Mr. Banana, take it away. History of russia like youve never heard it before. Mr. Banana wants to know what you think about when when you hear the word russia. Do you think of a bear and a bottle of vodka or maybe you think about president putin in the red square in moscow. Look how excited mr. Banana is to see mr. Putin. Oh, my god, look at him hes so dreamy. And hes right there in the youtube frame with me, and mr. Banana can barely contain himself. Hes going to unpeel right in front of us. This slightly idiomatically incorrect but accent free english video is not a very good history of russia even though thats what it says it is. But it is sort of slickly produced, a slick youtube production. It is designed to seem like at least as far as you can trust mr. Banana you ought to be able to trust this telling of russian history. Its a 12minute long video. Im not going to show you the whole thing. But let me show you a little piece of what it mean by it not being idiomatically correct as well as not being good history. Come along with me. Its also the time of the creation of the russian kirillic alphabet by two brothers who are christian missionaries. Yeah, yeah, its exactly the symbols you see in russian cuisine menus. Oh, those are the strange symbols you see in russian cuisine menus. Oh, yeah, yeah, its exactly the same strange symbols you see in russian cuisine menus, comrade. Goes on for quite some time in somewhat painful detail, but it really picks up when we get to Joseph Stalin. The second leader after lenins death was Joseph Stalin. He started to recover the country after the revolution. He reformed the country. He took the wealth from rich people and united all the poor ones. Russian robin hood, bang, hitler attacked the soviet union in june of 1941. And then were onto world war ii. Thats pretty much what Joseph Stalin is remembered for, being like robin hood, bang. Yeah, Joseph Stalin he was known as a reformer who was kind to the poor. I mean, its weird, right . If you scroll a couple more minutes into it you get to a part where they explain that the way alaska became a part of the United States was that nuketoa kristof gave alaska to the United States in 1957 as a present, as a gift which a really weird take on alaska, which the United States actually bought from russia in the 1860s. But if you want to call it a gift in the 1950s, then yeah youve been getting your history from mr. Banana. So heres the thing, the company that makes that mr. Banana let me tell you how awesome stalin was, oh, my god its putin, history of russia, right . The company that makes that turns out to be inexplicably massive online. Theyre called the sole publishing. Theyre the subject of a fascinating report that came out at law fair by lisa kaplan where, quote, measured in terms of view and subscribers the soul publishing has the Third Largest reach of any group of entertainment ch entertainment channels outranked only by disney and warner media. It goes disney, warner media, and then the mr. Banana people, this soul media company. As of november this year Third Largest on youtube. Quote, it is run by russian nationals based in and managed from cyprus. Funds itself from ad revenues from facebook and youtube worth of tens of millions of dollars. And last year in 2018 it purchased a small suite of facebook advertisements on political issues and made those purchases in rubles. The weird revisionist history Joseph Stalin robin hood theyre promoting online is a tiny little sliver of the space the company is taking up on youtube. The link online to the smart banana fake history videos are linked to other video producing entities like fiveminute crafts and 7second riddles and something called bright side and fiveminute magic. Its all this random click bait sort of highly optimized content on youtube. So, like, at fiveminute crafts girly which they say is the female version of their five minute crafts channel one of the things they teach you to do is pour in pepsi and you dont have to scrub, just pour the soda in there and its clean. Heres a handy tip about smearing toothpaste on a paper and sticking the paper in your mouth and now look your teeth are perfect. And while this sort of seems like stupid content its stupid content its become massive on youtube. Like click here for handy hints. That five minutes craft channel alone has had more than 16 billion views. This is the kind of thing people watch on youtube. Bright side another one of their weird linked entities has 44 million followers on facebook. By contrast, the New York TimesFacebook Page has 16 million facebook followers. Bright side, 44 million, New York Times, 16 million. So this company has built this mammoth social media operation that is mostly pushing out nonsense content or click batie stupid content that is working to attract clicks. But theyre now starting to integrate into the that content prorussian happy talk fake history material and some oddly sort of sort of subtle antiu. S. Stuff like this video that suggests the United States is one of the top ten countries in the world most likely to not exist anymore in the next 20 years because the United States is going to disappear. At least alaska and texas are definitely going to secede but thats only the beginning. And they dont portray this as some screed against the United States, its just tucked in among all the other countries that might no longer exist sometime soon. As lisa kaplan argues at law fair this week in this investigative piece one of the things to watch here as this huge russian social Media Presence has been developed in the United States, theyve started doing this prorussia undermining