it turns out president trump has a high profile defender in his impeachment battle. his name is vladimir putin. the washington post is report former white house officials say putin helped persuade the president it was ukraine and not russia that hacked the democrats and interfered in the 2016 campaign, despite all the evidence presented to the president by u.s. intelligence officials. according to the washington post, the president s intense resistance to the assessment of u.s. intelligence agencies that russia systematically interfered in the 2016 campaign and the blame be cast instead on a rival country, ukraine, led many of his advisers to think that putin himself helped spur the idea of ukraine s culpability. from manchester, new hampshire, senator jeanne shaheen, a member of the armed services and foreign relations committees. senator, welcome, happy holidays to you. thank you, happy holidays. also of course, what putin said in his annual news conference this week, that he
impeachment battle which is really in limbo right now. so the house has gone on a nearly two-week recess for christmas and holiday break and they have not sent the house or the articles of impeachment over to the senate trial or for a senate trial. so essentially this means that the senate trial that mitch mcconnell s hoping to begin immediately upon returning in january is not going to happen right after recess as they initially planned. let s talk a little bit about last night s democratic debate. what are you reporting about what happened? so we really are looking at this and what happened on the debate stage last night as a pile on pete. so mayor pete has really been the front runner in iowa and a lot of the candidates last night trained their fire on him and also elizabeth warren. but really one of the first times we ve seen mayor pete become the center of a lot of the attacks on the debate stage. a lot of these tensions that have been brewing with him kind of float out ther
did know there was a problem with the release of the funds. vladimir putin did not acknowledge the facts as the he continues to stand behind president trump during the impeachment battle. as you can see there, wolf, president trump can very much apparently count on vladimir putin as that impeachment battle continues. the pattern, of course, that we ve been seeing very much from the russians as they criticize the united states at the same time rarely ever criticize president trump and as we can see, supporting president trump at this very critical time, wolf? very interesting, indeed. fred pleitgen in moscow, thank you. just ahead, we re counting down to tonight s presidential debate as the new poll shows which candidate is leading the pack. before they re gone. now in-network with vsp. visionworks. see the difference. the ones that make a truebeen difference in people s lives.
democrats are frustrated because things aren t going anywhere. we were told a couple of weeks ago that support for impeachment was going to grow. republicans were going to come on board. now the numbers are shifting back the other way. democrats and everybody else is aware that the president will not be removed by the senate.es and in fact, probably the most significant finding of all and most significant data of all is not even polled. we are sitting here talking about democrats at risk for their reelection because of voting for impeachment. that is not the way this was supposed to work out. the writing is on the wall. the republicans won the impeachment battle. laura: john, that is pretty definitive from my old pal here. but jeff toobin is a revered cnn legal analyst. he has a real problem with this poll, watch. i don t believe that poll for one second. 90% to 77%. you know, i just don t believe f it. it makes no sense that number would change like that. the polls are sometimes
things aren t going anywhere. we were told a couple of weeks ago that support for impeachment was going to grow. republicans were going to come on board. now the numbers are shifting back the other way. democrats and everybody else is aware that the president will not be removed by the senate. and in fact, probably the most significant finding of all and most significant data of all is not even polled. we are sitting here talking about democrats at risk for their reelection because of voting for impeachment. that is not the way this was supposed to work out. the writing is on the wall. the republicans won the impeachment battle. laura: john, that is pretty definitive from my old pal here. but jeff toobin is a revered cnn legal analyst. he has a real problem with this poll, watch. i don t believe that poll for one second. 9277%. you know, i just don t believe it. it makes no sense that number would change like that. the polls are sometimes wrong.