hello and welcome to inside politics. i am john king. i am your retribution. donald trump s saying why democrats need to give him another chance. a busy 2024 includes a big speech by trump s biggest early rival and a decision by a prominent trump critic to bow out of running. plus, russia on the verge of the first battle field victory in months. ukrainians squeezed in the battle of bakhmut. pete buttigieg admits to cnn he got it wrong on the ohio train derailment. his response in a cnn exclusive interview. we begin with important and interesting maneuvering in the 2024 republican race. the weekend speeches in very different settings crystallize the competition at the top of the gshlop field. donald trump spoke for nearly two hours at cpac telling lies and deseesantis says republican need a doer, not a liar. they need to wrack upstate legislative wins as a launch pad. trump and desantis own the top tier in early 2024 polling with a half dozen ovr so other prospects a f
and liz cheney is vowing to prevent trump from returning to power after her landslide gop primary defeat that will oust her from congress. she says she s considering a 2024 run for the white house in a potential showdown with the former president. welcome to our viewers here in the united states and around the world. i m wolf blitzer, you re in the situation room. we begin this hour with rudy giuliani facing the georgia grand jury knowing he s the target of a criminal investigation. the former trump lawyer questioned under oath about the ex-president s potentially illegal attempts to stay in power. cnn political correspondent sara murray has more from atlanta. we will not talk about this until it s over. it s a grand jury and grand juries, as i recall are secret. rudy giuliani keeping a tight lid on six hours of testimony that just wrapped here. just days after prosecutors told him he is now a target in the criminal investigation into efforts to subvert the 2020 e
jake, that call that was on full display today during this hearing was, of course, the hour-long phone call that then-president trump had in january with these election officials in the state of georgia. mainly the secretary of state, brad raffensperger, who you heard from today. and i m told that despite what you saw today, which was the committee playing clips of that call with claims from trump saying thousands of ballots had been shredded or thousands of dead people had voted, and then flashing to raffensperger saying that s not true, we checked that out. that s also not true. trump has continued to defend that call. he has said it was a perfect call. he has told people he assumed it was being recorded. there were attorneys on the line as they were in this hour-lawn call where he alternated between asking for raffensperger to find these votes, thinly veiled threatening him when it came to certain pushback on claims he was making, and despite the fact you heard from them
the scheme going anyway. a former georgia election official telling the panel she and her family paid a horrible price for trump s lies, their lives threatened after the president falsely accused her of ballot fraud. we want to welcome our viewers here in the united states and around the world. i m wolf blitzer. you re in the situation room. tonight the american people have gotten a deeper look into donald trump s attack on democracy through the testimony of state level officials who defied him and wound up actually fearing for their own lives. let s get to all the testimony from the january 6th investigation. our chief congressional correspondent manu raju reports. you re a tyrant. you re a felon reporter: tonight the january 6th committee laying out in stark terms intimidation and pressure campaign from then president donald trump and his allies against state officials attempting to uphold democracy in states where joe biden won. what are we going to do, besides k
and they count find themselves having difficulty down the line later on because of the numbers as you said, they work in his favor if it is him. the rnc is trying, i think a couple things. that s a really interesting point about liz cheney, are they trying to make sure liz cheney doesn t make it on the deb state stage and create party unity where the biggest challenge of party unity is often donald trump. sununu said something else that s really interesting recently and it was that it s not about the number of candidates who enter the race. it s the number it s about knowing when to get out. to make sure that perhaps someone like donald trump is not the nominee. right. this is, again, an early weekend. it s march but the maneuvering is getting interesting. up next t for us live to ukraine. russian troops closing in on bakhmut fromom three sides. president putin wants the battle field win and d appears willingo pay a giant price. withth freight brokerage to transnsportation mana