the u. S. Sort of subtle content. And theyve started poking around the edges of buying overtly political content about u. S. Politics that in the future if it tests well they could presumably decide to ship to their gazillions of online followers. Again, in terms of taking up space on youtube its disney and warner media and then these guys. I mean, remember what we learned in the russian social media operation in 2016 to target our election in 2016 to benefit trump. We learned it in the criminal indictments against the Russian MilitaryIntelligence Officers charged by mueller. We learned it in the Senate Report reviewing how that russian information worked against us. One of their key plays is that they would build up seemingly nonpolitical content, they have lots of different avatars, lots of different accounts on lots of Different Social Media platforms attracting u. S. Viewership, attracting likes, attracting followers, all doing stuff that didnt seem to be overtly political at all. It was just designed to get people clicking there, just designed to get into peoples feeds. And when it came time to turn those things operational for the purposes of american political impact those seemingly nonpolitical channels started pushing out material designed to influence the election. And a big part of the impact, you want to capture the maximum number of eyeballs, well you better have the maximum number of subscribers already looking at your content before you become a political operation. Well, boy, are they doing that now. With the election of 2020 now bearing down upon us, i mean the Iowa Caucuses are six weeks away. Its super bowl sunday then the first monday in february, the day after super bowl sunday is the Iowa Caucuses. I mean, how prepped are we really . How prepped are the Democratic Candidates and the Democratic Party for contending with a potentially major foreignbased social media operation that this time wile be run under the auspices here of a federal government headed up by a president who was just impeached for inviting foreign intervention in the next election and who has implicitly stated hes good with it. Its one thing to not be ready because you didnt see it coming. This time we definitely see it coming. The question is, you know, how much help is the u. S. Government going to be under the leadership of President Trump . And how well are the democrats and the Democratic Party preparing to do their own work on this particularly if theyre not going to get help from the Justice Department under william barr and from the intelligence agencies under President Trump . Ill tell you just as we are coming on the air we did get a statement from the spokesperson for the soul publishing, the Company Behind mr. Banana and all those other videos. They say, quote, the soul publishing is proud of the light and enjoyable content we create for our fans around the world including the highly popular five minute crafts. We look forward to continued growth entertaining audiences and sharing more about our International Digital media company. Oh, i bet. I bet, the sharing. Further down this road you should also note today facebook took down more than 600 accounts that are linked to a different kind of operation that raises all these same red flags. The excellent longstanding debunking and Fact Checking website snopes. Com has been trying to raise the alarm about this since last november. Heres one of their reports on the subject. Quote, how a protrump network is building a fake empire on facebook and getting away with it. After weeks of those kind of public warnings from snopes and ultimately other researchers facebook today finally acted. Heres how nbc news ben collins reported on the action today at nbcnews. Com. Quote, facebook took down more than 600 accounts today. They took them down for using identities created by Artificial Intelligence to push stories about a variety of topics including impeachment and the elections. The network was called the bl and was run by vietnamese users posing as americans using fake photos generated by algorithms to simulate real identities. The Epoch Media Group spent 9. 5 million on online ads to spread content. Through the now suspended pages and groups. Quote, the network had over 55 million followers on facebook, which is almost double the number of followers that Kim Kardashian has. Quote, the account pushed antiimpeachment and protrump messages while otherwise posing as every day americans. So, yeah, President Trump just got impeached for trying to use the power of the u. S. Government and the presidency as leverage to force another country to get into the 2020 u. S. Election on his side. I mean, whether or not he was just impeached for that thats going to be the 2020 election. Can the Democratic Candidates compete with each other in terms of whos going to be the nominee on the basis of who is best situated to combat this threat and who has the best ideas about how to do so . And will any of them be able to count on help from u. S. Law enforcement and intelligence in a federal government that is run by donald trump particularly after hes just been impeached for this stuff . Reporter ben collins joins us next. Stay with us. loud fan noise children playing Music Building experience the power of sanctuary at the lincoln wish list sales event. Sign and drive off in a new lincoln with zero down, zero due at signing, and a complimentary first months payment. Here, it all starts withello hi . How can i help . A data plan for everyone. Everyone . Everyone. Lets send to everyone wifi up there . Uhh. Sure, why not . Howd he get out . a camera might figure it out. That was easy glad i could help. At xfinity, were here to make life simple. Easy. Awesome. So come ask, shop, discover at your local xfinity store today. Take a good look at this photo im going to put up on the screen. Its just the photo of a girl, looks nice, appears to be outside. Heres a woman who appears to be inside wearing makeup. You can see its kind of a studiostyle backdrop behind her. Heres a guy who appears to be outside on what looks like a sunny day. Kind of has a weird hair hat thing going on there. But you know, whatever. Nothing too weird about any of these pictures. But you should know none of these people are real humans. They look real but there are some clues if you know what to look for theres something weird, something artificially generated about them. The young girls sort of snaggal tooth is out of place. Looks like maybe its from someone or someone else. The come turns out to be kind of missing an ear given the way her hair falls and given the symmetry of her head. The hat on that guys head is kind of basically whats going on there is theres like a hat sitting on top his hair rather than staying on top of his actual head sort of. These are the kinds of things you look for when youre trying to figure out whether the pictures youre looking at are artificially intelligence generated pictures or generated images or pictures of real people. Those pictures youre just looking at were created using the same Artificial Intelligence algorithms used to create Fake Identities for accounts link today the protrump conspiracy content but because theyre fake and purport to represent the real accounts of what amount to fake people. And now the real people behind these accounts are getting caught. There was reporting on this by snopes, groundbreaking reporting by snopes this fall. There was reporting on it as well by lead stories realing great internet sleuths, now that facebook has discovered this, graphika has put out a report tearing this scheme apart, including this, quote, fake accounts for a major theme of this network. Over 80 groups and pages dedicated to u. S. President donald trump. Almost all the accounts administering these assets were fakes. These assets had strongly patriotic american names such as America NeedsPresident Trump and trump for americas president and we stand with trump and pence in all capital letters. Quote, but transparency tools showed that the stradministrato for these pages were primarily based not in the United States but rather in vietnam. Nbc news has been following this story. Nbc in this reporting building on their own early groundbreaking work about the efforts by epoch times in support of President Trump. Joining me now is ben. Ben, thank you very much for being here. Absolutely, thank you. First of all, i feel like the more i read on this subject and the more i come to understand on this subject, i gain increasing confidence in my ability to understand the stuff myself and become frightened by it. Yeah. I do not have a lot of confidence in my ability to explain it in a way thats going to convey these things to other people. Its hard to talk about in terms of its import. The most important thing to note here its creating a simulated environment in the United States where people believe things they may not necessarily believe. This is 55 Million People or some of them were not people this whole time, but 55 million Facebook Accounts followed these accounts that were pulled down today. And they were saying uniformly one thing politically. The people who joined in these groups they werent there to talk about President Trump. They were there to look at the teeth brushing videos that you were just talking about. But over time what they do is they builtup confidence, hey, this is reliable person, this is real american, this guy is real photo as far as i can tell. Hes from down the street. He says hes from denver or whatever. They create these identities that look american and then they shift the tide politically with just subtly over the course of time. The thing that is insidious about it that i didnt understand until the wake of the research stuff in russia was that it makes sense operationally for these online presences, these avatars, these accounts, to build up in a nonpolitical context. And it can be, you know, that its helpful hints for whitening your ogre teeth or how to tie your shoes faster or i love motorcycle or i love texas or i sure hate the police. You pick anything, any cause that might attract americans, any stripe of americans and you build up their interest and their following because you get them to trust you and then you become operational in the way thats designed to influence the election after youve got them on the hook. I think it was important work by snopes to narrow this down now. We dont know what it would have looked like in a year. They had already been banned from buying ads on facebook. They were the largest buyer of protrump ads before this. They got caught manipulating the platform. So, when you reported on this in august, the Largest Online purchaser of protrump ads was the trump campaign. The second largest purchaser of protrump ads was epoch times when you got them shut down. Thats correct. Yes. Now theyre back. Now theyre back. They werent shut down for their messages. This stuff was found in the data. It was very easy for them to find these Fake Identities because they looked so weird over time. And they all worked in packets, right . They all worked in groups together. It wasnt about the packets. Its about they were creating fake people over and over again. This was the second time they pulled this off. This is ta larger time in sheer numbers. I guess the most important thing is we dont know if its still happening. This takes a lot of internal work from facebook, a lot of work from reporters saying this looks very fishy. So their end game hasnt been pulled off. They hasnt meddled in an election the way they want to yet. Facebook is calling this part official amplification which is a helpful way to think about it. Its one thing to compete in the marketplace of ideas. Thats what elections are about, including political advertising. But to be creating foreignbased robot armies that are artificially amplifying your message is a form of information welfare. It feels like we dont have defense for it at all. The best defense we have is to understand it and youre doing great work. Stay with us. Doing great work stay with us old. Its not just a cold if you have high blood pressure. Most cold medicines may raise blood pressure. Coricidin hbp is the. 1 brand that gives. Powerful cold relief without raising your blood pressure. I was on the fence about changing from a manual to an electric toothbrush. But my hygienist said going electric could lead to way cleaner teeth. She said, get the one inspired by dentists, with a round brush head. Go pro with oralb. Oralbs gentle rounded brush head removes more plaque along the gum line. For cleaner teeth and healthier gums. And unlike sonicare, oralb is the First Electric toothbrush brand accepted by the ada for its effectiveness and safety. What an amazing clean ill only use an oralb oralb. Brush like a pro. I am all about livi g joyfully. Hello. The united explorer card hooks me up. Getting more for getting away. Rewarded going new places and tasting new flavors. Rewarded traveling lighter. Rewarded. Haha, boom getting settled. Rewarded. Learn more at the explorer card dot com. And get. Rewarded weve been talking tonight about all this new news there is about the battle of Public Opinion, over impeachment, over the 2020 election, potential worries about foreign interference, false information, fake online avatars, the whole thing. While were talking about that, one more thing worth keeping an eye on when it comes to this online battle over Public Opinion, in addition to the protrump outlets that are churns out fake or real contents in support of the president , republicans have been waging a very expensive and concerting advertising effort these past few months particularly online to try to turn people against the impeachment effort against President Trump, and they havent been particularly successful. The Public Opinion numbers of impeachment have been pretty stable. But its interesting. Republicans sort of had a lot of that field to themselves. Democrats didnt really try to compete with them in that advertising space. But that will presumably change as we head towards 2020, and thats what makes this next ad im about to show you so interesting. Let me say at the outset this ad is false. It is false. It is giving you information that is not true. It was posted and promoted by a progressive activist. In october mr. Hamilton registered hampton, excuse me. He registered as a california candidate for governor as a way to protest facebooks policy in which they say they will allow false political ads. Someone comes to them and says, hey, theres a political ad running on facebook that i know is based on false information. Facebook says we cant help you, were not going to police the truth or falsehoods of political ads anymore. Now mr. Hampton is a registered politician, he is posting all the fake content he wants on facebook because he can in order to make a point, right . Facebooks decided theyre not going to fact check any ads as long as theyre political ads, well that means this guy mr. Hampton of california can say whatever he wants. And thats exactly what hes done here with again this false ad. Deeply troubling crisis in our country. This is crisis of confidence, of credibility and of integrity. Our nation is indeed at a cross roads. Will we pursue the search for truth, or will we dodge, weave, and evade the truth . Im of course referring to the investigation and serious allegations of illegal conduct by the president of the United States. You see the hashtag there. Thank mitch for impeachment. That ad goes on for another minute or so. The implication of the ad is false, right . This is thank Mitch Mcconnell for supporting the impeachment of President Trump. Mitch mcconnell is not supporting the impeachment of President Trump, but the ad is pretty convincing in terms of the way it makes it seem he might be. Again, this ad is being run by a california activist to make a point you can run totally false political ads on facebook. And i dont think were going to see Democrats Use this strategy more widely, but it is technically a freeforall at this point as long as that is facebooks approach. And this is really weird new twist on what it means to fight partisan messaging on both sides particularly in this political climate. Stay with us. E all about bringing families together. This time of year, thats really important. So were making it easier than ever to become part of our family. Thats why our chevy employee discount is now available to everyone. The chevy price you pay is what we pay. Not a cent more. Family is important to us. And we want you to be part of ours. So happy holidays. And welcome to the family. All the chevy family get the chevy employee discount for everyone today. Do your asthma symptoms ever hold you back . About 50 of people with severe asthma have too many cells called eosinophils in their lungs. Eosinophils are a key cause of severe asthma. Fasenra is designed to target and remove these cells. Fasenra is an addon injection for people 12 and up with asthma driven by eosinophils. Fasenra is not a rescue medicine or for other eosinophilic conditions. Fasenra is proven to help prevent severe asthma attacks, improve breathing, and can lower oral steroid use. Fasenra may cause allergic reactions. Get help right away if you have swelling of your face, mouth, and tongue, or trouble breathing. Dont stop your asthma treatments unless your doctor tells you to. Tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection or your asthma worsens. Headache and sore throat may occur. Havent you missed enough . Ask an asthma specialist about fasenra. If you cant afford your medication, astrazeneca may be able to help. You may have gingivitis. When you brush, and the clock could be ticking towards bad breath, receding gums, and possibly. Tooth loss. Help turn back the clock on gingivitis with parodontax. Leave bleeding gums behind. Parodontax. Just between us, you know whats better than mopping . Anything at the end of a long day, its the last thing i want to do. Well i switched to swiffer wet jet and its awesome. Its an allinone so its ready to go when i am. The cleaning solution actually breaks down dirt and grime. And the pad absorbs it deep inside. So, it prevents streaks and haze better than my old mop. Plus, its safe to use on all my floors, even wood. Glad i got that off my chest and the day off my floor. Try wet jet with a moneyback guarantee as i mentioned at the top of the show tonight House Speaker nancy pelosi today, two days after impeachment officially invited President Trump to deliver his state of the Union Address on february 4th, which is two days after super bowl sunday and one day after the Iowa Caucuses. Her letter invited the president , quote, in the spirit of respecting our constitution. Today white House CounselPat Cipollone expected to lead the president s defense at his impeachment trial in the senate, he was up on capitol hill. He was seen meeting with Senate Republican leader Mitch Mcconnell. He also did a walk through on the senate floor, trying to see what the courtroom is going to be like . At the same time cnn is reporting democrats are privately preparing for a trial that may start as soon as january 6th, the week of january 6th. Cnn also reports that staffers for the key house committees in the impeachment are already working to prepare over the holiday break. Prior to handing over the impeachment articles to the senate, whatever that happens, Speaker Pelosi will also be mulling which of her member, which democratic members of the house will serve as impeachment managers in that trial in the senate. Among those who are reportedly under consideration is new york congressman Sean Patrick Maloney who joins us here in the studio. Sir, thank you so much for making time. Can you give us any news whats happening in terms of the process, the handing over the articles, the choice of impeachment managers, all of that . No. If i ever wanted to be one, that would probably be a great way to not be. Look, the speaker is very much in control of this process and she should be. Shes done an outstanding job to date in leading this inquiry and staffing it. She doesnt need any help from me. I can tell you that im very proud of the work that the two committees have done, intel and judiciary. Very proud of my colleagues on the house floor, particularly some of the very new members who are in tough districts who stood up for whats right. It was a historic week, and it was because of the hard work and dedication can principled Decision Making of really good Public Servants starting with our witness and the whistleblower, patriots and military officers who came forward, but also people in Public Office who still know right from wrong. I wanted to ask you about something i sort of asked openly at the top of the show and have been talking about ever since which is the question of foreign interference in the election. Obviously there was a question of russia in 2016 and the president s attitude towards that. He was just impeached for not just inviting but trying to extort another country into intervening on his behalf in 2020. And the argument a lot of your colleagues made about why we needed to act so quickly, why it wasnt appropriate to just let the Voters Decide and pass judgment in 2020 is that what he got caught for doing with ukraine was messing with that election, was undercutting the fairness of that election, corrupting it in effect. Now hes impeached, it doesnt seem like the risk of a corrupted 2020 election. Is it all lessened by his impeachment . And maybe im just being cynical or sort of shortsighted about that, but do you feel that risk is any less or affected by hes being impeached for what he did . Two points. The first is sunshine is the best disinfectant. Revealing did expose whatever scheme in ukraine. I think thats fair to say. Thats fair. Zblut be fact is theres a whole other side to the United States government. And im privileged to work with these folks. And they are very dedicated to their jobs. Im talking about people at the National Security agency, cia and others. They take the threat of foreign interference in our elections very seriously. And i want people out there to know there are dedicated people working in the government who still know who the good guys are and bad guys are. You hear a lot of flippant and dangerous stuff from the white house, of course, and that should concern all of us. And we need to watch it like a hawk, but there are real professionals in our agencies who care about these things. What i was talking about in terms of his sort of online surprisingly massive online operations that are foreignbased, that in some cases are using Fake Identities to push protrump content or seems to be sort of insinuating themselves into large numbers of american followers in what looks like nonpolitical content but starting to become prorussian, antiu. S. But testing political messages. I feel every time i learn about that stuff is because enterprising reporters and internet safety researchers are shaking the bars and trying to make the companies do something about it, trying to make twitter respond, trying to make facebook respond. I feel like i never hear about the government not shutting down but taking action or doing that might head that stuff off. Im a lot more worried about what facebook than whats going on at the National Security agencies. In other words, i have great confidence in the professionals who are dedicated to protecting our country in the government. Maybe not in the white house but in the agencies. I think they have talked themselves into this nonsense about protecting the First Amendment when theyre making money off of that business model, when they literally profit from viral nature of this click bait crap that is going to destroy anybodys ability to know whats real and whats not and to just ashooh any responsibility and to act like some Global Company thats above it all when in fact they like the rest of us depend on our system of freedom and rule of law and accountability for their success and for their long term well being. And they should act like americans once in a while or just be responsible, how about that . And i do think they should fix it and the industry should get its act together before a bunch of politician whose dont understand the internet, dont understand technology, who are going to do it wrong, i mean the best thing to happen would be a code of conduct where they at a minimum throttle fake contents. And i dont mean to go on and on about this but its really important because were about to be inundated by deep fake videos that nobodys ever really encountered before. Theres only something new in all of Human History that you can watch something live and it will be totally synthetic, it will be fake. We as human beings, i think well have a lot of trouble processing that and distinguishing whats real and whats not, and so weve got to educate our people about that. Weve got to be proactive about identifying that kind of malicious content. We need to have a partnership on this, and that is what concerns me most about going into the next election. New york congressman Sean Patrick Maloney, great to have you here. Well be back. Stay with us. Stay with us its friday, its a holiday season, theres snow in the yard. I ate lots of delicious homemade cookies today and no other food at all, which is fine. But my favorite thing about today still to come its an oldfashioned black and white, and it is the best new thing in the world. Thats next. children playing dog barking Music Building experience the power of sanctuary at the lincoln wish list sales event. Sign and drive off in a new lincoln with zero down, zero due at signing, and a complimentary first months payment. 1 in 5 people you meet wear yeah. That many but right now, is not the time to talk about it. So when youre ready, search my denture care. Poligrip and polident. Fixed. Fresh. And just between us. Its laundry truths, with cat and nat. I have so many kids and so much laundry. I dont have time for pretreating. What even is this . It looks like cheese but it smells like barf. With tide pods, you dont need to worry. The pretreaters are built in. So you just toss them in before the clothes. Tide pods dissolve even when the water is freezing. Nice if its got to be clean, its got to be tide. Skip to the good part with alkaseltzer plus. Now with 25 more concentrated power. Nothing works faster for powerful cold relief. Oh, what a relief it is so fast best new thing in the world, the queens daily eagle is a daily newspaper covering the new york city borough of queens, and today the queens daily eagle is the best exemplar i have ever seen how all news is local because on the front page its like oh, five more queens subway stations will become Wheelchair Accessible and turns out there was a pipe failure there not cooking grease that caused we also get their main headline on what amounts to a National News story, which is here can we see this here if i put it up like this. See that . Queens man impeached. Quote, former Jamaica Estates resident donald trump was impeached wednesday by the u. S. House of representatives. Hes the third president to be impeached in United States history, dash, and the first from queens. And the president s impeachment did not make the first page of his hometown paper. It did not even make the first 15 pages. It is tucked into the bottom of page 16 below two other articles about the new york city subway. Hey, look, the station at estoria boulevard is back open, neat. Below that, queens man impeached. So subscribe to your local paper. Do it right now. You will get news that looks different from anywhere else even when everybody has to cover the impeachment. Local reporters know their beat, right . Thats the new thing in the world. Now its time for the last word. Kwaegts i never dont enjoy your the last thing you say but that was unique and local. Thats the kind of thing you frame. Have yourself a fantastic weekend. As history was unfolding on wednesday with the impeachment of that queens man, president donald j. Trump, Michael Moore felt heto be there. So he watched from the front row of the house gallery. Michael moore is back in new york city